William Mortensen

One thing to bear in mind considering Mortensen's work was its diversity; he switched easily and often between very flattering commercial portraiture and glamour to risque nudes to landscape, historical allegory, theatrical character studies, sappy story-telling, and rather biting social commentary, (remember "Human Relations, 1932"?)



He also represented Pictorialism in a rather late stage, when the effect was more likely to be from retouching or printing through a texture screen or diffuser than from using a soft lens at the time of the original exposure or using an alternative process, which dominated Pictorialism during the earlier Linked Ring and Photo-Secession years.

It seems the most obvious separation between his approach to the medium and Adams' was Mortensen's eagerness to twist and bend and manipulate any part of the process to achieve his ends. Adams found something pure and almost sacred in the "unadulterated" print.

And Adams' style of "Straight" photography has fallen far out of fashion in the current avant-garde art-photography circles, almost as much as Mortensen did a few decades earlier.

I think I'll stick with my own style of "Straight Pictorialism".

I think I have almost all of the Mortensen books, save one or two and a couple of editions of more than one title. He was more of a photo illustrator really and at that time that was not a high brow term for "artist" by any stretch. Perhaps that was in some part the rub between himself and the Carmel gang.

In some of his books I would note that he states thing that today would be considered highly subjective as his opinions on these artistic matters were abject fact. That would be about the only fault I would find in his works. He was definitely an artist. That's for sure and a big influence on me as I learned this craft.
Just my two cents.
MW

Clearly Mortensen could be seen as a "Post Modern" photographer in regards to current work. His attitude was the negative is merely an intermediary step to the finished and highly manipulated print. I've talked to people who knew him and he was more like a medieval alchemist than photographer. I'm sure he cultivated that image to great business effect. He also had a huge and sweeping sense of the romantic/tragic in terms of subject matter. That was in vogue in Hollywood circles during the 20's and 30's as well. 20 some odd years ago, I saw an ad in Shutterbug selling a 16mm film about Mortensen narrated by actor and art critic Vincent Price. It was $50 bucks American, but I was too poor to buy it. Wish I had! I've never seen nor heard of this film since, but I bet it had a lot of insight into Mortensen's work.

rusty71 said:

I saw an ad in Shutterbug selling a 16mm film about Mortensen narrated by actor and art critic Vincent Price. It was $50 bucks American, but I was too poor to buy it. Wish I had! I've never seen nor heard of this film since, but I bet it had a lot of insight into Mortensen's work.

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Do you mean this one that Smieglitz referred to? http://www.pictorialism.com/tapem.html I sent him an email but got no reply :-(

"If you let other people's vision get between the world and your own,you will achieve that extremely common and worthless thing, a pictorial photograph. But if you keep your vision clear. you may make something which is at least a photograph, which has a life of it's own,as a tree or a matchbox has a life of it's own." - Paul Strand


Just thought to share this quote

Strand did and said many great things, but unless this quote has been taken out of context it is surely nonsense. It implies that all pictorialists have no personal vision and steal their ideas from others.

I don't find it so nonsensical, myself. I can easily imagine it coming long after the pictorialists' dominance had ended; say into the 1960's. By that time, attitudes toward pictorialism had crystalized. The quote expresses quite well the point of view that was common when I was an undergraduate. Pictorialism and pictorialists were scorned and reviled. You could say nothing that was harsh enough for them.

I can well believe that it was said, but it's still narrow minded nonsense.

I think if you read the Strand quote closely, it is quite useful. Just set aside the word 'pictorial' for a second. What he is saying is that the minute you create a photograph in a way that you think someone else would make the same photograph, you are allowing an intermediary idea to muddle your vision. At the time he wrote this quote, that would be quite an accurate criticism for a lot of so-called 'Pictorial Photography'. People were churning out loads of stuff that had nothing to do with their own vision, and everything to do with what the Salon and Pictorial movements said was photographically appropriate. Ironically, the modernist movement begun by Strand, Weston, Adams, Stieglitz and others fell victim to the same problem. Their heirs, in many instances, are looking at, and recording, with the same 'vision' that Ansel or Edward would have used. When they made their photographs, this vision was fresh and exciting. Copying their same visual grammar today allows the same notion of an externally mediating concept to stand between the world and the artist's individual take on that world. Which is why showing a gallery owner a beautifully zoned and toned image of Bridalveil Falls in Yosemite is likely to be greeted with a yawn.

I completely agree with you Clay: if a photographer is seeing the world through someone else's eyes then that's a problem. It's the sweeping dismissal of a whole genre of photography that irritates me.

But, remember, each era has its own peculiar contextual orientations, as does ours. Saying it today might be evidence of narrow minded nonsense, but in another time, your having said that it is could just as well be considered to be lacking in conviction, brilliant, stupid, wishy-washy, correct, hopelessly misguided or almost anything else. Today, maybe you are "right", but as perspectives change, you are going to be wrong, or just forgotten.

