Pages: 1 ... 4 5 [6] 7 8   Go Down

Author Topic: Street Art  (Read 15544 times)

RSL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 16046
    • http://www.russ-lewis.com
Re: Street Art
« Reply #100 on: May 26, 2018, 07:54:29 pm »

Remember that The Americans was derided here in the US when it was first published, and as you know Frank had to go to France to publish the book because he met too much resistance here. It was the style that American editors and publishers found objectionable. Think about that.

If you'd read the stuff on my web you'd know that I've not only thought about it, I've lectured on the subject.
Logged
Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

RSL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 16046
    • http://www.russ-lewis.com
Re: Street Art
« Reply #101 on: May 26, 2018, 07:56:19 pm »


Moretti is a honey! One of the best you've posted yet!

Rob

Thanks, Rob. That came from just wandering around downtown after dark. I love that picture too.
Logged
Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

OmerV

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 513
    • Photographs
Re: Street Art
« Reply #102 on: May 26, 2018, 08:11:05 pm »

If you'd read the stuff on my web you'd know that I've not only thought about it, I've lectured on the subject.

I know you know, Russ, that’s why I mentioned it. My point is that your outlook of contemporary photography seems to be similar to that of those ‘50s publishers.

Farmer

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2848
Re: Street Art
« Reply #103 on: May 26, 2018, 09:08:28 pm »

Okay, Ivo. First explain how I'm supposed to know that that's a Muslim girl? The headscarf? Lots of girls wear headscarfs. The point is that for it to be effective photojournalism a picture has to be complete. This one isn't.

Oh, come on, Russ.  Look at how the other two women are dressed - it's mild to warm temperatures, but the woman on the right has both a full head covering and her arms and legs are fully covered, combined with her skin tones (someone will complain about that comment, I guess), my very first though is that she is probably Muslim.  Lots of woman do not wear headscarves in 2018 in western countries, and very few during warm or hot weather.

Then you have the classic play between red and blue, and the tie in of those colours and the woman on the right looking across.  In the background, between the Muslim woman and the other two is a red pedestrian stop signal - I'm going to say that wasn't deliberately captured, but it sure does add to the scene.

There's lots in this scene - intended or fortunate.
Logged
Phil Brown

Ivophoto

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1103
Re: Street Art
« Reply #104 on: May 27, 2018, 12:31:13 am »

Oh, come on, Russ.  Look at how the other two women are dressed - it's mild to warm temperatures, but the woman on the right has both a full head covering and her arms and legs are fully covered, combined with her skin tones (someone will complain about that comment, I guess), my very first though is that she is probably Muslim.  Lots of woman do not wear headscarves in 2018 in western countries, and very few during warm or hot weather.

Then you have the classic play between red and blue, and the tie in of those colours and the woman on the right looking across.  In the background, between the Muslim woman and the other two is a red pedestrian stop signal - I'm going to say that wasn't deliberately captured, but it sure does add to the scene.

There's lots in this scene - intended or fortunate.

Thanks Farmer
I’m so glad somebody can read contemporary picture here.
When I ‘m out with my camera, I shoot approx 1,5 picture a day, you can imagine that I saw why to raise my camera.

I was really hoping to share some insights with Lula’s Statler and Waldorf, but unfortunately.

Logged

32BT

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3095
    • Pictures
Re: Street Art
« Reply #105 on: May 27, 2018, 02:19:25 am »

hmmm, I must admit that I'm slowly sympathising with Rob's surprise here.

I realise that language skills in general are degrading quickly, and evidently, visual language skills fare no different, but one would expect that a photography forum would at least show a little more intelligence regarding pictorial analogy, metaphor, repetition, and ambiguity. And for the Street Art subgenre, an excellent eye for mood rendering and composition would be appreciated.

If you operate on the level of Van Gogh or Picasso, you might posit that you can and want to change the interpretation of an entire genre, but for the rest of us mere mortals, that be a bit conceited and narcissistic. (Oh wait... Conceited and narcissistic gets you lots of dough and power, nm)

Sure, new techniques and new technology will change the visual language, but the fact that phones have made the superficial ubiquitous, doesn't mean that contemporary Street Art needs to become flat and superficial by the forces of the common. 

