Art photography according to curators...

[removed account4]

i guess this is another "photographers, curators, and judges are talentless,
and promote "bad photography" / "bad art" " threads ...
a lot of this is true and always will be true, ... but, it sells ...

if it really matters so much who the curators or judges are ...
if you don't like the contests they are judging, or the exhibitions they are showing

don't go ... and start your own ...

it isn't hard to rent a space and start your own gallery, or have your own contests
but the problem is, if your place becomes popular, or trendy, or shows "talent" then you become
just like the things you were trying to get away from ( in other people's eyes )

 

[clayne]

I don't know how to really express it, but I believe I know what the OP is talking about WRT to Shore, et al. There's something smarmy and seemingly ungenuine about the way their photographs come off and possibly a byproduct of their approach. A lot of times it feels manufactured and engineered - and I just don't care for it even if it looks great.

"Look at how slick and subtle I am."

I find the same general thing going on with most of the snapshot-driven crowd. I feel the need to tell them "alright, dude, yeah I get it already."

 

[Moopheus]

Weegee and Atget, the self-confessed documentarians, are revered as two of this medium's creative geniuses - in the mind of curators and historians - and as a result, the mind of photographers.

Historically, this isn't really true. It was other photographers--in Atget's case, mainly Berenice Abbott, and in Weegee's, Diane Arbus--who had a strong hand in getting them recognition in the art world. Weegee, during his life, was a shameless self-promoter who didn't need no steenking curators to get attention. Museum curators were followers, not leaders, of opinion.

 

[Hikari]

These posts sound to me more about sour grapes that any legitimate opinion. Get over it, some people have different ideas and they have gone out and developed a career doing this. If you want to curate photography, go out and earn that place too.

 

[keithwms]

I'm sure I'll come across as an ignorant swine to some serious students of photography here, but I don't believe his ideas about aesthetics have any relevance to our lives as creatives.

Of course, you have to find your own aesthetic, using your own creative powers. I'd say just guard your creative process, and don't waste a moment thinking about whether your output should or shouldn't be appreciated or curated.

 

[removed account4]

This "as though I were standing there" I hear often and I can only say, perhaps you should get out more! I have the same fantasies looking at holiday brochures.

For me this is the defeatist attitude of contemporary photography and harks back to Atget and his 'documents for painters'. The difference is that these modern survey images are supported by art speak. Photographers become their own personal critics, defending their 'documents as art' like a curator might speak of Atget's. If the photographs strike you because they are of a time and place, then their true value is nostalgia. This is what art snobs will tell you is the only value of any photograph, but they are just as ignorant as the photographers making these images. In a family photo album nostalgia is fine, but in a gallery, first and foremost I expect the visual arts to be visually stimulating.

If we all had the same tastes the world would be a very boring place, but I feel this kind of work and those who defend it are ignorant of photography's power to transcend illustration, through transforming subject matter, and revealing something of the world that we wouldn't have seen, had we been stood there. I also think there's something to be said about the perceived ease with which the images are made appealing to unskilled amateurs, who might then pursue such an approach and get overly defensive about it, taking an elitist position. When you're aware of this, I find it's too painful to make or appreciate banal illustrations. As somebody who was once enticed by this contemporary aesthetic, I can say photographing empty parking lots feels like such an intellectually cold and joyless procedure, knowing what is really possible with a camera.

I agree about the 'pushing boundaries', but these photographers never seem to get very far. As far as I can see it's the prolific auteurs with conservative, safe and constant visions who are seen as mature artists, regardless of content. If you make the same bland image over and over again, at some point you will get the press.

forgive me for asking this batwister but what kind of photography is it that you believe should be in galleries and museums?
you seem to paint photography that doesn't belong there with a broad brush ... most everything created with a camera falls
into the categories you claim are lame ... and your gallery here on apug doesn't give any insights ( shallow dof portrait, and natural clutter )

art in a gallery is safe, yes ... it is a commodity that the gallery is selling to people who want to buy "that sort of thing" ...
i wouldn't expect someone who is represented by a gallery to take a drastic turn from where he/she is going because
the collectors want something, the same thing ...

if a photographer can't speak of his or her work to defend it or place it in the short tradition of photography,
then who is --- academia, galleries, curators and museum-people?
you don't like galleries, you don't like curators, you don't like academia, you don't like museum-folk ...