Our peculiar aesthetic bias today doesn't look with favor on the ideological blinders imposed by f/64 and friends, even though I think many of us value the work they did. Perhaps another time will value Strand's ideological perspective, or trash it completely, or assign it to irrelevance; we don't know. Fashions come and go. Intellectual fashions change just as much as those in apparel or interior design, but we are not often as aware of it.

It seems more important, at least to me, not to judge those perspectives as much as to try to understand them and the contexts that produce them. Unless we can accept them without having to agree or disagree with them, how can we possibly hope to understand our own biases and the usually invisible assumptions that lie beneath them?

Personally, we may regret that Mortensen was treated so badly both in his time and in the contemporaneous revision of history. We may regret that persons whom we may admire for other reasons could have acted in ways we find unbecoming.

Then again, I suppose our inability to separate ourselves from the battles is part of what drives the whole thing. Anyway, it is fun to watch the drama.

No doubt that the quote was unfairly dismissive of an entire genre of photography. Like all true-believers, Strand and Weston and Adams spent a lot of time defining themselves by what they were not, and maybe not as much time articulating what they really were. There was quite a lot of beautiful work that he tars with the pictorialist brush. If you ever run across a copy of the book "Impressionist Camera: Pictorial Photography in Europe, 1888-1918" pick it up. There was an amazing amount of very creative work from that era that has survived the test of time.

Ian Leake said:

I completely agree with you Clay: if a photographer is seeing the world through someone else's eyes then that's a problem. It's the sweeping dismissal of a whole genre of photography that irritates me.

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clay said:

If you ever run across a copy of the book "Impressionist Camera: Pictorial Photography in Europe, 1888-1918" pick it up.

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I wish people would stop recommending books - Amazon are making a fortune out of me! (That translates as: thanks Clay, my one-click order is on the way.)

ilya1963 said:

"If you let other people's vision get between the world and your own,you will achieve that extremely common and worthless thing, a pictorial photograph. But if you keep your vision clear. you may make something which is at least a photograph, which has a life of it's own,as a tree or a matchbox has a life of it's own." - Paul Strand


Just thought to share this quote

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Strand is one of my favorite photographers, but this was an incredibly arrogant thing to say.

One thing that nobody's mentioned here is the use of the term "pictorial". HE DOES NOT SAY "PICTORIALIST".

What I think he is talking about here is not necessarily a school or movement in photography, but very simply, representations of things seen with a standardized vision. Pictures of things are one thing, photographs might be something else. Most images that people make are footnotes to other images that WE have seen. Note, that I am here including myself as well, in potential. I am perfectly capable of applying formulaic structural organization to what's in front of the camera.

In this respect, I really don't think that Strand's comment is at all disrespectful of anyone in particular. It is simply encouragement to open MY eyes. Thanks Paul, I needed that.

I think that the way this comment is being interpreted has been set up by the discussion so far. That is, I think that meaning has been added to the comment that simply was not there to begin with. In order to verify it one way or the other, we would need to see the comment in its original context, not just OUR context.

It is not really fair to Mr. Strand.

" Above all , look at the things around you , the immediate world around you . If you are alive , it will mean something to you, and if you care enough about photography, and if you know how to use it, you will want to photograph that meaningfulness. If you let other people's vision get between the world and your own , you will achieve that extremely common and worthless thing, a pictorial photograph. But if you keep your vision clear , you may make something which is at least a photograph, which has a life of it's own , as a tree or a matchbox has a life of it's own"- Paul Strand British Journal of Photography, Oct 5, 1923

Larry , Larry ... You are too smart for me , I am just a car salesman

Here is what Mortensen said in 1938 , which I thought was a jab

" Glossy stock is apt to be associated in the mind with very crass and crude commercial work. But it has definite pictorial uses. Glossy paper is demanded , for example , by certain sorts of crisp and brilliant material - such material as that exploited by "F-64" group and other so-called photographic "purist".

This whole period should be more known , I wish someone could recommend a book that would go in depth of this public battle...It is fascinating to me , because I do and love both of this styles...

ILYA

ilya1963 said:

"

This whole period should be more known , I wish someone could recommend a book that would go in depth of this public battle...It is fascinating to me , because I do and love both of this styles...

ILYA

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al, et Ilya,

Too bad I ain't gonna need a car anytime soon. I'd buy it from you! There was a shop out back of our building in the lawless town of Edison, WA, where a couple of Russian guys were building muscle cars to send to Russia to support mom, who still lived there. Lots of activity at night cars coming in and going out. hmmm. the guy who owned the property, their landlord, referred to them as "the commies". I really don't think they were commies.

