Traditionalists and nostalgia.

To me they are mildly interesting nostalgia. At least they are correctly called snapshots.

Unfortunately today snapshots are called portraits.

If I were a malicious person I would suspect that the Kodak contest (or contests) was just a marketing trick to make people buy film, use cameras, see themselves as potential prize winners etc.

In order to do so, the best thing is to award the prize to a picture of a family dog, or a child.
Those are:

a) obviously present in most houses;
b) obviously available as models for free;
c) obviously the subject that most photographers are "shooting" in any case;

Besides, after the publication of the results, most people will think "well, that's not really better than my own production" and this will encourage the narcissist inner self to photograph more.

So one might be induced by the Malign to think that the winners were not really chosen by the jury, but by the marketing department or, which is the same, that the marketing department instructed the jury on the kind of picture which should have won: a picture similar enough to any family picture, thereby excluding professional executed portraits or exotic landscapes etc.

The winner picture, in a word, should have looked like a picture that "you could have taken" (and you could have won the prize).

Obviously I don't think any of the above because thinking bad of photographic juries is a sin and I care about my spiritual salvation.

Fabrizio

blansky said:

To me they are mildly interesting nostalgia. At least they are correctly called snapshots.

Unfortunately today snapshots are called portraits.

Click to expand...

Today, snapshots are called Gursky photos and sell for $4.3M.

batwister said:

All art has its rightful places and means of communicating and some just won't fit with the zeitgeist. That work is better left on your own wall. It's about tapping into the spirit of the times or simply not getting it, which is when most artists will fail to find an audience. There are rarely ideas as brilliant as the barking dog which will challenge what is culturally accepted. If a pictorialist photographer is capable of doing that, then nostalgic photography might have something timely and worthwhile to say. Most of the time it only seems to appeal, quite incestuously, to other photographers.

Click to expand...

I think you are getting hung up on the history of art and it's impacts on people. You are giving a reverence for historical artists and their aesthetic and basically saying that type of aesthetic is off limits and to be hung on your wall as opposed to being considered "art".

Is my appreciation of art deco architecture laughable to you? If I was an architect and I was designing an art deco style building; would that be a deplorable persuit because that doesn't fit the revered zeitgeist and would be better off designing glass boxes like every other architect? Your very claim for analog'ers to move past their aesthetic is flawed because your premise is that we will canabalize our own near and dear analog capture medium due to not moving beyond the art movements of past. What is paradoxical is you seem to believe that what is produced is rehashed and therefore not art and thus the inevitable failure of film is our fault. Who is to say what is art or not? You?

Diapositivo said:

If I were a malicious person I would suspect that the Kodak contest (or contests) was just a marketing trick to make people buy film, use cameras, see themselves as potential prize winners etc.

Click to expand...

That is exactly why Kodak had these contests.

I know that there is a strong streak of "I can do that" in me.

blansky said:

To me they are mildly interesting nostalgia. At least they are correctly called snapshots.

Unfortunately today snapshots are called portraits.

Click to expand...

Yeah, gotta agree there.

markbarendt said:

That is exactly why Kodak had these contests.

I know that there is a strong streak of "I can do that" in me.

Click to expand...

Yup. Think "Pillsbury Bake-Off" run by General Mills for years.

zsas said:

If I was an architect and I was designing an art deco style building; would that be a deplorable persuit because that doesn't fit the revered zeitgeist and would be better off designing glass boxes like every other architect?

Click to expand...

I'm just not sure you'd get the planning permission.

zsas said:

Your very claim for analog'ers to move past their aesthetic is flawed because your premise is that we will canabalize our own near and dear analog capture medium due to not moving beyond the art movements of past. What is paradoxical is you seem to believe that what is produced is rehashed and therefore not art and thus the inevitable failure of film is our fault. Who is to say what is art or not? You?

Click to expand...

The original work is and was the greatest work produced in photography, but still relevant to a time and place, which is why it had an impact in the art world then and doesn't now even in the most skillfully rehashed forms we see in traditional fine art photography publications. The original Steichens and Westons and early Brandts still have impact if only because they have become iconic images and have a recognisable name attached. An annonymous, unpublished image by one of these artists is unlikely to turn many heads in a gallery. The vision of the photographer is still apparent in the image, the composition is still beautiful, but without the name or the familiarity, the photograph is simply an artifact from a time and culture long gone. Only historians and other well read photographers would perhaps recognise the image and see its worth.