 

[eclarke]

This "art" word always spawns massive overthinking...

 

[eddie]

Galleries have financial reasons for hanging work which attracts a broad audience. They pay rent, utilities, employees, and advertising costs. There's no shame in that...

 

[clayne]

These posts sound to me more about sour grapes that any legitimate opinion. Get over it, some people have different ideas and they have gone out and developed a career doing this. If you want to curate photography, go out and earn that place too.

Right, because everything mainstream must be accepted as truth, reality, and the way it should be?

Why be critical of anything...

 

[batwister]

forgive me for asking this batwister but what kind of photography is it that you believe should be in galleries and museums?
you seem to paint photography that doesn't belong there with a broad brush ... most everything created with a camera falls
into the categories you claim are lame ... and your gallery here on apug doesn't give any insights ( shallow dof portrait, and natural clutter )

art in a gallery is safe, yes ... it is a commodity that the gallery is selling to people who want to buy "that sort of thing" ...
i wouldn't expect someone who is represented by a gallery to take a drastic turn from where he/she is going because
the collectors want something, the same thing ...

if a photographer can't speak of his or her work to defend it or place it in the short tradition of photography,
then who is --- academia, galleries, curators and museum-people?
you don't like galleries, you don't like curators, you don't like academia, you don't like museum-folk ...

First of all, the clutter and shallow DoF images I've been trying to delete since I joined the forum! Don't know what's going on there. Uploaded as an amateur's contributions, not artistic statements. I can only say I've come a long way in the last couple of years. As awful as the images are, your defining the portrait by the aperture used is perhaps more revealing of your own concerns. Although I'd have to agree if you're insinuating that centrally composed portraits at f2.8 are a trademark of the Hasselblad amateur!

To the point, I'd only hope that photographers aren't tailoring their work for gallery's tastes. I've never believed successful artists when they've said "I don't think about the audience', don't patronise me! Their prints would never leave the house if this was true. But... what I see in contemporary photography are hoards of conformists and it doesn't take a nitpicker to make this observation. Even the pictorialists, f/64 and New Topographics had very definite individual concerns and these were essentially photography cults! What I see today is the cult of fashion, where the individual is ostracized, not only for his sense of aesthetic, but perhaps because he doesn't have an artist's trench coat and haircut.

Todd Hido, whose work has actually taken a lot from Stephen Shore, is the first contemporary photographer I've seen who has really done something with the 'banal aesthetic' and given it personal depth. His photographs embrace the nostalgia that is sitting just below the surface in a lot of this kind of work. He has dared to strip it of its cooly observed 'appearence' and add some atmosphere. I deeply admire him for making a bold step in moving past the superficial that has plagued photography for so long, in this age of appearences. Neither does he wear designer clothes or speak about his own work like a critic might - he doesn't feel the need to defend it with art speak. http://www.toddhido.com/

The over-intellectualizing of their own work - words before images - isn't just my own silly observation, and I can only guess you're pretending to be naive for the sake of argument. See this link for a more light hearted take on what I'm getting at - http://www.artybollocks.com/

forgive me for asking this batwister but what kind of photography is it that you believe should be in galleries and museums?

So in short, personal concerns over the contrived in style and letting the work speak for itself. Quite a manifesto, ey?

 

[c6h6o3]

I think it's very important to distinguish here between curators and gallery owners. The financial concerns driving them are quite different. The gallery owner needs to hang work that sells, period. A museum curator has a lot more freedom in selecting work to show or acquire for the collections they manage.

 

[batwister]

I was talking about curators up until that point, but jnanian put words in my mouth!

 

[batwister]

These posts sound to me more about sour grapes that any legitimate opinion. Get over it, some people have different ideas and they have gone out and developed a career doing this. If you want to curate photography, go out and earn that place too.

I think the fact that this discussion has arisen sugests that there is a problem and if I could just get over it, there would be no need to voice my opinion. But I feel we're living in a world where the young artist is forced to take a position, rather than follow his personal intuition. This is my dilemma and I believe that of many others.

 

[Hikari]

I think the fact that this discussion has arisen sugests that there is a problem and if I could just get over it, there would be no need to voice my opinion. But I feel we're living in a world where the young artist is forced to take a position, rather than follow his personal intuition. This is my dilemma and I believe that of many others.

