Is "alternative process" and excuse for boring subject matter?

[unregistered]

If an image can't stand up one its own, no process or technique will save it...unless the photog is just going with trickery and BS. If the image can stand up on its own, it opens the doors as to the many different ways it can be interpreted.

 

[Thomassauerwein]

I agree with some of whats been said and dis-agree with some. The one thing that is missed so far is that even given all the different processes and formatts by all the analog people here,there are so many different experiance levels. People interested in different approaches to reslove thier couriosity about whatever it is that they have chosen as a pathway to image creation. All the images are not going to stand the test of time. But we are here to share our growth. Absolutely "some images fail". In any process! Some images are ganged into a process where they may do better as something else. The use of the galleries and the honost response from the viewing team here at APUG will help guide some of this. I know I've benefitted greatly from some of the responses. But weeding out what helps and is personal egenda is tricky also. Anyway, I suggest we look at this stuff for what it is. People at different levels of experiance with different oppertunities for personal growth and allow for some experimentation along the way. The Right brain left brain thing is tough. One will impose itself on all of us. Sometimes no brain at all appears, the fact that there is work in progress is most important! As a person with individual tastes I'd say 85% of what I see does not hold my interest but that means nothing to the masses at large. How can we make a blanket statement about process or formats or even film vs digital when it is only personal preferance.

 

[Donald Miller]

Quote: "How can we make a blanket statement about process or formats or even film vs digital when it is only personal preferance."


I think this sums it up about as well as anything that I have read. I certainly do not want to stack my subjective opinion up as being objective reality...I think that it is really arrogant to do that. So who can really claim to have the basis to judge?

Let's face it, anything fresh and new is going to run into a ton of bullshit from the establishment...that means the photographer's establishment.

Thanks Thomas....

 

[Harrigan]

As a person with individual tastes I'd say 85% of what I see does not hold my interest but that means nothing to the masses at large. How can we make a blanket statement about process or formats or even film vs digital when it is only personal preferance.[/QUOTE]



I may up that to 90% in my opinion. Making a blank statement about alt/ulf is rediculous there is plenty of really bad 35mm, 120, 4x5 and so on. Maybe the point was originally being made that just because you do ulf and gum over plat doesn't make it good work. I have a ulf camera and I can print any alt process I want but I continue to do silver because I enjoy it. I don't think doing more gum or plat or whatever would improve my images one bit. Now albumen on the other hand...

 

[clay]

Well, this whole thread got started without the benefit of having the controversial thread guidelines posted yet.

It really should have started "Have you ever noticed ultra large format practitioners and alternative process printers who insist that their negatives make the most sublime prints, but i think they are sad, sad, lame misguided subhuman wannabe's who think that what they do is art, but everyone knows that Ansel Adams hated platinum prints, and who are we to argue with that?"

It think that would have started out things on the right foot without this namby-pamby polite disagreement between peers. Stated that way, we could have had all-out war right from the start without all this tiresome build-up.

 

[rfshootist]

It seems to me that a lot of people get so caught up with the process itself that they seem to forget to actually take a picture of something that is interesting or something that has meaning.
-Grant

Watching the LF, ULF and alternative galleries that is exactly my impression too, much too often. Getting so caught by the , let's call it"quality idea"
and/or by the process itself can be obviously a trap, at least for all those who once focussed their interest on photography primarily and not on printing and wh now loose the track in the darkroom.

A print is no worth itself. And printing is not a niche where one can rest from the permanent creative pressure from which we all "suffer" as amateurs, more or less . Neither the camera shop nor the darkroom are a place to hide.

bertram

 

[MurrayMinchin]

Some people like jazz and some like rap. Some people like tequilla and some like ice wine. Some people like the snap and sizzle of a fully printed gelatin silver print and others enjoy the luminous midtones of a platinum print, or the warmth of a sepia print, or...

I think anybody pointing fingers at one group of photographers should first cast a critical eye towards the group they belong to. Me thinks the ratio of so-so to amazing work is the same for every genre.

Murray

 

[sanking]

It think that would have started out things on the right foot without this namby-pamby polite disagreement between peers. Stated that way, we could have had all-out war right from the start without all this tiresome build-up.

Good point, Clay. I also hate "namby-pamby polite disagreement." Too many jerks around who stick the knife in your back and finish thieir message with something like, 'Good Luck', or "Best Regards".