I'm saying that this derivative nu-pictorialist/modernist work is more craft than art, because I believe for a photograph to be accepted as 'art', it has to fit with the zeitgeist and cultural sensibilities or move beyond it, to affect people who aren't other craft concerned traditional photographers. It's simply too self-referential if it harks back to movements normal people have forgotten. Having any success as an artist depends on seeing outside of your creative bubble, which can often be delusional and warped. You have to learn to communicate with your audience on their terms, even if you're an abstract expressionist. That is, you say what you want, in a language they understand.

I don't make the rules, but unfortunately, if you were to show an annonymous, unpublished Gursky image and an archetypal modernist Weston image (unpublished) on the street in a metropolitan area (where average Joe will be more middle class and more switched on about art) I have a gut feeling the Gursky would attract most attention. Without them recognising the photographer or the image that is. This is because the imagery and clinical documentary style representation in the Gursky reflects the mood of the times we live in. Its visual language is something people will understand without a deep knowledge of the history of photography or knowing the value of its materials and craft hours. For photography to be considered art it surely has to be appreciated and understood by people who have no concept of these references to the craft and history of photography? Which is all that the nostalgic work I'm criticising does and why it has no audience outside of photography communities and publications.

batwister,
I was brief earlier in this thread, when I said B&W photography is alchemical process.
Most of us probably have been there, where You are standing now and have had that high school / undergraduate university student jumpstart.
to quote Oscar Wilde

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.

Click to expand...

So is understanding for some conceptually fundamental points about stuff.
You might be just trying to cross the street with a helicopter, when the other way might not be that obvious, yet.

My best wishes to You!
G

batwister said:

I'm just not sure you'd get the planning permission.

Click to expand...

Please see:
6060 Indian Creek (built 1992) 2nd one down, then call the planning board who approved this design and convince them to have the building condemned...

"The Sixty Sixty Resort Residences is an Art Deco-style property..."
Dead Link Removed

batwister said:

I'm saying that this derivative nu-pictorialist/modernist work is more craft than art, because I believe for a photograph to be accepted as 'art', it has to fit with the zeitgeist and cultural sensibilities or move beyond it, to affect people who aren't other craft concerned traditional photographers. It's simply too self-referential if it harks back to movements normal people have forgotten. Having any success as an artist depends on seeing outside of your creative bubble, which can often be delusional and warped.

Click to expand...

Who said anything about success?

I guess we need to part ways here because, your sacred reverence for artists who've connected doest make room for the van Gogh's and Vivian Maier's and outsiders, those are the ones that keep me jazzed, "the little guy", the one who couldn't connect and are missed by your algorithm.

Everything is a remix anyway, please, please check this out....thoughts?

Dead Link Removed

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9

zsas said:

Who said anything about success?

...sacred reverence for artists who've connected doest make room for the van Gogh's and Vivian Maier's and outsiders, those are the ones that keep me jazzed, "the little guy", the one who couldn't connect and are missed ...

Everything is a remix anyway, please, please check this out....thoughts?

Dead Link Removed

Click to expand...

I totally agree with regard to acceptance/external success/commerce being a lousy measure for what good art/photography is or isn't.

Watched the whole series of the remix thing, very interesting.

With regard to the original thought of the thread, essentially that the subject matter needs to change to save film, I'm not sold on that idea.

In my mind photography is essentially, but not exclusively, a "sharing" medium. Much of what we used photography for in the past has been socially replaced by email, messaging from our cell phones, Flickr, and facebook... The mundane, cute but forgettable stuff, found the cheapest and fastest way through our lives.

Film can still do certain things better that digital, for example; my daughter has decided to take my Polaroid camera on her summer college trip to China this year. She will be pasting the photos into a journal/book that she can write her thoughts in and she and her buddies and the people she photoigraphs can annotate the book and photos directly and she can make a physical artifact in real time that will last her lifetime.

