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Author Topic: from the front page: adam krawesky  (Read 19677 times)

Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #120 on: January 07, 2019, 01:10:43 pm »

... When someone comes up with a technique that works and speaks about it then others will follow. It happens all the time. We all do it.

That is precisely why I do not care much about the articles where someone explains their technique (artistic, not technical): it makes me and others want to copy it, consciously or not. Some might eventually rise above copying.

Or as Jean-Luc Godard said, “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take things to.” By all means use a Leica and stalking technique, just produce something above a copy. Or the other quote, often misattributed to Picasso: "Good artists copy, great artists steal." Yes, steal a technique (stalking in this case) but take it to a higher or different level.

Ivophoto

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #121 on: January 07, 2019, 01:29:03 pm »

This is insane. It's like I am speaking Latin or something, except I am not.

I am implying nothing, I have stated very very clearly that Adam Krawesky is not a notable photographer, because he produces pictures that are very much like the pictures produced by something on the order of 100,000 similar photographers.

I do understand your point, Andrew.

Only, since when is Lula ‘the’ location where the lesser photographers doesn’t deserve a small platform?
The as Hipster condemned photographer is not hanging in the MOMA. I would understand your upset if that was the case.

Last time I visit centre Pompidou I spent more than one hour to admire one of Picasso’s ceramic portraits.
The week after, I was in a local art academy and got upset by the low quality of the clay contraptions made by somebodies grandma with too much time. I had Picasso in mind.
I had to correct myself and admitted I had a wrong kind of elitist misplaced feeling.
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32BT

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #122 on: January 07, 2019, 01:29:59 pm »

This is insane. It's like I am speaking Latin or something, except I am not.

I am implying nothing, I have stated very very clearly that Adam Krawesky is not a notable photographer, because he produces pictures that are very much like the pictures produced by something on the order of 100,000 similar photographers.

Oh, so just the fact that he ALSO is able to churn out similar pictures, that makes him not notable? Like saying that Chopin wrote etudes, but because every other composer did so as well, it makes him not notable.

Dumb logic that, but that may be my ignorance.
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #123 on: January 07, 2019, 01:35:08 pm »

... Dumb logic that, but that may be my ignorance.

Not ignorance, just sophism.

On the previous page, I was arguing against Martin's similar accusation of "dumb logic" as basically a reductio ad absurdum fallacy.

amolitor

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #124 on: January 07, 2019, 01:37:56 pm »

To suppose that Chopin's etudes are pretty much the same as other composer's etudes is absurd. At this point you're obviously just baiting, and clumsily at that.
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Martin Kristiansen

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #125 on: January 07, 2019, 01:45:28 pm »

Not ignorance, just sophism.

On the previous page, I was arguing against Martin's similar accusation of "dumb logic" as basically a reductio ad absurdum fallacy.

Except I never said dumb logic did I? Nope I just checked. I said odd. Anyway I wasn’t following what you were getting at and I usually find myself in agreement with many of your posts so I was questioning what you had said to try to understand it.

I think I understand what you meant now. Although I like to read people’s descriptions of how they work. I hope I don’t end up totally copying but I often find useful ideas. Years ago I experimented with adding film grain to my images. I was finding digital a little clinical for my taste and after reading this article I might revisit that idea. See how I feel about it now. That type of thing.
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elliot_n

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #126 on: January 07, 2019, 01:52:46 pm »

Apart from the usual list of currently living notables that I'm sure we could collectively construct easily, I'm rather fond of Frédérick Carnet and Karel Kravik.

Thanks. Carnet's work is very good - http://www.frederickcarnet.com - but it's full of familiar tropes.

I think you're being rather harsh on Adam Krawesky.

(Is this all he has in way of a website? http://inconduit.com/set/ )
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32BT

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #127 on: January 07, 2019, 01:55:33 pm »

To suppose that Chopin's etudes are pretty much the same as other composer's etudes is absurd. At this point you're obviously just baiting, and clumsily at that.

Well, excuse me for being both ignorant and clumsy then.

Your argument seems to be: this photographer churns out SOME bad pictures, therefore he is not a notable photographer. Because SOME of his images show the application of an all too familiar technique which you dislike because the results are mostly empty, his results are therefore also empty and he is not a notable photographer.

I'm sure you can't be bothered to educate us on how to view the given examples in the article so we can draw the same conclusion, no? That would possibly allow us to understand your judgement, which btw doesn't mean we have to agree on that judgement, just that it might enable us to understand your observations.



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amolitor

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #128 on: January 07, 2019, 02:04:13 pm »

No, opgr. I will not be drawn into an endless cycle of re-explanation.

It's clear that you're irritated that I will neither shut up, nor fall into line with your assessment of Krawesky's pictures, and that you intend to snipe, nitpick, invent fantastical readings of things I have said, and generally campaign to waste my time and attempt to make me look bad.

No. I disagree with you. Grow up and get over it.
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #129 on: January 07, 2019, 02:04:29 pm »

Martin, that's why I said "similar" :) I was aware that you used a more polite term.

On copying... sure, we all do it. One has to start somewhere, unless one is as talented as little Mozart. The technique that initially blew me away by its originality, and which I tried to copy, was the Ernst Haas' one, where he would do a double exposure on film of an intricate bush or tree, first by rendering it sharp, then adding the second exposure totally out of focus (in the book "The Creation"). Once that technique was popularized by Orton, and millions started using it in the digital era, I lost interest.

amolitor

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #130 on: January 07, 2019, 02:15:10 pm »

Krawesky's web site is depressingly suggestive, yes, and as far as I know that's all there is.