So for what it is worth, here is where I stand. I have seen a lot of alternative work that was both uninteresting and technically deficient. I have also seen about ten thousand times more 35mm and medium format work that was equally or more unintersting, and also poor in its technical execution. And I have not seen more ULF and alternative workers trying to pass their work off as artistic than 35mm and medium format folks doing the same.

I am generally less forgiving of technical deficiency than lack of artistic vision because technique can be improved with effort. Whether an image or series of images is seen as interesting or uninteresting depends on a variety of factors, most of them highly subjective and behyond the control of the photographer. Let's say, for exmaple, that you do a portfolio on gas station toilets, and your work is technically brillant. Some people might find this kind of work totally uninteresting because it is not consistent with their pictorial vision. Others might see this as important and innovative work that treats a taboo subjectr with a lot of sensitivity.

You can not please everybody, so perfect your craft and please yourself. If you do this, perhaps a few others will appreciate your work. If they don't, life goes on.

Sandy King

 

[Donald Miller]

Good point, Clay. I also hate "namby-pamby polite disagreement." Too many jerks around who stick the knife in your back and finish thieir message with something like, 'Good Luck', or "Best Regards".

So for what it is worth, here is where I stand. I have seen a lot of alternative work that was both uninteresting and technically deficient. I have also seen about ten thousand times more 35mm and medium format work that was equally or more unintersting, and also poor in its technical execution. And I have not seen more ULF and alternative workers trying to pass their work off as artistic than 35mm and medium format folks doing the same.

I am generally less forgiving of technical deficiency than lack of artistic vision because technique can be improved with effort. Whether an image or series of images is seen as interesting or uninteresting depends on a variety of factors, most of them highly subjective and behyond the control of the photographer. Let's say, for exmaple, that you do a portfolio on gas station toilets, and your work is technically brillant. Some people might find this kind of work totally uninteresting because it is not consistent with their pictorial vision. Others might see this as important and innovative work that treats a taboo subjectr with a lot of sensitivity.

You can not please everybody, so perfect your craft and please yourself. If you do this, perhaps a few others will appreciate your work. If they don't, life goes on.

Sandy King

Service station toilets??? Thanks for the idea. I was about to wrap up the cigarette butts lying in parking lots.

 

[VoidoidRamone]

Maybe the point was originally being made that just because you do ulf and gum over plat doesn't make it good work.

I think that sums it up for me. And on a side note, I think a series of cigarette butts in parking lots would be really good. Especially if it was shot in color.
-Grant

 

[gr82bart]

I'm a complete newbie at alternative/historical processes, so I guess I'm deficient in image content and process!

My images have been called a lot worse than boring...bring it on!

Regards, Art.

 

[clay]

So are we agreed? All alt-photo practitioners produce boring art, while all silver gelatin and color workers produce 100% beautiful art, 24/7?

 

[Claire Senft]

Well then Grant this would be an excellent time to start your own seires of photos that maybe less than perfect and which may be judged by others to be boring.

No need to allow the ULF folks to have all of the fun. Your own accomplishments are at least as good.

 

[catem]

Points have been made earlier about the necessity of making aesthetic judgements about work, how this is a part of appreciating art and artistic processes. This is true, but a statement such as "I don't like/understand Picasso" (purely hypothetical) is totally different from a statement such as "I think all modernists are boring". Or, "I think people who make oversized lumpy sculptures are cluttering up the environment".

It is slipshod, I would have thought, of any critic to make such broad generalisations (not that any critic of any worth could say such things about Picasso, but just using him as a given example...)

Surely it is more important, anyway, to work towards understanding and appreciation rather than "I prefer this to this". Or, "this is boring" which seems to say more about the observer than the work.

Is it 'mundane' photographs that are being objected to (for my money, NOTHING wrong with the mundane - most of my pictures are of - I hope - mundane things) - or is it 'cliched' subject matter/treatment? Very different.

No photographic medium has a monopoly on 'cliche' - it's everywhere, a complete oversaturation of images. I'm not an expert in alt processes or LF (have done some cyanotypes) but I would have thought these are as prone to any other format/medium to cliche, but there are rather fewer such cliched images around because less people are doing them than all the rest. Cliche is not to do with actual subject matter though, but how the whole work comes together (or doesn't come together). I firmly believe that no subject matter has been done to death - it's always possible to re-interpret, and re-create.

