How much editing is justified?

[Pieter12]

If you replace "must" with "can", then I agree. Taken as it's formulated, literally, I think it flies in the face of how much art comes into being. There's a lot of mucking about especially in the 'fuzzy front-end' of the artistic process, that constitutes a search for intentionality and direction. And the degree of control by artists of the process involved is really very variable. Some like to be in that position (and manage it), quite a few don't. Artists are a rather motley crew, it seems to me. They appear to defy generalizations. Perhaps, if anything, that's their most defining characteristic. That, and being overall utterly allergic to anyone saying the word 'must' in their vicinity. Tends to freak them out pretty badly, much of the time.

Street, wildlife, sports and candid photography in general would seem to be exceptions.

 

[Vaughn]

... I'm fighting anyone that says Duck Dodgers isn't art.

As hunks of breathing meat, we can individually call something art or not art...and be right as rain. Just be ready to duck!

Western art has spread across the globe, not always on its own merits, but on the back of commerce, conquest, and the allure of the foreign. And as Westerners, we tend to elevate our own past and culture, and appropriate others (and it goes the other way, too, of course). It makes looking at art from a global perspective difficult.

One fun aspect on making single transfer carbon prints is that is reverses the image. It gets me to thinking. There is a tendency for a people to look at images in a way that is influenced by their culture's form of writing. Western writing is read left to right, so that influences a left-to-right 'reading' of an image. So an image that encourages the eye to enter from the left and keeps it from exiting stage-right can work well for westerners -- but might create barriers for those who culturally would prefer entering the image from the left.

Square images are nice that way...there tends to be a more circle like movement than left-right/right-left...perhaps it is a minor factor in Kenna's Japan work.

 

[Don_ih]

"Intention" is meaningless. I can intend any number of things and fail in the attempt. Furthermore, I can intend to do one thing and result in something different. Also furthermore, my intent is not something anyone else is privy to.

Physical art (all those objects people generally call art) has an existence on its own - it does not rely on an artist to be, even if it does rely on an artist to become. It can cease to be regarded as art, though - just as various things seemingly never intended to be art can eventually be considered art.

(Note that some art does not persist after the act of the artist. That would be performance.)

 

[chuckroast]

"Intention" is meaningless. I can intend any number of things and fail in the attempt. Furthermore, I can intend to do one thing and result in something different. Also furthermore, my intent is not something anyone else is privy to.

Physical art (all those objects people generally call art) has an existence on its own - it does not rely on an artist to be, even if it does rely on an artist to become. It can cease to be regarded as art, though - just as various things seemingly never intended to be art can eventually be considered art.

(Note that some art does not persist after the act of the artist. That would be performance.)

Whether you fail or succeed there has to be intention on the artist's part or it's just random noise.

In any of these settings there are three actors: The artists, the artifact, and the observer/consumer. The first creates the second thereby making art. The third consumes the second independently of the first. The first may care about the third but that's not what creates the art.

 

[chuckroast]

I'm not convinced that this criteria is valid as a definition for art. Artists have produced art on commission for a very long time.

Yep...

Yeah, but was the commissioned work in their time actually considered "art"? More often than not, these were vanity pieces produced for the egos of their benefactors.

 

[chuckroast]

On the latter point, we fundamentally disagreee.
Of course, I look at art as a continuum. I look at creations, and judge how much art is in them.
The purpose for which they were made is relatively irrelevant. For that reason, things like hand tools and software coding can be imbued with art too.

I am an engineer and scientist by training. Hand tools and software are normally understood as craft, not art. Only in rare circumstances does a hand too rise to the level of art. I have yet to see any software that was remotely art. Only better- or worse craft.

 

[BrianShaw]

Yeah, but was the commissioned work in their time actually considered "art"? More often than not, these were vanity pieces produced for the egos of their benefactors.

Sigh. Deep sigh…

 

[chuckroast]

Norman Rockwell and N C Wyeth created images for advertising that are almost the definitive look of their time and had a huge cultural impact. It's silly to not consider that work art.
Don't get me started on cartoonists.waterson, Schulz, Chuck Jones, Maurice Noble? I'm fighting anyone that says Duck Dodgers isn't art.

