Why do you think Ansel Adams is better known than William Mortensen?

[Alan Johnson]

.Few followed the daunting technical trail he had laid: a twisted path to no good purpose."

Nearly right. But see Mortensen on the Negative, choose your own purpose.

 

[BrianShaw]

...choose your own purpose.

... and that’s what it’s all about!

 

[DREW WILEY]

Mortensen was a Fauxtographer before Fauxtoshop. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Does me using those terms offend you? - well, maybe that says something more about your particular slanted bias than mine. Works both ways. It's just as legitimate a use of terminology as trashing a person's work by filing it away from sight in any other labeled bin, like "Romanticism", which is just another way of stating, "It all looks the same to me". But none of this is of enough specific interest to me to re-litigate those contemporaneous squabbles about the respective styles involved. Historians are paid to that kind of thing. Hopefully another quirky contentious thread will replace this one soon and keep us all busy pontificating on the next rainy day.

 

[removed account4]

Mortensen was a Fauxtographer before Fauxtoshop. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Does me using those terms offend you? - well, maybe that says something more about your particular slanted bias than mine. Works both ways. It's just as legitimate a use of terminology as trashing a person's work by filing it away from sight in any other labeled bin, like "Romanticism", which is just another way of stating, "It all looks the same to me". But none of this is of enough specific interest to me to re-litigate those contemporaneous squabbles about the respective styles involved. Historians are paid to that kind of thing. Hopefully another quirky contentious thread will replace this one soon and keep us all busy pontificating on the next rainy day.

no not really DREW. it doesn't offend me because I don't really care one way or another. be as snarky as you want. LOL ... what I find really sad is people argue about differences so much they fail to see how things are pretty much the same...

 

[DREW WILEY]

Some people see things all the same that are really quite different. Semantics, not really important in the overall scheme of things, just web banter. Cute video. Thanks. I think I've eaten there once !

 

[removed account4]

Some people see things all the same that are really quite different. Semantics, not really important in the overall scheme of things, just web banter. Cute video. Thanks. I think I've eaten there once !

that's right DREW. and at the same time some people see things that are very much the same and claim they are completely different. as you said it goes both ways..
I'm one who sees the sameness. the differences in most of the BS people argue about incessantly and thump their chests and claim are sooo different are moot points as far as I am concerned. but whatever. humankind has been dwelling on differences between people and things since the beginning because it all has to do with a power dynamic. photographs are photographs. a $6,000 lens can look just like a $30 holga. but someone spends the 6grand because it proves they are so much better. a photographer makes snapshot type photographs but has them made using dye transfer just because he can .. does it matter? nope, just gives him the edge gives him the power of people thinking he is great and gets him show at MOMA. someone uses a giant 8x10 or 4x5 camera to photograph the American west and aunt Estelle uses her iPhone and gets the same look and feel, and since her nephew is a real photographer ( the person with the LF camera ) she puts fake notch codes on her 8x10 print. does it matter? nope. but some people (maybe her nephew ) would call her a fraud. because you know she didn't lug around the giant camera and sniff the developer. same old same old. whole thing is comical.

 

[BrianShaw]

I’m ready to give this thread the 5 starz on Yelp!

 

[Arthurwg]

Aren't we all just dancing around the real explanation? Ansel Adams was a better photographer than William Mortensen. That is why Ansel Adams is better known. QED

Absolutely correct. And let's face it, WM was a bit of a crackpot. But I do think AA was a "painterly" photographer. If you'd like a non-painterly landscape photographer I'd suggest Lewis Baltz.

 

[removed account4]

But I do think AA was a "painterly" photographer

I heard them's is fighting words !!

And let's face it, WM was a bit of a crackpot

that's OK. everyone's a crackpot once in a while. at least he was having fun ?

I’m ready to give this thread the 5 starz on Yelp!

make sure you say you feel the love in your review.

 

[Wayne]

Nothing wrong with differences, if everything was the same language would be a waste and life would be boring as hell. We need language to explain those differences. People can wish them away and close their eyes to them, but they still exist. The trouble comes when people project their opinions and values on those differences.

 

[Vaughn]

[QUOTE="jnantz, post: 2377233, member: 668"...that's OK. everyone's a crackpot once in a while. at least he was having fun ?...[/QUOTE]
And Laguna Beach was a pretty cool place to live and work...sort of the Carmel of SoCal. My relatives had a beach house on the boardwalk. (Condemned and bought by the city eventually and turned into a park). He died there in 1965 in his late 60s. Who knows, I might have seen him in town, although I was 11 when he died. I remember the Greeter, though -- an old gent who would wave to everyone from the sidewalk.

