That's why Berenice Abbott, among the few to call shenanigans on the Straight's fight against Pictorialism, called Adams, Weston, and the later Stieglitz "Super-Pictorialists", in the sense that they exhibited the same amount of print fetishism than Mortensen.
The main difference between f/64 and Pictorialism is the kind of painting they associate with. The former with Clement Greenberg-championed flat, geometrical modernism; the latter with late 19th C. Symbolist or pre-Raphaelite paintings.
It's my hope that in future histories of photography, "straight" photography stops being seen as a break from Pictorialism, but rather like a competing school with similar aesthetic values.
If Damien Hirst http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...s-36-800-plastic-skull.html?ito=feeds-newsxml produces it it will end up in the Tate Modern, or the National Gallery then sell for millions.If you gild a turd, sell it for a huge price and get people to wax idiotic about it's percieved "virtues", guess what? It's still a turd.
What are you Scott, some sort of a ventriloquist ?I've got an idea - I'll gild one of my own, and sell it to the Tate Modern claiming it is in fact Damien Hurst's own turd...
Galen Rowell was another person with a camera with more marketing skill than artistic vision. There was always the "oooh" factor when you found out exactly what he did to get the shots he got (like dangling upside down off the side of a cliff while manipulating his color ND grad filters that he was so fond of). Amazing technician. But he's up there with Michael Fatali in the excessive manipulation of color (although he never did set fire to a national landmark) and excessive deployment of ego in the name of marketing.
I definitely agree with you on Rowell, but I'm not sure he actually considered himself to be or marketed himself as a true artist. Maybe he did, but he is an Adams-ite from top to bottom (the "oooh" factor you speak of.
I'm picking up a lot of tips on this thread,and to think I almost overlooked it!
I'm picking up a lot of tips on this thread,and to think I almost overlooked it!
I think the level of contribution to this thread has now become a quite accurate indicator of the people posting the comments and really has little to do with the photographers or artists mentioned.
The number of references to bodily waste is distasteful and demonstrates a low level of intellect. That in turn indicates that the posters have nothing of value to contribute to what was supposed to be a discussion about art, artistic ability and artistic integrity.
This is a photographic forum, not a school toilet wall.
It's my hope that in future histories of photography, "straight" photography stops being seen as a break from Pictorialism, but rather like a competing school with similar aesthetic values.
I was looking at Getty's Eliot Porter page, and thinking about Kinkade, Lik, Adams, etc, and I realized something: when a black & white image is dramatized, it doesn't go over the top, it just looks good. When a color image is dramatized, it can make your skin crawl. Porter's East Penobscot Bay is dramatized. No scene can look like that with the sun in that position, but the print looks good. Now imagine if Lichens on River Stones had the saturation increased like Lik and Kinkade would do it. Would it still be a nice composition?
Probably due to human nature, for any changes to be made in most things there has to be a rebellion of sorts, and with that goes the name calling, the tribalism and the "one is better than the other" mentality.
We can see than occurring now with the film/digital tribes. Human nature sort of dictates that in any rebellion there has to be a winner and a loser, where higher evolved individuals can see that "different" is a positive thing and not a hindrance or a threat.
I completely agree with you. Some photographers are more concerned with the nuts and bolts of photography rather than the aesthetics of photography. To me, the mechanics of technical details of photography should serve the art.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?