"How America's Most Cherished Photographer Learned to See" / Stephen Shore with Peter Schjeldahl

[Alan Edward Klein]

I agree with the bulk of what you wrote above, but depart when it comes to artwork which is intentionally banal and only gains meaning once you learn the intent behind the work.

Like I keep saying, there's room in the pool for everyone. I prefer art which speaks for itself without having to join a club to get the decoder ring.


In Shore's words from the article:

"The second approach entailed the idea of the snapshot. Snapshots, too, have their own visual conventions, but sometimes they feel like an unmediated experience. That’s what I was after. I made the snapshots with the Mick-A-Matic, and that led to “American Surfaces,” taken with a 35-mm. point-and-shoot. While working on this series, I engaged in a mental exercise. At random times during the day, I took “screenshots” of my field of vision. I wanted to make a conscious mental record of what seeing looked like. And I based my pictures on this.

This practice not only informed how I photographed but what I photographed. Since I was choosing random moments, I found I was looking at situations that were not usually the subject of photographs: riding in a taxi, standing in an elevator, eating a meal, watching television. This led me to go beyond conventions not only of pictorial structure but of content, too."

There are as many ways to photograph as there are photographers, and this is equally valid as any other, but it and the resultant images don't resonate with me. Having a decoder ring and knowing why it was taken doesn't change the way I see it. Guess I'm just not good herd member material...knowing why it was made doesn't change the way I see it.

I choose to walk, typically through Nature, and wait until a particular place or thing stops me. I'll move around until the strongest vantage point is found which accentuates what stopped me, then decide on the best way to arrive at a print which accentuates it even more. I want the photograph to speak for itself. A diametrically opposed aesthetic.

Shore can happily splash away in his end of the pool and I'll splash away in mine. I've previously stated I can see what he's doing and have tipped my hat his way for achieving it, but it just doesn't float my boat.

That's what I do with my landscapes. Just trying to capture something that caught my eye. The only thinking is how to execute the shot right. We'll have to let them swim at the other end of the pool.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Alan, I'll say it for the last time: I never said you have to. But many people like to, and for many people it's important to, wether it's as viewers or as artists themselves. And that many photographers want, or need to go beyond one "nice shot" after the next doesn't make their work less powerful, evocative, emotionally relevant than the work of those who go from nice shot to nice shot.

You say "Art is about feelings most of all." Sorry to point this out, but that's not for you to decide.

Why shouldn't I decide that art is about feelings most of all? It's my opinion and my belief. You're giving your opinions, also not the truth and no more valid than mine. Everyone is just giving their beliefs.

 

[MattKing]

Why shouldn't I decide that art is about feelings most of all? It's my opinion and my belief. You're giving your opinions, also not the truth and no more valid than mine. Everyone is just giving their beliefs.

No - some people seem to be saying that what they believe is what everyone should believe.

 

[awty]

awty, I was only using The White Album to illustrate the point Matt and I were making, that with photographers who work in series—a very modern, and actual artistic stance—you have to approach the work as a whole, not judging individual photographs. The White Album is famous for having a bunch of ordinary songs—many purposefully so, but that's for another discussion—make an extraordinary and brilliant album when considered as a whole.

According to the Beetles it was just that, a bunch of left over songs. It was people like Charles Manson who elevated it to something more meaningful.
Have to be careful of our prophets.

 

[awty]

We have nothing but the past to draw on.
What might incidentally happen just near you at any moment in time, you might not be ready to participate in, or you might be excluded from for a variety of reasons.
Unless you just happen to be in a hotspot or nodal point like the Factory, Bauhaus, Bell Labs, Memphis group etc. you will never really be in touch with or understand what is happening right now. As in deeply grokking it.
You are looking at the present through a rearview mirror.

What’s more, it’s been very hard to pinpoint any cultural nodal points in the last thirty years. The world has not really seen any clear trends or isms after postmodernism.
Pop culture more or less stopped in 1990.