The beach houses were removed and the park/new boardwalk happened in 1968. Just so happens to be the same year Dr. Timothy Leary was arrested in Laguna Beach by local policeman Neil Purcell on the day after Christmas.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Hi, Michael - I don't care about the methodology, whether a pair of scissors and a bottle of paper glue, or a software program. I refer to Fauxtography contemptuously in relation to corny over the top affectations of art. Of course, "Fauxtoshop" refers to just how much of it is out there now, because it's become so much easier to do the new way. But in a neutral sense, Photoshop is just yet another tool kit, just like we darkroom workers have our own tool kit, or perhaps hybrid kits. In other words, "Fauxtoshop" is an abuse of Photoshop. Going hog-wild, let-it-all-hang-out via blatant manipulations of the newest app on the block might be appropriate for teenage blockbuster movies (which I ignore); but this get awfully monotonous in magazines or picture frames. I stopped subscribing to Natl Geo for that very reason. It would have been anathema to that journalistic organization at one time. There are other reasons I stopped subscribing too (no need to elaborate here). Everyone has their own opinion. I admire Uelsmann, even most of the Surrealist and Dada practitioners. Mortensen, nope ... he crossed the line over into corny and blatantly concocted. A good illusionist never shows their hand. I don't appreciate anything surface-obvious. The Peanuts cartoon strip was more psychologically sophisticated than Mortensen. He was trying too hard to be artsy - and it shows.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I'm referring to those who feel the need to denigrate the work of one because they prefer the other.

I ignored the feud and looked at the works of both. Then I made my own decision based on what I like. End of story.

 

[Helge]

Helge - how many of Carleton Watkins masterworks have you seen? I've seen a lot of the real deal. The biggest collections are nearby. Our family also has hundreds of his commercial little stereo images - of little collector value, but it's how he made much of his income. In a few of his mammoth plate images, Watkins proved his title to be a predecessor of constructivist abstract art long before Sheeler. Brilliant work. But 99% of what he did was exactly what you'd deride as "romanticist" or "pictorial scenery" because that was what ahe was specifically sponsored to do by the railroad companies hoping for greater tourist traffic in the West, prior to automobile highways. My own babysitter as an infant was the first white woman ever in Yosemite when she was a little girl. I had a ranch near there, own all kinds of old tintypes and ambrotypes of the area, from before much of a park concept even existed, and know the difference in these various kinds of imagery very well.

And the notion that AA was the first person to take advantage of panchromatic plates in this manner, even in Yosemite itself, it utter nonsense. There's a dealer near here specializing in those kinds of period Yosemite photos (open only by appt now). Quite a few significant photographer were there between the time of blue-sensitive work like that of Watkins and Muybridge and AA. Fiske is a well known one. Then there's the infamous "Uncle Earle" incident, where the negatives of Yosemite by some moderately-talented commercial photographer were discovered in an attic, and the heir attempted to sell prints of those as early work of AA himself. The real AA foundations sued and stopped it.

Ansel would not be one of the photographers I personally classify as a truly great printer, but certainly competent enough to communicate his sensitivity to natural light eloquently. He never really understood color well, or printed itself, but did make enough interesting color images (sometime paid to do so by the film companies) that it warranted a nice little book. Likewise, Edward Weston. In fact, the largest source of AA's income came from stock he received in lieu of cash from the start-up of Polaroid, testing and promoting film for them. And yes, he clearly made an effort to understand how his images would come out in offset print version instead, in books or other print media, prior to modern scanning. He specially printed somewhat lower contrast for those particular applications; and many of those prints remain, but sell for relatively little due to their lack of snap in comparison to actual signed display prints.

Helge - you mention Western traditions, Oriental tradition, AA, etc etc. I've exhibited with all of em, and think I know the difference. Right beside significant modernist works from the far east, still in semi-traditional garb, famous NT abstract expressionists, famous second-generation Impressionists, AA, etc. There's simply way too much variety out there to force them into neat pigeonholes like critics trying to find any excuse for yet another over diatribe tend to do.

Yes I’ve seen Watkins work in the Eye of the Sun exhibition in the National Gallery of Art in DC in November 2019.
Magnificent.
And I had the ability to immediately compare to contemporary(ish) landscape painters in the same museum and to Ansels work in the Wilderness Society the next day.

Where do you get the idea that I’m deriding romantic landscapes? They are absolutely a pivotal and valuable part of art history and just plain great art, full stop.
But in the same way you can’t do straight cubism or straight Byzantine religious art today, and expect to be taken seriously as a trailblazer or great original artist; Ansel was probably right on the cusp of being able to do what he did and get famous.
He knew what he did however, was very good at it and added a certain amount of flair, touch and originality that made it fly and not just be blind repetition.

