Loss of fine art photography tradition

At the end of AD Coleman's lecture (video link in a previous post), he's asked about the difference between digital and traditional.He makes the interesting point that digital photographers really aren't that interested in a physical print. Those of us raised on the giants of the past (including Pictorialists) have a reverence for the print. Today's generation is more thrilled with some digital multi-media display. Asking them to look at prints from the past (even the recent post-modernist past) is boring. Can you imagine them sitting thru a Minor White class? Maybe they are practicing the much vaunted paperless revolution;-)

davidkachel said:

My concern is this: since new photographers have no need of seeking knowledge concerning analog materials and techniques from older photographers, they are therefore no longer immersed in an atmosphere conducive to acquiring knowledge of other aspects of photography from those same people. They do not learn the history, aesthetics, the various schools or even familiarize themselves with any of the work of the past. It is as if, for these new photographers, all the greats and what they had to teach us have simply vanished from the Earth.

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Innovation rarely comes from those who stare in the rear-view mirror.

Avant garde may rarely stand the test of time and although sometimes interesting, rarely produce the greatest pieces of art no matter what art form. Most of it ultimately turns out to be dead ends. That doesn't make it less important, though.

While true innovation and advancement of the arts most often come from those who have a certain understanding of the history, the contemporary and the avant garde, some ideas can only come from those who don't know or care about traditions.

mannbro said:

some ideas can only come from those who don't know or care about traditions.

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Agreed, but good ideas can only come from those who learn from the people that came before them, and I think that is true of all the greats.

horacekenneth said:

Agreed, but good ideas can only come from those who learn from the people that came before them, and I think that is true of all the greats.

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Horse feathers.

Surely there are things to be learned about the craft involved and ways to do business but there is absolutely no requirement to know history or follow tradition to make good art/photos.

I would actually suggest that tradition hinders art.

for hundreds of years people died because they ate the leaves of the tomato plant.
tradition told them not to eat the large red berries. eventually someone broke tradition
ate the fruit from the plant and it is a popular fruit turned vegetable most people take for granted.

while one may say that some ideas come from people who don't know or care for traditions,
one might also say that some people come up with new ideas, not because they don't know or care
about traditions, but because they know all to well the traditions, they are bored with them and they feel like doing something else.

horacekenneth said:

Agreed, but good ideas can only come from those who learn from the people that came before them, and I think that is true of all the greats.

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Well, we have all learned from the people that came before us, so in some sense that is true. That, however, doesn't mean that you need to study the early history of toaster design in detail to design a cool, innovative, cutting-edge toaster.

Some of the greatest breakers of tradition in art were highly schooled in the traditions of art before they decided to break them - look at early Picasso paintings for example. Or early Renoirs, or early Caravaggios. Salvador Dali could paint "straight" if he wanted to, and so could Yves Tanguy. In photography, look at Edward Weston's work from the 1910s-1930- he was a Pictorialist! Same with Ansel Adams. His really early work consisted of contact prints of whole-plate glass negatives in platinum/palladium. You've got to know the rules and conventions before you can break them successfully - otherwise you're just floundering around.

markbarendt said:

Horse feathers.

Surely there are things to be learned about the craft involved and ways to do business but there is absolutely no requirement to know history or follow tradition to make good art/photos.

I would actually suggest that tradition hinders art.

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I'd be interested if you could suggest to me a single great artist who didn't learn from those that came before him. How could you even do something new if you didn't know what was old?

Picasso did something new. Did you know he was actually excellent at traditional styles of painting?

Ansel Adams did something basically new, but of course he was very familiar with the art that came before him. A lot of the popular art before him he didn't like, and that informed how he proceeded, what he tried to change and do differently in his own art.

Tradition is one of the the greatest things we have, especially for art. It means that everytime we try to do something new, we don't have to start at the very beginning. It means that when we want to invent tomato soup, we already know not to eat the leaves - tradition taught that. Tradition is the wisdom that allows you to set out in a new direction in the first place.

TheFlyingCamera said:

You've got to know the rules and conventions before you can break them successfully - otherwise you're just floundering around.

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Scott hit the nail on the head.

Not having read the whole thread, I'm wondering who these kids today know as fine artists? Do they know Annie Leibovitz?

TheFlyingCamera said:

You've got to know the rules and conventions before you can break them successfully - otherwise you're just floundering around.

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Yeah, but in the case of photography I think those rules and conventions have more to do with composition, line and light, and the like, as opposed to technique per se. The fine-art photography tradition certainly isn't the only place to get those things---the same principles apply in painting, of course, but also in photography that's well outside the fine-art mainstream. I think Weegee, for instance, is likely better known among the photo-student demographic than his Place In History(TM) might suggest, and you can learn a whole lot about composition from his work even though it clearly was never born for the gallery wall.

