Interesting article on photographic aesthetics

[Mainecoonmaniac]

In an age of greater visual literacy, there are more description of photos? Or maybe photos should mean different things to different people?

http://petapixel.com/2016/05/31/opinion-disturbing-trend-photography/

 

[Ron789]

At the risk of being considered another old grumpy guy longing back to a past era..... I agree with him.

 

[Richard S. (rich815)]

"...give me less words and better pictures!!"

100% agree. It's like verbal or written "post-processing". If it needs too much your photographs probably aren't very good.

 

[mooseontheloose]

This reminds me of the time when I was taking a continuing ed photography course and the instructor never liked it when we had actual titles (beyond facts - place, date) for our photos. I'm not talking descriptions, just simple titles, but even for him it was too much information that interfered with his interpretation of what he was looking at.

 

[TheRook]

A truly good photo should be able to stand on its own without words, I agree. However, a simple title can sometimes help further define the image. For example, let's take painting. In essence, Picasso's "Guernica" is a powerful image. Yet its title adds poignancy to the work by giving the elements within the composition further meaning. I don't see why photography should be any different.

 

[pdeeh]

In an age of greater visual literacy

didn't you just post a thread recently bemoaning a lack of cultural literacy in the present age?

which is it?

or is it something else again, presumably people moaning that today is different and therefore worse than yesterday?

 

[mdarnton]

Conceptualism was a movement in art in the 60s, mostly burned out by the 70s. Nice to see that photography still isn't art enough to come up with its own original ideas, isn't it?

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

didn't you just post a thread recently bemoaning a lack of cultural literacy in the present age?

which is it?

or is it something else again, presumably people moaning that today is different and therefore worse than yesterday?

Let me explain. There's visual literacy that corporate media uses to manipulate the masses and cultural literacy. Do you ever notice when young kids pose for photos, they have the same stilted poses? They know what looks "good" but have less knowledge of art, literature and music and performing arts. It's not their fault. Arts education has been cut back severely here in California. The only access to art is TV, movies and the internet. What do you think?

 

[blockend]

A similar sentiment here: http://blakeandrews.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/extraneous-information.html

 

[Ko.Fe.]

In an age of greater visual literacy...

In general, I guess, but not everywhere. On one particular forum for one particular geographic location I'm constantly having debates with too many people who have imagination and abstract thinking set to zero. All what they are able to see is visual effects.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

In general, I guess, but not everywhere. On one particular forum for one particular geographic location I'm constantly having debates with too many people who have imagination and abstract thinking set to zero. All what they are able to see is visual effects.

Very true. In the digital age, there are many effects available and our senses are over saturated. We look at celebrities that have over retouched skin, amp up colors with HDR, and photoshop filters to the hilt. I'm not against all the tools. I'm for using them skillfully. Take a look at this video on how over-retouched images change how we perceive ourselves and others.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

In my case it wasn't about special effects in editing.
Here is one (not from me ) photo from film dedicated site gallery:

The photo was criticised by those who claim to be visually literate. It is flat and nothing is here, according to them, it is not visually effective.
To me it tells about facial lifting, dental implants and trying to stay young even if nature of the age is telling the different story. Even if it is not the case for particular person. It is the photo which tells me this story.

I'm providing this as example to say what "photos should mean different things to different people" statement is understood by me. While visual literacy to me is often nothing but cliche.
"Oh, it has to be sharp, oh, it has to be with great light, oh, it must have perspective". No, if you have imagination developed.

 

[Diapositivo]

Normally if a work of art has something to say, it will "say" it itself.
If the work of art has nothing to say, than the "artist" will have to speak on its behalf, and the result will be a ridiculous attempt, by the listener/viewer, to retrace the concept in the work. How interesting!

We saw this already in music, sculpture, painting etc. After centuries of good, or less good, or awful music, but music that needed no elaborated explanation, we arrived at Cage, Stockhausen, Nono, etc. who had to "explain" to us what their "music" meant, how it was obtained, how original it was etc.

Cannot write decent music? Don't worry, just talk about it! People who don't like music will appreciate your work, because they don't "get" music anyway, but they might get reasoning and that might make them feel cultivated, culturally sophisticated etc.
Plenty of academic teachers, with no artistic inspiration themselves, will teach their students to produce "concepts", so that they can legitimize both teachers and students as artists.

"Academism" is probably the right term to describe this kind of artistic production.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Normally if a work of art has something to say, it will "say" it itself.
If the work of art has nothing to say, than the "artist" will have to speak on its behalf, and the result will be a ridiculous attempt, by the listener/viewer, to retrace the concept in the work. How interesting!

We saw this already in music, sculpture, painting etc. After centuries of good, or less good, or awful music, but music that needed no elaborated explanation, we arrived at Cage, Stockhausen, Nono, etc. who had to "explain" to us what their "music" meant, how it was obtained, how original it was etc.

Cannot write decent music? Don't worry, just talk about it! People who don't like music will appreciate your work, because they don't "get" music anyway, but they might get reasoning and that might make them feel cultivated, culturally sophisticated etc.
Plenty of academic teachers, with no artistic inspiration themselves, will teach their students to produce "concepts", so that they can legitimize both teachers and students as artists.

"Academism" is probably the right term to describe this kind of artistic production.

I'm just a tech in a university art department. There are 2 disciplines taught here. The theoretical and the practice side. On the theoretical side, there's art history and the practice side is the studio art classes in painting, sculpture, print making, photography and the digital realm. The art studio professors are pretty tough in their critiques also called "crits". A good art department pushes art students and make an artist justify their art. Most that move on and spend a couple more years and tens of thousands of dollars to attain an MFA degree want to give their art "validity". Some do their art and teach to earn a living. There is an elitist side here of course, but overall, students leave as well trained artist.

 

[Doc W]

A joke that has to be explained is never very funny.

 

[removed account4]

photography has been yearning to be a "real art form" for 170 years
and the whole artist statement-thing has been going on for 30-40 years or more.

it doesn't bother me one way or the other whether or not there is a long couple of pages explaining
where the person who made the photographs is coming from. the problem is that there are people
who have no verbal-info, they expect their photographs using someone else's style
( ansel adams, weston you name it from the "10 photographers to ignore" article you posted from last time )
and they expect their work to stand on its own.

i'd rather read the detailed explanation and the run of photographs afger that any day over the same old
song and dance that has been played by people who currently insist that just because it is made with a large format camera
that it is better than anything else.

where's mortenson when you need him ?