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Author Topic: from the front page: adam krawesky  (Read 19659 times)

OmerV

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #60 on: January 06, 2019, 03:37:44 pm »

What does it mean when a body of work consists of pictures of a sort that are easily, and are commonly, knocked out by anyone with a modicum of technical ability and patience?

Well Andrew, it depends on whose opinion that is.

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #61 on: January 06, 2019, 04:29:58 pm »

Yes I can Russ.

The image of HCB here above.

This image lives his life thanks to all the cinema around it. 

I don’t say it doesn’t have it’s merits and I don’t want to minimize it’s impact , but they are not in proportion with the hysteria around it.

HCB is a lot of fantastic images, but also a lot of blabla generated by wannabes who think having to say something about HCB increases their seriousness.

Did you had the chance to visit the HCB foundation in Paris? Loaded with only the after talk and pompous reflections of all so called HCB specialists, you run into a massive deception.

On the other side of the spectrum I could point to Gursky’s ‘The Rhine’. It is an impressive picture, but hyped to sky by all who feel great by joining the hype.

Or Vivian Maiers hyped œuvre that would never had surfaced without the smart marketing of John Maloof.

Lartigue’s œuvre, the snapshots of jumping, racing or tennis playing woman, only made possible because he had the money to buy the newest gear / technical possibilities. Also here it was the curator of MOMA who hyped the early works of Lartigue to the status it is now.

Etc etc

Interesting, Ivo. I finally got you to support one of your off-the-wall opinions. Strangely enough, to some extent I agree with you. There’s been an awful lot of hype around HCB’s stuff. But the most important thing about HCB is that he was one of the first (Kertesz probably was the first) photographer to use the Leica to catch life in progress rather than life suspended while we take a picture. He certainly was the guy who defined street photography.

I agree with Rob about “Behind the Gare.” There’s a great deal in that picture, though I agree it’s probably been over-hyped. The point is, it’s just one of the pictures that was a masterpiece in its time. You show ignorance of the historical background when you criticize the work of people like HCB. Yes, HCB’s work has been over-hyped in general, but he certainly was the most influential photographer of the twentieth century, and today’s best photography owes him a lot.

Gursky’s Rhine, along with the work of people like Cindy Sherman, is centered on museum hype. It’s based on hyper-marketing but it hasn’t much to do with photography as fine art.

In general I agree with you about Vivian Maier. She’s been hyped as a street photographer, and she did a few good street shots, but most of her stuff that’s been held up as street isn’t street.

You can knock Lartigue if you want to, but your critique comes across as envy of Lartigue’s financial situation rather than on the quality of his work, which was quite astonishing for its time.

As far as “Walk to Paradise Garden” is concerned, why focus on that less-than-fantastic shot when Gene did things like Dr. Ceriani smoking after losing a patient, and like the Haitian asylum inmate, and like Tomoko Uemura in her bath? Gene Smith was one of the greatest photographers of all time. When you try to reduce his stature by picking one of his weaker works, all you do is expose your envy.
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OmerV

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #62 on: January 06, 2019, 04:52:25 pm »

Interesting, Ivo. I finally got you to support one of your off-the-wall opinions. Strangely enough, to some extent I agree with you. There’s been an awful lot of hype around HCB’s stuff. But the most important thing about HCB is that he was one of the first (Kertesz probably was the first) photographer to use the Leica to catch life in progress rather than life suspended while we take a picture. He certainly was the guy who defined street photography.

I agree with Rob about “Behind the Gare.” There’s a great deal in that picture, though I agree it’s probably been over-hyped. The point is, it’s just one of the pictures that was a masterpiece in its time. You show ignorance of the historical background when you criticize the work of people like HCB. Yes, HCB’s work has been over-hyped in general, but he certainly was the most influential photographer of the twentieth century, and today’s best photography owes him a lot.

Gursky’s Rhine, along with the work of people like Cindy Sherman, is centered on museum hype. It’s based on hyper-marketing but it hasn’t much to do with photography as fine art.

In general I agree with you about Vivian Maier. She’s been hyped as a street photographer, and she did a few good street shots, but most of her stuff that’s been held up as street isn’t street.

