Your pick for most underrated and most overrated photographer

[BradS]

Not to take anything away from his landscapes, but AA's portraits are dismal.
And off the top of my mind, I think Stephen Shore is overrated.

Funny. I think Stephen Shore is very much underrated.

 

[Arthurwg]

Stephen Shore is living proof that if you take enough pictures your bound to get a few good ones. I do like his pictures of the Roman countryside, however. As for AA, I've come to believe that he was actually a romantic Pictorialist, rather that the F64 realist he believed himself to be. Let's face it, he was a great manipulator.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I was waiting for the inevitable back and forth. Since AA seems to be the lightning rod most people are familiar with, let me use him to point out a basic distinction in photographic philosophy, which I think I can objectively do because I'm not a disciple of his own style, though it's inevitable from time to time that some scene might come out similarly. In you study his work, particularly having lived amidst much of those settings yourself, and have read his own words about all this, what he was attempting to do was communicate his own impression of the light as best he could, which necessarily involved certain redistributions of emphasis and contrast and texture and so forth in the darkroom, using common tools like dodging and burning, along with contrast filters in the first place, at the time of the shot. Never mind all the methodology lingo like Zone System. But it was all for sake of bringing out something he felt he was actually witnessing. Yeah, maybe that went over the top theatrically at times. But in principle, it wasn't a substitution of what was there employing utterly foreign ingredients like Lik so clumsily does. Whole different ballgame. One honors the subject matter, the other deliberately abuses it.

 

[Arthurwg]

I'm not saying I don't love Ansel. I do. Indeed, I also have a book of his color photos, which are none too shabby. But you say his pictures were something "he was actually witnessing." I think it was more like something he was actually " imagining." But lucky you to live there.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Switch of gears - Stephen Shore certainly wasn't the best camera operator, and wasn't a particularly good printer (his enlargements from 8x10 film were done by a pro lab). But he was quite skilled at turning an otherwise obnoxious idiosyncrasy of the then extant version of Vericolor L color neg film to his advantage. If you peruse his famous book, Uncommon Places, or look at actual prints from those negatives, nearly every single shot has the same color strategy. He takes the leaning of all warmish yellow or tan tones toward pumpkin orange, and plays it against the deliberate clash of the "poison green" cyan-infected green inherent to that particular film and most other CN films of the era. A clash occurs when two noxious hues exist in parallel proportion, either via saturation or area in the composition. But what Shore did so well, and what he himself likened to the correct tension of the line when fly-fishing, which he also enjoyed, was to use those clashy hues in very intelligent disproportion. Sometimes blue substituted for poison green. But just study his pictures and you'll see. There was no dumb luck to it; he knew exactly what he was doing. Not personally my cup of tea, but I do find some of his images quite iconic for that particular era.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Arthur - well, if he was trying to bring out the dramatic scale of Half Dome against the sky, as well as bring out the textural interest in its face, and discovered early on that a red filter did that with panchromatic film, well then, a black sky just comes with the territory, doesn't it? Call it collateral damage, or the learning curve in a drama class. But I don't find it over the top like some of Barnbaum's baroque effects addicted to Farmer's Reducer. Either way, there's an attempt to highlight or accentuate something actually present. Where one draws the line is a more complicated topic. PH Emerson thought that any form of dodging or burning of the print was a heinous sin; but he allowed for spotting out annoying little reflections in the print.
But there is simply no way somebody can tell me that AA didn't have tremendous respect for extant light itself. The chase to capture that was behind his whole ZS mentality to begin with.
Do I think of him as a great printmaker? No. But he did get from Point A to B quite successfully relative to his own objectives. Having done hundreds of trips into the high Sierra myself, and having grown up there, I can distinctly recognize a kind of "authority" or authoritative respect he had for that kind of lighting. Ironically, it's his cash cow "Moonrise" there in your state that I find too theatrical. I've traveled a lot in the Southwest too. But certainly nothing was faked, even if enhanced. The lighting of the foreground was real, not dubbed in afterwards. The moon was truly rising over that scene. It wasn't pasted on huge IN FRONT of trees on the horizon like one of Lik's kindergarten abominations.

 

[Pieter12]

I believe the gentleman is still alive.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Still doing occasional interviews and workshops, I think.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

Funny. I think Stephen Shore is very much underrated.

Maybe not underrated as much as misunderstood.

There is an existential quality about his photograph that takes a while to grasp. The ones in "Uncommon Places" - the series of his I know best - also manage the rare feat of being both very spontaneous and extremely formal.

And the way he manages colour within the frame is admirable, and totally beyond me. Every time I look at how colour is mastered and displayed in his photographs, or in those of Alex Webb, I go back to black & white because I know I'm not there yet.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

Switch of gears - Stephen Shore certainly wasn't the best camera operator, and wasn't a particularly good printer (his enlargements from 8x10 film were done by a pro lab). But he was quite skilled at turning an otherwise obnoxious idiosyncrasy of the then extant version of Vericolor L color neg film to his advantage. If you peruse his famous book, Uncommon Places, or look at actual prints from those negatives, nearly every single shot has the same color strategy. He takes the leaning of all warmish yellow or tan tones toward pumpkin orange, and plays it against the deliberate clash of the "poison green" cyan-infected green inherent to that particular film and most other CN films of the era. A clash occurs when two noxious hues exist in parallel proportion, either via saturation or area in the composition. But what Shore did so well, and what he himself likened to the correct tension of the line when fly-fishing, which he also enjoyed, was to use those clashy hues in very intelligent disproportion. Sometimes blue substituted for poison green. But just study his pictures and you'll see. There was no dumb luck to it; he knew exactly what he was doing. Not personally my cup of tea, but I do find some of his images quite iconic for that particular era.