That journalling process will create an artifact that has to be shared in real time and space. I will have to physically visit her to see it, and that"s ok because she holds the rest of the story and I will get to hear her narration of the story and it will be interactive in that the narration will be affected by my questions, my wifes questions, my son's and even her remembrances will change over time, new layers will surface.

I'm not saying digital can't achieve a similar product in electronic form, what I'm saying is that the tactile original book imposes constraints and accepts inputs that aren't easy or better in digital, like: gluing in a coin, piece of fabric, a pressed flower, a sketch, a napkin, or a postcard or handwritten note.

To me it seems that the survival of film, like painting and slow cooking, is rooted in how it's product fits into our social context/life and the unique/efficient things it provides, as a tool, to the artists/craftspeople who use it.

zsas said:

Who said anything about success?

Click to expand...

I'm not talking about success in terms of selling a print for $4.3m, but simply as the clear communication of culturally relevant ideas, without hiding behind a dusty veil of the past. By 'culturally relevant' I only mean something that will have a better chance of grabbing someone, by communicating through recognisable references to a world and culture they know, and therefore, allowing them to have a closer, multifaceted relationship with the work - whether they like the image or not. Is that not important? This I consider to be of our culture - http://hussonbookstore.tumblr.com/post/4959306720/todd-hido-between-the-two-available-here and this I do not - http://jenniferhudsonfineart.com/blog/?p=886. I'd like to know what people's honest immediate reactions are to these images. The first for me is more emotional, even though I don't think it's a particularly great image. To the second image I only react to the treatment. I do not recognise the woman as somebody of this age, she is alien to me, so my mind concentrates on the technicalities of the image, which I can better understand. I'm distanced from the subject.

zsas said:

I guess we need to part ways here because, your sacred reverence for artists who've connected doest make room for the van Gogh's and Vivian Maier's and outsiders, those are the ones that keep me jazzed, "the little guy", the one who couldn't connect and are missed by your algorithm.

Click to expand...

Van Gogh and Vivian Maier did connect, just not during their lifetimes. They were still doing something right during their time - clearly communicating through their work. They simply had quieter voices that have only been carried down wind in recent years. But also, in the case of those two, that the work didn't find an audience doesn't necessarily mean there wasn't one. It was an unfortunate tragedy and quite rare for such talent. In some ways, during such incredibly creative periods in art - post-expressionism and the heydey of street photography - there's so much exceptional work around, that some is bound to be overlooked. It happens in particularly inspired periods in music too, one modern example being Nick Drake and in literature, Thoreau or Poe. In these cases I think it says more about the quiet and reluctant artist, who might not be prone to self-promotion, more than it says anything about an inability to connect with their generation. I almost see these artists as overflow, pushed out of a full cup, spilling wet onto our lap and making us take notice.

Having said this, we still consider Van Gogh and the others very much as artists of their generation, we appreciate the work in its rightful cultural and historical context - we're aware this work was influenced by the way things were done then, but no longer. This is why no ambitious artist will emulate the style of that work literally. What an ambitous artist will take away from a Van Gogh is that pure expression of the human soul, which will always be relevant. I don't believe Vivian Maier will have much influence on contemporary work, as the intrigue of the images is largely historical, not adding anything particularly unique to the street photography canon. I enjoy her work all the same.

zsas said:

Everything is a remix anyway, please, please check this out....thoughts?

Dead Link Removed

Click to expand...

There isn't anything in the video that I disagree with. It comes back to the jazz thing of 'imitate, assimilate, innovate'. Nostalgists get hung up on imitation of technicalities, the effect - which is what I've been saying. Maybe I should throw the video back at you to emphasise my point that literally applying what we've appropriated as creative people is a lack of imagination and what I see the nostalgists being concerned with. I believe innovation depends on the artist being able to tap into what is universally applicable, the idea within the work, over the effect or approach. Innovation also depends on the artist being able to tap into what is universally lacking and finding a way to fill that void. There's the idea of the longing of the artist which in my mind is a deep sensitivity to what is fundamentally lacking in the world, often noted today as spiritual emptiness. Yes, every artist and creative person steals, but the ones who really say something use what they've taken to move forwards, rather than as a means to re-live the era they stole from.

zsas said:

Everything is a remix anyway, please, please check this out....thoughts?

Dead Link Removed

Click to expand...