(did that sound conceited enough to at least get me some dough? ;-)  )

Logged
Regards,
~ O ~
If you can stomach it: pictures

Rob C

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 24074
Re: Street Art
« Reply #106 on: May 27, 2018, 04:54:14 am »

I’ll try, but we both know it probably won’t change much.

Your criteria for what makes a “street” photograph legit* is in fact within GreggP’s photo. But it is packaged differently and owes little to the past, perhaps making it difficult to accept (too kaleidoscopic?) Except that today’s photographers are as capable as yesterday’s(please.) It seems too obvious to say but, whoa, guess what, love, loss, defeat, pride, difficulties, are all as relevant in today’s photography as in the beloved 1930s–60s pictures.** Ya just gotta toss that HC-B monkey offf your back.

Remember that The Americans was derided here in the US when it was first published, and as you know Frank had to go to France to publish the book because he met too much resistance here. It was the style that American editors and publishers found objectionable. Think about that.

So there you go.  ::)

PS I think the street forum is still a good idea. Just lighten up a bit. That goes for Rob too.

*Emotional connection to the environment, relationships between folks, and you know the rest.
** I really dislike the Family of Man thing that Steichen put on... Just for the record.

I'm kinda confused, now, because I need a reference to which snap we speak about in this context. If we speak of the beach, no it is not street; if of the city shot, yes, it fits street art, but please don't offer that it is new in any way: folks were making sandwich slides almost as soon as transparency film was on the market. Today we do the same old trick in the computer. Ain't nuttin' noo... we just have to try and make the perennial as interesting as we can.

Frank's book wasn't accepted in the States, originally, for the same reasons that Klein's New York had problems: no US publisher wanted to take the financial hit he expected from a country where the folks hang the flag outside their house, a concept so strange, unexpected, unusual and apparently pointless to Europeans: we take our nationalities for granted and feel no need to keep reminding ourselves of who we may be. Only after Europe made the books succesful did the US leap on the bus and look for its rake-off too.

No, Omer, it is not time for Russ or moi to "lighten up" a bit. It is time fo those who want to use this part of the site to abide by the hoped for aims of it: to be a showcase for street photography. To do that we need to contribute street and street art, not reduce it to the spiritual equivalent of holiday snaps at the beach, even if those snaps are the best ever snapped. It's a question of posting within the right location, and nothing more.

But I think you understand that perfectly well, anyhow. I think Ivo does too, hence the need to ignore my post #66.

Truth to tell, I think this is spilling over into troll heaven, rather than being any serious consideration of the topic.

;-)
« Last Edit: May 27, 2018, 05:01:56 am by Rob C »
Logged

Rob C

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 24074
Re: Street Art
« Reply #107 on: May 27, 2018, 05:06:42 am »

Oh, come on, Russ.  Look at how the other two women are dressed - it's mild to warm temperatures, but the woman on the right has both a full head covering and her arms and legs are fully covered, combined with her skin tones (someone will complain about that comment, I guess), my very first though is that she is probably Muslim.  Lots of woman do not wear headscarves in 2018 in western countries, and very few during warm or hot weather.

Then you have the classic play between red and blue, and the tie in of those colours and the woman on the right looking across.  In the background, between the Muslim woman and the other two is a red pedestrian stop signal - I'm going to say that wasn't deliberately captured, but it sure does add to the scene.

There's lots in this scene - intended or fortunate.


Farmer, have you served an apprenticeship with a curator?

Rob C

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 24074
Re: Street Art
« Reply #108 on: May 27, 2018, 05:43:35 am »

Well, it's a "snap" all right. And that's supposed to tell me. . . what?

That where red was once supposed to be the optical key to the main point of interest, we now have a shot which can't decide which point is interesting, so throws in two in hope of dodging the decision-making bullet...

In fairness, I blame the look of computer colour imagery for that.

