Is straight photography dead?

[Vaughn]

Every seen a Hieronomus Bosch painting?

Or most religious art?

 

[Craig]

That knocks out YT ad interruptions?

You bet it does. Makes YT like it was 10 years ago.

 

[logan2z]

You bet it does. Makes YT like it was 10 years ago.

Good to know. But I do most of my YT watching streamed from a Roku to a TV so that's not an option. I am thinking about paying the no-commercial fee to YT because I seem to spend more time watching videos there than anywhere else. Netflix goes mostly unused in my household so I might just cancel that and pay YT instead.

 

[Pieter12]

Or most religious art?

You mean that isn’t real?

 

[madNbad]

madNbad - Atkenson was first in the genre of big coffee table books, slightly ahead of even the Muench clan. More the scenic or postcardy genre, and basically all classic ole Ektachrome 64 4X5 work. My older brother sometimes traveled with Emil Muench to locations; but neither he nor I was ever influenced by that genre, and both of us gravitated more toward Eliot Porter as a role model instead.

Both my parents were from pioneering Oregon families. My great grandmother was the first woman to climb Mt Hood, and my great grandfather pioneered the side of Tillamook Bay soon after the Civil War where the cheese factory is. I owned the oldest cemetery in Oregon for awhile, until I deeded it over to a nephew; the State maintains it as a historical site. And the State historical printing press and society is housed in my Grandfather's and Great Grandfather's grist mill, where my mother grew up.

Thanks, Drew. When I moved to Portland in the mid 1980s, I had a studio apartment in downtown at the intersection of SW 10th and Clay. It wasn’t very far from the Arlene Schnitzer Hall (The Paramount) and there was the annual release of Warren Miller’s latest ski spectacular. It was early March when I arrived, which of course meant rain and clouds, after about a week when it cleared I wandered down to the Hawthorn Bridge and saw Mount Hood for the first time.
There was a little bookstore on 9th Ave called the Great Northwest, that’s where I discovered Atkenson. I particularly remember a photo of him with a Linhof Master Techinka.

 

[VinceInMT]

Pieter12 and Rollie, thanks for that. Of course there were painting of mythical subject matter. I was thinking more in terms of “straight” painting of people and landscapes that viewers would take as “rea” representations.

BTW, Bosch is one of my favorites.

 

[Vaughn]

You mean that isn’t real?

The human race grew up on creating images of what we could not see.
There is straight photography and then there is straight photography...and then there is my nephew who is so gay, he says he can't even think straight.

 

[MattKing]

Every seen a Hieronomus Bosch painting?

Or most religious art?

I think we should all chip in and send Alan to visit the Sistine Chapel .
Actually, we should all visit the Sistine Chapel - whether we are religious or not, irrespective of faith.
I was projecting ~my 45 year old slides taken there just last month.

 

[Rolleiflexible]

Pieter12 and Rollie, thanks for that. Of course there were painting of mythical subject matter. I was thinking more in terms of “straight” painting of people and landscapes that viewers would take as “rea” representations.

BTW, Bosch is one of my favorites.

I prefer to believe that the Garden of Earthly Delights does in fact exist. Whether Mr. Bosch's representation is "real" begs an epistemological inquiry. ;-)

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Good to know. But I do most of my YT watching streamed from a Roku to a TV so that's not an option. I am thinking about paying the no-commercial fee to YT because I seem to spend more time watching videos there than anywhere else. Netflix goes mostly unused in my household so I might just cancel that and pay YT instead.

Does the paying of no commercial fee also eliminate them on feature movies?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I think we should all chip in and send Alan to visit the Sistine Chapel .
Actually, we should all visit the Sistine Chapel - whether we are religious or not, irrespective of faith.
I was projecting ~my 45 year old slides taken there just last month.

Last week, I was admiring the frescoes on the ceiling at the Shubert Theater on Broadway where we saw the show "Some Like It Hot". No they weren't painted by Michaelangelo. Maybe his brother.

 

[logan2z]

Does the paying of no commercial fee also eliminate them on feature movies?

That's a good question, I don't think I've ever watched a feature movie on YT. I don't see any restrictions listed in the description of YouTube premium so I assume that the 'Free with ads' movies would not have ads if you have a Premium subscription. Not positive, though.

 

[MattKing]

Photography seems dead...

YOu can go online and see so many videos on how to do things with photoshop or light room..

Like say how to take a photo of a person in swim trunks, a photo of a suite, and turn into into a photo of a person in swim trunks wearing a suite jacket..

Its one of those things that raises issues when that "professional photographers of america" education package and certification test is nothing but light set ups and digital editing

I expect you mean "suit".
But with respect to the PPA, I can see some utility of looking to them as a source for information about lighting set ups that are quick to set up and good for high volume production, as well as advice about efficient digital editing in order to maximize profitability. I wouldn't, however look to them for education on photography itself. They are a better source for information on business practices, marketing, customer relationships, acquiring business, obtaining appropriate licenses and insurance, reaching potential photographic buyers, sources and methods of presenting work favourably, etc.

 

[koraks]

No they weren't painted by Michaelangelo. Maybe his brother.

You've got to be kidding me.