Sure, students of anything are going to need to learn about their predecessors, but I'm pretty sure it's true in all times and all fields that they (1) think their instructors are hidebound fuddy-duddies for their obsession with the past, and (2) gradually grow into hidebound fuddy-duddies of their own in the natural course of events.

If students raised in the online-social-media dialectic are less responsive than their predecessors to the f/64-fine-art stream of history, maybe that doesn't represent philistinism so much as a movement that has run its course and been assimilated into the Establishment...and who ever approached their education by saying "I want to grow up and be part of the Establishment!"?

-NT

markbarendt said:

Horse feathers.

Surely there are things to be learned about the craft involved and ways to do business but there is absolutely no requirement to know history or follow tradition to make good art/photos.

I would actually suggest that tradition hinders art.

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A slavish adherence to tradition can hinder the progress of art. Of course, that doesn't excuse someone from doing sloppy work. I have seen a rather large number of prints on office walls from "professional artists" showing extremely sloppy printing technique.

As for knowing the work of previous photographers, there was a post on PetaPixel.com recently about riding buses. Imagine you're at a central bus depot, and buses to many destinations are going in and out of the central depot. Some of them share a common route for a while, and then they diverge to their individual endpoints. An artist gets on a bus, and starts riding it. The bus is the artist's journey. The artist takes their artwork to an art dealer, and the dealer says, "Oh, but that's like Adams." And so the artist jumps off that bus, takes a taxi back to the bus depot, and jumps on another bus, and rides that bus for a while. And the dealer says, "Oh, but that's like Arbus." And the artist does the same thing again, hopping on another bus.

What the artist needs to do is stay on the bus and see where it goes. The bus will diverge from the other routes, and go somewhere unique. The photographer needs to figure out what they want to photograph, and stick with it.

While Adams is known for dramatic 0.8 ratio pictures of nature, that's not the only thing he photographed, or the only type of camera he used. I saw a YouTube video where he packed a lot of cameras into his truck, and among them was a panoramic camera. I have never seen any prints from that! So how does Adams break from his own tradition?

That's another thing that drives me nuts, is that everybody has to find something to be "known for." You have to have a rut. You may not move out of that rut. And what is a rut? A very long grave.

Brian C. Miller said:

What the artist needs to do is stay on the bus and see where it goes. The bus will diverge from the other routes, and go somewhere unique. The photographer needs to figure out what they want to photograph, and stick with it.

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Well put, absolutely right.

Anyone who tries to be different just to be different is an airhead. I don't care if you're a wannabee
"artiste" or a guru/curator type. You only live once. Go with your heart. Maybe you'll get your fifteen
minutes of fame, maybe you won't. Believe me, it's no big deal. What counts is the experience - living
your own shots and prints. If you photograph to please others, you haven't lived photographically. Maybe you gotta do it just to make a living (even Weston had his detested portrait studio), but then
there is still your own time. And don't listen to anyone who says, you can't shoot rocks or trees cause
Ansel did that. Bullshit! Dauguerre photographed people almost two hundred years ago - so does that
makes human irrelevant subject matter today? Worrying about trends if for featherweights. Maybe successful crooks prioritize that kind of thing, but they haven't lived either. Actual seeing, perceiving,
and being able to eloquently put that perception into a print, that's what counts! But seeing how other
accomplished people did this in the past is part of the learning curve. Someone who has never read a
great novel is not likely to write one themself! And the kid down the street with a tuba is not likely
to ever get welcomed to a symphony without some serious coaching!

DREW WILEY said:

Anyone who tries to be different just to be different is an airhead.

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DREW WILEY said:

If you photograph to please others, you haven't lived photographically.

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DREW WILEY said:

Worrying about trends is for featherweights.

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Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

(Especially that first observation.)

Ken

ntenny said:

Yeah, but in the case of photography I think those rules and conventions have more to do with composition, line and light, and the like, as opposed to technique per se. The fine-art photography tradition certainly isn't the only place to get those things---the same principles apply in painting, of course, but also in photography that's well outside the fine-art mainstream. I think Weegee, for instance, is likely better known among the photo-student demographic than his Place In History(TM) might suggest, and you can learn a whole lot about composition from his work even though it clearly was never born for the gallery wall.

Sure, students of anything are going to need to learn about their predecessors, but I'm pretty sure it's true in all times and all fields that they (1) think their instructors are hidebound fuddy-duddies for their obsession with the past, and (2) gradually grow into hidebound fuddy-duddies of their own in the natural course of events.

If students raised in the online-social-media dialectic are less responsive than their predecessors to the f/64-fine-art stream of history, maybe that doesn't represent philistinism so much as a movement that has run its course and been assimilated into the Establishment...and who ever approached their education by saying "I want to grow up and be part of the Establishment!"?

