Photographers you most admire

[Mark J]

I’ll turn this thread around a little and list the photographers whose work I don’t like.

Brett Weston — Too derivative

Wow ! - derivative of whom ?

 

[Mike Lopez]

Wow ! - derivative of whom ?

I was wondering if anyone else noticed that. Brett Weston was highly original.

 

[snusmumriken]

You're in for a treat. One thread that connects them, for me, is that they both explored themes of alienation, separation, anxiety and uncertainty about the future in the divided Germany pre 1989.

"Waffenruhe", "Berlin Wedding" and "Leipzig Hauptbahnhof" have a special place on my desk.

Thanks +1. Have just ordered 'Leipzig Hauptbahnhof'.

 

[benderscameracorner]

Olegas Truchanas. A name likely not well known outside of Australia, but it ought to be.

Objectively speaking, his photography may not have shifted the needle on the medium much itself. But his explorations of Tasmania's southwest and resultant photographic presentations would help shift an entire country's attitude to its own natural environment, and eventually lead to both modern day environmental movements and the creation of the world's first 'green' political party. His images of the pre-flooded Lake Pedder serve as both an important archive as to what was, and a reminder of what can happen when financial and political interest trump our natural environment. His drive to protect the Franklin River - through replacing the slides lost in the 1967 Hobart Fire -would ultimately claim his life.

He also mentored the equally important Peter Dombrovskis, who quite literally carried on the flame: his work ultimately playing a huge part in the eventual protection of the Franklin River from damming.

Sadly the film 'Wildness' is no longer on YouTube, but the earlier documentary 'Spirit of Olegas' is still available. If you have a spare half hour and the vaguest interest in wilderness photography, watch it.

 

[George Mann]

Have any of you ever heard of Vivian Maier?

 

[SodaAnt]

Have any of you ever heard of Vivian Maier?

Yes.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2714900/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3252208/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2

 

[Mogens]

Top 10 Living (no particular order):

• Stephen Shore
• Alec Soth
• Abelardo Morell
• Trent Parke
• Alessandra Sanguinetti
• Joel Meyerowitz
• Taryn Simon
• Lynsey Addario
• Lee Friedlander
• Simon Kossof

Top 10 Dead:

• Robert Frank
• Walker Evans
• Eugene Atget
• Manual Alvarez Bravo
• Garry Winogrand
• Diane Arbus
• Helen Levitt
• Harry Callahan
• Aaron Siskind
• Ray Metzger/Kenneth Josephson (tie)

 

[Mogens]

I have always found that art in the service of agenda is a disservice to the art. Art in service of socio-political causes is better understood to be propaganda. Art in the service of commerce is advertising or marketing. Art in the service of religion is pamphleteering.

That's not to say that there isn't great work done in such settings. Salgado's "Workers" is quite obviously a socio-political work, and it's really well executed. Ditto the fashion work of Richard Avedon. But in neither of these cases would I say the end result is great art - the work is tainted by the agenda peddling.

More difficult to categorize is the religious art of, say, the Renaissance and thereafter. We stand in awe of this work today because of it's durability over time and beauty. But even Bach wrote a great body of his work for church worship services. Handel wrote Messiah because he needed the money. So does that make the St. Matthew Passion pamphleteering? Maybe, in its time, that's exactly what it was, but today surely it's also great art that stands on its own. Perhaps the value of the art is exposed only when the proximate non-arts purpose it served is no longer relevant. Maybe Helmut Newton will someday come to be seen as the equal of Raphael or Monet ... but I doubt it.

But as much as I find agenda-driven art somehow diminished, it actually doesn't matter all that much. The true damage done to art today is at the hand of the contemporary theory fetishes found in the arts community (deconstructionism, postmodernism, feminist critque, intersectional theory, blah, blah, blah, puke) . Most "arts" publications, showings, and discussions end up being so polluted by this sewage that it loses all meaning. The only exception I have found recently is "New Criterion" magazine which covers all the arts and is a very fine arts criticism publication, albeit very New York-centric. At least the manage to cover photography now and again.