I suspect that he is in fact Josh's new web guy, and possibly is best described as a former photographer, but that's fairly sketchy guesswork at best.
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Rob C

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #131 on: January 07, 2019, 02:16:37 pm »

There's an unspoken problem with all of this.

If a photographer decides to work in any given style/genre (I'm not saying they are the same thing), the point is reached when he runs out of himself, usually at about the same time that he realises that his physical location possibilities have run out of offers.

I have seven galleries (Glimpsed Parallels) in my website that are basically all around one sort of ethic or visual thinking mode. I have realised that my current lack of shooting interest boils down to what Andrew has been suggesting: I came to see that I was doing the same shot over and over, even when it looked entirely different to its neighbour; the similarity lives within the photographer's own mindset, and there the critical problem we come to face if we shoot enough. i've been shooting since the 50s, one way or the other, the best of those years with models which gave the perfect means to avoid seeing that same image every time. But, I have come to believe other, older snappers who have declared that we all shoot the same photograph all of our lives. In a deeper sense, it's an unavoidable consequence of being who we are, which is one person only.

Blessed is he who only dabbles: he will never come to discover who he is.

:-(

amolitor

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #132 on: January 07, 2019, 02:26:04 pm »

Rob, I think there are people who derive genuine and honest pleasure from making more or less the same pictures over again.

I take delight in every good pot of soup I make, every good loaf of bread I bake, and it is not because I am naive, or simpleminded. Photography, alas, works somewhat differently for me.

I am passable fake in a variety of genres. I can bang out decent landscapes, still lifes, portraits, product shots. Am I good at any of them? Not really. Having got to the point where i realized that, with a year of concerted labor, I could get good at one or another of these, at the point where the path was pretty clear, I lost interest. I didn't want to make the same damned thing over and over, incrementally better, until I could make really good ones.

And yet, with soup, with bread, I am perfectly happy with precisely the same path. People are funny.

It took me most of a decade to figure out what I actually wanted to do with a camera (I think), and it involves a lot more words than I would have guessed.
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elliot_n

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #133 on: January 07, 2019, 02:30:28 pm »

I like Krawesky's work because it reminds me of Jeff Wall. For example this shot:

http://inconduit.com/set/1024/v.php?i=16

Or this one:

http://inconduit.com/set/1024/v.php?i=13

Which gets me wondering whether the images are more staged than simply hanging out on a street corner and waiting for something to happen?

(I'm with you on the soup and the bread.)

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Rob C

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #134 on: January 07, 2019, 02:34:33 pm »

Martin, that's why I said "similar" :) I was aware that you used a more polite term.

On copying... sure, we all do it. One has to start somewhere, unless one is as talented as little Mozart. The technique that initially blew me away by its originality, and which I tried to copy, was the Ernst Haas' one, where he would do a double exposure on film of an intricate bush or tree, first by rendering it sharp, then adding the second exposure totally out of focus (in the book "The Creation"). Once that technique was popularized by Orton, and millions started using it in the digital era, I lost interest.


I had Ernst down as one of my favourite photographers for many years. I bought the Steidl Ernst Haas Color Correction and pretty soon wished that I had not. The thing is, there was not a lot wrong with the pictures, just that as far as the street art stuff went, I felt Leiter did it far better. Leiter didn't do the wildly successful books (though he did get some published during his lifetime, but via the art world circuit rather than the public one), and neither as much advertising. That said, in retrospect, I think Haas shines even more brightly than Leiter in black and white, as his work on the The Misfits movie with Marilyn shows; a great eye for catching the personal and sensitive moments of human revelation.

Of course, you can't soar with the eagles when you work with turkeys, and all of us in the amateur condition should realise that in order to avoid heartbreak.

Rob

amolitor

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #135 on: January 07, 2019, 02:35:57 pm »

Carnet's work, by the way, seems to be to be entirely in sequencing. Taken individually his pictures don't really speak to me at all, they're rather boring. Put in a row, however, they become something much greater than the sum of the parts. To me, at any rate, and there is some evidence that I am not alone on this.
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KLaban

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #136 on: January 07, 2019, 02:43:42 pm »

There's an unspoken problem with all of this.

If a photographer decides to work in any given style/genre (I'm not saying they are the same thing), the point is reached when he runs out of himself, usually at about the same time that he realises that his physical location possibilities have run out of offers...

At that point the photographer needs to move on: cerebrally would do.

elliot_n

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #137 on: January 07, 2019, 02:45:49 pm »

Carnet's work, by the way, seems to be to be entirely in sequencing. Taken individually his pictures don't really speak to me at all, they're rather boring. Put in a row, however, they become something much greater than the sum of the parts. To me, at any rate, and there is some evidence that I am not alone on this.

Indeed. He has good sequences and a substantial body of work. But his sequences feel very familiar. Alex Soth and Jem Southam come to mind, as do many of the contributors to Fraction magazine - http://www.fractionmagazine.com . It's a way of doing things.
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Rob C

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #138 on: January 07, 2019, 05:14:42 pm »

Thank you for that link: some very interesting takes on contemporary work. I have not done more than look at the last two selections of people, so far, but intend to go back for more.

It would be nice if LuLa published a similar department, but perhaps it would be killed in the crossfire that accompanies everything. Guess it's the price to be paid for conversation.

Thanks again for the link.

Rob

amolitor

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #139 on: January 07, 2019, 05:21:44 pm »

Fraction Magazine may not be 100% gold, and maybe not more than half to any particular person's taste, but I don't see how you could spend 10 minutes on that web site and then come back to LuLa's current lead article and still think "Oh yeah, Adam Krawesky, he's amazing."

But, you know, it's a big world and it contains multitudes.
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