 

[DREW WILEY]

My aunt left me all her old Kodachrome slides of murals in Europe - all by then badly mildewed! Her hero was the Renaissance fresco painter Pierra Della Francesco. She herself is credited with keeping fresco alive in the 20th more than any other person worldwide, and was second in fame in this country only to Diego Rivera at that time. She has more murals on the National Historic Register than any other artist in US history. But I never personally cared much for the Social Realism genre ubiquitous during the Depression years, and much preferred her personal watercolors instead. Those both inspired me, and informed me why I was better cut out for photography rather than being a painter myself. But no color film or paper ever invented can reproduce natural hues in the way simply mixing watercolor pigments can, not even close. That's one fact which frustrates me; but I keep trying.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Similar to Jeff Wall - which means that his work can be powerful, evocative, thought provoking, beautiful and soul stirring.
Wall's "After Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison - the Prologue."


View attachment 334287

Or perhaps "Untangling"
View attachment 334288

Yes, these are re-enactments. They are also wall size - most likely Cibachromes.
Are they "straight"?

It is not a question of whether or not something can be passed off as straight photography, it is a question of honesty, which you should know something about. Oh and size does not matter with honesty.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I've stayed out of this discussion, because it is a subject that is so central to my preoccupations that I don't want to lose myself in longwinded dialogues here. But two observations:

1. I find it interesting that before the Great Yellow Father put cameras in every household, drawing was considered a basic skill, not an art refined by a relative few. Everybody drew. It was the only way to record images. Computers and smartphones have marginalized handwriting in the same ways that cameras marginalized drawing.

2. That said, painters often took license with "what was in front of them" for many centuries before the Impressionists arrived. I don't think Hieronymus Bosch visited the musician's hell before painting The Garden of Earthly Delights. More prosaically, portraitists routinely flattered their sitters over the centuries. Or, in the case of our man Sargent, passed off his male infatuation, Albert de Belleroche, as his famous Madame X in a prototrans moment in art history.

Hieronymus Bosch and Sargent were painters, not photographers. Please keep that straight.

 

[bluechromis]

I never bought into the distinction between manipulated versus un-manipulated images that the Straight School promoted. No photograph is an exact rendering of the subject. They are all an interpretation of the subject to some degree. Garry Winogrand said, “Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed.” If people like to make photos in a more representational style, that's fine. I do that myself at times. But I am happy if photographers now feel free to express themselves in less representational styles. This puts photography more on an even footing with other art forms where the degree of representationalism and realism is just another artistic parameter like line or color that the artist is free to use as they choose.

 

[DREW WILEY]

For heavens sake, koraks - Alan was referring to a stage set faux mural, not the Sistine Chapel itself. Wanna see grand scale faux? - visit the Venetian casino in Las Vegas - true wallpaper masterpieces, seamless. I hate casinos, but did have to go to business conventions there. And Vegas is to certain categories of skilled craftsmen what Hearst Castle once was, only with disposability in mind. After all, it is faux and Vegas, and not the Vatican. Hard to say who spent more money - Bugsy and his successors, or Pope Leo X and his - actually, it was the latter category. Many of the pigments Michelangelo used were more expensive per weight than gold, and a lot more toxic too!

 

[Mike Lopez]

I think we should all chip in and send Alan to visit the Sistine Chapel .
Actually, we should all visit the Sistine Chapel - whether we are religious or not, irrespective of faith.
I was projecting ~my 45 year old slides taken there just last month.

When I returned home after visiting the Sistine Chapel, I approached one of my best friends, a Catholic, and said "I'm not Catholic, I don't play one on TV, nor do I aspire to, but I get it. After seeing that place...I get it."

 

[VinceInMT]

I prefer to believe that the Garden of Earthly Delights does in fact exist. Whether Mr. Bosch's representation is "real" begs an epistemological inquiry. ;-)

Well, it does remind me of some parties back in the day, but my memory is a bit hazy. Now I don't get invited to them anymore.

 

[bluechromis]

“Straight Photography” has always been an illusion.

I agree!

 

[MattKing]

It is not a question of whether or not something can be passed off as straight photography, it is a question of honesty, which you should know something about. Oh and size does not matter with honesty.

Jeff Wall's photography is totally honest - what you see, and what it communicates, is completely honest.
It is represented as allegory, and it presents as both allegory, and an object of interest, either beautiful or intentionally ugly, depending on the information it intends to communicate.
There is absolutely no misrepresentation involved, and one needs to have misrepresentation for there to be a lack of honesty.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

You've got to be kidding me.

Yes I am kidding you.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

For heavens sake, koraks - Alan was referring to a stage set faux mural, not the Sistine Chapel itself. Wanna see grand scale faux? - visit the Venetian casino in Las Vegas - true wallpaper masterpieces, seamless. I hate casinos, but did have to go to business conventions there. And Vegas is to certain categories of skilled craftsmen what Hearst Castle once was, only with disposability in mind. After all, it is faux and Vegas, and not the Vatican. Hard to say who spent more money - Bugsy and his successors, or Pope Leo X and his - actually, it was the latter category. Many of the pigments Michelangelo used were more expensive per weight than gold, and a lot more toxic too!

Did you get a chance to eat in Bugsy Seigel 1941 place in LV? My wife and I had a great breakfast there. Really pigged out. That's him and his sweetie Virginia Hill who ran stuff for the mob.