These people were all certainly emblematic of their time. But that doesn't make it art. If that were the case, the Malboro Man, the "Where's the beef?" lady, and United Airlines' Al E. Gator would all be art. They aren't. The mere fact of capturing a moment in time isn't sufficient.

 

[MattKing]

I am an engineer and scientist by training. Hand tools and software are normally understood as craft, not art. Only in rare circumstances does a hand too rise to the level of art. I have yet to see any software that was remotely art. Only better- or worse craft.

Mathematicians refer to a proof as "elegant" when they value it highly.
If you don't see art in some of the creations of a talented finishing carpenter, or even a really difficult installation of a master plumber, you are excluding yourself from some of the most meaningful art there is.
An anecdote I've shared before: the story of someone coming across someone drawing patterns - delightedly - in the sand on a beach, right down where the incoming tide was rising. Swirls and curls and fantastic shapes, that were there for just minutes, only to washed away by the sea.
The creator, not immediately recognized, turned out to be Pablo Picasso.
Self editing art?

 

[chuckroast]

Mathematicians refer to a proof as "elegant" when they value it highly.

That's doesn't mean it's art. That means it has been demonstrated with great clarity and presumably a simply as possible. I have done more than a few proofs in my lifetime, a few were elegant, most were not. No one of my acquaintance in grad school thought this was art.

A parallel exists in competitive chess where the best players in the world do not seek just to win but to win with style and, yes elegance. But again, no one seriously treats this as art.

If you don't see art in some of the creations of a talented finishing carpenter, or even a really difficult installation of a master plumber, you are excluding yourself from some of the most meaningful art there is.

It's craft but not art. No one is going to hang an corner miter from a crown molding that fits perfectly in an asymmetric corner of a kitchen on the wall the as an object of art. I greatly admire people who can do this but it is still craft. I have never heard any great craftsmen (and I know more than a few) claim what they were doing was art. (BTW, I am a fair construction monkey in my own right but I can't cut a corner miter to save my life. It's not craft or art, it's pure hackery when I do it.)

An anecdote I've shared before: the story of someone coming across someone drawing patterns - delightedly - in the sand on a beach, right down where the incoming tide was rising. Swirls and curls and fantastic shapes, that were there for just minutes, only to washed away by the sea.
The creator, not immediately recognized, turned out to be Pablo Picasso.
Self editing art?

 

[Mike Lopez]

I am an engineer and scientist by training. Hand tools and software are normally understood as craft, not art. Only in rare circumstances does a hand too rise to the level of art. I have yet to see any software that was remotely art. Only better- or worse craft.

Have you never seen Walker Evans' photographs of common hand tools? If you see those photographs in person I suspect you might re-think all of the opinions about tools that you've expressed here. That man could see, and his pictures of tools reveal a certain beauty that might stop you cold.

 

[Vaughn]

Yeah, but was the commissioned work in their time actually considered "art"? More often than not, these were vanity pieces produced for the egos of their benefactors.

I am influenced by multiple reading of Narcissus and Goldmund by Herman Hesse (1933). As part of the story, he describes a main character becoming an apprentice to a sculptor, and the work love skill and art needed to create pieces for the Church in a middle size German town in the Middle Ages (if that is still the proper term!) with the Black Death wandering around.

I need to read it again -- my paperbook copy is toast, cover off, book in two pieces. Only a half-century old, bought used, only read a few times since I bought it at the end of the 70s...I'll try to find a better copy. The two characters take the places of the spirit and the flesh, and the many variations there of. A very good read.

 

[chuckroast]

Have you never seen Walker Evans' photographs of common hand tools? If you see those photographs in person I suspect you might re-think all of the opinions about tools that you've expressed here. That man could see, and his pictures of tools reveal a certain beauty that might stop you cold.

The photographs are art, but the tools themselves aren't.

 

[mshchem]

I like that one; that's a nice parallel!
I understand what you say about control vs. intentionality, although that already starts shifting the sands. Whether your criteria is about one or the other - either could be the case. But they're different things!


There's two issues here I'd like to highlight before making a point which I think is crucial to understanding my reflection on @cliveh's earlier statement.