SH was (not so much anymore) tremendously good at composition. There is something very subtly off about how well composed seemingly random mundane places are.
Not in the Lynchian/Lovecraft, often pubescent “society is rotten at the core” type, but rather in a magical reality way. Not always white magic though. More like gray.
His photos often reminds me of David Byrnes lyrics for Talking heads songs.

Their is always something going on, think it is just more economical to regurgitate the past.
"Say something once why say it again"

 

[awty]

I didn't find what @awty said to be an insult. He more or less stated fact, regarding music, and how people stop trying to hear anything new at some point.

Also, there is room to interpret a series of photos as being the significant art object rather than a single photo in the series. Photography is so ductile that single photos can be woven together to highlight a situation, tell a story, outline a series of events, etc. Art does not have to be a solitary object - and there's valid argument to be made that art cannot be a solitary object, that it must draw itself into relevant relation with other aspects of the world.

For example, Duane Michal's Christ in New York sequence.

View attachment 329964

When I was at primary school the head principle used to sell our food scraps to a pig farmer, so he had two bins set up everywhere, one for food scraps and one for other waste like plastic and paper etc. Children being as they are would mix the bins up. The pig farmer must of complained so the principle allocated certain volunteers to monitor the bins. worked for awhile, but the bin monitors started relinquishing their duties, because they decided they had better things to do. All except Brian Leo who continued to single handedly chastise and reported to the teacher on lunch duties anyone who dared forgot to remove their waxed paper from their soggy jam sandwiches their mum made them before putting in the bin. He did this all year. Its the Brians in the world we need to be thankful for maintaining order, even if the pigs weren't too concerned with a bit of paper in their diet.

Duane has interesting work, but its a little dated, most of us have been emancipated from main stream religion, what is he doing now?

 

[Alex Benjamin]

According to the Beetles it was just that, a bunch of left over songs. It was people like Charles Manson who elevated it to something more meaningful.
Have to be careful of our prophets.

The Beetles? Don't know that group. Were they hired by Volkswagen to write the jingle to promote their Love Bug?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

No - some people seem to be saying that what they believe is what everyone should believe.

Everyone here makes arguments to convince others their views are correct. Nothing new there. It happens in every thread. Much of what we say is just debating.

Those taking the opposite view of mine believe that unless you examine all the facets of the work and meaning, you really can't understand art, that you're some sort of a kunckledragging boob. They're trying to convince others they right.

 

[Melvin J Bramley]

Art?
I think he exposes the vulgar side of the USA.

 

[MurrayMinchin]

If you actually read my post (which you responded to), you'd notice that you are agreeing with it.

Well, slap my ass and call me Judy!!!!

Consensus (of a sort) in about 100 posts!

Time to put this one to bed.

 

[Melvin J Bramley]

Agreed.

South Coast BC

Thanks, Judy!

 

[MattKing]

Everyone here makes arguments to convince others their views are correct. Nothing new there. It happens in every thread. Much of what we say is just debating.

Those taking the opposite view of mine believe that unless you examine all the facets of the work and meaning, you really can't understand art, that you're some sort of a kunckledragging boob. They're trying to convince others they right.

No we are not Alan - at least not most of us.

 

[MurrayMinchin]

Agreed.

South Coast BC

Thanks, Judy!

No problem, neighbour

 

[Don_ih]

Those taking the opposite view of mine believe that unless you examine all the facets of the work and meaning, you really can't understand art, that you're some sort of a kunckledragging boob.

All I'm saying is you will have the appreciation you have, based on what you are familiar with, your own experience, what you've learned, and your attitude - and that it will be different from people who have significantly different experiences and knowledge and values. Even identifying something as "art" places it in that meaningful context where you come to expect a certain type of experience of it.

Duane has interesting work, but its a little dated, most of us have been emancipated from main stream religion, what is he doing now?