My thoughts:

- The invention of the telephone is actually by many attributed to Italian inventor Antonio Meucci:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Meucci

- That everybody builds on previous discoveries is a bit of a common place.
In the Aula Magna of the faculty of Chemistry of the University La Sapienza, Rome, there's this beautiful sentence:
Tristo è quel discepolo che non sopravanza lo suo maestro
A poor disciple is he who doesn't overcome his master
(should be by Leonardo da Vinci, I go by memory)

The Romans used to say that even better: Vita brevis, Ars longa (Life is short, but technique is long, because every generation starts from where the progress of the previous generation ended).

- Nice that the video begins with Wagner's music, it is then repeated shortly during the Apple - Xerox discussion. For the curious, that's from the first scene of Das Rheingold, which confirms me that I should detoxicate myself from computer dependence and listen to more music.

Fabrizio

Batwister - Here is the paradox of everything you are advocating for (i.e., for the analog notalgists to wake up) is that you don’t know if a photographer is in any of the three phases of the creative process, which Ferguson defines, copy, transform, combine, and that is why I originally said that I think your comments are rude. You are essentially throwing out the baby with the bathwater (i.e. “analog pictorilism is dead - everyone move on now, hurry up…”). My examples of outsiders who have not made it was said because it is those who point to the masters all day and wish to move on because of his/her appreciation for the masters' contributions, don’t realize the spirit they can crush when s/he keeps pointing for artists to move on. Maier could have felt her work was no better than HCB’s because he was on such a pedestal, this reverence and judgment of what is relevant at the time can have an affect on one to intimidate and crush an artist's spirit/drive. The minority of one artist needs to be protected. There are a bunch of new APUG’ers that might just be getting into say LF or street and they might be trailing Ansel or HCB to find his or her way, how can they innovate to a new creative historically relevant photography if they don't learn (i.e. copy as Ferguson calls it) when someone is preaching that they are in fact going to kill the very medium they are learning to find his/her voice in?

I like the idea of concentrating on socially relevant subject matter and I see no reason why new people can't start with that relevant material on their photographic journey: the film doesn't care, nor is the craft film photography that hard to learn.

What is tougher is knowing/deciding on what we want to make pictures of, what look we want to portray, how to manage subjects and context, how to get the subject/model to cooperate, how to light the subject (or find the right light). In this sense photography is no different than painting or drawing; that's a sentiment that I think HCB, Renoir, Monet, Hurrel, Gursky, Jose Villa, most any artist actually, would validate.

To be honest, once the goals are known; designing and learning a process to get a specific result is a reasonably simple task. Sure the process gets easier and more refined with practice and at some point the process can be transcended or improved technically, but that's a "so what moment" because if it is successful others will follow shortly.

zsas said:

Batwister - Here is the paradox of everything you are advocating for (i.e., for the analog notalgists to wake up) is that you don’t know if a photographer is in any of the three phases of the creative process, which Ferguson defines, copy, transform, combine, and that is why I originally said that I think your comments are rude.

Click to expand...

You cannot pretend a pastiche is anything other than pastiche, it's obvious. I don't think where people are artistically is quite as mysterious or indefinable as you suggest. My problem is that this unrealised and derivative work is published and celebrated as anything other than pastiche, which is insulting to anyone who is even vaguely well-read photographically. What is strange is how otherwise switched on people continue to create what is essentially naive art.

Someone mentioned earlier in the thread that every photograph, regardless of what is in the frame is inherently of the 21st century. Chemically and physically that might be somewhat true, but the image is of light, an illusion. It's how we use this illusion to create signs and symbols, and what we associate with them that make us feel and think. They manipulate us to recall certain things to which we have been culturally predisposed - we can't get rid of them. No matter what, certain images will contain signifiers of what we relate to as the past or even a very particular time period. Nostalgists play with symbols that recall the past, which I believe creates a mental distance for the viewer and has less impact when presented as art. The people who produce nostalgic photography, I'm convinced, are more reactive to contemporary work, but the imediacy of the symbolism is too much of a shock to the system. There's comfort to be found in the distance nostalgic work creates then. Images that make reference to our own time and culture simply hit closer to home, making emotional responses more intense, often in quite a disconcerting way. I think an adverse reaction to this leads people to retreat to the safety of old processes and imagery. Essentially, I see this as dissociation.

