10 photographers to ignore?

[removed account4]

There's nothing wrong I suppose with being a slavish imitator of someone else's work if you're just doing it for your own satisfaction. If you have a goal of being someone, of being "the next Michael Kenna" or "the next Annie Leibowitz" or whoever, that's when you run into trouble.

hi scott

i know what you mean ... that sounds like trouble.

 

[blockend]

Not talking about incremental technological evolution. Talking about incremental intellectual evolution. Which directly impacts progressive visual creativity. And which you appear to believe is impossible. Despite all of the obviously valid factual examples of it with which you have been supplied. And the fact that mankind has been continuously progressing via incremental intellectual evolution—later better ideas built upon the shoulders of earlier lesser ideas—for over five million years.

There are real reasons why the ancient Romans, with all of their impressive intellectual capabilities, had wonderful chariots, but were still not able to place a man on the moon. There are also reasons why the lunar rovers used wheels, just like the Roman chariots.

If I accept what you say, then I cannot for the life of me see how we arrived at where we are today. It makes no sense. Unless you are arguing a Biblical interpretation wherein we all just suddenly materialized fully intellectually formed from a featureless vacuum...

Ken

Sorry, I don't accept the premises or terminology you're using. A contemporary photographer of the urban scene is not more "evolved" than Eugene Atget. Atget used equipment that was antique even for his own time, and albumen printing out paper. He was an extremely sophisticated photographer, a proto-surrealist who sold his work as artist's source imagery. I don't know of anyone working today who outdoes Atget at his own game. In the street photography genre Tony Ray-Jones defined a particular humanistic street aesthetic that has yet to be equalled on its own terms. There are great street photographers ploughing their own furrow but none that have evolved - i.e. progressed - beyond Ray-Jones' aesthetic. In the realm of art photography Stephen Gill uses toy cameras, found negatives, composites, experimental developers, each at the service of his artistic vision, but no one will out-Gill, Gill. Jacques-Henri Lartigue worked in a similar vein to McGinley, grabbed images of youthful hedonism, one in privileged belle epoque France, the other in millennial America, but the second isn't an evolved version of the first.

You seem to view photography as a kind of artistic trajectory with the past of less merit than the present, and the future better than both. I see no basis for that whatsoever, past greats stand shoulder to shoulder with current ones as equals. The only advances I perceive are the democratisation of photography, from chemists and aristocrats to iPhone users. True visionaries exploit whatever comes their way.

 

[markbarendt]

Part of the reason I like ignore as a word in this line of thought is that it doesn't assume that we've never seen or considered the named photographers.

It instead just suggests that we move on.

That's good advice.

It may be more productive for photographers to study Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse, Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estasnislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, Frida Kahlo, Mahfuzul Hasan Bhuiyan, Alex Veledzimovich...

 

[blockend]

It may be more productive for photographers to study Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse, Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estasnislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, Frida Kahlo, Mahfuzul Hasan Bhuiyan, Alex Veledzimovich...

Spot on!

 

[removed account4]

+2

 

[Doc W]

At its most fundamental, yes it does. If one is an artist for whom an art sale in a competitive market means meat and potatoes on the table that evening, then you're darned right it's all about qualitative evolutionary change. That is Darwin's principle in spades. Reference The Daybooks... Weston hated those damned portrait sittings. But even he admitted to himself that they were ultimately his own products. Part of his body of work.

Besides, I prequalified the process to behavioral evolution, as opposed to biological evolution. Nevertheless, everything in the world still evolves over time. Including human intellect. Which is the underpinning of human creativity. Which is the foundation of human art. Show me something anywhere in Creation that does not evolve over time, and I'll show you a failure of the Second Law. A motionless Arrow of Time.

People seem to have this strange concept that Art, in this case Photography as Art, is somehow immune to the laws of nature. That so-called artists can, by the mere force of their will, change the rules by which human endeavor is defined. That by using their self-proclaimed uniqueness they can make the laws of nature disappear by simply ignoring them. And as a consequence settled fact becomes instead matters of opinion. It is the height of uninformed arrogance. The very definition of reaching only the first level of expertise competence.

My advice to these "artists" is to tone down the testosterone and approach Nature with a bit more humility, recognizing the inconvenient truth that, like it or not, you will always be the grasshopper in that relationship.