-NT

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I don't disagree, except as much as you have 21st century photographers trying to achieve certain looks, and that look has already been defined and formulated, yet they want to re-invent the wheel to get there. It's a bit of a chicken/egg problem made worse by the speed at which trends cycle. You have people today doing a lot of things to imitate things done in the past, and while they may be arriving at the same destination via a different route, they're claiming superiority and innovation when in fact it is equivalence and mimicry. I'm not saying don't get out there and play with your tools, don't make mistakes, don't experiment - I'm just saying if you want to experiment, know WHY the old thing you're trying to deviate from was done in the first place. Today's wet plate work is a great example. A lot of folks are using it and producing intentionally sloppy pours of collodion and streaky, blotchy development as a counterpoint to the clinical exactitude of the digital inkjet print and to a lesser extent the silver-gelatin enlargement. They're doing it in contrast to that precision as a way to point out the uniqueness and organic quality of the images they're making, and in contrast to the traditional way of making wet-plate images where the photographers from the 1860s to the 1920s making ambrotypes and tintypes would go for as clean and flawless a pour and development as possible, and then mask the edges of their plates where things were less than perfect.

All very fine and good - you know what you're doing and why you're doing it. But trying to imitate that with some other technique for the sake of doing it with the other technique be it chemical or digital does become a case of making a violin sound like a tuba because you can. You're not doing it to make a statement - you're just trying to latch on to a trend. I think it's very hard to establish what "breaking the rules" with digital media consists of right now because they're still in their infancy and the rules are not yet established. So we're seeing a lot of folks doing things that break the old rules but don't have a good explanation for why they're breaking the old rule, and why the old rule should be broken. That's certainly true for things like print presentation - the old rule is still "bring me 20+ matted prints in pristine mats with well-cut windows, large margins, properly exposed/printed, etc". No reason why I can think of that that rule should be thrown out yet. But you can certainly try to make a case for an individual rejection of it - "my work is mounted on driftwood because I want to make a comment on the transient and impermanent nature of existence" or "I'm rejecting the clinical aesthetic of presenting work in mats and frames because they serve to erect an elitist barrier between the audience and the artwork". But don't just show up with a box of loose prints that says you don't give a shit about your own presentation.

DREW WILEY said:

Anyone who tries to be different just to be different is an airhead. I don't care if you're a wannabee
"artiste" or a guru/curator type. You only live once. Go with your heart. Maybe you'll get your fifteen
minutes of fame, maybe you won't. Believe me, it's no big deal. What counts is the experience - living
your own shots and prints. If you photograph to please others, you haven't lived photographically. Maybe you gotta do it just to make a living (even Weston had his detested portrait studio), but then
there is still your own time. And don't listen to anyone who says, you can't shoot rocks or trees cause
Ansel did that. Bullshit! Dauguerre photographed people almost two hundred years ago - so does that
makes human irrelevant subject matter today? Worrying about trends if for featherweights. Maybe successful crooks prioritize that kind of thing, but they haven't lived either. Actual seeing, perceiving,
and being able to eloquently put that perception into a print, that's what counts! But seeing how other
accomplished people did this in the past is part of the learning curve. Someone who has never read a
great novel is not likely to write one themself! And the kid down the street with a tuba is not likely
to ever get welcomed to a symphony without some serious coaching!

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I think you started out really strong here but I don't think you finished. Being different just be different is worthless but it doesn't end with so just be. I don't think that's helpful.

C.S. Lewis said that if you try to be original you will end up copying everything that happened before you, but if you try to tell the truth you will end up being original.

That's helpful. Don't try to be different. Try to tell the truth.

OK. That's a nice clarification. It reminds me how back in the sixties all the hippies tried so hard to look different and individual, that they all ended up looking the same! Or now, everyone want a tatoo,
with the same result. Lemming mentality. But it takes some track record before one realizes what they
really want. And sometimes one does need an outside catalyst to get things to gel.

horacekenneth said:

I'd be interested if you could suggest to me a single great artist who didn't learn from those that came before him.

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Here are three that seem to me to have come to there art/inspiration before there schooling in art.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandma_Moses

Dead Link Removed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Maier

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansel_Adams

DREW WILEY said:

OK. That's a nice clarification. It reminds me how back in the sixties all the hippies tried so hard to look different and individual, that they all ended up looking the same! Or now, everyone want a tatoo,
with the same result. Lemming mentality. But it takes some track record before one realizes what they
really want. And sometimes one does need an outside catalyst to get things to gel.