I think an adverse reaction to this leads people to retreat to the safety of old processes and imagery. Essentially, I see this as dissociation.

Strikes me as a profound inability to deal with nuance and ambiguity. Both are disruptive, even insulting, to anyone content with archetypes.

batwister said:

You cannot pretend a pastiche is anything other than pastiche, it's obvious. I don't think where people are artistically is quite as mysterious or indefinable as you suggest. My problem is that this unrealised and derivative work is published and celebrated as anything other than pastiche, which is insulting to anyone who is even vaguely well-read photographically. What is strange is how otherwise switched on people continue to create what is essentially naive art.

Click to expand...

You seem to be applying an arbitrary standard, and then seemingly defining yourself into that elite status, I find that a bit insulting.

You also seem to miss the point that much if not most of the published and celebrated work you speak of is judged by what I view as a flawed standard, commercial/public success.

Commercial/public success is mostly about business/self promotion/showing up/entering the contest, not about the quality of the art. 80:20 business:art Good art can exist in that sphere but it is not a prerequisite.

markbarendt said:

That journalling process will create an artifact that has to be shared in real time and space. I will have to physically visit her to see it, and that"s ok because she holds the rest of the story and I will get to hear her narration of the story and it will be interactive in that the narration will be affected by my questions, my wifes questions, my son's and even her remembrances will change over time, new layers will surface.

I'm not saying digital can't achieve a similar product in electronic form, what I'm saying is that the tactile original book imposes constraints and accepts inputs that aren't easy or better in digital, like: gluing in a coin, piece of fabric, a pressed flower, a sketch, a napkin, or a postcard or handwritten note.

Click to expand...

A new digital polaroid.....http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/104163-polaroid-this-time-its-digital

blansky said:

A new digital polaroid.....http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/104163-polaroid-this-time-its-digital

Click to expand...

Interesting, didn't know thise existed, even if not quite ready for prime time given the reviews at that page. The Z230E PoGo looks interesting too, if a bit smaller.

The primary reason my daughter wants to use the Polaroid camera though is to avoid any editing, thinking, and/or chimping, she simply doesn't want that distraction or temptation on her trip; just compose, shoot, pull, & paste. HCB would be proud of her.

blansky said:

A new digital polaroid.....http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/104163-polaroid-this-time-its-digital

Click to expand...

Seems to combine the worst features of various technologies into one barely workable package. Initial and lasting reaction is--WTF?

True. But lets face it Polaroid was never the greatest of quality and was a "hit" in most cases just for the fun factor of the instant picture.

Although the negative in "665" ??? forget the number??? was kind of cool.

Wasn't there a digital camera that output directly to print pics more than 10 years ago?

I'm going to disagree....

First of all, this site represents a fraction of the true talent out there using film to cutting edge effect, so you can't just take the posts on here as the totality of the medium. I know plenty of great guitar players who like acoustic over electric and none of them choose the Martin over a Les Paul due to a silly thing like nostalgia.

There are plenty of people with cameras who either shoot digital or film who get SOOOO caught up in the tools that the notion of a fluid connection with personal vision is utterly absent from any image they make, far too many in my opinion actually. But it is the constant bickering of one being better than the other or nostalgia around film sadly resulting in boring as hell photographs that is off putting to most who would otherwise like to just flat out see a great image, regardless of how it was arrived at.

I think my D800 is truly the first digital camera I have used in my 20 span in the medium that could conclude my use of film if it ever came to blows....it is *that* good. But I have a different journey in mind, a different branding to my life that I want to both continue with, promote and share with people, in that not only does the final image matter, but like life, the journey, how you arrive there can matter too....

A photographer with both brilliant raw talent and a level of patience to master any medium can at this point in time, choose a number of mediums and journeys in which to arrive at his final image....and this has not a thing to do with nostalgia.

For example, I am going to start using 4x5 in my black and white work. If I find in using it I am unable to fully connect with my vision or I bring nothing new to the table, I will pass on it even though many wax poetic about it having better tonality and sharpness, being "Better" than any digital camera ( what a load of BS if your image is boring ).

Rant over...