That is not an argument. Because you do not like the way things are, which is really how things have always been, then you decide to call it an issue. That sounds a lot like what you are complaining about. BTW, you started this "discussion."

 

[batwister]

Perhaps things have always been this way. Thanks for contributing Hikari, appreciate it.

 

[arpinum]

batwister, let close friends be your curators and patronus. Its ok to live in your own bubble. Venture out to MoMA as a tourist, to see how the foreigners live. Then there is no dilemma at all, you create for yourself and those who appreciate what you say.

Appreciate Gursky as an artifact of continental atheism much as you would a temple to Jupiter.

Being in a bubble will improve your life, don't dismiss it. Much of the world is ugly, boring and wrong. And you won't change it. Build something new instead. Import only what you like from the outside.

 

[removed account4]

First of all, the clutter and shallow DoF images I've been trying to delete since I joined the forum! Don't know what's going on there. Uploaded as an amateur's contributions, not artistic statements. I can only say I've come a long way in the last couple of years. As awful as the images are, your defining the portrait by the aperture used is perhaps more revealing of your own concerns. Although I'd have to agree if you're insinuating that centrally composed portraits at f2.8 are a trademark of the Hasselblad amateur!

To the point, I'd only hope that photographers aren't tailoring their work for gallery's tastes. I've never believed successful artists when they've said "I don't think about the audience', don't patronise me! Their prints would never leave the house if this was true. But... what I see in contemporary photography are hoards of conformists and it doesn't take a nitpicker to make this observation. Even the pictorialists, f/64 and New Topographics had very definite individual concerns and these were essentially photography cults! What I see today is the cult of fashion, where the individual is ostracized, not only for his sense of aesthetic, but perhaps because he doesn't have an artist's trench coat and haircut.

Todd Hido, whose work has actually taken a lot from Stephen Shore, is the first contemporary photographer I've seen who has really done something with the 'banal aesthetic' and given it personal depth. His photographs embrace the nostalgia that is sitting just below the surface in a lot of this kind of work. He has dared to strip it of its cooly observed 'appearence' and add some atmosphere. I deeply admire him for making a bold step in moving past the superficial that has plagued photography for so long, in this age of appearences. Neither does he wear designer clothes or speak about his own work like a critic might - he doesn't feel the need to defend it with art speak. http://www.toddhido.com/

The over-intellectualizing of their own work - words before images - isn't just my own silly observation, and I can only guess you're pretending to be naive for the sake of argument. See this link for a more light hearted take on what I'm getting at - http://www.artybollocks.com/



So in short, personal concerns over the contrived in style and letting the work speak for itself. Quite a manifesto, ey?

sounds like a great manifesto to me !

yes, i am being kind of naive for the sake of argument ..
and i do agree that a lot of artwork ( photographs, paintings whatever ) are heavy on conceptualization light on everything else ..
(to me at least ) there is always a place for that, and i think it is kind of a funny that it sells ... maybe it makes sense to someone ?

thanks for the links ...
i have seen the BS generator before and it is pretty funny.

i think i have seen hido's work before. i am not familiar with stephen shore's work ( i only have heard the name and know he is "famous" )
and i like some of the abandoned home images where the light casts images on the walls, but the rest of them and the muted colors are kind of nice too.
but in the end they look similar to others who have a similar style. the deadpan portraits are kind of nice too,
like movie stills ( some of them ) i don't see much difference between these and other deadpan portraits i have seen.
maybe i am drawn to them because i have done similar things, i am always drawn to the abandoned ( people and buildings ).

regarding your gallery uploads ..
i wasn't insinuating that they were awful or amateurish at all ...
i am a fan of both kinds of images you uploaded, and find them to be much more interesting
than most things, both being pedaled in galleries &c as "art" ...


john

 

[removed account4]

I was talking about curators up until that point, but jnanian put words in my mouth!

i always thought they were the same thing, sorry for my misunderstanding.
i am completely clueless, and i did not mean to suggest that you are as ignorant as me.

john

 

[batwister]

I took a look at the Hido website and it isn't anything new either. People like Jeff Brouws have been doing this kind of work for decades.

Jeff Brouws, the typologist? If you look at Hido's 'House Hunting' series you'll see that the images play on a longing for suburbia, the houses aren't empty vessels like with Brouws' studies. Hido concentrates on the mystery of what might be going on inside, not to mention the misty and evocative atmospheres the houses inhabit - and also his portraits which suggest the people who might live in these places. It's all about narrative. Brouws and Hido are coming from completely different places - one concerned with surface, the other concerned with the mystery that lies beneath. I suggest you take another look.