He's in his 90s. His series work was interesting. He did a lot of double-exposure stuff. He made some very interesting portraits.
Emancipated from the building, maybe. The values and ideals of Christianity have been fully embedded in "Western" society for a long time, now.

 

[Helge]

No, it's something I do in real life as well, like calling someone out for telling a racist joke and expecting me to laugh.

I have no doubt about that.

Wouldn't know how to look at them? Really? If you stumbled across a Shinto Shrine wandering off trail on a Japanese mountainside, would you give it no attention? Wouldn't you pause and drink in the relationship between the shrine and its surroundings, or would you immediately turn on your heel, scurry back to town, and find someone to help you understand?

If you didn’t know what shrines are? If you don’t know Shinto? If you don’t know Amaterasu?

Sigh...they don't have the right mental tools? Nothing offensive there at all! Because Picasso stole the essence of West African ceremonial masks to 'invent' Cubism, I'd say forest dwelling Indigenous people would be closer to the source material than even Picasso was.

Mental tools do exist? Or is that also offensive in your pretend mollycoddled world?
Point of view is worth 80 IQ points.
BTW. You might check up on your Picasso. It seems lacking at best.

I didn't say he was late to the game, just that some suggest he was a pioneer when he wasn't.

He was as much a pioneer as many other people. But more so than most.

The root of the problem/debate here is best highlighted in the title of the article which spawned this thread, as it was written from a New York gallery scene centric perspective. Calling Shore "America's Most Cherished Photographer" is ludicrous. He might be quite the darling to Big Name Gallery insiders, but pretty much unknown anywhere else.

As demonstrated in the video I posted, there are many valid ways to interpret art. It is the presumptive totality of correctness in the argument you are making that makes me say, "Hey, wait a minute".

There is room in the pool for all of us, but it seems you have decided that people need requisite knowledge to even get their feet wet.

The idea of (and perceived need for) “intuitive” understanding of art, is something that runs deep in western culture. Most of it diluted and grossly misinterpreted from enlightenment poets and philosophers.
There is definitely some human basics to art and they are, as basic often are, fundamental.
But from what a small child, with basically no cultural understanding, and then to what even a ten year old understands of tropes, references and allusions, there is hell of a lot of room to play.

There is a tremendous amount of social and mental stuff that is generally taken as written in stone, given and “intuitive”, that is absolutely not that.

I’m done in this discussion with you, because it’s not really a discussion. You seem extremely eager to take generic offense as a primitive rhetorical device.

Their is always something going on, think it is just more economical to regurgitate the past.
"Say something once why say it again"

Pretending to know the present is like staring at a brick wall or out the window to understand a piece of architecture.
You don’t really have enough distance or are able to move around fast enough to say anything conclusive.
What we call the present is really an agglutination in our mind of the past ten years or so.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

No we are not Alan - at least not most of us.

Most people here believe their point of view is the "right" one and often try to convince others. Who argues the other person's point of view? Everyone cherry picks their "evidence." Not all the time, just mainly.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

All I'm saying is you will have the appreciation you have, based on what you are familiar with, your own experience, what you've learned, and your attitude - and that it will be different from people who have significantly different experiences and knowledge and values. Even identifying something as "art" places it in that meaningful context where you come to expect a certain type of experience of it.



He's in his 90s. His series work was interesting. He did a lot of double-exposure stuff. He made some very interesting portraits.
Emancipated from the building, maybe. The values and ideals of Christianity have been fully embedded in "Western" society for a long time, now.

I'm not against enjoying art intellectually. I often study it myself and find in fascinating. What I oppose is when people think that's the only way a person can appreciate it. Then it becomes a "putdown" of the "riffraff".

 

[MurrayMinchin]

Okay, I'm back in, but only to tidy up.

BTW. You might check up on your Picasso. It seems lacking at best.

Did you read the link I referenced regarding Picasso?