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That's because human beings are tribal. Very few people have the desire or ability to work outside of the tribe.

markbarendt said:

Here are three that seem to me to have come to there art/inspiration before there schooling in art.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandma_Moses

Dead Link Removed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Maier

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansel_Adams

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Ansel Adams was already discussed. I don't know much about Grandma Moses or Vivian Maier (except that her photographs are wonderful). I think the point was already made extremely clearly however that you can't plan on doing "something new" unless you know what is currently and what came before.
You certainly don't need a formal education to be a good artist but I bet you that all three artists you mentioned were aware of the traditions in their art. The point is that traditions are not so much a limiting factor as trying to be different for the sake of being different (or following tradition for the sake of following tradition).

(Lots of good stuff, trimmed for space.)

TheFlyingCamera said:

You have people today doing a lot of things to imitate things done in the past, and while they may be arriving at the same destination via a different route, they're claiming superiority and innovation when in fact it is equivalence and mimicry. (...)

All very fine and good - you know what you're doing and why you're doing it. But trying to imitate that with some other technique for the sake of doing it with the other technique be it chemical or digital does become a case of making a violin sound like a tuba because you can. You're not doing it to make a statement - you're just trying to latch on to a trend.

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I pretty much agree with you, but that's easy for me to say as a middle-aged dilettant with an interest in tradition and no real involvement in the social-media dialectic. The thing is, I kind of think what you're describing is a productive set of "mistakes" for people to make when they're young; it's one stage of artistic development, not an entire lifetime's arc. The kids who don't eventually break out of the inet-driven trends will stagnate, or wander off to other interests, and the ones who stay around and get serious about the making of images will eventually start listening to the people saying "you should look at Kertesz" or whatever. I think that's all more or less as it should be.

Sorry to go back to musical analogies again, but perhaps it's like the circa-1960 era when every kid who could scrape up an acoustic guitar had a band that tried to sound like a clone of the Kingston Trio. It was unquestionably a trend, and one with no great artistic depth driving it---who listens to the Kingston Trio now except as a nostalgia trip?---but we've ended up with plenty of serious, interesting music over the ensuing half-century that can trace its pedigree to the Great Folk Scare.

So I don't want to go to the wall for the artistic superiority of every uneducated punk with an iPhone, or anything; but I do think it's possible, even likely, that whoever is going to be to photography in 2020 what Bob Dylan was to music in 1967, right now they look like an uneducated punk with an iPhone.

I think it's very hard to establish what "breaking the rules" with digital media consists of right now because they're still in their infancy and the rules are not yet established. So we're seeing a lot of folks doing things that break the old rules but don't have a good explanation for why they're breaking the old rule, and why the old rule should be broken. That's certainly true for things like print presentation - the old rule is still "bring me 20+ matted prints in pristine mats with well-cut windows, large margins, properly exposed/printed, etc". No reason why I can think of that that rule should be thrown out yet. But you can certainly try to make a case for an individual rejection of it - "my work is mounted on driftwood because I want to make a comment on the transient and impermanent nature of existence" or "I'm rejecting the clinical aesthetic of presenting work in mats and frames because they serve to erect an elitist barrier between the audience and the artwork". But don't just show up with a box of loose prints that says you don't give a shit about your own presentation.

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Agreed, if we're talking about showing up to the gallery owner and saying "represent me". From the original post I'm not sure if that's what the young "wannabes" in question are doing, or if their approach is more in the vein of talking shop and getting feedback. The young people I know who think of themselves as somewhat serious about photography mostly, I think, don't really see the "pristine matted print on a gallery wall" model as being relevant to them, and I think we're partly seeing some mutual misunderstanding between different generations who are playing different games without fully realizing it.

-NT

markbarendt said:

Here are three that seem to me to have come to there art/inspiration before there schooling in art.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandma_Moses

Dead Link Removed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Maier

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansel_Adams

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Their just Wannabes

I know that I, as a middle-aged fart, if I owned a gallery, would have no problem showing work that was non-traditionally presented, IF the artist could justify it and would be bothered to make the case. What I worry about is that there is a new generation of artists coming up who, as you put it, don't see the traditional model as relevant, but haven't articulated a vision for what should replace it - perhaps it's my inner old fart talking but I don't see hanging a bunch of monitors on a wall or posting images on a website as a viable alternative to a gallery. I know I can't make money off of that model as a gallerist, and neither can I as an artist. Democratic tendencies aside, if I'm going to make art for a living, I want to be able to live on making my art, and while working commercially can certainly pay bills while making art, it's hard to balance client work and personal work.

No artist works in a vacuum. All are influenced by others.

davidkachel said:

They never heard of Stieglitz or Weston either.

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All the great artist have studied other artist that have proceeded them. Art and other human endeavors require practitioners to stand on shoulders of giants. It's the basic foundation. Without it, we build on shifting sands and indulge in solipsism.