Tradition is a double-edged sword. It can stunt progress as easily as it can aid it.
My point is simply that tradition is important. Obviously that looks different in different fields. The law of thermodynamics works. We don't start new everytime. Ideas in art work or don't work. Successful artists know about them and build on them.
Tradition is a double-edged sword. It can stunt progress as easily as it can aid it.
I've just been looking with some attention at O'Sullivan (I bought _Framing The West_, prompted by a recent thread on him), and I feel like the narrative of his photos is fundamentally different from Adams's. O'Sullivan's landscapes are rougher, more dangerous, and more inhabited---the whole storyline of Adams's grand-landscape work is about the *pristine* landscape, which I submit was not a primary concern for a guy who kept putting his developing tent in the photo!
...
I still get very different artistic voices from them, and I tend to think Adams deserves credit for the cultural birth of that pristine-grand-landscape gestalt in photography, even if he *did* reuse O'Sullivan's tripod holes to do it. (Indeed I think it speaks quite well of both of them that they could tell two different stories about the same raw material.)
-NT
i think you are right ... ansel adam's work was made to be "art" or "fine art" or "a sierra club calender" and
o'sullivan made the photographs for the federal government to record the property they had just "bought" ... surveys so they could make maps.
definitely different "genres" but sort of the same. ...
who knows what would have happened if their places in history were swapped. if ansel adams was the government contractor and osullivan was the "artist" ...
i think adam's work might have looked like osullivan's ( except for the tent)
and osullivan would have had 20 shades of grey because his materials would have allowed it.
we are lucky to live in a time where we can easily see work of a bizillion different photographers or painters or ... just a keystroke away
it wasn't too long ago that traveling shows that presented magic lantern slides + stereoscopic views &c were common ...
Unfortunately for those people who don't care about the past, tradition is the very groundwork and foundation for progress & invention.
John I gotta call you on this one...
Ansel WAS contracted by the government to make photos that's how he got funded to go to these places, he just made an agreement that on his off days / time he could shoot and keep negatives for himself.
I venture to guess that he simply kept the good stuff and sent the government all the less artistic stuff.
~Stone
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A great friend of mine gave his teenage daughter a camera, ...
Wow....that is like saying history classes should be dropped from all school curriculum, entirely ignorant sir.
Except Ansel, I had no idea who any of those old masters were when I was in my teens and early 20's. But as I grew up, got more work and got better, I sought out the info for my self. David Hobby and McNally are not in any way shape or form at the level of mastery of who are truly considered masters by the way, they are mostly marketing sell-outs and will never have the historical impact of the aforementioned. They also won't have a nice print sale like Nick Brandt's 60x80 African elephant at 215K. There is a big difference between a fine art photographer and two guys who now make most of their incomes off of teaching gear laden workshops my friend....
I'm not sure how much this post was tongue-in-cheek, but to the extent that it's serious, I think you're conflating technique (which of course is often highly specific to materials and workflow) with artistic concerns (which mostly aren't). The OP and most of this thread were, I think, talking mainly about the latter.
That said, I think if I were going to send an aspiring photographer forth to learn about the artistic uses of lighting, the first name I pulled out wouldn't be a photographer, it'd be Goya. Apart from techniques, I'm not sure there's any special reason why photographers should be privileged over painters in the *artistic* education of an aspiring photographer; composition is composition whether it's rendered in silver or oil or pixels, right? But you never hear photographic educators complaining that their students have never seen a Renoir.
-NT
Since the thread has evolved a little, and meaning no slight on the past masters mentioned; Who are the comtemporary masters?
Might as well. The ones governing our countries don't seem to care anyway so why should we?
I dont think history in all and the history of photography relate or has much in common in relation to this subject. The way things evolve in this era with all this new technology etc I see little reason to demand that young photogs know about the master of....
....Hey someone called me ignorant whaiii at last
Best regards
I have seen versions of this story over and over and over.
The important part of art, IMO, is the inspiration and attempt at expression.
Well, you hear what you want to hear.
So history is important both in art and in the world. Repeating history in the art world is a little more acceptable (like when someone told me my model work reminded them if Helmut Newton and I had to look up to see who that was because I was ignorant, only to discover I was flattered by the compliment) but without knowing I had repeated a style, (but only vaguely in my opinion) however seeing the work gave me new ideas...
There's a visual vocabulary that we develop, much the way we learn our native language, organically and unconsciously. You don't develop your verbal vocabulary in a vacuum - you get it from the people around you when you're growing up, even though you're completely unaware of it. Then you reach a curiosity point and if you push yourself past it, you start trying to find new words to expand your vocabulary. The same thing happens with images. You're surrounded by them 24/7/365, and when you see something that resonates with you, that 'punctum' moment that Barthes postulated is in every image, it sticks in your psyche and becomes a part of your visual vocabulary.
Stone- I suspect that you saw, earlier on in your life somewhere Helmut Newton images that resonated with you. You may have been completely unaware of them as Helmut Newtons - I think most people have seen some of his work at some point without knowing it, as he was a highly successful fashion/advertising photographer in addition to his nude work. He did a lot of work for Vogue, Harpers Bazaar and Playboy, so if you saw any of those magazines, particularly back issues from the 50s to the 80s, you saw his work. Something about it resonated with you and you used it, unconsciously, as a jumping-off point when trying to formulate your own visual vocabulary.
A little while ago I found this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zwk3YFknyNA
through here
http://erickimphotography.com/blog/page/2/
Quite interesting I think
Best regards
My point is simply that tradition is important. Obviously that looks different in different fields. The law of thermodynamics works. We don't start new everytime. Ideas in art work or don't work. Successful artists know about them and build on them.
It's one of those things where you pick up these visual language elements without even realizing that you're doing it, just through sub-conscious exposure to them.
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