Am I Supposed to "Like" Photographs Because Many Others Do?

[jtk]

It depends on which audience you are referring to. To the readers of Camera Craft magazine, Adams and his aesthetic was the victor.

I think Mortensen vanished because publishers didn't want to be connected with him. There appears to be only one Mortensen book today, with a VERY DEMURE selection of his work.

If you know sites or books that are available today, share the info

 

[faberryman]

"IMO it's a little deceptive to refer to the "disparate views" of Adams and Mortensen without mentioning that Mortensen's fame had a lot to do with his outright and extreme, beautifully executed pornography. "

I haven't seen any of his "pornography" (yes nudes, but no pornography) so I really can't comment on that aspect of his photography.

 

[jtk]

I haven't seen any of his "pornography" (yes nudes, but no pornography) so I really can't comment on that aspect of his photography.

Few have seen his porn in recent years, fewer might admit it. Not mere nudes, not merely somewhat erotic.

 

[removed account4]

What is your reaction when viewing a picture for the first time?

i don't look at something for 3 seconds ...
i have a background in art and architecture and art+architectural history
as well as the sciences so i look at something from a handful of perspectives
even if i don't like it i will still look at, maybe even more than if i like it .. like being a gut feeling ...
its all about what baggage you bring to the viewing. i'm not a big fan of brady's civil war dead
not because they are bad photographs, or he might have positioned them to "look better / more painterly"
but because it brings back memories of a day i looked at the images for hours for a class
and then a couple of hours later, for 3 hours i heard oral histories and personal accounts and photographs of a genocide ...
and then a few hours later for about 2 hours i looked at jeffrey silverthorne's series he took at morgues of people who had died of unknown causes ...
it was a bit overwhelming and still 30+ years later i don't really want to look at brady's work or much of anything that
is in your face with dead bodies ...

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

i don't look at something for 3 seconds ...
i have a background in art and architecture and art+architectural history
as well as the sciences so i look at something from a handful of perspectives
even if i don't like it i will still look at, maybe even more than if i like it .. like being a gut feeling ...
its all about what baggage you bring to the viewing. i'm not a big fan of brady's civil war dead
not because they are bad photographs, or he might have positioned them to "look better / more painterly"
but because it brings back memories of a day i looked at the images for hours for a class
and then a couple of hours later, for 3 hours i heard oral histories and personal accounts and photographs of a genocide ...
and then a few hours later for about 2 hours i looked at jeffrey silverthorne's series he took at morgues of people who had died of unknown causes ...
it was a bit overwhelming and still 30+ years later i don't really want to look at brady's work or much of anything that
is in your face with dead bodies ...

At my photo club they invited a speaker who was an expert in flower pictures. After watching 45 minutes of a hundred or so of his flowers as he explained how he captured the beauty of each, you wanted to throw up. Or kill the guy. I know he thought he was great and very important, but not that great or that important. After all, it was only photos. I think we all can get carried away with this stuff. I think three seconds is enough. Except for mine, of course.

 

[faberryman]

At my photo club they invited a speaker who was an expert in flower pictures. After watching 45 minutes of a hundred or so of his flowers as he explained how he captured the beauty of each, you wanted to throw up. Or kill the guy. I know he thought he was great and very important, but not that great or that important. After all, it was only photos. I think we all can get carried away with this stuff. I think three seconds is enough. Except for mine, of course.

I'm surprised you put yourself through it. Don't they disclose the agenda before the meeting?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I'm surprised you put yourself through it. Don't they disclose the agenda before the meeting?

Yes, they did let us know he was going to do a presentation on how to do flower photography. But who figured he was going to torture us. They won't invite him again.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I think the problem was he used the "class" to show off his work. All 70 shots or so. He let his ego get in front of what his task was. If he stuck to two or three shots, and spent more time showing how to set up and then a lot of time for questions, it would have been tolerable. After all, how many daisies, sea grass, and orchids can you look at?

 

[faberryman]

I think three seconds is enough.

I have the slideshow set at three seconds on my website. I'd hope you'd look at my prints for longer in person.

