I'm kind of familiar with what you're sort of saying, but I'm not exactly sure where you're leading us to.
I'm not sure I'm leading anything !
I'm a photographer, and so my perspective is as a photographer's. At least on photography ! And what that means is that a photographer's intention is to take pictures. A painter or sculptor make use a camera as a means to an end, a step in a process of creation of a complex object. But for me at least, when it all gets broken down, a painter paints, a sculptor sculpts, and a phototographer takes pictures. There is SOMETHING that puts a camera into a photographer's hands, and not a hammer, brush, or some other tool.
There is a gulf between critics and artists, as there is between sports-talk radio and athletes. Watching and Doing. I think we sometimes are influenced too much by what somebody had to say about Weston or Adams, or HCB. Drawing parallels and conclusions at a comfortable distance is important to do, if we want to better understand what it is like to LOOK at their pictures. But if we want to understand the process of making those pictures, in order to make pictures for ourselves, we need to drop the theories and schools and trends, and look at the process. Weston is a great example: his Daybooks are an amazing Primary Source. We can see what he did, and why, and how, and what happened next. Diaries and notes put the artist in an eternal present tense that allows us to compare our own experiences, our own successes and failures, and measure ourselves. Reading the letters between Adams, Strand and Weston gives us a chance to get an idea of what each was really like, and compare that idea to their work. And THAT helps us to get past the "Well, I like sharp pictures", or "I think that sucks" layers of photographic criticism. When we know what an artist was stimulated by, and how it set about responding to it photographically, and what was the result, we learn a lot about how we each can make our pictures for ourselves.
Every artist lives in the present tense. That pretty much determines that the artist is not aware of how he will be judged in retrospect. Artists seldom think about being in a 'school'. They think about taking pictures. Or eating dinner. Not about art theory. I don't for a second think that any 'straight photographer', be it Brady, or Emerson, or Marville, or anybody was thinking farther ahead than we do when we want to take a picture. We all know what the questions are that must be answered: will I get mugged while I'm under the darkcloth ? when will I get this da*ned tripod leg fixed ? is the sun coming out of that cloud as soon as I pull the darkslide ? where can I find somebody to buy me dinner ?
And the reaction is ALWAYS the same when there is a good picture: incredible excitement to get home and get it into the developer, to hurry the drying, and to make the first quick print. Then you show it to your friends. Every photographer has done that, and always will. And that's how you can identify a photographer in a crowd of pretenders.
I was in Prague shortly after the Russians left. In December. Wandered around with a battered Leica, trying to stay as warm as I could and make a few more pictures before the light vanished. Frozen solid, I had time to spend before meeting friends, and found a building with lights on and a lot of activity that had been quiet days before. I wandered in, grotesquely underdressed, and found to my joy and amazement it was a new photo gallery --- an opening !
And the place was packed with lots of oldtimers with cameras around their necks,over their shoulders, a drink in their hand, and an astonishing amount of joy in the room. One tall, elderly fellow came toward me with an outstretched hand, and as I shoved my mitts into a pocket he saw the Leica, and I got a fantastic hug. We laughed, and he asked a *lovely* young woman to interpret for us, and there was a drink in my hand, and every time a photographer came up to me with a business card, I handed back a roll of Tri X from the huge pockets of my wool NATO pants.
My host told me a story. Before the Gestapo came to Prague, he was a young man, and photographed every Sunday afternoon. Everybody photographed every Sunday afternoon. Then the Gestapo came, and nobody photographed, ever.
But soon, friends began to gather in quiet, out of the way apartments. Each would bring an innocuous object - which would hopefully be explainable if one were stopped on the way and searched. When everyone arrived, the blinds were drawn, a lookout posted, and the various articles were assembled into a composition of some sort: sculptural, political, dangerous, humerous, and a camera taken from the pried up floorboards, lights arranged, an exposure made, and the camera returned to the hiding place. The 'installation' was taken apart, everyone had a drink, and in time, went home.
They were photographers, and had to make pictures. They had to do it in secret, at nights, and in extreme danger. When the Gestapo left, there was the KGB, and the secrets continued. Fifty some years later, photographers returned to the streets, and decades of secret pictures were on display.
And the old photographers who had spent a lifetime photographing in the dark a landscape of their own imagination were laughing about it, studying the prints, and proudly slapping me on the back saying how glad they were that visitors were there who understood their work.
Not quite, not at all. I had never risked my life to make a picture, or been devoted enough to photography to nail a camera under the floorboards. And until that night I seldom felt the honest joy of a crowd of folks who were alive because of their pictures, and the need to make them.
We have Installations at every third gallery every month. But nobody is ever watching out for that black mercedes to roll up out of the rain and haul their butt off to Terezin.
The point is, I suppose, that photography is all about getting something in front of your camera that means something to you, and making a picture that justifies the trouble. it has little to directly do with Art, Schools, Theories. It is democratic, uncivilized, and of necessity, unruly. It is common to all photographers, and has no need for theory, standards, and awards. And no distance is too great to either make, or see, a good photograph.
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