The first is that you speak of a 'proper photograph'. The adjective 'proper' implies a normative judgement. I have no problem with that; you can think of anything being better or lesser than something else if you please. But I do want to signal that this kind of normative-hierarchical thinking easily creeps into the line of reasoning without being acknowledged. Let's at least acknowledge it. It's interesting and can inform further discussion. Just putting it there and pretending like it doesn't exist, doesn't get us very far.

Then there's the 'clear immediacy'. I think that word group is inherently problematic. If one were to pick apart my earlier argument and also the statement of @cliveh about 'immediacy' being a relevant criterion, I think the inescapable step would be to discuss what that term means. It's not clearly defined. It's fuzzy and probably highly subjective. Hence, speaking of 'clear immediacy' brings to mind the saying 'clear as mud'. We'd have to sift the mud first. I suspect that immediacy means something else to you than it does to me.

This is one of the definitions that I can scrape off of the internet (apparently Wikipedia) for 'immediacy':

So 'direct experience', 'without intervening medium', 'perception of time and reality', 'urgency or importance in the present moment.
Let's have a look at those elements:
Direct experience: well, inherently not. It's a photograph. So that one's out.
Intervening medium: that one is very dominant in the presentation in the way the tonal relationships are twisted by the medium. We're looking as much at the medium as at the original scene.
Perception of time and reality: reality is visible in shape, but the same could be said for my colorful photograph/image (it just happens to be a very abstract shape - it's still real). Then again, the color is constructed artificially and most certainly not real. This affects the overall impression the image makes. Time is perhaps a little more forgiving here - referring back to @cliveh's mention of the transient nature of the light, and the dominant role it plays in this image, there's a kind of time-specificity in the image.
Urgency or importance of the present moment: it's not the present moment, of course. There's that. Importance is probably subjective and could be tied to being familiar with the person and the moment depicted, but I'd refer to an image that expresses something I would associate with activities such as reflection, pondering or perhaps daydreaming as the opposite of 'urgent'.
Would I attribute a high degree of 'immediacy' to this image? I guess not. It doesn't add up. But...perhaps the 'immediacy' of a photograph is inherently limited if we critically look at this definition. We can compromise, of course, and argue that immediacy is not a binary quality. It can be attributed to an extent. Still, I would state that this photograph has a limited immediacy, and that more importantly the choice in editing (sabattier) has reduced its degree of immediacy significantly. That's of course subjective. You may disagree. But at least, given the above unraveling of the fuzzy subject, we can make the disagreement more concrete than a blunt 'yay or nay'.

Now for the one point I'd like to stress: in the above, I try to (1) make any normative judgement explicit and (2) make it more tangible by unraveling one of the fickle concepts involved. This makes it possible to reason about things that evidently still have a clear emotional and subjective dimension. This will always be there, but I think that in some cases, even emotional and subjective matters can follow some sort of logic. I find that interesting, because this logic may not always answer to the kind of mathematical logic that the term strictly refers to. What I spotted in @cliveh's statement about editing affecting immediacy in photographs is a logic that seems clear enough to me - but at the same time, I'm confronted with a recent example published by the same person that in my view goes against that same logic. I don't deny that both can exist next to each other: Clive can have this conviction, and at the same time he may not always act on it. I find that interesting and I wanted to highlight the discrepancy. Apparently, the normative frameworks we build for ourselves, and present to others, are not as strict or robust as suggested by the way they're positioned.

My criticism of what @cliveh said is not about whether or not I find immediacy a relevant criterion. I'm interested in the inconsistency between what he says and what he does, which suggests that what he really thinks or feels is a lot more nuanced (and therefore more interesting) than he lets on. There's breathing room in the nuance he refuses to talk about, leaving just the anoxic environment of some blunt, axiomatic statements.


It's a pity, though. There's a conceptual richness underlying what we do. When all the shop talk about stop baths and whatnot has been addressed, that's the base layer that remains so fascinating.

Wow, you guys must type with all ten fingers! Not me, just 1 finger and I have a non displaced styloid radial fracture on the typin' side. Whew!

 

[chuckroast]

Wow, you guys must type with all ten fingers! Not me, just 1 finger and I have a non displaced styloid radial fracture on the typin' side. Whew!

I use my toes

 

[Mike Lopez]

The photographs are art, but the tools themselves aren't.

Ok, then I’m going to take the same approach that @Don_ih took in deleting their last post. We won’t agree, and this is pointless.

