Form/ Aesthetics v. Concept/ Statement

Darkroom317 said:

I will admit I am a fan of Ansel Adams and other modernist photographers, so my work is formally similar. It seems to me that the current art community looks down on landscape photography even though Adams and landscaper painters such as J.M.W Turner are studied and revered.

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I see nothing wrong with you working in whatever style you wish. If you wish to emulate the style of Adams, then stick with it and after several hundred/thousand photographs you will notice your work is not like Adams but your own. Everybody copies or is inspired by someone and although professors may suggest (not tell) you what to do, you don’t have to follow. There are no rules, so be true to yourself.

Diapositivo said:

Being homosexual is a bit too exploited. I suggest going to a vernissage with your goat and introducing it as "your fiancé" specifying it's a male goat obviously lest they think you are a conformist.

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You're probably right, being a homosexual is probably passe.

But being from Rome we probably have cultural differences because here in the US, most rural men have at least one goat they consider special.

Won't get a second glance.

I'm maybe thinking, an owl.

Walk around with it on your shoulder and call it your muse.

Could be perfect. Supposed to be wise, nocturnal, and can give you that "what the fuck are you looking at" kind of look.

cliveh said:

There are no rules, so be true to yourself.

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We don't live in a vacuum.

There are rules and they nearly always apply; if one wants to pass a class the professor's rules apply, or if one intends to succeed in marketing their art, the rules of the market apply. If I want to please my wife's taste in art I need to use color, that's the rule.

The only time "the rules" don't apply is for purely personal work.

I suppose having a goat as a significant other might have its perks. For instance you can sell it and buy a younger model. Or, if it pisses you you off you can kill it without going to jail... as long as the animal rights folks don't find out. And that would result in free dinners for quite some time.

OMG... I think I'm becoming as wanky as Blansky!!

markbarendt said:

We don't live in a vacuum.

There are rules and they nearly always apply; if one wants to pass a class the professor's rules apply, or if one intends to succeed in marketing their art, the rules of the market apply. If I want to please my wife's taste in art I need to use color, that's the rule.

The only time "the rules" don't apply is for purely personal work.

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Rules are for the guidance of the wise and the blind obedience of fools.

cliveh said:

Rules are for the guidance of the wise and the blind obedience of fools.

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Who's that quoted from?

cliveh said:

Rules are for the guidance of the wise and the blind obedience of fools.

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I'm the son of an art educator...

I talked to my dad last night and he brought up 'rules', saying there are those who want chaos and anarchy but art schools need to teach the rules to prepare people for the world that lies ahead.

I said the world that lies ahead will be one of chaos and anarchy so I am preparing my children for that future...

He got a laugh out of it. Whether what I or he said last night is true or not... I don't know.

Old-N-Feeble said:

Who's that quoted from?

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Group Captain Sir Douglas Robert Steuart Bader CBE, DSO & Bar, DFC & Bar,
FRAeS, DL (21 February 1910 – 5 September 1982).

blansky said:

You're far better off ******* the exposure, **** the focus, ****** shift/tilts, .... and then ***** the developing.

Once you have the developed negative place it carefully on floor and place your foot on it, turn on Chubby Checker and do the twist with it.

When you print it, make an hack, amateur print and develop it in the wrong *****.

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Though I assume this was tongue in cheek, there could be some value in this exercise.

If your usual standards are sharp prints, perfectly exposed, developed and printed... break out to see what lies underneath... Print negatives you would normally discard. You may find yourself...

cliveh said:

Rules are for the guidance of the wise and the blind obedience of fools.

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This is a great point.

I would also say that most people try to be good at the wrong rules, as blansky suggests above;

blansky said:

That's because photographers are trying to be good at it. A total waste of time.

You're far better off the fuck up the exposure, fuck up the focus, fuck up the shift/tilts, if you're anal enough to have them, and then fuck up the developing.

Once you have the developed negative place it carefully on floor and place your foot on it, turn on Chubby Checker and do the twist with it.

When you print it, make an hack, amateur print and develop it in the wrong shit.

And viola.

You be an artiste.

And wear a cape.

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Being normal is a commodity, being different is value added.

Being different is a performance, Adams was there once, but once established and refined to fit the rules of commerce that character becomes a trademark and one's bread and butter. In time possibly even the norm.

To be blunt, it's no longer tough for people so inclined to travel to almost anywhere in this world and take a well focused, sharp, long DOF, landscape shot, and manipulate the tones.