 

[removed account4]

At my photo club they invited a speaker who was an expert in flower pictures. After watching 45 minutes of a hundred or so of his flowers as he explained how he captured the beauty of each, you wanted to throw up. Or kill the guy. I know he thought he was great and very important, but not that great or that important. After all, it was only photos. I think we all can get carried away with this stuff. I think three seconds is enough. Except for mine, of course.

yeah i can see that ...

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Frank. You have very nice photos and I have spent more time looking at them. Initially though, I kind of glance at them, usually the thumbnails, and then pick out the ones that jump out where I spend more time. I'm a landscape person so the Yosemite BW group was more attractive to me. The one that stands out is the stream with the haze in the background 2017-007-15_72_720. Mysterious and great tones.

 

[faberryman]

The one that stands out is the stream with the haze in the background 2017-007-15_72_720. Mysterious and great tones.

Thanks. That was taken at the base of Yosemite Falls, just off the path. It rained most of the three days I was there. Technical details: Olympus OM1, 28-48mm f/4 lens. Ilford Delta 400 developed in DDX. Scanned with a Pacific Image Filmscan XE. Minor adjustments in LR. I have been doing more of my black and white work in digital lately. I have more control over the final image in LR despite 45 years in the darkroom.

 

[jtk]

I have the slideshow set at three seconds on my website. I'd hope you'd look at my prints for longer in person.

I wish your website stopped changing when I want to take more than 3 seconds with one of your excellent images.

 

[faberryman]

I wish your website stopped changing when I want to take more than 3 seconds with one of your excellent images.

Just click on the image to enter scroll view.

 

[Jim Jones]

I think Mortensen vanished because publishers didn't want to be connected with him. There appears to be only one Mortensen book today, with a VERY DEMURE selection of his work.

If you know sites or books that are available today, share the info

Amazon.com has a good used selection of his popular books, including a reprint of his 1956 last version of The Model, retitled How To Pose the Model. It's 100 pages skimpier than the original 1937 edition. This is still a useful book on posing nude and clad women (and an occasional male). I've never considered any of his photographs in several books to be pornographic. They are certainly more intimate than the nudes of Ruth Bernhard but less revealing than some of Weston's or Imogene Cunningham's.

 

[Vaughn]

It depends on which audience you are referring to. To the readers of Camera Craft magazine, Adams and his aesthetic was the victor.

If you have a chance to read Alinder's book on the f64 group, it is interesting to read how she presents how Mortensen out-wrote AA, and like I wrote above, won the battle.

Camera Craft had a relatively small audience. I could not find the subscription number, but considering the Depression and the lack of the internet, I wonder how many people actually read the back-and-forth articles. And a high percentage of those readers more than likely took Mortensen's side. So I am not so sure that AA's "victory" was thru his writings in Camera Craft...not solely for sure. The times were achanging, and f64 was surley in the right place at the right time.

 

[jtk]

Amazon.com has a good used selection of his popular books, including a reprint of his 1956 last version of The Model, retitled How To Pose the Model. It's 100 pages skimpier than the original 1937 edition. This is still a useful book on posing nude and clad women (and an occasional male). I've never considered any of his photographs in several books to be pornographic. They are certainly more intimate than the nudes of Ruth Bernhard but less revealing than some of Weston's or Imogene Cunningham's.

No point in more here. Porn means what we all think of as porn. Very active. Not surprising that it's not on Amazon...doubt it ever has been. Amazon has many policies as well as innocent blind spots.

 

[Black Dog]

But you probably didn't read the Observer when she was working.

I heard a story that she used to carry her cameras in a plastic bag! Her portrait of Beckett is one of my all time favourites.

 

[removed account4]

No point in more here. Porn means what we all think of as porn. Very active.