Ken

My point was this: art changes (evolves), it doesn't necessarily get better. The latter is not observable except from a particular social point of view. One man's lith print is another man's fuzzy something or other.

 

[blockend]

My point was this: art changes (evolves), it doesn't necessarily get better. The latter is not observable except from a particular social point of view. One man's lith print is another man's fuzzy something or other.

I agree with that, my squeamishness is at the world "evolve", which carries a boat load of ideological baggage some people are heavily invested in. If you simply mean "change", it's impossible to argue. Pictorialism was a reaction to the "realism" of straight photography. From fairly early days large glass plates and sharp lenses were capable of resolving and fixing reality, mostly in monochrome, to an unprecedented degree. Some photographers felt the need to physically intervene, aping the mores of painting, to prove the new medium's credentials as an art form. This is still being played out today to some extent, but informed viewers no longer view a 10 x 8" negative as objectively superior to a half-frame 35mm negative, or an image with more extensive sharpness as superior a less defined one, at least on those factors alone. We know from long familiarity that the medium is capable of out-resolving human vision, and look for things other than hyper-reality on which to judge a photograph.

 

[blockend]

The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said: "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

You are not alone on this site, or even within this thread. There are a handful of others here with whom I also cannot hold a rational discussion because they too insist on casting inconvenient facts as opinions, also couching the transgression in artistic terms so as not to have to defend the sin.

You speak with the closed-minded characteristics of the religiously evangelical,* refusing to look beyond your own preconceived, and self-serving, arbitrary definitions of how the world works. While it is always fair game to hold differing opinions regarding matters of opinionable points of view, it is not fair game to turn settled facts into opinions.

I understand that you wish to see artists as being somehow different than everyone else. Not subject to the same ebb and flow of constraints imposed by nature upon all the rest of us. But the fact is, artists are merely human beings. Beings that have both biologically and behaviorally evolved over time in response to their environments.

They, and their intellectual outlooks, were just as incrementally arrived at over time as yours, and mine, and those of all the rest who came before us. You did not suddenly spring from the womb as the fully intellectually formed person you are at this moment. It took decades of experiencing life and the world around you to build and evolve into the person you are today.

At the moment you celebrated the passing of your first hour of life, you could no more have participated intellectually in this thread than the Romans could have driven their chariots to the moon. You, and they, just were not there yet.

To conveniently state that you "don't accept the premises or terminology..." is to attempt to take the easy way out. To unilaterally redefine the facts in your favor. To short circuit the topic in a way you believe reinforces your viewpoint by creating an unassailable fortress behind which you can hide.

It's what the evangelical do when confronted with inconvenient questions. Such as how the entire planet could have been flooded, after which the flood receded. But, but... Water seeks its own minimum level, and the Earth is not now flooded. So where did all of that extra water suddenly come from? And once completely covered, what lower basin could it have possibly receded back into?

Such devastatingly logical questions are merely waved off with vague references to a book that both describes it, and then verifies its authenticity by referencing that same description.

These are the same class of logical questions I am asking you. And what I am getting in return are the same sorts of circular reasoning that I get from the earnest people who periodically show up at my front door. That it's true because you believe it to be true. Because we are all allowed to have our own opinions. Even when those opinions conflict with first-person directly observable facts.

I don't need to read your opinions of a hundred different individual photographers. I am not challenging those opinions, as those are validly opinionable points of view. What you believe regarding them is both perfectly acceptable and perfectly defensible, but is not relevant to the point at issue.

No, my challenge to you is on a far, far more fundamental level. A level that seeks to include those artists of which you speak into the larger and more general set of humanity. Because, unlike you, I refuse to arbitrarily separate them, and their intellects, out from that larger humanity.

Ken

* No harm, no foul. We live in a religiously pluralistic society and I will defend to the death your right to believe as you wish. But I will also reserve the right to challenge your assertions when you ask that I should believe as you do.

Too many straw men to even begin to take on there. Almost every line is a projection, and not one based on anything I've written. If you'd care to remove the polemic and talk in terms we can discuss, I'm happy to engage.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

I agree with that, my squeamishness is at the world "evolve", which carries a boat load of ideological baggage some people are heavily invested in. If you simply mean "change", it's impossible to argue.