You can knock Lartigue if you want to, but your critique comes across as envy of Lartigue’s financial situation rather than on the quality of his work, which was quite astonishing for its time.

As far as “Walk to Paradise Garden” is concerned, why focus on that less-than-fantastic shot when Gene did things like Dr. Ceriani smoking after losing a patient, and like the Haitian asylum inmate, and like Tomoko Uemura in her bath? Gene Smith was one of the greatest photographers of all time. When you try to reduce his stature by picking one of his weaker works, all you do is expose your envy.

Russ, you asked for one example of an over-hyped photo. Well, only well known photographers will have work that becomes iconic, and obviously one image does not define any photographer. As for Gene Smith, he was indeed a very good photographer, though in my opinion it is his Pittsburgh work that is his best.

Rob C

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #63 on: January 06, 2019, 04:53:38 pm »

Rob, thanks for the clarification.

If you’re daughter started to teach in ‘70, she’s old generation.
Our youngest son is 18 (my wife and I have together 5 kids, oldest 29) and uses smart boards, iPads, smartphones since elementary. Home work is distributed over internet ‘smart school’ we even get his points by message before the kid gets home. How unfair! He even doesn’t have the chance to learn how to duplicate my signature to hide low grades from his parents. Poor lad.

He doesn’t have a clue how to use a calculation table book and he doesn’t have an idea how to calculate X cubed without smartphone.
But the stuff he knows about where to get the information he needs to do what he wants is beyond belief.
His social skills, despite all horror stories about iPad generation, are amazing.

It’s us who cannot deal with technological progress, the youth can and have it nicely placed into their world.

When I see my daughter, despite here smartphone addiction she graduated as social counselor and here real live social contacts are an exponent of the contacts I had in my time.

I had a ersatz Sony Walkman and a handful of cassettes.  A pile of magazines with pictures (some of them with clothes) and Happy days on TV. That was it.
Of course I valued and weighted that scarce information differently than my daughter handles here overflow of information coming to here on line.
It didn’t make her an emotional disabled person, in the contrary.

All this probably leads into a fragmentation of focus but not necessarily into an impoverishment of the total scale of emotional and intellectual intelligence.
Maybe for younger peoples photography and possibly also literature is not anymore the view on the world as it was for me and you and it’s function is changed over the past decades. That could explain shifts in visual language.

My point is: different is not lesser.

No! Don't let her see that! She went to secondary school during the 70s and finished university in the early 80s. Teaching came some years after uni, after she had a lot of other experiences in different countries.

Yes, Scottish schools also use all the electronic devices, but that doesn't mean that the kids should get away with playing with their cellphones instead of paying attention to the lesson.

Being able to access information via an electronic device does not mean that's always going to be a good idea: what happens when you can't get access to that device and have to know, for example, your seven or nine times tables by heart, right up to sixteen? You are sunk, as truly as the sailor in acute electrical distress who can only use satnav.

You see another illustration of that problem right here on LuLa: Dr Google allows everyone to have a perfect (instant) knowledge of everything, even if three minutes later they remember none of it; it's often a case of faux and immediate expertise. No, I will not point a finger, but it does make a mockery of a lot of stuff, and those people usually do give themselves away in the end.

You should have seen my first studio umbrella setup. It was a gents black umbrella with a zillion coats of white emulsion paint on the inside; the modelling light was a domestic bulb suspended from the wooden shaft, and the flash head a shoulder unit one that I slid into an accessory shoe screwed to the same shaft. Actually, it was better for fashion than the real monobloc I bought to replace it. Why? Because the shoulder unit had a very short flash, but the monobloc got its power through having a long duration, making it pretty lousy for stopping motion.

Rob

32BT

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #64 on: January 06, 2019, 04:55:45 pm »

As usual with good narrative photography, you sometimes have to look twice.

At first I didn't quite get the "people diving off of the pier" image. There is clearly the circular relation that was captured well. People diving off, then crawling back up.

I only now noticed the bird flying out of the scene.

Godd*mn. Now it suddenly falls into place. Bloody brilliant. People trying to fly, falling down, crawling back up. Absolutely ridiculously fantastic. Requires all elements to be understood. Great metaphore, great ambiquity, great street.

