Is this a good photo?

UKJohn · Jul 27, 2006

I have skimmed through the other replies and here is my two pence or dollars worth...

I am currently studying for a degree in photography in the UK, and one thing I have learnt (if nothing else) is not to discredit or disregard other photographers or artists work with out first looking into the reasons and background as to why the photograph has been taken.

To me, and I will confess this definitely is not my favourite style of photography, but this is similar to work by Eglestone (I'm sure this is spelt wrong so please forgive me!), Teller, Peter Fraser and Richard Billingham. To me they are snap shots but, you will often find that the photographers are skilled in the craft but have decided to take 'their art' back to a very basic level, almost intentionally disregarding all the photographic rules. In many cases this appears to be seen as art!! I would disagree but then that's my humble opinion.

Also, showing one image from what might be a series of images is misleading and unfair to the photographer, if there are other images that support this one photograph then they should also be shown to prevent it from being read out of context.

Well as I said thats my two pence worth.

Cheers

John

MurrayMinchin · Jul 27, 2006

Grant, you trouble maker

Without knowing who the photographer is, or how 'important' the photographer is, or without having been told by 'someone in the know' why this photograph is important...it's a lame duck.

Then again, within the context of a body of work or a portfolio, this could be the pivotal image which binds several themes together. Alone, its lifeless.

Murray

tim atherton · Jul 27, 2006

CraigK said:
I'd like to see the actual print though. I've seen a lot of this type of photography, particularly from a few teachers and lots of students at variuos fine art faculties. The prints are invariably in colour and typically very big (as big as the Kreonite at the school will go) and usually have suburban homes/streets, cars, gas stations, power plants and fluffy white clouds in them.
.

this one was usually an 8x10 contact print

tim atherton · Jul 27, 2006

I recently read a wonderful description of Eggleston's work - and although this isn't Eggleston, it remains appropriate I think (wish I could remember where I copied it from...)

In part - "Eggleston's photographs look like they were taken by a Martian who lost the ticket for his flight home and ended up working at a gun shop in a small town near Memphis. On the weekends, he searches for that lost ticket with a haphazard thoroughness that confounds established methods of investigation. It could be under a bed among a bunch of down-at-heel shoes; or in the Thanksgiving turkey under the seat of a kid's looming tricycle, in the spiky ears of a mini-mouse cactuses, in a microscopic tangle of grass and weeds - in fact it could be anywhere. In the course of his search he interviews odd people - odd in the Arbus senses - who, though polite, look at him askance. He suspects some of them might once have been in a predicament similar to his own but have since put down roots.

Weston pointed out that the prejudice against colour came not seeing colour as form and decided he "liked colour" even if he didn't "know" colour - " those of us who began photographing in monochrome spent years trying to avoid subject matter exciting because of its colour. We must seek colour as form, avoiding subjects which are only coloured black and white."

Eggleston was working not as though colour were a separate issue, but rather as though the world itself existed in colour, as though the blue and the sky were one thing (is that chevy red, or is that red which happens to be a chevy?).

... or to put it another way (as Dorothea Lange said) - can you photograph an orange in B&W? Not really. Doesn't the thing that makes an orange an orange demand that it is photographed in colour?"

tim atherton · Jul 27, 2006

Remember (as some would remind us) , Walker Evans once said Colour tends to corrupt photography and absolute colour corrupts absolutely. There are four simple words that must be whispered: colour photography is vulgar

David A. Goldfarb · Jul 27, 2006

tim atherton said:
this one was usually an 8x10 contact print

Some galleries list it as a 20x24" as well.

Dan Fromm · Jul 27, 2006

Hmm. I wouldn't hang it on my wall or prop it up on my desk. Many are the reasons why not. And being told that a "great photographer" took it won't influence my view of it.

Jon Shiu · Jul 27, 2006

I like the feeling in the picture, but was wondering about the color? I also saw this copy on the web with more faded color. How does it change the feeling?

Jon

Markok765 · Jul 27, 2006

tim atherton said:
Remember (as some would remind us) , Walker Evans once said Colour tends to corrupt photography and absolute colour corrupts absolutely. There are four simple words that must be whispered: colour photography is vulgar

It does, for most things, for the few things id doent corrupt, i use fuji velvia, sensia and kodacrome

Lee Hamiel · Jul 27, 2006

I don't really care who took the original shot.

Critiquing a shot like this is like being at a wine/cheese tasting get together - I don't much care for the exercise.

With that said - end the bland mystery please ...

I feel like I'm channel surfing & there's nothing on that I want to watch

Regards

tim atherton · Jul 27, 2006

David A. Goldfarb said:
Some galleries list it as a 20x24" as well.

Since his book was re-published and expanded last year, for which new hi-res scans were made, I recall him saying he's been making use of new technology to be able to print a bit bigger, but originally, until quite recently I think, they were usually all 8x10 colour contacts

(and a set of them purchased and hung on the walls in the 70s/80s in the Kunstakadamie in Dusseldorf were the inspiration for the Struthsky's...)

Bob F. · Jul 27, 2006

"Good", "bad"? Phoooey!