 

[mshchem]

Do you folks think that prehistoric humans knew that they were "artists"? Maybe the person who had the hoarde of yellow iron oxide got to choose who created the monuments??

There were probably influential patrons even 40,000 years ago.

Cro-Magnon-Peggy-Guggenheim .

 

[chuckroast]

With complete serendipity, I found myself at an arts display this evening of original works by 4th and 5th grade children. Some of it was remarkably mature for persons of that young age.

But what really struck me were the statements of the children themselves describing their interest and affinity for art. To nearly the 100th percentile they all said things like "I like doing art because it does X for me" or "it makes me feel like Y" or "it gives me Z". Literally none of the 50+ children involved talked about how their art would affect, influence, or impress others.

Out of the mouths of babes ...

 

[tcolgate]

The Merriam Webster definition of "art" provides for a more thought provoking, enlightening, and uplifting discussion of the actual use meaning and interpretations of the term than the bizarrely dogmatic interpretations being thrown around in this thread.

 

[koraks]

I'm OK with the thread meandering back & forth. At the same time, I would like to point out that the fact I did not mention 'art' in post #1 was deliberate. What art is, what makes an artist and what drives artists are all interesting topics in their own right. But they're only indirectly related to the question of what we as photographers (whether we consider ourselves artists, amateurs, snapshotters, enthusiasts or any combination thereof) deem permissible or desirable in terms of manipulation of images.

I also formulated the question in such a way that it focuses on the personal/individual choice, and not so much as a normative, prescriptive or dogmatic topic. However, also here I accept that the lines get easily blurred and it's often hard to create a separation between our own practice and what we expect from, or appreciate in others.

 

[Don_ih]

To nearly the 100th percentile they all said things like "I like doing art because it does X for me" or "it makes me feel like Y" or "it gives me Z". Literally none of the 50+ children involved talked about how their art would affect, influence, or impress others.

For activities like that, children are prompted by specific questions. You can pretty much infer what the questions are if they all answer with "I like doing art because __" or "It makes me feel __".

More importantly, if you were to ask young children, they would say that art is something they do or make. That is, if you want an unmuddied concept, free from pretense, elitism, and protectionism.

 

[Vaughn]

Do you folks think that prehistoric humans knew that they were "artists"? ...

Definitely. What's the difference between paint a cave wall and painting a church ceiling?

immediacy...photographs are not direct experience themselves, they are not the moment. They can be of the moment and represent the moment -- how well they can do that can be discussed in the terms of immediacy...how well they describe to the viewer the reality of the moment.

In the case of the earlier image of the red-faced lady -- the image can very well be a more accurate representation of the moment than a 'straight' image (no editing). After all, can one experience any moment with zero emotion? Using editing to include an emotional response to the represented reality can increase the quality of the image's sense of immediacy that the viewer can draw from.

 

[wiltw]

With complete serendipity, I found myself at an arts display this evening of original works by 4th and 5th grade children. Some of it was remarkably mature for persons of that young age.

But what really struck me were the statements of the children themselves describing their interest and affinity for art. To nearly the 100th percentile they all said things like "I like doing art because it does X for me" or "it makes me feel like Y" or "it gives me Z". Literally none of the 50+ children involved talked about how their art would affect, influence, or impress others.

Out of the mouths of babes ...

My wife and I went to the Guggenheim in Bilbao last year. The exhibited 'art' certainly impressed neither of us! Clearly the pieces were made for the satisfaction of the artist.

 

[chuckroast]

My wife and I went to the Guggenheim in Bilbao last year. The exhibited 'art' certainly impressed neither of us! Clearly the pieces were made for the satisfaction of the artist.

Yeah, Art For The Artist doesn't mean it's good.

I have this deep, dark feeling that a lot of the dreck that passes for art these days may just be a scam to get funding from the arterati, but what do I know...

 

[Vaughn]

...

More importantly, if you were to ask young children, they would say that art is something they do or make. That is, if you want an unmuddied concept, free from pretense, elitism, and protectionism.

And eventually someone comes along and tells them not to call themselves artists...an arterati has to call them one first.

But after raising triplet boys, I realize there is an 'innocence of youth', but the waters are still very muddied.