We need to remember, I think, that well, which of us ever agrees with the other? Which member of your family is "normal" - I ask this and the answer most often received is "me". Difference is really the norm. Each of us has our opinions, as much as we'd like to be able to hold ourselves up as objective. We're not. It's a matter of definition, of what we are if we succeed in stripping away even a few of the illusions. There are more than 6.8 billion of us on this planet right now, and each of us thinks ourself the center of the universe. Is it any wonder that Bill Mortensen, St. Paul Strand, and Anselmo Adams, et al could not agree? And who are we to judge them? Aren't we just as focused on our own limited screens as they were? It's enough to make you just take pics of birdies, like Elliott Porter did. Hey, hey oughta my way!

I just hope that in my mad rush to control the world, that I can step back and laugh at myself sometimes. Art ideologies were really in, back in their time. Ansel's manifesto was not titled as such, and Clement Greenberg took over that function for the AbEx bunch, but that level of Manifest Destiny in the arts wasn't done by the time the f/64 guys and Mortensen locked horns. By god, it was SERIOUS!!! It mattered, whatever your philosophy. It was as important as anything. As Good vs. Evil. They were that identified. We could look at ourselves. Are we? What is it that we care that much about?

As much as I've read in the forums or seen in the world around me now, I just don't see it. I don't see that kind of commitment to your being wrong, or my being right, like they had then. If we consider the moral weights of the various ideas of what is aesthetically correct or incorrect, it seems to me that the idea itself is in grave danger of losing its grip. The weights are light, the battles halfhearted. At the moment, there seem to be very few marker buoys and a lot of swimmers.

I wonder how you all deal with this. So many people doing it. So little that hasn't been done. So many avenues. No way to cope with the million or so dimensions. Mortensen, Adams, et al couldn't agree, which really seems pretty natural; but at least they had an idea what the argument was about. It was so much simpler then. It was possible to believe in something without affectation, to believe in a way that seemed more like certainty and without having to force it as we see in fundamentalist religionists who want certainty so bad they will die for it. Then, you could just say it, and although someone might not agree with you, at least they would take you seriously without your blowing yourself up.

It was possible to photograph your garden and not title the picture "sorry, another flower".

Oh, I do go on.

"By god, it was SERIOUS!!! It mattered, whatever your philosophy. It was as important as anything. As Good vs.. Evil. They were that identified. We could look at ourselves. Are we? What is it that we care that much about?"
_______________
I don't know , I have been a by-stander in some heated and strong discussions about analog vs.. digital and even now here if you ask a technical question about digital it seem to be a taboo, or you get - " we do not discuss it here " and you get directed to another website

The difference, I think , is that there is no strong figures representing those camps , the trend seem to be moved more by manufacturers rather then artists...

ILYA

ilya1963 said:

The difference, I think , is that there is no strong figures representing those camps , the trend seem to be moved more by manufacturers rather then artists...

ILYA

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I think you are right. Commercial domination of what has always been in the province of philosophy, with its extensions into all aspects of human life is disgusting. That's me speaking. On our part, as humans, our allowing this to happen is unconscionable. It amounts to giving up on being human, succumbing to the lowest common denominator, to living as beasts. If you look at it on the largest scale, the reduction of the planet to the ravages of exploitation on the one hand and as a waste dump, on the other, we have left humanity behind and have joined the rodents in fouling our own nest.

As much as I might deplore the behavior of individuals in the dispute that broke photography apart in the 20th C. I have to believe that they were better than what we see now. They cared, and what they cared about had some significance beyond base pettiness.

Well, digital vs analog aside, the Leica does feel good in the hand.

Well, digital vs analog aside, the Leica does feel good in the hand

But not like a Contax

Humourous Regards
Bill

have not touched anything but 8x10 in the last 5 years myself , between 1500- 2000 negs a year ... it's been a strange trip indeed...i have a stack of prints that would blow you away...

ilya1963 said:

have not touched anything but 8x10 in the last 5 years myself , between 1500- 2000 negs a year ... it's been a strange trip indeed...i have a stack of prints that would blow you away...

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Will you share some with us?

ilya1963 said:

have not touched anything but 8x10 in the last 5 years myself , between 1500- 2000 negs a year ... it's been a strange trip indeed...i have a stack of prints that would blow you away...

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I'd better get a job selling cars, if that's what it takes to do that!

I need your help!
I am trying to upload an image , I have scanned 5 times and every time it is telling me my size is too big, first time someone told me that,

I finally , I think found a proper setting , but now it's telling me my que is full with five images allowed a day , how do I remove them from there so i could try again ...

ILYA

AGHHHHH

Perhaps your images "blew away" the APUG uploading software, huh?

:>)

Gene