More to the point is whether it is successful in portraying the artist's intentions. William Eggleston (and if this is not he, then it carries the same ethos) documented the urban United States in much the same way Atget did to Paris: using the available materials and equipment of the time to describe the culture they found themselves in. How successful they were at that is the real measure of their work, not passing fads that denote a work as "good" or "bad". Context is all.

Cheers, Bob.

tim atherton · Jul 27, 2006

Jon Shiu said:
I like the feeling in the picture, but was wondering about the color? I also saw this copy on the web with more faded color. How does it change the feeling?

Jon

yes, it wasn't too good a representation of the colour of the original based on memory and the books on my shelf

tim atherton · Jul 27, 2006

Markok765 said:
It does, for most things, for the few things id doent corrupt, i use fuji velvia, sensia and kodacrome

Of course the second part of what Evans said is usually forgotten; When the point of the picture subject is precisely the vulgarity, then only colour film can be used validly.... which is modern America today.

and of course he went on to spend the last years of his life exploring colour and producing quite wonderful - and at times sublime - colour miniatures.

blansky · Jul 27, 2006

I love the descriptions, pro and con.

Obviously people will buy anything.

This shot could be taken by walking down any street in any town and shooting at houses. It's a poor real estate picture. As someone suggested a boring survellance picture or a pending drug deal. Completely uninteresting and blase.

Dressing it up by contact printing, platinum printing, dipping it in blue paint or printing it really really big does not help it out at all.

As someone suggested, it's a vapid slice of lifelessness that will be mildly interesting in 2189.

I can't wait for an art student or gallery owner to tell me that I just don't understand it.

Michael

tim atherton · Jul 27, 2006

blansky said:
I can't wait for an art student or gallery owner to tell me that I just don't understand it.

Michael

nah - just lacking in imagination... ;-)

Bill Mitchell · Jul 27, 2006

I believe that a good picture is one which stirs the emotions of the viewer -- an out-of-focus, underexposed photograph of the world's ugliest baby would be a good picture to its Grandmother.
This image does nothing for me.
(Technically, the sky/clouds are burned out, which even makes it somewhere on the downside from just plain old boring, no matter how famous the photographer may be).

jovo · Jul 27, 2006

Well, Voidoid, as I commented to you on one of your own pics, an elegant composition of a qoutidian scene at least can engender some irony. This isn't particularly elegent...it's just competent. But if it hangs in a gallery rather than a real estate office, the context itself would tend to provoke the notion of irony. But this is simply bland. Seems there's another naked emperor lurking in suburbia.

tim atherton · Jul 27, 2006

One thing I find quite interesting about the work of these pioneers of colour photography (the New Color Work) is that they have also probably had a much greater influence outside photography than most other work from the last 40- 50 years.

Aspects of modern cinema, painting, video, television, advertising, design etc have been and still are influenced by the work of these photographers

Gene_Laughter · Jul 27, 2006

To me it's not a question of good or bad. It's a record of a place in time. Nothing more. Nothing less. The image doesn't interest me in the least and who shot the picture is also totally unimportant.

Cheers,

Gene

Lee Shively · Jul 27, 2006

There are numerous famous photographs made by famous photographers that I simply "don't get". One that comes to mind is Henri Cartier-Bresson's famous "puddle jumper". It's a perfectly timed, technical mess that even HCB cropped to try and fix the imperfections in the composition. To me, it's simply an action photo and the action is all there is. I know the context and history but, really, it's a pretty weak photo to me.

Despite the technical limitations, unassuming nature and lack of any action or tension, I prefer this photo to that famous HCB picture. It's mundane, superficial, dull and seemingly without purpose. I guess I can identify with that. Much like everyday life.

DBP · Jul 27, 2006

tim atherton said:
Remember (as some would remind us) , Walker Evans once said Colour tends to corrupt photography and absolute colour corrupts absolutely. There are four simple words that must be whispered: colour photography is vulgar

So do those who give young photographers color film have to go the way of Socrates?

MurrayMinchin · Jul 27, 2006

blansky said:
Obviously people will buy anything.

Ah, yes...the more than $1,000,000.00 recently spent at auction on a colour photograph of a portion of a Marlboro (sp?) cigarette ad comes to mind. That photograph, like the one we're discussing here, was also a lame duck in that without an explanation by the artist or by a gallery owner, the public just might see it for what it really is - banal. On it's own, this ones wearing no clothes.

When I grow up I hope to be as sage and sure as blansky...until then I'll say this image may make sense if seen in context.

Murray

tim atherton · Jul 27, 2006

MurrayMinchin said:
Ah, yes...the more than $1,000,000.00 recently spent at auction on a colour photograph of a portion of a Marlboro (sp?) cigarette ad comes to mind. That photograph, like the one we're discussing here, was also a lame duck in that without an explanation by the artist or by a gallery owner, the public just might see them for what they really are - banal.

Murray

I will never understood how that out of focus, badly exposed (print in poor condition) of some pond by Steichen sold for $2.9 million! Murky old Edwardian Pictorialism at its worst

MurrayMinchin · Jul 27, 2006

tim atherton said:
I will never understood how that out of focus, badly exposed (print in poor condition) of some pond by Steichen sold for $2.9 million!

Investment.

Murray

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UKJohn

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