This thread puts reminds me of discussion around how to give constructive feedback in galleries.
Surely constructive appraisal is what should be aimed for outside the galleries aswell, rather than tearing down someone else's house?....just my 2p.....

 

[Kerik]

And on a side note, I think a series of cigarette butts in parking lots would be really good. Especially if it was shot in color.
-Grant

It's been done. Try and come up with something fresh, please.

 

[bill schwab]

...a series of cigarette butts in parking lots would be really good. Especially if it was shot in color.

ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.........

 

[donbga]

It's been done. Try and come up with something fresh, please.

How about dried up chewing gum spots on pavement and sidewalks? It could work ....

 

[Grady O]

So are we agreed? All alt-photo practitioners produce boring art, while all silver gelatin and color workers produce 100% beautiful art, 24/7?

Have you even read the original post!? You may want to get your prescription checked if you are getting that out of it. Someone simply posted an observation (sorry they didnt follow your holy than thou rules for starting a post), and you seem to have taken it as an attack and against the fate of ULF/Alt. processes.


best regards!
Grady

 

[gr82bart]

Oh oh, another thread about to degrade....let's see how this one goes....
Regards, Art.

 

[scootermm]

Have you even read the original post!? You may want to get your prescription checked if you are getting that out of it. Someone simply posted an observation (sorry they didnt follow your holy than thou rules for starting a post), and you seem to have taken it as an attack and against the fate of ULF/Alt. processes.


best regards!
Grady

I think clay just forgot the [sarcasm] ... [sarcasm/] tags.

by the way thats Pope Saint Cardinal Clay.

 

[Kerik]

by the way thats Pope Saint Cardinal Clay.

Amen and Hallelujah brother Scooter!

 

[VoidoidRamone]

I think pretty much everyone is taking this the wrong way. I have never ever said that "standard" processes are in any way better than ULF/Alt Process. A lot of people in this thread basically dug that out. I understand that I'm in the minority of this site and that I'm arguing against a vast majority on this site. I think its kind of funny how I never singled anyone out or pointed fingers... but several people are now taking this post so personally and are starting to single out me as "an angsty art school student/color photographer, etc." I simply posted a thread for people's consideration, everyone else brought this thread to where it is now. I only offered my opinions. I don't think just because my opinion differs from many that that should be an excuse to be condescending to me.
-Grant

 

[catem]

I simply posted a thread for people's consideration, everyone else brought this thread to where it is now. I only offered my opinions. I don't think just because my opinion differs from many that that should be an excuse to be condescending to me.
-Grant

i don't wish to be condescending to you, Grant, I don't wish to make too much of your post, and I believe you didn't mean to polarise opinion as it has been polarised but......I have to pick this point up because it seems to me there is quite a lot of "I only offered my opinion" on this forum.

Considering this is an "ethics and philosophy" forum, I can't see how this thread fits here, as I'm very hard put to see any ethical issues or any philosophical ones either.

There seems to be a lot of posting of opinions without much thought or appreciation as to how they may be received, followed by "It wasn't me , I didn't mean it" and complete surprise as to the effect of said opinions.

I'm interested in both ethics and philosophy and if I may say so I think it's important to retain a certain detachment within both these areas, aswell as the ability to see a number of viewpoints, and to discuss these rationally. Sensitivity as to how your words may be interpreted by others and the ability to predict these possible interpretations is useful and desirable.

I've dipped my toe into these discussions but I find them mostly dismaying (sorry).. I think I'm going to go back to technical issues.

 

[clay]

I DID forget to include the sarcasm tag. [self-referential sarcasm on] All gross generalizations from small-sample anecdotal observation are suspect [/self-referential sarcasm off]

And truly Grant, I don't take this personally, because I don't take this whole thread seriously anyway. I am just amused at the way something is stated can almost be guaranteed to generate a lot of contoversy. I'm laughing on the inside AND the outside.

St. General PFC bottlewasher cardinal just-call-me-mister Clay

 

[blansky]

Let's just call a spade a spade here.

ALL alt process is pretentious, self conscious, posturing and almost always boring as hell.

If it weren't, why would every print need to shout out that is alt process, and therefore a very special print.

It has to do this because it can't stand alone on merit but need the alt process label to prove its meager worth.

"I only print platinum, I must be an artist"

" I suck as a image, but never mind I'm bromoil"

"I'm all blue, on purpose."



Give me a break.


Michael