Maybe de-tuning the colour pain of the thing, also making it smaller, might help. Blown so large, the eye is compelled to wander about looking for - what? Smaller, it sees three figures, one presumably picking a bit of crap from the other, a third just looking on, or out, for traffic. Pictures trying to tell a story have to be concise, physically as emotionally, so that they can be seen and understood in an instant.

As that's all far too complex for me, I find my jollies in taking a shot that possibly has a bit of "something", and then playing around with it until it either accentuates that something, or turns into another thing altogether, which can be unexpected fun. Having said which, I fear that the word fun is as hopeless as the word nice; they mean absolutely nothing.

And some thought pictures were a minefield...

Farmer

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2848
Re: Street Art
« Reply #109 on: May 27, 2018, 06:29:14 am »

Farmer, have you served an apprenticeship with a curator?

Hah - I'll pay that :-)

Different things speak to different people in different ways, Rob.
Logged
Phil Brown

RSL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 16046
    • http://www.russ-lewis.com
Re: Street Art
« Reply #110 on: May 27, 2018, 07:55:38 am »

You are obviously not in the possibility to understand the situation in this picture and not able to grasp the interaction and sensitivity between the Muslim Girl and the Western Girls, you also fail to see the color game in the image.

Okay Ivo, Evidently you haven't been around women enough to understand that they sometimes dress irrationally, so you don't understand that a girl wearing a headscarf and long pants isn't necessarily Muslim. But that aside, what's this about the "color game in the image?" Is that the message this picture's supposed to convey? Street isn't about color games, Ivo. It's about interrelationships between people.
Logged
Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

RSL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 16046
    • http://www.russ-lewis.com
Re: Street Art
« Reply #111 on: May 27, 2018, 08:23:24 am »

I know you know, Russ, that’s why I mentioned it. My point is that your outlook of contemporary photography seems to be similar to that of those ‘50s publishers.

Really? In what way Omer? Those fifties publishers were trying to tell us that America actually looks like the stuff painted by Norman Rockwell and photographed by Alfred Eisenstadt. We all knew better. In what way is my stuff like Rockwell's or Eisenstadt's?

I was there when The Americans hit America. I read the slam on it by Popular Photography. Your age is N/A, so I guess you were too young to have actually experienced that. Pop Photograph soon was overrun on that miscalculation.
Logged
Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

Slobodan Blagojevic

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 18090
  • When everyone thinks the same, nobody thinks
    • My website
Re: Street Art
« Reply #112 on: May 27, 2018, 09:27:28 am »

lol No, Omer, it is not time for Russ or moi to "lighten up" a bit. It is time fo those who want to use this part of the site to abide by the hoped for aims of it:...

That sounds awfully close to children who spend their whole life trying to please their never-satisfied father and his idea who they should be, never actually figuring out what that is.

You two are turning into genre police, I am afraid. You are not only mocking whole genres, like landscape, you are now mocking people’s attempts to fit into your own beloved, yet ever-elusive genre definition, which more and more looks like a Procrustean bed.


Rob C

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 24074
Re: Street Art
« Reply #113 on: May 27, 2018, 09:58:33 am »

That sounds awfully close to children who spend their whole life trying to please their never-satisfied father and his idea who they should be, never actually figuring out what that is.

You two are turning into genre police, I am afraid. You are not only mocking whole genres, like landscape, you are now mocking people’s attempts to fit into your own beloved, yet ever-elusive genre definition, which more and more looks like a Procrustean bed.


And to think that I always figured you could read very well indeed!

Mocking anything doesn't enter. No "whole genre" has been mocked, but irrelevance to the street zone within LuLa has been pointed out over and over again, because it seems to be a simple, basic yet impossible thing for a lot of folks to grasp: in a street section can you please post street photography pictures, not landscape, cityscape (as in your excellent, award-winning architectural design studies) nor beach? Please? Those are all something other than street. Why is that difficult for people to comprehend?