Of course Ansel wasn’t the first user of Pancro in Yosemite. That would have been a strange and pointless happenstance.
What matters is that he more or less grew up with it and learned to master it before everybody and their grandmother was there.
That in conjunction with his other lucky happenstance (including genetics) made him who he is.
And he might not be the best of anything but he was great at a sufficient amount of stuff.
Have you ever seen his darkroom? That horizontal enlarger with locally variable light is insane.

Regarding your last paragraph: Finding commonalities, patterns and temporal trends is what much of art history/critique is about. Science and cognition could be said to be nothing but.
So you’d be eschewing that in the name of faux egalitarianism and “peace of mind”, with your “it’s to complex to think about”.
Very few things of interest, is about “getting to the bottom of things”.
It’s about finding interesting and useful observations and things to say about the object of idea.

Edmund Burke was together with a handful of other gentleman philosophers famously one of those who defined, or at least put into words what became the tenets of the discussed period of landscape painting.
But those ideas and notions are part of humankind, culturally and genetically. They where not imported from the moon.
They wax and wane and change according to societal circumstances and material resources.

Same with something like the Japanese aesthetic concepts like wabi-sabi or iki.
We might not have the exact words for them., but we can recognize the ideas and they resonate in deep ways with us (perhaps especially because it puts a word on some “junginan archetype”).

That doesn’t preclude that certain incarnations or constellations of those concepts form a recognizable entity or mental cluster.
That is what we call a school or period in art.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Yes I’ve seen Watkins work in the Eye of the Sun exhibition in the National Gallery of Art in DC in November 2019.
Magnificent.
And I had the ability to immediately compare to contemporary(ish) landscape painters in the same museum and to Ansels work in the Wilderness Society the next day.

Where do you get the idea that I’m deriding romantic landscapes? They are absolutely a pivotal and valuable part of art history and just plain great art, full stop.
But in the same way you can’t do straight cubism or straight Byzantine religious art today, and expect to be taken seriously as a trailblazer or great original artist; Ansel was probably right on the cusp of being able to do what he did and get famous.
He knew what he did however, was very good at it and added a certain amount of flair, touch and originality that made it fly and not just be blind repetition.

Of course Ansel wasn’t the first user of Pancro in Yosemite. That would have been a strange and pointless happenstance.
What matters is that he more or less grew up with it and learned to master it before everybody and their grandmother was there.
That in conjunction with his other lucky happenstance (including genetics) made him who he is.
And he might not be the best of anything but he was great at a sufficient amount of stuff.
Have you ever seen his darkroom? That horizontal enlarger with locally variable light is insane.

Regarding your last paragraph: Finding commonalities, patterns and temporal trends is what much of art history/critique is about. Science and cognition could be said to be nothing but.
So you’d be eschewing that in the name of faux egalitarianism and “peace of mind”, with your “it’s to complex to think about”.
Very few things of interest, is about “getting to the bottom of things”.
It’s about finding interesting and useful observations and things to say about the object of idea.

Edmund Burke was together with a handful of other gentleman philosophers famously one of those who defined, or at least put into words what became the tenets of the discussed period of landscape painting.
But those ideas and notions are part of humankind, culturally and genetically. They where not imported from the moon.
They wax and wane and change according to societal circumstances and material resources.

Same with something like the Japanese aesthetic concepts like wabi-sabi or iki.
We might not have the exact words for them., but we can recognize the ideas and they resonate in deep ways with us (perhaps especially because it puts a word on some “junginan archetype”).

That doesn’t preclude that certain incarnations or constellations of those concepts form a recognizable entity or mental cluster.
That is what we call a school or period in art.

I do not have a problem with Romantic Landscapes. I have problems with the Painterly movement. Monet used a camera to photograph a scene and used the print to aid in making some of his paintings, but to him photography recorded the scene as a model for his paintings. Both were separate. I understand the Painterly movement and Surrealism. I do not like the Painterly movement and I feel that it was a wrong headed attempt to turn photography into painting; two different mediums. While I appreciate Surrealism, I do not care to seek it out.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Helge - AA's darkroom was rather primitive or Spartan even for that era. His biggest prints were commercially printed by a far better equipped pro lab under his direct supervision. But I evaluate art with my eyes, not a philosophy text. I remember walking through the biggest Watkins exhibit I'm aware a number of years ago at SFMMA explaining his compositional strategies to a friend. Museum staff followed me around listening. That because, as a kindred mind LF photographer myself, I recognize what he was doing far better than the "expert" who wrote their accompanying monograph, who was good at all kinds of superficial historical details and the kind of generic philosophic pigeonholing you speak of, but had no ability to think or perceive like Watkins himself did. Another problem with most books about Watkins is that it is really difficult to appreciate the effect of his mammoth plate personal style in small scale repro. It takes something much bigger to lead your eye into the sophistication of the details. A far better monograph, in bigger size, has come out more recently, although it's somewhat too pricey for me to want to collect at my age now. Difficult enough just to set up estate details relative to my own prints.