Then perhaps we have inadvertently stumbled upon some common ground, as my use of the term "evolve" is as a synonym for "change". I assume no qualitative direction in that change. The change is objective. The quality of that change is subjective. I am concerned here with the former, not the latter. You can make of it what you will, but blanket denial that it happens is a much tougher nut to credibly crack.

My assertion that in evolving (changing) we stand upon the shoulders of those who came before us parallels the well-known Pictorialism example you reference. The former state had to come before the latter state. And thus, for better or worse (which again, does not concern me), stood on its shoulders. Pictorialism as a movement did not spring fully formed from a vacuum. Neither did the -ism that preceded it. Nor the one that followed it.

(And that pesky Second Law is grinning quietly in the background...)

Too many straw men to even begin to take on there. Almost every line is a projection, and not one based on anything I've written. If you'd care to remove the polemic and talk in terms we can discuss, I'm happy to engage.

Projections as understandably uncomfortable conclusions, drawn from a careful reading of your written positions thus far. I do not gloss over what you write. That would be both disrespectful and dangerous. It receives careful in-depth consideration, and thus I stand by my interpretations and conclusions. They were not arrived at hastily. Or, I believe, in error.

I am more than pleased to continue. I ask only that we stick to observable, demonstrable, or settled facts. A position taken should be a position justifiable with concrete examples and/or illustrations. Not nebulous artistic interpretations. While that may not be possible with every sentence, I trust you understand the underlying point of my request.

Ken

 

[blockend]

Then perhaps we have inadvertently stumbled upon some common ground, as my use of the term "evolve" is as a synonym for "change". I assume no qualitative direction in that change. The change is objective. The quality of that change is subjective. I am concerned here with the former, not the latter. You can make of it what you will, but blanket denial that it happens is a much tougher nut to credibly crack.

My assertion that in evolving (changing) we stand upon the shoulders of those who came before us parallels the well-known Pictorialism example you reference. The former state had to come before the latter state. And thus, for better or worse (which again, does not concern me), stood on its shoulders. Pictorialism as a movement did not spring fully formed from a vacuum. Neither did the -ism that preceded it. Nor the one that followed it.

(And that pesky Second Law is grinning quietly in the background...)



Projections as understandably uncomfortable conclusions, drawn from a careful reading of your written positions thus far. I do not gloss over what you write. That would be both disrespectful and dangerous. It receives careful in-depth consideration, and thus I stand by my interpretations and conclusions. They were not arrived at hastily. Or, I believe, in error.

I am more than pleased to continue. I ask only that we stick to observable, demonstrable, or settled facts. A position taken should be a position justifiable with concrete examples and/or illustrations. Not nebulous artistic interpretations. While that may not be possible with every sentence, I trust you understand the underlying point of my request.

Ken

As I said earlier in the thread, change and evolve have different connotations. Change suggests simple alteration, the substitution of one thing for another for various factors, ranging from the price of available technology to the tastes of gallery curators, and editorial fashions to the re-discovery of a technique. Evolution is a different barrel of monkeys, it implies notions of "direction" and "progress", advancement to an ultimate goal with objective and identifiable criteria of what is good and what is less so. As I also said, I can see no evidence for that kind of ideological progress in photography as a creative activity.

If you're a aerial surveillance photographer looking for weapons of mass destruction, or a medical technician searching for the early stage of an illness, then photographic progress is vital and its benefits undeniable, but technological evolution is mainly directed toward the goal of falling prices and democratic distribution. If you happened to be William Eggleston and could afford a Plaubel Makina and dye transfer prints at $500 dollars a time in the 1970's, you were at no aesthetic deficit to a present day colour photographer, indeed you enjoyed a number of advantages with access to a chemistry that is no longer available.
The mass availability of easy to use, high quality, low priced cameras has had no clear impact on the overall quality of images produced, even though the number of photographs taken has increased exponentially. Which is very different from saying technology has not enabled some photographers involved in some kinds of photography, because it clearly has, but those things are financially democratising, not aesthetically liberating for the most part.