I don't mock landscape. I can't do it to my own satisfaction and, guess what - neither do most of the people who do try to do it. To put some finer focus on it: you will remember Chuck Kimmerle, who used to post on LuLa. I looked at his website a lot; some very interesting black/white photography, out of Nikon. He thinks of himself as a landscape artist. Now, note this: his present website shows an almost completely different sense of images and direction to his old set, to the more commonly imagined genre of what constitutes landscape. He has certainly moved on from very good to very, very focussed, too.

https://www.chuckkimmerle.com/

I guess you can reasonably draw the conclusion that the more immersed you become, the more you understand and, inevitably, the deeper within yourself you have to dig.

;-)
« Last Edit: May 27, 2018, 10:15:33 am by Rob C »
Logged

Ivophoto

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1103
Re: Street Art
« Reply #114 on: May 27, 2018, 09:59:10 am »

Okay Ivo, Evidently you haven't been around women enough to understand that they sometimes dress irrationally, so you don't understand that a girl wearing a headscarf and long pants isn't necessarily Muslim. But that aside, what's this about the "color game in the image?" Is that the message this picture's supposed to convey? Street isn't about color games, Ivo. It's about interrelationships between people.

Russ,

Serious, are you really saying this to me?

You know, few days ago, I really cared about your idea.

But reading your last posts, I don’t care anymore.

I continue doing what a like second most

Fly fishing



Kind regards

Ivo.

Logged

RSL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 16046
    • http://www.russ-lewis.com
Re: Street Art
« Reply #115 on: May 27, 2018, 10:24:26 am »

That sounds awfully close to children who spend their whole life trying to please their never-satisfied father and his idea who they should be, never actually figuring out what that is.

You two are turning into genre police, I am afraid. You are not only mocking whole genres, like landscape, you are now mocking people’s attempts to fit into your own beloved, yet ever-elusive genre definition, which more and more looks like a Procrustean bed.

Slobodan, if you sit down and actually study the work of the people who defined street photography you'll see their work is  anything but stuff in a Procrustean bed.

This morning I picked up Walker Evans's American Photographs and started re-reading the comments on it by Lincoln  Kirstein (if you don't know who Lincoln is you probably ought to find out).

"A superficial ease of operation has rendered the camera the dilettante's delight. It is both simpler and cleaner to make  bad photographs than it is to make bad paintings." and further: "Sighting ... through a little window and clicking a small key  are obviously child's play, and the ensuing childish results offer the vastest possibilities for innocent amusement. . ."

This, of course, was long before digital point-and-shoots and the cellphone swelled this kind of activity to a torrent of ho- hum garbage and selfies.

The problem we see in Street Showcase is not people trying to cram stuff into a definition. It's a problem of gross  ignorance of the definition. There's a bunch of stuff here in Street Showcase that would go just fine in User Critiques. That  includes your girl with head in the clouds. It's an interesting picture but it's a long way from street photography.

Which is why I'd recommend strongly getting rid of Landscape Showcase and Street Showcase. I see plenty of stuff in  Landscape Showcase that obviously isn't landscape. A picture, for instance, of tree bark is a hell of a long way from  landscape, though it'd go just fine in User Critiques, which, you might have noticed studiously avoids categories. Ivo's "color exercise" picture of women is street, but it's exceedingly bad street. It would go better in User Critiques where it wouldn't be  trying to fit a genre Ivo obviously knows nothing about.

I keep hearing about how out of date my idea of street photography -- actually of photography in general -- is. But I have  yet to see anybody post a picture that purports to be a convincing and worthwhile advancement from the kind of work  Atget, HCB, Frank, Walker Evans or Ansel Adams, did. Yes, we have better color nowadays. (Big f...ing deal.) In general we  have better equipment, so in many cases we can beat these guys in important things like "sharpness." (Another big f...ing  deal.) What makes a great photograph or a great painting or a great poem or a great musical composition isn't sharpness  or color. It's what I'll call the soul that went into it. In most cases, if you're struck by something with the soul that shines out  of Ansel's "Moonlight over Hernandez" you don't say to yourself: "Wow! That's really sharp." or "Wow! What great color."  You don't say anything. You Just accept the gift.
« Last Edit: May 27, 2018, 10:31:52 am by RSL »
Logged
Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

OmerV

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 513
    • Photographs
Re: Street Art
« Reply #116 on: May 27, 2018, 10:25:10 am »

I'm kinda confused, now, because I need a reference to which snap we speak about in this context. If we speak of the beach, no it is not street; if of the city shot, yes, it fits street art, but please don't offer that it is new in any way: folks were making sandwich slides almost as soon as transparency film was on the market. Today we do the same old trick in the computer. Ain't nuttin' noo... we just have to try and make the perennial as interesting as we can.

