Sure, they're well established in the artworld pantheon. They, like, I dunno, several thousand other photographers, and a few 10s of thousands of other media artists, have representation, are collected by some museums and collectors. They're not nobodies, they're not failures.
They are not A-list, they do not in general get major travelling shows like Diana Arbus, or Sally Mann, Richard Avedon, and a small handful of others (is that the "A-list"?) Nor are they particularly dominant on the international stage while not getting major travelling shows like, say Crewdson, Ruff, Struth (photographers recognized as Good and Important, but pathologically incapable of drawing anything resembling a crowd).
The Vancouver School photographers are never described as Important Photographers, or Major Artists. No, these guys are always Important Canadian Artists, the recognized Great Men of the Vancouver School of Photoconceptualism. Which, you know, makes a lot of people who aren't canadian say "the Vancouver School of what, now?" and then you look it up and you see that it is/was a real thing, with a real aesthetic and some ideas. It looks a bit like some of the Düsseldorf School, but it's not as Important. It might, if you squint, have some evolutionary ideas from New Topographics, if only in that the latter opened the door to Dreary Photos of Crap in the Americas, but again it's not as Important.
The Vancouver School isn't exactly Bauhaus, but then it also isn't Fishboy. It lands somewhere in between
Like Emily Carr, they are seen as major and important artists in Vancouver, and as you move away from Vancouver, they tend to shrink. They do not vanish, but they shrink.
Personally, I dislike all of them, but as often as not I recognize roughly what they're trying to do, and recognize also that they're a bit clumsy. They lack the deft touch of the truly brilliant. As a person who also lacks that deft touch, I have a certain sympathy for them.