This explains so well what I like about his photography - the conjunction of art, craftsmanship, imagination intelligence, and sensitivity. And the strange emotions that they inspire by being both too natural (the banality, the commonness of the subject) and yet slightly unnatural (the colour scheme).

 

[Alex Benjamin]

As far as the general public is concerned, I'd put photojournalists as a group in the underrated category. There is some great visual storytelling going on these days but little of it is appreciated as it should, even when published (digitally or otherwise) in mainstream media outlets.

I have boundless admiration for photographers who travel all over, spend weeks, months within communities, trying to understand the people, understand what's going on, what the story is, and bring it in a visual manner to the public.

 

[logan2z]

Let me just say that this thread has turned out to be very interesting and full of thought-provoking posts - despite its rocky start. No bruises or bloody noses yet Keep it coming!

 

[alanrockwood]

Overrated = Ansel Adams
Underrated = Ansel Adams

All depends on who you talk to, which photographs you've seen, and not the least of which ... how many.

The perfect answer. I was going to post something similar, but now I don't have to.

 

[alanrockwood]

Where does Weegee fit in the pantheon of Best/Worst photographers?

 

[logan2z]

I have boundless admiration for photographers who travel all over, spend weeks, months within communities, trying to understand the people, understand what's going on, what the story is, and bring it in a visual manner to the public.

I do as well. And one such photographer whom I consider underappreciated is William Gedney. He did some excellent photojournalistic work before his untimely death at the age of 57.

 

[Wayne]

I play this same over/under game with my friends using guitar players.

Most underrated: Alvin Lee
Most overrated: Eddie Van Halen

 

[Nitroplait]

Wow! I love when someone invites me to be negative on the internet. Then I don't feel as bad as when I trash someone of my own free will. Now I can say; " Logan2z asked for it"

Overrated. Peter Turnley: His self promoting writings are completely over the top and make me sick. He's desperately trying to place himself with the greats of Magnum, and the like, by writing himself into the narrative of the first half of last century, when in fact his own photographic work stems from the 1980's and onwards - and is emulating their work, but 50 years later.

What he says and what he shows is a sirupy-Hollywood-movie-banal and everything I see from him is a sorry attempt to please.

Underrated: Blake Andrews - Here's a great mind and great photographer. See his mind boggling work on Instagram @swerdnaekalb and check out his excellent blog with photographer interviews both famous and unknown.

 

[George Mann]

Most underrated: Alvin Lee
Most overrated: Eddie Van Halen

And Billy Gibbons?

 

[Arthurwg]

And Billy Gibbons?

Same three chords.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

Overrated. Peter Turnley: His self promoting writings are completely over the top and make me sick. He's desperately trying to place himself with the greats of Magnum, and the like, by writing himself into the narrative of the first half of last century, when in fact his own photographic work stems from the 1980's and onwards - and is emulating their work, but 50 years later.

What he says and what he shows is a sirupy-Hollywood-movie-banal and everything I see from him is a sorry attempt to please.

He's an interesting study about what makes, or doesn't make, a good photo essay. His interest in people seem genuine enough (I don't know the guy, so I'll be angelic and not assume otherwise). But therein lies the problem. His various photo essays - I'm looking at the "Refugees" series - are far from lacking photographic qualities. Part of what's missing to make them truly meaningful is context. The approach is essentially portraits, with very little surrounding, as if facial expression in itself, especially if "dramatic", is sufficient to convey meaning about what these people are living.

Not saying that approach can't work. It can, and brilliantly, but you need both an amazing sense of composition and a strong sense of empathy for it to happen. That's the other thing missing, empathy - maybe not his (again, don't know the guy), but the ability to make your camera empathetic. One doesn't feel he has spent time with them (he may have, one just doesn't the feeling that he knows them), but rather that he's passing by and is arrested by something dramatic - not necessarily a bad thing but, in my mind, it doesn't fully carry the meaning he's trying to convey.

Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" comes to mind as the perfect example of that combination, composition and empathy. I would also point to Sebastiao Salgado's work in the genre - migrants, refugees - as being much more effective and meaningful. You feel in his portraits of poor children that he has talked with each and everyone of them.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

Forgot to add:

70s prog rock is way underrated.

There, I said it. Burn me in Hell.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

As far as the general public is concerned, I'd put photojournalists as a group in the underrated category. There is some great visual storytelling going on these days but little of it is appreciated as it should, even when published (digitally or otherwise) in mainstream media outlets.

I have boundless admiration for photographers who travel all over, spend weeks, months within communities, trying to understand the people, understand what's going on, what the story is, and bring it in a visual manner to the public.

The NY Times Album section has some great photojournalism and storytelling on a regular basis, often by unknown photographers.

 

[MattKing]

Forgot to add:

70s prog rock is way underrated.

There, I said it. Burn me in Hell.

If you have some playing now, you may already be there .

 

[MattKing]

Where does Weegee fit in the pantheon of Best/Worst photographers?

In the row behind, with IR bulbs in his flash gun..

 

[Wayne]

And Billy Gibbons?

Doesn't deserve either. Unremarkably just fine.