Now just HOW is Thomas Struth an artist?

Ian Grant said:

Any discussion of Struth's work really needs full referencing, it's easy to say you (or I) don't like it (I'm ambivalent) but without proper critical analysis comments are meaningless.

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But a person doesn't have to be crazy to dislike art that can't be understood without "proper critical analysis". If you're of the school of thought that art is communicative, then I think it's fair to be frustrated when a work needs a lot of specialised decoding before it communicates anything.

I'm of two minds on that school of thought, personally. On the one hand, half the fun of communication is in the decoding; on the other, coding that's too opaque creates a hothouse environment in which a tiny group of people are communicating only with one another, and the rest of us are occasionally told by some critic somewhere that we're supposed to like it.

As a big fan of _Finnegans Wake_, I have quite a lot of sympathy with insular intellectual communities that are unintelligible to outsiders. (But a lot of people think the Wake is a nonsensical waste of time, too, and I don't try to tell them they should read it.)

-NT

ntenny said:

But a person doesn't have to be crazy to dislike art that can't be understood without "proper critical analysis". If you're of the school of thought that art is communicative, then I think it's fair to be frustrated when a work needs a lot of specialised decoding before it communicates anything.

I'm of two minds on that school of thought, personally. On the one hand, half the fun of communication is in the decoding; on the other, coding that's too opaque creates a hothouse environment in which a tiny group of people are communicating only with one another, and the rest of us are occasionally told by some critic somewhere that we're supposed to like it.

As a big fan of _Finnegans Wake_, I have quite a lot of sympathy with insular intellectual communities that are unintelligible to outsiders. (But a lot of people think the Wake is a nonsensical waste of time, too, and I don't try to tell them they should read it.)

-NT

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I'm glad you feel that way. I personally thought that the Wake would make a good paperweight, good for flattening badly curved filmstrips. But then again, I like Bartok, and a lot of people can't stand his music.

This brought up something we used to say back in the lab at college. Not sure where it originated, but I'm sure if it's a famous quote someone will jump in and correct me...

"If you can't do it well, do it in color. If it's still not good, print it bigger."

I definitely appreciate seeing a photographer who can snap a shot without blowing the highlights or muddying up the shadows, but I think it's really telling when all it takes nowadays to be a "world class artist" is to snap a shot with good exposure and then print it big. To me, this is just the kind of mentality that has us all fearing the future of film.

It's disheartening to see this kind of rampant display of mediocre camera work being heralded while local camera shops are closing their doors permanently because the word "camera" is no longer considered to be an artist's tool, but just another "gadget".

Maybe I just don't "get it". Is his work supposed to be ironic or kitschy? Cuz that's kind of what I'm getting out of it. At least that's the best reason I can come up with that an actual art museum would hang his snapshots (I retract that... huge prints = huge money regardless of content).

When I started doing this photographic stuff, I of course looked to Adams and Weston as guiding forces, but my opinions have changed as I have traveled farther down this crazy road, examining it along the way. I always loved Weston, and just finished reading his daybooks for the second time. The first time was about 15 years ago. I used to think he was amazing, but now that I can relate to him more, and have a better understanding of the creative process as well, my opinion of him has changed. I don't see the images in the same way. Now I think he was a philandering man with a god complex who thought every image he made was the best thing ever done, at least until the next image. Opinions change.

Even though I used to think the New Topographics and the German school were very boring, as I have aged I have begun to understand more about what they were and are doing. At some point one has to advance beyond the image otherwise the result is just pretty pictures all the time. An Ansel image for example has very little substance behind it except for the physical beauty of the picture. What comes next? The problem with a lot of modern photography such as Struth's is that it doesn't connect well with the viewer without a lot of explanation and understanding of what has informed the photographer. More elaborate explanations make the meaning of the image more tenuous, and further alienate the viewer. Then there are the questions we ask as image makers and find it difficult to see the claimed uniqueness of the images. If Joe Blow from Kokomo made the same images no one would care because he has not "studied" with the Bechers. In most cases, the pedigree of the photographer (with whom he studied) makes the art world pay attention. This is pretty rampant throughout photography, with exceptions of course, but it is there. It is the reason why photographers always mention their associations. If Gursky was Joe Blow he might achieve some success making exactly the same images, but they wouldn't sell for $680,0000. There is a kind of piggy back effect that goes on. Think about a "famous" modern photographer. You can't read an article about Stephen Shore without the mention of Warhol for example. Every photographer with an MFA will mention the degree and school straight away, and if one of their instructors is famous, his name gets dropped as well. So while we see an image, the rest of the world is influenced by other factors. I think it is important to recognize that.

Thoughts?

Art is something which is constantly overthought....

Indeed:

eclarke said:

Art is something which is constantly overthought....

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...and underpracticed!

keithwms said:

Indeed:



...and underpracticed!

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And overengineered.

patrickjames said:

An Ansel image for example has very little substance behind it except for the physical beauty of the picture. What comes next?

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Call me old-fashioned, but why would an image need to be (or convey) anything MORE than physical beauty?

Are you implying that a picture/photograph should convey deeper philosophical concepts, e.g. the proverbial "meaning of life"?

I'm not talking about difference between art and kitsch here, but the notion that a picture/photo needs to be "something else" besides itself - in order to be what...?

Please, do not take this as an "ad hominem" attack - I'm just an under-educated (as far as aesthetics and art are concerned) old fart who is sincerely baffled by your proposition quoted above...

(patrickjames)

An Ansel image for example has very little substance behind it except for the physical beauty of the picture. What comes next?

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Denis P. said:

Call me old-fashioned, but why would an image need to be (or convey) anything MORE than physical beauty?