Just in case you don't go to the link, here is the meat of what I was using to illustrate my point about not having to know the sociological/cultural/academic/art-speak context of a piece to milk it of its essence:

"During the early 1900s, the aesthetics of traditional African sculpture became a powerful influence among European artists who formed an avant-garde in the development of modern art. In France, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and their School of Paris friends blended the highly stylized treatment of the human figure in African sculptures with painting styles derived from the post-Impressionist works of Edouard Manet, Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin. The resulting pictorial flatness, vivid color palette, and fragmented Cubist shapes helped to define early modernism. While these artists knew nothing of the original meaning and function of the West and Central African sculptures they encountered, they instantly recognized the spiritual aspect of the composition and adapted these qualities to their own efforts to move beyond the naturalism that had defined Western art since the Renaissance..."

"Picasso's African influenced period was followed by the style known as Cubism, which had also developed from Les Mademoiselle Mignonne's. Specifically Picasso's interest was sparked by Henri Matisse who showed him a mask from the Dan region of Africa. Scholars maintain that Matisse purchased this piece from Emile Heymenn's shop of non-western artifacts in Paris."

https://www.pablopicasso.org/africanperiod.jsp


Perhaps it is you who is overinflated, rather than me lacking?


Extra reading credit:

Picasso's African Period - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"Picasso's interest in African art was sparked partly by Henri Matisse who showed him a wooden Kongo-Vili figurine.[5]

In May or June 1907, Picasso experienced a "revelation" while viewing African art at the ethnographic museum at the Palais du Trocadéro.[6][7] Picasso's discovery of African art influenced aspects of his painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (completed in July of that year), especially in the treatment of the faces of two figures on right side of the composition. Although many modern art curators have attempted to match individual African masks with the faces of these figures, the African masks used in these examples have not always been accurate, and the artist took ideas from multiple works.[8]

Picasso continued to develop a style derived from African, Egyptian, and Iberian art during the years prior to the start of the analytic cubism phase of his painting in 1910."

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Picasso stealing all this from Africa makes me feel better about me copying Ansel.

 

[MurrayMinchin]

The ultimate end for minimalism in art:

Salvatore Garau - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Maybe the next great art-speak justified movement in photography (where those who buy into the schtick will pay great sums of money and feel warm glows of importance as they explain its meaning to the uneducated) will be photographs taken with the lens cap on?

 

[MattKing]

Most people here believe their point of view is the "right" one and often try to convince others. Who argues the other person's point of view? Everyone cherry picks their "evidence." Not all the time, just mainly.

You are still not getting what I'm saying Alan.
There is a difference between saying "This is what Art is for me", and "This is what I believe Art is for everyone".
And both of them are different than saying "This is what Art is".
The last version is potentially quite disruptive to the discussion.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

You are still not getting what I'm saying Alan.
There is a difference between saying "This is what Art is for me", and "This is what I believe Art is for everyone".
And both of them are different than saying "This is what Art is".
The last version is potentially quite disruptive to the discussion.

Most people think that what they believe is what it is and that others should believe the same way. They then spend their time trying to convince the world they're right. If they didn't then no one would argue about anything. They'd just accept others' viewpoints. Those people are the ones who don't post. But that doesn't happen. We talk past one another all the time.

One read of any thread titled, "What is Art?" would convince them no one hears the other side.

 

[cliveh]

Picasso also did much photographic art and how brilliant it was.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Most people think that what they believe is what it is and that others should believe the same way. They then spend their time trying to convince the world they're right. If they didn't then no one would argue about anything. They'd just accept others' viewpoints. Those people are the ones who don't post. But that doesn't happen. We talk past one another all the time.

One read of any thread titled, "What is Art?" would convince them no one hears the other side.

As I say, I only made one mistake in my life. That was when I thought I was wrong but it turned out that I had been right all along. Similar statement about art abound.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

As I say, I only made one mistake in my life. That was when I thought I was wrong but it turned out that I had been right all along. Similar statement about art abound.

I'm not as consistent as you.