 

[removed account4]

I do not have a problem with Romantic Landscapes. I have problems with the Painterly movement. Monet used a camera to photograph a scene and used the print to aid in making some of his paintings, but to him photography recorded the scene as a model for his paintings. Both were separate. I understand the Painterly movement and Surrealism. I do not like the Painterly movement and I feel that it was a wrong headed attempt to turn photography into painting; two different mediums. While I appreciate Surrealism, I do not care to seek it out.

what painterly movement are you talking about .. pictorialism ?

 

[Sirius Glass]

All of it. It was an effort to turn a trombone into an automobile or film into a serving platter. Equally impractical and not nonsensical.

 

[removed account4]

All of it. It was an effort to turn a trombone into an automobile or film into a serving platter. Equally impractical and not nonsensical.

I am not sure, still what you are talking about - bromoils and gum prints and carbon prints &c ? using a lens that isn't tack-sharp like a pezval or anastigmatic lens stopped down to f22? I don't think any of the people who were doing any of those things ( or still do those things ) believe they are making a painting or passing anything off as a painting. Maybe more of the handmade / craft based aesthetic seeing there is not the same aesthetic when one exposes film and makes a contact print or enlargement or gets film back from a lab...
can you elaborate a little more ?

 

[Vaughn]

In the series of articles in Camera Craft, Mortensen warns about the "Fuzzy-Wuzzies" (those photographers using soft-focus lenses) for their use of "...essentially non-selective character of diffusion." *

AA prefers a fuzzy image of a sharp concept over a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.
Mortensen seems to have just preferred the fuzzy image of a sharp concept and screw the sharp image altogether.

* Camera Craft 41, March1934, p106-7

 

[Sirius Glass]

I am not sure, still what you are talking about - bromoils and gum prints and carbon prints &c ? using a lens that isn't tack-sharp like a pezval or anastigmatic lens stopped down to f22? I don't think any of the people who were doing any of those things ( or still do those things ) believe they are making a painting or passing anything off as a painting. Maybe more of the handmade / craft based aesthetic seeing there is not the same aesthetic when one exposes film and makes a contact print or enlargement or gets film back from a lab...
can you elaborate a little more ?

I am not interested in the cutting and pasting. I do not care for Surrealism. The focusing is part of composition to I do not have a problem with that. But I do not care for the supernatural creatures such as but not limited so Vampires, Werewolves, Fairies, Elves, Ghosts, Leprechauns, Unicorns and Virgins.

 

[Helge]

Helge - AA's darkroom was rather primitive or Spartan even for that era. His biggest prints were commercially printed by a far better equipped pro lab under his direct supervision.

But I evaluate art with my eyes, not a philosophy text.

But philosophy texts made art and art schools.

In the same way you can’t take a three year old, or a deep rain forrest indian into an art museum and expect them to understand much of the stuff going on; the idea that art should explain itself to a tabula rasa human being (or just someone without a reasonable modicum of schooling in the liberal arts) is obviously nugatory.
Art that is that simple (to be able to fulfill that role) is of little worth.
Most art should have that initial layer in it to some degree though, to speak to all faculties and attention layers of the human mind.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Philosophy, especially in the hands of art schools, ruined art. In the words of Miro, everything has gone downhill since the days of the cave paintings.

Otherwise, I had a friend who made a similar enlarger with a bank of multiple bulbs, each with a rheostat. The exposures were slow, slow, slow. I've seen that video and analogous ones before. Maybe that's why AA did well - basically a Pleistocene cave with stone age darkroom gear.

 

[Helge]

Philosophy, especially in the hands of art schools, ruined art. In the words of Miro, everything has gone downhill since the days of the cave paintings.

Otherwise, I had a friend who made a similar enlarger with a bank of multiple bulbs, each with a rheostat. The exposures were slow, slow, slow. I've seen that video and analogous ones before. Maybe that's why AA did well - basically a Pleistocene cave with stone age darkroom gear.

I think you’d have a hard time finding a cave painter who wasn’t also some kind of philosopher.
If philosophy ruined art, then being ruined is the natural state of art.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I need a darkroom like that! Half a day to get the exposure right sound like me.