Not that Brouws is inferior, just very different.

 

[SuzanneR]

I'm a fan of Hido's work, though it took me sometime to come around to it, but I agree, it's quite personal, and seems a natural evolution of earlier work you mentioned. I firmly believe, however, that work that truly stands out will find its audience despite the taste makers telling us what's good for us. There's a lot of highly conceptual art and photography out there that leaves me cold, and I'll take a personal shooter like Hido over just about anyone thinking too much about it all.

With all that said, I'm not a big fan of what I've seen as a trend toward the curator as"art star", it seems to me we see more and more curator names on the wall along with the artists in big shows at museums, but if they've done their job well, their hand in it should be far more invisible than they seem to be lately, and keep their names in the catalog at the end of the essay... not alongside the work they selected to present on the wall, imnsho.

 

[MattKing]

The museum environment is such a narrow microcosm of the photographic world, that the discussion here fits more comfortably in a forum about museums and collectors than it does in APUG.

I say this not to discourage the posters here (this thread is not without some interest, and I am glad to see it here) but rather to point out that it is important to understand how small and specialized (some might say isolated) the collecting and curating world is.

 

[John Austin]

I am tempted to broaden the thread by including photography festivals, like FotoFreo (FF) in Fremantle Western Australia

In FF the un-curated Fringe Festival often shows more exciting and innovative work than the Core Programme - However, in FF2010 two core shows grabbed my total attention, Eugene Richards "The Blue Room" and Claire Martin's "Slab City" - The latter was above a room full of 35mm style doco work which had too much pain for me to take in one lump, just too much - Both these bodies of work cited were documentary, but aren't all photographs documents by their very existence? - In order to exist as a photograph the event depicted had to exist at the moment of exposure (I am conveniently ignoring photo-manipulation)

The FFF fringe exhibition which energised both Rae and myself was of small quiet delicate prints by Tracy Mortimer and Helena Taelor, after the loudness of the rest of FF/FFF I found the work by these two women gave space within which my mind could explore the work and its sensitivity - We regret not being able to afford some of Tracey's palladium prints - The point I am getting to is that we came to work we adored through the very lack of noise and art-speak bullshit

FF will start this year on the Ides of March, less than one week away - This festival has degenerated to an absolute autocracy by its director - Given the paucity of the "Core Programme" for this year's festival I would encourage its director to consider the warning to Cesar - I digress

I feel a bit bad about not driving north to Fremantle this year, but I have images to make and the long hot summer looks like it is about to change which means going out and making my own images - An instant contradiction is that if I can afford it I may still go, out of guilt for missing a series of shows that I would not otherwise have a chance to see - Living in a community of 30 houses and a pub in the forest gives me few opportunity to see work other than what is shown on line - Real prints rule!

I hope I have not digressed too far

John

 

[c6h6o3]

I think the fact that this discussion has arisen sugests that there is a problem and if I could just get over it, there would be no need to voice my opinion. But I feel we're living in a world where the young artist is forced to take a position, rather than follow his personal intuition. This is my dilemma and I believe that of many others.

I agree. I think a lot of young artists are ruined by the "show or perish" pressure placed on them. The art schools contribute to this just as much as the curators do. Photographers whom I consider truly great, such as Edward Weston, Brett Weston and Frederick Sommer didn't let either public or curatorial taste dictate what they did. I think that's why their work is so personally compelling.

Charles Ives once said that a creative artist should never practice his art for a living. He should do something else for a living and practice his art as a true 'amateur'. Otherwise the work goes, as Ives put it, "Ta-ta for money".

 

[Vaughn]

I have been reading with pleasure.

Art photography does not accord to curators. At best, the art of photography, or any art for that matter, comes into accord with its creator...and it is nice when there is an audience that can appreciate it.

 

[FiatluX]

Charles Ives once said that a creative artist should never practice his art for a living. He should do something else for a living and practice his art as a true 'amateur'. Otherwise the work goes, as Ives put it, "Ta-ta for money".

I can relate directly to that, I had to take a 10 year photography break after having worked as a pro.. The economical angle kept ruining any creative thought that I had, leaving me stiffled and confused!