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Actually, I think Ansel Adams *used to be* a good example of the answer. Remember that he was taking a lot of those pictures when the modern environmental movement was in its infancy, and the whole concept of the raw, forceful beauty of the pristine landscape was *not* something he could take for granted in a viewer. So the picture contains not just the "physical beauty", but the secondary message that you, the viewer, should *get* that version of beauty.

Nowadays, that aesthetic won, especially in America, where we tend to equate a beautiful landscape with an untouched landscape. So that additional message of Adams's work has become a victim of its own success, in a way.

So I'd say that one reason for an image to contain something "more" than pure beauty is that its beauty may be nonobvious, and the image can also contain the message "yes, this really is a kind of beauty".

-NT

Bear in mind that an Ansel Adams landscape is, despite surface appearance, a highly constructed and manipulated image. He chose his viewpoints, compositions, exposures and printing with a high degree of consciousness. Everything in one of his scenes is deliberate and purposeful - While he did not go out and manipulate the landscapes he photographed, he did not take a photo if there was something in it he could not control, even if only in the darkroom. There is a famous shot of his whose title escapes me at the moment of part of the Owens Valley, near Manzanar. In his print, the hills in the background appear pristine, but in the original scene someone had painted giant white letters on the hillside, somewhat akin to the Hollywood sign. He removed it from the negative in the darkroom, and if you look very carefully at the print, you can make out the faint outline of the words.

Ansel Adams was also left out of the major "Art of Photography" Exhibition 1989 shown in New York, London and Sydney, celebrating 150 years of photography, because his work was deemed un-original, he trod in the footsteps of the great 19th C US Topographic photographers, Sullivan etc.

Making work that is very close to or copying others isn't art, it's bordering on plagiarism. AA wasn't that close but not distinct enough in the eyes of that particular selection committee.

Ian

I have done a fair amount of thinking about the difference between "found" and "constructed" photography for some time, as this was a big issue with group f/64. I simply wanted to understand their influence on me.

My verdict is that AA was actually much more of a "found" photographer and did much less construction than we see today. Mind you, so much is hyperconstructed, contrived and overwrought now... :rolleyes:

A more interesting character, in the continuum between "found" and "constructed", is Edward Weston. Weston did a lot of very careful (one might even say compulsive) constructions, but also some very minimal-construction "found" work. His photo-biography is really fascinating, much more so than that of AA in my humble opinion. I think EW's shows real tension between these two extremes, a constant battle in his head. AA was mostly at peace with his place in photography, but I really don't think Weston ever was.

Ian Grant and Patrick James: You seem to have done some reading and study on the New Topographics and the significance of their work. Can you refer us to a good exposition of their intentions, their meanings and their significance?
I've been looking at their work for a few years now and it often seems to be limited to "interrogating the medium”, which, for me it is usually not enough.

This image, for example, http://www.kunsthaus.ch/struth/en/, of a famous cliff face (El Capitan? Half Dome?) with tourists seems like a nice wry comment on A. Adams's heroic landscape work, but that's all it seems to be other than well-executed. I have taken many such photos because of my interest in the human impact on landscape and the way Adams and his ilk, rightly or wrongly, tend to eliminate it.

Am I missing something?

Thanks.

jglass said:

Ian Grant and Patrick James: You seem to have done some reading and study on the New Topographics and the significance of their work. Can you refer us to a good exposition of their intentions, their meanings and their significance?
I've been looking at their work for a few years now and it often seems to be limited to "interrogating the medium”, which, for me it is usually not enough.

This image, for example, http://www.kunsthaus.ch/struth/en/, of a famous cliff face (El Capitan? Half Dome?) with tourists seems like a nice wry comment on A. Adams's heroic landscape work, but that's all it seems to be other than well-executed. I have taken many such photos because of my interest in the human impact on landscape and the way Adams and his ilk, rightly or wrongly, tend to eliminate it.

Am I missing something?

Thanks.

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I'm not well read James but knowledge is power, Struth is about reality not the myth of the idyllic quintessential American landscape, but the US new topographic movement where there as well.

I can and have written highly researched academic essays into this area of landscape photography but it's too far back in my past to access easily.

Ian

jglass said:

This image, for example, http://www.kunsthaus.ch/struth/en/, of a famous cliff face (El Capitan? Half Dome?) with tourists seems like a nice wry comment on A. Adams's heroic landscape work, but that's all it seems to be other than well-executed.

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Hmm, it seems to me to be a broader comment than that, on the difference between our mythic image of The Famous Landscape (which AA exemplifies) and how we actually experience it (from the highway, with other tourists in the foreground and some haze).

-NT

Quote:
[This image, for example, http://www.kunsthaus.ch/struth/en/, of a famous cliff face (El Capitan? Half Dome?) with tourists seems like a nice wry comment on A. Adams's heroic landscape work, but that's all it seems to be other than well-executed.]

My question, in the context of art here:
Why would you buy that photo? Where would you put it? Would you want to look at it every day? I can understand the making of it. I can understand trying to get a point across. But that "point" portrays little beauty in my mind. I would therefore not purchase that print to hang on my wall, or prop up on a table in my library, etc. Hope I'm making sense...

i don't know

seems every bit as interesting ( or even more so ) as "the famous-one" ..

Because my wife is an exceptionally fine professional artist (oils and pastels), I have a somewhat greater regard for Struth than I otherwise might. Painters (realist, but painterly) will regard just about any subject as worthy. They then juggle value, balance, and a host of other criteria when making their work. We are all rather likely to appreciate a well done painting of nearly anything because we recognize the skill it took to make. We are far less generous about a comparably random photographic subject because it seems to require an explanation to validate its very existence, though no such blather needs to attend a painting. When I look at photographs with the same equanimity that I do paintings, I feel much greater sympathy (although not necessarily more fondness!) for whatever the lens has captured if it "works" in the way a painting would.