Camera Arts gone?

Please understand that I don't think all photography should pin sharp and technically perfect, but it should atleast be interesting. The toy scenes mentioned, (now this is where we run into trouble) is not pleasing to my eye and I am allowed to think that and speak it if I choose. Now some may find it wonderful and hold it high regard.
I just don't understand how stuff like that rises to the top.

Magazines We Don't Get

As long as we're talking about magazines we don't get, I've picked up the last 3 issues of View Camera and read every word of them. In the last issue, for example, a couple of articles, like the Karen Kuehn piece on her portraits, and the still life and landscape work of Ken Lee were of interest to me, but most of the articles are not that informative or interesting (to me, YMMV).

One article that had tons of information but caused me to scratch my head and say 'why?' was that lengthy piece about the 4x5 color digital back shooting of the ancient temples of Angkor. I have great respect for the work Kerry Thalmann has done on tech issues related to lenses, etc., and he's a good writer, but Jim Collum's work doesn't inspire me. Maybe the prints, in person, would do that, but I read the article and studied the pictures several times, and I just don't get it.

A magazine that I do like, and it's not really a photo how-to mag, is B&W Photograhy. It's aimed at people who are interested in collecting B&W photographic images, and shows samples of lots of people's work.

Neal Wilson

I like B&w magazine also, I widh the printing were better, but the interviews are pften times inspiring.

I only vaguely recall the toy stuff you're talking about (photographer re-ignites childhood obsession with toy cars, starts photographing them fuzzy and in odd colours, right?), but it didn't seem to me that it was in any way rising to the top. It got some magazine coverage, yeah, but with a small publication you only need one fan (editor/publisher) to get printed. It's not like the guy is the toast of the Manhattan gallery scene or anything.

That aside, it's odd that a reference to him ties into the standard 'contemporary art sucks/is a joke' and pomo strawman-bashing that rears up on photo forums every now and then. His work was touchy-feely, nostalgic decorative BS, the kind of thing that gothy Baudrillard-quoting MFA candidates are trained to dismiss out of hand.

B&W is worth it for the portfolios in back some of the time, but I find its emphasis on collecting/value and collectors a real turn-off. Not as bad as ArtNews (where you get longer profiles of wealthy and irrelevant collectors than you do about artists), but nothing I want to pay money for.

I was just joking. It is called irony where I come from.

That said, I absolutely think the toy stuff in Aperture was inane. Just as another frickin waterfall can be inane. When something is new and fresh, it can be interesting. Once it has been done thousands of times by thousands of people, it gets pretty old. I think the 'constructed reality' work that appeared in Aperture on more than one occasion was nothing more than the artistic and intellectual equivalent of self gratification. And it took considerably less than a thousand images in that genre before they began to generate belly laughs whenever I saw them.

celluloidpropaganda said:

I only vaguely recall the toy stuff you're talking about (photographer re-ignites childhood obsession with toy cars, starts photographing them fuzzy and in odd colours, right?), but it didn't seem to me that it was in any way rising to the top. It got some magazine coverage, yeah, but with a small publication you only need one fan (editor/publisher) to get printed. It's not like the guy is the toast of the Manhattan gallery scene or anything.

That aside, it's odd that a reference to him ties into the standard 'contemporary art sucks/is a joke' and pomo strawman-bashing that rears up on photo forums every now and then. His work was touchy-feely, nostalgic decorative BS, the kind of thing that gothy Baudrillard-quoting MFA candidates are trained to dismiss out of hand.

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Sportera said:

"People should check the build of their domicile before they start throwing stones."

Are you directing this at anyone in particular?

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My point is that there are people who take chances, try really hard and sometimes succeed and sometimes fail spectacularly. There are other people who act in rote and succeed predictably.

I feel that some here will trot out the spectacular to cover for the predictable, or maybe it is just that old fear of the unknown.

Sorry if my original post was harsh.

FWIW I think Aperture is an excellent mag which succeeds and fails with verve.

What John said, with spades.

I like things that try, succed and even sometimes fail. The more I work on what I do, the more I like people who take risks and don't give a dog bolloxs (as a friend of mine would say) what people think.

Failure is very important, probably as important as success, if you don't fail ypou don't grow.

Sportiva, like what you have on your Katrina section of your site. Keep it up.

Thanks David.

I totally agree with you about taking chances and being different, original, and fresh in their approach. I admire anyone who can think on their own. But this is part of my reason for satirizing a certain type of Aperture article. The first person to set up these 'constructed realities' things was being original, albeit a little feeble in intellectual depth. But the hordes of people who apparently began doing the same sort of work are no more original than the dude who shoots another 'Clearing Storm' at Yosemite Point and expects the world to rave about their genius.

My point is that I don't understand why we should see what I would consider failures. My trashcan is full of things that sounded neat, but didn't work. I think there is a little tendency at some magazines to 'preference' (I just had to throw that pomo term in here, for fun of course) perceived freshness over quality. Maybe there just is really not much fresh quality work that they get to see. I don't know. But I do know that during the last ten years that I got Aperture, there were maybe 3 or 4 articles a year that I really thought worth more than a casual glance. And this is most decidely not because I am a 'rocks and trees' lover.

mrcallow said:

My point is that there are people who take chances, try really hard and sometimes succeed and sometimes fail spectacularly. There are other people who act in rote and succeed predictably.

I feel that some here will trot out the spectacular to cover for the predictable, or maybe it is just that old fear of the unknown.

Sorry if my original post was harsh.

FWIW I think Aperture is an excellent mag which succeeds and fails with verve.

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My trashcan is full of things that sounded neat, but didn't work.

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So, where is this trash can?

Website

Did anyone else post this?

http://www.cameraarts.com/intro.html

I just flipped through the last (or is it THE last) CameraArts and they lost me with the nutty essay from George DeWolfe.

Walter Benjamin out of context and without an appropriate counter (which could have come from Walter Pater, written a century before Benjamin or postmodernism), and silly stuff like Marxism resembles postmodernism (or is it vice versa).

Please spare me the half-baked crit, stick with pictures.