IDK about that
there are bushleloads of
"fine art nude photographers"
also called "erotic photographers"
and "boudoir photographers"
( and you can substitute film makers in there )
who would tell you that you have a closed mind, have no idea what you are talking about
and are a prude and oh yeah, you have no idea what you are talking about ( again a 2nd time )
<yes it's been said it to me on more than one occasion ! >
i think it is kind of funny that there are so many
pornographers pushing their subject to the art realm
( its not just the ma na ma na song cheezy jazz and a soft focus lens anymore )
>> jeff koons et al. ( im not going to list the rest of them )

while there is the famous line " i'll know it when i see it"
a lot of people see it and its something different

 

[jtk]

Amazon.com has a good used selection of his popular books, including a reprint of his 1956 last version of The Model, retitled How To Pose the Model. It's 100 pages skimpier than the original 1937 edition. This is still a useful book on posing nude and clad women (and an occasional male). I've never considered any of his photographs in several books to be pornographic. They are certainly more intimate than the nudes of Ruth Bernhard but less revealing than some of Weston's or Imogene Cunningham's.

Amazon does NOT have a representative selection of Mortensen's porn, tho it does OK with his mildly erotic stuff.

I've seen his original porn prints (long gone gallery near Castro/Market in San Francisco) but it appears that nobody else here (so far) has seen them...or perhaps NOT ANY of his original prints.

As prints they were beautiful and accomplished what porn's supposed to accomplish. Mortensen's patrons/buyers were reportedly big names in Hollywood. Presumably the work becomes available at "certain" auctions.

 

[jtk]

I bought a photo book, Deep South by Sally Mann. I knew her work a little, mainly the shots of her family and I love reading about the South, especially the books of James Lee Burke. The large format camera seemed to give the results of a pinhole, blurred, messy, weird compositon. I put the book aside with a feeling I had wasted my money. A couple of months went by and the pictures stayed in my head so I went back to the book and this time I got the sense of it. I keep looking and each time I gain more. All the best, Charles. P.S. I am reading her autobiography, Hold Still. It is the best thing I have read in years and will compel me back to her photographs.

 

[sissysphoto]

Are you supposed to like something because "everybody else likes it"? Or " critically acclaimed". Like To Kill a Mockingbird, is purportedly "acclaimed". Acclaimed by who? The answer is always the same crowd doing all the acclaiming. And always of the same underlying agenda. No. Not liking something is actually refreshing to heard being admitted. The Emperor is naked, and he look ridiculous. The acclaimers are all of the same aspiring elitist ilk, and many are militant lunatics. Truth is, if you don't like a picture, you don't like it. Nevermind the hoopla. You're fine.

 

[removed account4]

Are you supposed to like something because "everybody else likes it"? Or " critically acclaimed". Like To Kill a Mockingbird, is purportedly "acclaimed". Acclaimed by who? The answer is always the same crowd doing all the acclaiming. And always of the same underlying agenda. No. Not liking something is actually refreshing to heard being admitted. The Emperor is naked, and he look ridiculous. The acclaimers are all of the same aspiring elitist ilk, and many are militant lunatics. Truth is, if you don't like a picture, you don't like it. Nevermind the hoopla. You're fine.

can you please keep your political commentary to the soapbox? this thread has nothing to do with political conspiracies or left wing propaganda ..

 

[Peter Schrager]

i don't look at something for 3 seconds ...
i have a background in art and architecture and art+architectural history
as well as the sciences so i look at something from a handful of perspectives
even if i don't like it i will still look at, maybe even more than if i like it .. like being a gut feeling ...
its all about what baggage you bring to the viewing. i'm not a big fan of brady's civil war dead
not because they are bad photographs, or he might have positioned them to "look better / more painterly"
but because it brings back memories of a day i looked at the images for hours for a class
and then a couple of hours later, for 3 hours i heard oral histories and personal accounts and photographs of a genocide ...
and then a few hours later for about 2 hours i looked at jeffrey silverthorne's series he took at morgues of people who had died of unknown causes ...
it was a bit overwhelming and still 30+ years later i don't really want to look at brady's work or much of anything that
is in your face with dead bodies ...

Sally mann did a series where they actually store dead bodies outside to watch how they decompose...whoa!!!

 

[faberryman]

can you please keep your political commentary to the soapbox? this thread has nothing to do with political conspiracies or left wing propaganda ..

I was just going to ask for an example of a photography critic who was a militant lunatic. I've known of some that were opinionated, but militant lunatic not so much.