 

[garysamson]

Before Ansel there was Carleton Watkins.

http://www.jeffreyglasser>com/

+1

 

[removed account4]

this website should compile almost a "required reading" list
of photographers + painters/architects &c known or unknown in a variety of genres
so if someone starting out or hanging around can look or ignore these heavy ( or light ) hitters.

while this is a different subject altogether ...
this guy studied painting when he was younger ( like art history )
and now he finds himself turning his subjects into renaisance paintings

 

[Helios 1984]

Best photographic satire ever:

http://theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com/2006/06/great-photographers-on-internet.html?m=1

http://theonlinephotographer.typepa...at-photographers-on-the-internet-part-ii.html

We need more satire like that, you brightened up my day.

 

[drkhalsa]

this website should compile almost a "required reading" list
of photographers + painters/architects &c known or unknown in a variety of genres
so if someone starting out or hanging around can look or ignore these heavy ( or light ) hitters.

while this is a different subject altogether ...
this guy studied painting when he was younger ( like art history )
and now he finds himself turning his subjects into renaisance paintings

Loved it!

 

[faberryman]

I hadn't heard of four of the photographers. But now I want to check them out. It seems the article backfired.

 

[faberryman]

exposing for highlights isn't a rule the last time i checked.

Absolutely correct. The rule is expose for the shadows (and develop for the highlights).

 

[miha]

this website should compile almost a "required reading" list
of photographers + painters/architects &c known or unknown in a variety of genres
so if someone starting out or hanging around can look or ignore these heavy ( or light ) hitters.

while this is a different subject altogether ...
this guy studied painting when he was younger ( like art history )
and now he finds himself turning his subjects into renaisance paintings

Great video John! Thanks for sharing.

 

[removed account4]

Absolutely correct. The rule is expose for the shadows (and develop for the highlights).

LOL thanks for reminding me about another rule i have been not worrying about since about 1970ish...
personally, i think there are too many rigid-rules in photography. obviously they work and make a difference for some people
but they are just baggage or distractions for others ... i just judge the light and expose.

===

glad you liked it miha and drkhalsa !
i thought it tied into this thread well

 

[faberryman]

I suspect that, given your experience, when you say "judge the light" you intuitively know how much exposure to give for good shadow detail, and when you develop by inspection, you intuitively know when the negatives are the proper density. After all, it's just chemistry.

 

[flavio81]

Best photographic satire ever:

http://theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com/2006/06/great-photographers-on-internet.html?m=1

http://theonlinephotographer.typepa...at-photographers-on-the-internet-part-ii.html

This is fantastic, thanks Theo!

 

[Sirius Glass]

The article's author has never done anything worthwhile in his life and probably never will. Why waste the bandwidth of that worthless piece of defecation?

 

[removed account4]

I suspect that, given your experience, when you say "judge the light" you intuitively know how much exposure to give for good shadow detail, and when you develop by inspection, you intuitively know when the negatives are the proper density. After all, it's just chemistry.

i have never judged for the shadows or highlights. when i say judge the light i mean sunny 11. i don't
develop by inspection much, probably the last time was 4 years ago.
i just have an exposure and processing routine that i am comfortable with
and i don't expect perfection because i know perfection doesnt' exist ... i believe "good enough" exists ..
if you truly want to know my processing routine, i either stand develop my film ( b/w c41 + e6, all isos )
all in the same tank, or tray .. then i use caffenol c with a shake of dektol in it, and walk away...
for about 30 mins and fix. or i process the same film 1min and 10 seconds at the top of the min for 4 mins
dektol 1:7, pour out,
continuously agitate caffenol c with a shake of dektol. sheet film i just shuffle the same and switch developers in the middle.
no fancy exposure readings, no fancy development .. no problems ...

 

[faberryman]

My mistake. I misunderstood your previous posts.

 

[removed account4]

My mistake. I misunderstood your previous posts.

not worried about it ,,,
( i'm really not one to over complicate an extremely simple process. )

there are a lot of people who LOVE to over complicate things,
zone system, densitometers, senttometers, charts &c more power to'em !

not me ... judge the light, expose and develop ... and then
test strip and print ( sometimes split filter printing, sometimes on azo,
sometimes on rc paper with a 300watt bulb ) .. or sometimes that sc .. thing
not really complicated..

 

[Patrick Robert James]

Personally I like Blake's writing, but it obviously isn't for the intellectually challenged.