Frank's book wasn't accepted in the States, originally, for the same reasons that Klein's New York had problems: no US publisher wanted to take the financial hit he expected from a country where the folks hang the flag outside their house, a concept so strange, unexpected, unusual and apparently pointless to Europeans: we take our nationalities for granted and feel no need to keep reminding ourselves of who we may be. Only after Europe made the books succesful did the US leap on the bus and look for its rake-off too.

No, Omer, it is not time for Russ or moi to "lighten up" a bit. It is time fo those who want to use this part of the site to abide by the hoped for aims of it: to be a showcase for street photography. To do that we need to contribute street and street art, not reduce it to the spiritual equivalent of holiday snaps at the beach, even if those snaps are the best ever snapped. It's a question of posting within the right location, and nothing more.

But I think you understand that perfectly well, anyhow. I think Ivo does too, hence the need to ignore my post #66.

Truth to tell, I think this is spilling over into troll heaven, rather than being any serious consideration of the topic.

;-)

Seriously?

You and Russ are being pedantic in what is in effect a social setting, a hangout for mostly amateurs.

But you’re right, we’re trolling each other. So I’m done.

Good weather.

RSL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 16046
    • http://www.russ-lewis.com
Re: Street Art
« Reply #117 on: May 27, 2018, 10:26:16 am »

Russ,

You know, few days ago, I really cared about your idea.

But reading your last posts, I don’t care anymore.

Ivo.

Oh dear, Ivo, I'm crushed.
Logged
Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

Slobodan Blagojevic

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 18090
  • When everyone thinks the same, nobody thinks
    • My website
Re: Street Art
« Reply #118 on: May 27, 2018, 10:36:53 am »


... a simple, basic yet impossible thing for a lot of folks to grasp: in a street section can you please post street photography pictures, not landscape, cityscape (as in your excellent, award-winning architectural design studies) nor beach? Please? Those are all something other than street. Why is that difficult for people to comprehend?...

Perhaps because it was Russ who argued that “street” doesn’t have to be on the street, but could be, among other things, on the beach just as well?

In another post of yours, you divided, quite cleverly, genres with the word “street” in them, into:

Street
Street Art
Streetscapes (cityscapes)

Perhaps if you clarified that in your OP for this thread, people at least wouldn’t post streetscapes or cityscapes in your Street Art thread?

Never mind that the term (sub-genre?) “street art” doesn’t seem to exist, other than under the category of what most people think it is, i.e.,  murals, graffiti, or even street performers. Now, don’t get me wrong, even if it doesn’t exist and you invented it and defined it, I think you would be right to do so, as I could see a merit for its existence. It is just that not being universally understood, it could lead to people posting all kind of similarly sounding stuff.
« Last Edit: May 27, 2018, 10:50:08 am by Slobodan Blagojevic »
Logged

Slobodan Blagojevic

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 18090
  • When everyone thinks the same, nobody thinks
    • My website
Re: Street Art
« Reply #119 on: May 27, 2018, 10:49:19 am »

... That  includes your girl with head in the clouds. It's an interesting picture but it's a long way from street photography...

You keep saying that, Russ, but, as before, I am puzzled by that comment. Did I post it as “street”? I never did, nor interned to. I posted it in Rob’s subsection “Street Art” as I believed it fits his own definition of it. Perhaps it doesn’t, but I am still waiting for Rob to elaborate why not.
Pages: 1 ... 4 5 [6] 7 8   Go Up