I don't think you can have good art that isn't agenda driven; though I'd make a distinction between public and personal agendas. Ansel Adams' oeuvre? The man was a committed conservationist who used his photography in service to his environmentalist agenda. The same could be said of most landscape photographers.

1. Gerry Johansson
2. Robert Adams
3. Michael Schmidt
4. Chris Killip
5. William Eggleston
6. Luigi Ghirri
7. Helga Paris
8. Stephen Shore
9. Paul Graham
10. Lewis Baltz

Luigi Ghirri is someone who I only recently discovered by ordering his Puglia book. As a kid I was living in that same region of Italy during the period he was working there. So the whole experience was overwhelming to me. I'm anxious to find more of his work. There are four names on your list that I'm not familiar with, so I'm excited to dig in.

 

[albireo]

Luigi Ghirri is someone who I only recently discovered by ordering his Puglia book. As a kid I was living in that same region of Italy during the period he was working there. So the whole experience was overwhelming to me. I'm anxious to find more of his work. There are four names on your list that I'm not familiar with, so I'm excited to dig in.

I know Puglia very well, for some reason. And I adore Ghirri's work.

Random question for you. Going by your signature you are American, yet you say you spent time in Puglia in the 80s. Were your parents by any chance employed as military personnel at the NATO air base in San Vito dei Normanni?

 

[Mogens]

I know Puglia very well, for some reason. And I adore Ghirri's work. Let's say I could have been one of the kids he portrayed playing in those old town images in the mid 80s.

Random question for you. Going by your signature you are American, yet you say you spent time in Puglia in the 80s. Were your parents by any chance employed as military personnel at the NATO air base in San Vito dei Normanni?

Even more randomly than that... my dad was a cultural anthropologist who did field work there. He was studying unusual agricultural settlement patterns in the Valle d'Itria. So we lived in a small village outside Locorotondo. We went there twice in the 80s, once for a year and once for a summer. I would have been about 12 the second time we went, this would have been the summer of '85. I spent all my time running around with the neighborhood kids, but my experience was more rural. I've only been back once, I spent a year as a student at the University of Bologna, so I went there for a week in '96. I'd love to go back. My mom was there recently and we still have many family friends. There's a conversation that's happening in Locorotondo about naming a piazza after my dad, so that would obviously be the occasion. Apparently being the only foreign academic to ever have taken an interest in their town is a big deal. My dad, by the way, was the guy who got me into a photography, for him it was part of his anthropological tool kit. So I grew up with a darkroom and various interesting cameras around the house. I still use his Rolleiflex.

 

[albireo]

Even more randomly than that... my dad was a cultural anthropologist who did field work there. He was studying unusual agricultural settlement patterns in the Valle d'Itria. So we lived in a small village outside Locorotondo. We went there twice in the 80s, once for a year and once for a summer. I would have been about 12 the second time we went, this would have been the summer of '85. I spent all my time running around with the neighborhood kids, but my experience was more rural. I've only been back once, I spent a year as a student at the University of Bologna, so I went there for a week in '96. I'd love to go back. My mom was there recently and we still have many family friends. There's a conversation that's happening in Locorotondo about naming a piazza after my dad, so that would obviously be the occasion. Apparently being the only foreign academic to ever have taken an interest in their town is a big deal. My dad, by the way, was the guy who got me into a photography, for him it was part of his anthropological tool kit. So I grew up with a darkroom and various interesting cameras around the house. I still use his Rolleiflex.

Fascinating! Thanks for sharing!

EDIT - do you remember the name of the village?

 

[SodaAnt]

I don't think you can have good art that isn't agenda driven

Here’s what’s sure to be a controversial position: I don’t consider photography, in any of its forms, to be art at all.

 

[Don_ih]

Here’s what’s sure to be a controversial position: I don’t consider photography, in any of its forms, to be art at all.

It's not controversial. It's vacuous. It's meaningless to say what you don't consider something to be unless you then go on to say why and also say what it is.

"Daddy, what is a bird?"
"Well, son, I don't consider it a vegetable."

 

[snusmumriken]

Here’s what’s sure to be a controversial position: I don’t consider photography, in any of its forms, to be art at all.