I have to agree with Bill there, I remember when I was taking an early photo class, my professor was talking about how developer is generally used at 20c, my friend and I looked at each other and smiled....we then boiled the the water, mixed in the hc110, developed the film...the result was predictable (crazy contrast, emulsion boiled away in the highlights, etc, etc), the professor was joyed to be able to talk with my fellow students how it all worked, one of the photos is one my all time fav's....learning, experimentation, find your voice....

blansky said:

That's because photographers are trying to be good at it. A total waste of time.

You're far better off to fuck up the exposure, fuck up the focus, fuck up the shift/tilts, if you're anal enough to have them, and then fuck up the developing.

Once you have the developed negative place it carefully on floor and place your foot on it, turn on Chubby Checker and do the twist with it.

When you print it, make an hack, amateur print and develop it in the wrong shit.

And viola.

You be an artiste.

And wear a cape.

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You nailed it, Michael. I'm thinking Rauschenberg here.

c6h6o3 said:

You nailed it, Michael. I'm thinking Rauschenberg here.

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Although there is much pretentious crap in modern art, I don't think Rauschenberg is one of them. His artwork is fantastic.

Well, I study art history at the Ph.D. level, so I guess I share some of the burden of responsibility for your predicament.

When you look at photography from a maker's point of view, part of what you're doing is intuitive, another part is very conscious and intentional, and a last part is more or less contingent, the result of either circumstances, chance, or zeitgeist.

When you look at photography from an art historian point of view, you need to see meaning, intention, design, or concept. Not just because of Conceptual Art (tm), but because we appreciate art works as things with a history of making that make some kind of sense. Most art historians will be looking for some kind of explanation behind a picture: why did he painted the sky purple rather than blue? why is it sharp instead of fuzzy? etc.

Obviously, a good art historian will not mistake her interpretations and meaning-making activities with the intention of an artist. She will acknowledge that the meaning of the work is broader than what was just intended, and will talk about it in terms of how it makes sense, how it can function with an audience, rather than just "what meaning was intended."

Now everybody can point at a photograph that exists more or less because of luck/happenstance/minimal design and that generated in turn a HUGE literature on its significance. Much of which can be legitimate anyway, since the reception of art work is a valid object of study.

BUT there seems to have been lately in the realm of photography school more and more conflating of these two different points of view. I see art historians putting forward their artistic practice as part of their academic work, while I see artists adopting more and more the language, concepts, stance, and reflexes of art historians in the presentation of their work. This might be due to the simple fact that for most artists who want to have a stab at teaching, art history is the direct way out of fine arts programs (I consider myself strictly as an amateur photographer, in all possible senses of the term, that's why I hang around here).

On the one hand, I can understand the need for photo teachers to push their students to be articulate about their photos, since they themselves must be so. For the administration of the college, having a word-shy genius like a Garry Winogrand for teacher can be a liability, despite the beautiful risk it carries of fostering greatness. On the other, I am well aware that students learn to write whatever their teacher asks them, and just go about photographing. Others buy more into it, and know that mastering this way of talking about photo will help them navigate the world of galleries and collectors.

I think you have to be able to defend what you're doing, since we less and less let "geniuses" loose without a fight; it's also important for yourself to understand what you're doing (and verbalizing it is one way to make it clear) if you want your work to develop; but no amount of semiotics, concept, intention talk, political critique, etc. will make you a better photographer in and out of itself.

Michel Hardy-Vallée,

Thanks for pointing out the different perspectives. My take-away from your post is that photography makers should not try to explain their work using terms that future art historians might use. It may be better to tell the plain story, perhaps explain the conscious decisions and the circumstances and luck involved.

Thanks Bill. Yes, I think it's worth articulating oneself clearly, but to me the real work of the artist is in the doing, and no amount of explanation will suffice.

At any rate, even if an artist did a perfect art historical analysis of his own work, for an academics it would still require an additional layer of scrutiny (why is the artist so well versed? what is the relationship with the work? etc), so that an artist's statement or intention will always be a completely different thing from an art historical analysis.

Someone like Jeff Wall is the textbook example of an artist well-versed into art history, and whose work actively engages with major works of art in this manner. I think there's a certain amount of power wrestling therein, and an attempt at putting forth a response to the "photography isn't art" discourses of earlier decades. I have seen this exact same behaviour with comics: artists write "graphic novels" because they have been put down as "not literary enough." My gripe is always that if someone says you're not X enough, why give him credit by becoming X enough?