(But yeah, sure, it must be just projection, and everyone can churn out images like these... not. )
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Ivophoto

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #65 on: January 06, 2019, 04:56:49 pm »

The surprise is on my side, you finally recognize my arguments. It’s not the first time I explain my opinions, it is the first time you pay attention. But let’s not spoil this moment of mutual understanding.

It’s not about envy, Russ. How could it be. It’s about observation and place things in its timeframe.
You are correct we should see HCB and others in their time, for same reason we should see contemporary photographers in this time and not in HCB’s time.

I mention Lartigue because in his case the gear factor in his early work is practically all there is. Ok, he did have access to tennis courts, race circuits and other posh locations, that increased the interest in his work later on.

I could have mentioned Henri Talbot, here it is even more clear his work is of great interest due to the pioneering in photography and not due to the content or visual impact of the images.

You can make a chain from Paris to Amsterdam with all the photographers who had a bit of success thanks to Kodachrome or Velvia. Not mentioning the crowd tributary to Leica optics, Hasselblad glass and Polaroid.

Is it not safe to say it’s only a niche in photography that cares about the artistic content of an image?


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Ivophoto

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #66 on: January 06, 2019, 04:59:18 pm »

No! Don't let her see that! She went to secondary school during the 70s and finished university in the early 80s. Teaching came some years after uni, after she had a lot of other experiences in different countries.

Yes, Scottish schools also use all the electronic devices, but that doesn't mean that the kids should get away with playing with their cellphones instead of paying attention to the lesson.

Being able to access information via an electronic device does not mean that's always going to be a good idea: what happens when you can't get access to that device and have to know, for example, your seven or nine times tables by heart, right up to sixteen? You are sunk, as truly as the sailor in acute electrical distress who can only use satnav.

You see another illustration of that problem right here on LuLa: Dr Google allows everyone to have a perfect (instant) knowledge of everything, even if three minutes later they remember none of it; it's often a case of faux and immediate expertise. No, I will not point a finger, but it does make a mockery of a lot of stuff, and those people usually do give themselves away in the end.

You should have seen my first studio umbrella setup. It was a gents black umbrella with a zillion coats of white emulsion paint on the inside; the modelling light was a domestic bulb suspended from the wooden shaft, and the flash head a shoulder unit one that I slid into an accessory shoe screwed to the same shaft. Actually, it was better for fashion than the real monobloc I bought to replace it. Why? Because the shoulder unit had a very short flash, but the monobloc got its power through having a long duration, making it pretty lousy for stopping motion.

Rob

Nothing can replace good old experience, Rob, I can only agree.
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Rob C

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #67 on: January 06, 2019, 05:06:28 pm »

Russ, you asked for one example of an over-hyped photo. Well, only well known photographers will have work that becomes iconic, and obviously one image does not define any photographer. As for Gene Smith, he was indeed a very good photographer, though in my opinion it is his Pittsburgh work that is his best.

I think you could be right: I first came across him and bits of the Pittsburgh opus in the pages of one of the Popular Photography Annuals, along with some copy to support the story. However, the thing did unfold as very political which might have been one of the reasons it didn't make it into Life as expected and commissioned...

The stuff in other spheres is also pretty amazing, but it doesn't grab my attention as strongly, possibly because I remember being fascinated by his use of bleach in exactly the same way as did the fashion magazines with their white faces and highlights that I could never quite get for myself in camera. PS just had to be invented.

There is also the fact that the first encounter can sometimes be the strongest.

amolitor

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #68 on: January 06, 2019, 05:13:43 pm »

The interpretation of the boy jumping to tap the sign might make sense if the picture were given to us by itself, although it's a bit of a stretcher.

But then we look at his other pictures. A theme that appears multiple times is the motion arrested at something like the peak of action, but the metaphor of the boy doesn't work. So, ok, you make up new allegories for each of those arrested motions. Perhaps the artist sees motion frozen at the peak as a way to express various allegories, fine.

Ooops, now we have a bunch of static photos of people standing there. Um. Maybe those are a counterpoint to the arrested motion studies? Do these each express their own allegories? Are any of these allegories related to one another, or are they all just cut to fit whatever is in the picture?

Eventually you have a sort of Ptolomaic solar system of epicycles going on, struggling to make sense of this portfolio.