Isn’t that like saying that applying paint to surfaces isn’t art? I would say that one can make art in either medium, but the medium in itself guarantees nothing.

 

[Mike Lopez]

Here’s what’s sure to be a controversial position: I don’t consider photography, in any of its forms, to be art at all.

How derivative. Yawn.

 

[Sirius Glass]

How derivative. Yawn.

 

[jeffreyg]

It’s interesting that nobody mentioned Joseph Niepce who started it all. (although I just mentioned him)

 

[nsurit]

Two photographers/educators who would be on my list would be Keith Carter and Christopher James. Each of these also happen to be, in my opinion, wonderful human beings.

 

[Mogens]

Fascinating! Thanks for sharing!

EDIT - do you remember the name of the village?

Yes, we were in Lamie Olimpie. The place that's now a butcher shop was the house we rented in 1985: https://maps.app.goo.gl/6MzBha9g1XGNFhma9

 

[Mogens]

Here’s what’s sure to be a controversial position: I don’t consider photography, in any of its forms, to be art at all.

That's just an absurd thing to say. I think like any other medium, it can be more 'craft-like' or more artful. There's a world of difference between a macro image of a tulip that looks like 1,000,000 other macro images of tulips and, say, a photo by Gregory Crewdson that requires an entire production to create a photographic image with a great deal of artistic intent. As if photography were so simple!

 

[Dali]

Here’s what’s sure to be a controversial position: I don’t consider photography, in any of its forms, to be art at all.

Please elaborate. It is a bold statement but you might have more to say about it.

 

[SodaAnt]

Please elaborate. It is a bold statement but you might have more to say about it.

Sure. What I said is my opinion and probably doesn't reflect other's opinions. To me, photography is a memory aid--something to help me remember the places I've been and the things I've done. It's also a documentary tool to record events for reporting purposes. Some consider it art because of how they compose and how they manipulate their photos, and if that works for them, and they call it art, fine, I have no problem with that. And I also feel that something, like a photo, can be beautiful without being art.

I too manipulate photos (in Photoshop) to try to get an image that matches what I saw with my eyes. I don't do things like replace a boring sky with a dramatic one, juice up the saturation using the vibrance slider or by using Velvia, or anything like that however.

 

[SodaAnt]

That's just an absurd thing to say. I think like any other medium, it can be more 'craft-like' or more artful. There's a world of difference between a macro image of a tulip that looks like 1,000,000 other macro images of tulips and, say, a photo by Gregory Crewdson that requires an entire production to create a photographic image with a great deal of artistic intent. As if photography were so simple!

Why is it absurd? It's just my opinion, and if yours's is different than mine, I won't call yours absurd.

Prior to your post, I'd never heard of Gregory Crewdson. I went and looked him up and looked at some of his work. I wasn't impressed. One article I read on CNN had an image of his with three teens on bikes stopped in the middle of the street watching a trailer burn in a vacant lot. I'm not sure what point he was trying to make with this staged photo, but it inspired no emotional response in me. I just don't see the "artistic intent".

 

[albireo]

Not strictly in order, but my top 10

1. Lee Friedlander
2. Robert Adams
3. Robert Frank
4. Paul Strand
5. Sid Grossman
6. Eugene Richards
7. Don McCullin
8. Danny Lyon
9. Josef Koudelka
10. Josef Sudek

@logan2z - just received a copy of Paul Strand's Hebrides book. Absolutely sensational.

 

[Don_ih]

It's just my opinion

And what does that mean? Do you think an opinion is an innocent thing? Do you think your opinion has no ability to influence what others think or do? Opinion has always been and will always be the greatest influence over human belief. No opinion gets stated as something that is true for the speaker only - opinions get stated as facts, as objectively true. So there is no "just my opinion" unless it goes unshared. Once uttered, it claims itself irrefutable.

And what is wrong with making a strong claim such as "photography is not art"? Why hide behind the wishy-washy shield of subjectivity, implying that it's "just" what you believe? If it's to avoid needing to defend your claim, justify your statement, and define your terms, then you should not make the claim to begin with.