But back to Wall, the odd consequence of his doing so is that he short circuited the assumed distance between artist and critic/historian: he admitted having been inspired by Michael Fried's theories of absorption and theatricality for his work; in turn, Fried champions Wall in Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before as being a perfect example of the "good" kind of photograph, the "absorption" one. Way to be critical, Fried!

Michel Hardy-Valle, you say it so well and my experience seems to parallel yours.

The art-academics and the professional curators and critics I know are, to a man or woman, largely incapable of engaging with a photograph in terms of its formal qualities: what it looks like. That's not because these people are ignorant or unintelligent but because their training is otherwise. To graduate to an academic position, to draw salary, keep job security (even tenure), and hope for promotion it is necessary to write and expound at length about photographs. And the writing and exposition needs to take a coherent form that other academics can recognise and approve. Such dissertations reflect:

The craving of novelty and its (mis?)identification with quality and progress.
The historic placement of a photograph.
The social context surrounding the photograph with an emphasis on post-modern thought modes.
The political implications of a photograph, again post-modern or, failing that, Marxist.
The aesthetic milieu of a photograph: who influenced who?
The technical qualities of a photograph, what medium, how big, etc, so archivists will know what to do with it.
The position of a photograph in the art market, a popularity contest rather than a quality contest, run by high-rollers, chancers, and state institutions.

None of the above is of the slightest use as mental support for a creative photographer in the moment of standing behind a camera and in the presence of evocative subject matter. How will the best qualities of the subject be realised, what subtleties of composition, what lighting, what focus will make the photograph so beautiful that it commands to be looked at? Those are necessary starting thoughts and the academic world has little to teach here.

An amusing analogy told to me, by an academic no less, equated making photographs to the Native American experience of buffalo hunting. There is excitement, danger, thrills aplenty, great rewards and the potential for disaster. The academics come by after the herd has passed and read the dung: there were so many animals, they went this way, many calves, few bulls, etc, etc; a much safer career.
l

As I was working in the yard yesterday and fixing up my deck......


I took a break, did a hit of LSD, and pondered the nail I was holding in my hand.

To the guy that made it, it represents an intensely boring job. He sees billions of then and they all look the same.

To the guy that ships then they represent a heavy, sharp and unwieldy nuisance that doesn't fit together. They are trouble.

To the guy that transports them they represent a heavy box without merit. Just dumb weight.

To the guy at the retailer they represent merely a commodity. How much can I get, for how many.

To the guy that buys them they represent promise and the future.

He's going to build something. Create something. And this little nail is the glue that will hold it all together.

To the guy who comes by and sees the final result he doesn't see a nail at all and only looks at the project as a whole.

If he looks real close he can see a little round dot but dismisses it as a necessary nuisance in an other wise beautiful project.

Everyone had a different experience of that perfect nail because to them it all represents something different.

To a guy stoned on LSD a nail is elegant perfection. It's a work of art, aesthetically and practically, it is perfect.

Yet like all art, the viewer will always add their own baggage to it to try to make it about them.

This is why I use decking screws.

Allen Friday said:

This is why I use decking screws.

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A person who uses decking screws instead of nails is very self conscious, doesn't make lasting friendships, tries too hard to please others, doesn't really trust his own judgement, is wishy-washy, afraid of commitment, and has trouble making decisions.

This type of person goes out shooting with a 35 mm with 20 rolls of film instead using LF and two sheets of film.

All in all a hollow shell of a human being, desperate for approval, slinking through life and never making a mark of his own, but instead ready to emulate his peers at that moment, in a futile attempt to fit in.

In short a Zelig.

REPENT.

blansky said:

A person who uses decking screws instead of nails is very self conscious, doesn't make lasting friendships, tries too hard to please others, doesn't really trust his own judgement, is wishy-washy, afraid of commitment, and has trouble making decisions.<snip>

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Maybe, but his deck stays together and is easily serviceable.

I resent that. I always shoot at least 4 LF sheets to make sure I get the shot.

Old-N-Feeble said:

Maybe, but his deck stays together and is easily serviceable.

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Aha, the compromising of ones principles in the worship of practicality.

Foregoing the beautiful woman and settling for the good cook.

blansky said:

Aha, the compromising of ones principles in the worship of practicality.Foregoing the beautiful woman and settling for the good cook.

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I thought we were discusisng getting one's deck nailed or screwed.

If Leica made decking they would use screws, not nails and would certainly not contemplate them under the influence of LSD.