An alternative take, much simpler, is that the photographer thought it looked cool.

Even if you discard the relevance of the artist's intent, saying "I don't care what Adam intended, what I see is.." you're still stuck with the mess of epicycles and incoherent pile of tortured metaphors.
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amolitor

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #69 on: January 06, 2019, 05:16:06 pm »

I would like the record to show this: I think it's a very bold move, bordering on crazy, to call into question the weight of "The Walk to Paradise Garden" in the art-history of photography. Great claims demand great evidence, and simply hand-waving "overhyped" isn't going to convince me.
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Ivophoto

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #70 on: January 06, 2019, 05:22:25 pm »

I would like the record to show this: I think it's a very bold move, bordering on crazy, to call into question the weight of "The Walk to Paradise Garden" in the art-history of photography. Great claims demand great evidence, and simply hand-waving "overhyped" isn't going to convince me.

And that is perfectly fine. Bold moves bordering on crazy, it makes the world move on.

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amolitor

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #71 on: January 06, 2019, 05:24:06 pm »

I'm not saying it's an insupportable position, just that it's a very bold move and that making it without the ability to back would be, hmm, a bit fraught perhaps.
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #72 on: January 06, 2019, 05:26:03 pm »

... Bloody brilliant. People trying to fly, falling down, crawling back up. Absolutely ridiculously fantastic. Requires all elements to be understood. Great metaphore, great ambiquity, great street...

Pass that bong, dude!  ;)

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #73 on: January 06, 2019, 05:31:11 pm »

Pass that bong, dude!  ;)

Ah, so that's why you moved to Florida, because it'd be legalised there... ;-)
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OmerV

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #74 on: January 06, 2019, 05:47:39 pm »

I'm not saying it's an insupportable position, just that it's a very bold move and that making it without the ability to back would be, hmm, a bit fraught perhaps.

No Andrew, it is not a bold move.The picture is a clear attempt to solicit Disney like sentimentality, grossly so. I'm not faulting Smith for trying to make work that would sell to the public, but as someone else on this thread said, it belongs on packaging for candy or dolls. And I am sure Smith was amused by the seriousness with which it was regarded. By some.

Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #75 on: January 06, 2019, 05:54:05 pm »

No Andrew, it is not a bold move.The picture is a clear attempt to solicit Disney like sentimentality, grossly so. I'm not faulting Smith for trying to make work that would sell to the public, but as someone else on this thread said, it belongs on packaging for candy or dolls. And I am sure Smith was amused by the seriousness with which it was regarded. By some.

That's a bit harsh. Sentimentality has no place in "serious" art? Children's innocence and hope neither?

OmerV

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #76 on: January 06, 2019, 06:16:26 pm »

That's a bit harsh. Sentimentality has no place in "serious" art? Children's innocence and hope neither?

Ah yes, children, innocence, and hope. But sentiment is not sentimentality. The second is often a contrivance and manipulative. It is not a coincidence that art–not Disney or Hallmark–made of children often portrays them as complicated, difficult and serious. Both Diane Arbus and Sally Mann understood it.

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #77 on: January 06, 2019, 06:21:35 pm »

"too much sentimentality and some guy in this thread whose name I cannot be bothered to look up agrees with me" is not a very strong argument.
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #78 on: January 06, 2019, 07:13:46 pm »

... It is not a coincidence that art–not Disney or Hallmark–made of children often portrays them as complicated, difficult and serious. Both Diane Arbus and Sally Mann understood it.

But surely freakish children are not the whole truth about children? Both artists have expanded our understanding of children, but reducing art to freaks and “complicated, difficult, and serious” is rather extreme.

P.S. Did I just use the Oxford comma when you didn’t? ;)
« Last Edit: January 06, 2019, 10:07:32 pm by Slobodan Blagojevic »
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Alan Klein

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #79 on: January 06, 2019, 09:56:09 pm »

His pictures all seem planned, not off the cuff.  That wouldn't be so bad for one or two shots.  But it seems his style is to frame a great composition first with great lighting and then wait for the people to walk through.  It becomes sterile after a while because it's not about the people or their feelings or "the condition of man" but rather the composition. 
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