Your pick for most underrated and most overrated photographer

[shutterlight]

IMO, Meyerowitz is a much better talker/self promoter than photographer. He rode the coattails of people like Garry Winogrand and Robert Frank but his street work wasn't in the same league. Nothing particularly special about his LF work either. His reputation as one of the greats isn't really deserved IMO.

YES.

 

[removed account4]

I don’t know much about Lik’s background and other photographs so whatever. But if the one Matt linked to was millions of dollars at some point I feel kind of bad for people like Bruce Barnbaum who did all those slot canyon photographs decades ago.

we all stand on the shoulders of giants, even if the giants are unknown...

Hahahaha

I've got my little box of wax and saving the good stuff for myself ..

Have a great new year michael_r !
Fran k.

 

[Wayne]

OK, two rules.

DREW
I never said your opinion doesn't matter but you certainly have put me in my place ! LOL
some people like Velvis's who am I to tell them they have no taste because I might not appreciate them, or
because my rug doesn't have resale value ? what does resale value have to do with whether something is "good" or not ?
it doesn't ... no, taste doesn't matter, and I am participating in this tread ( or is it thread ? ) because im not an art snob like you ( it seems ? ) and it is too. bad because there is a lot of "art" out there that maybe gagossian wouldn't sell for $100.000 but it is not bad.
FAUX-tographs? seems like sour grapes whenever I see that, and its sad.

I don't have a Napoleon complex DREW and I think it is kind of funny that you have to use insults to get your point across
because your taste is so much better.

Sorry for the short response but I have to get back to my crop of dental floss.
Frank

How DARE you! Now you are going to be called one of those people like you!

(Just be damn glad you weren't called someone like me, like I was!)

 

[removed account4]

OK, two rules.



How DARE you! Now you are going to be called one of those people like you!

(Just be damn glad you weren't called someone like me, like I was!)

thanks Wayne ! naah. like you is fine too

I just hope DREW realizes it really doesn't matter to me. good taste or bad.

Have a great 2021!
John

 

[Vilk]

i find ansel adams to be overrated, especially his dated method of shooting. could be a hot take, but it's mine.

dint want to be the first to say it

 

[logan2z]

I have never seen Baltz's work in person, so I can't really judge the print quality. I really like his work as well as Adams, but Wessel falls a bit flat for me. And that includes his prints--the few I've seen are very flat.

They are flat, and I don't think that always worked that well. FWIW, I think his printing style was an attempt to replicate the bright California light while retaining openness in the shadows.

 

[logan2z]

Peter Lik. I am lost for words.

That's strange, I immediately came up with a four-letter one.

 

[Wayne]

dint want to be the first to say it

I think he is just overexposed. Seriously. When you see it or imitations of it time after time, year after year, decade after decade, it just loses its effect. I inhaled everything he did when I was younger, and it was certainly one of the reasons I started large format. But I eventually lost interest and didn't look at his work for many years. When I went back later and looked again I saw that he really was the master at what he did best. (and it wasn't portraits)

 

[DREW WILEY]

Here's what fun anecdotally about slot canyon shots. That one Lik claimed he got a over a million bucks for (the amount seemed to go up each time he claimed the sale) was a staged black and white shot with someone throwing dust in the air, and afterwards totally colored red. There is no evidence anywhere that he EVER sold ANYTHING remotely around that kind of price. It an unsubstantiated claim made by himself on his own website, with zero collaborating sales evidence. Easy to do if the buyer "remained secret". If you went to one of his galleries tomorrow and offered $4000 dollars for the same thing, they'd probably take it, but even that would be a ridiculous price for an insultingly corny mono-colorized piece like that. Four bucks would be more realistic, and then just for target practice.

As far as Barnbaum goes, I'm upset with him for publicizing these places and stampeding herds of photographers into them ever since, ruining the experience. Now web and GPS data are ruining all kinds of places. But eminent photographers like Eliot Porter did canyon work long before, and in black and white, clear back to Timothy O' Sullivan on the Powell expedition. If one hunts around, there are still slots one can have all to themselves. But it's become a cliche genre.

 

[wyofilm]

I think he is just overexposed. Seriously. When you see it or imitations of it time after time, year after year, decade after decade, it just loses its effect. I inhaled everything he did when I was younger, and it was certainly one of the reasons I started large format. But I eventually lost interest and didn't look at his work for many years. When I went back later and looked again I saw that he really was the master at what he did best. (and it wasn't portraits)

The world is really small now. We've seen it all or at least a lot of it. The world must have been blown away when AA's work came out. The west was revealed to the world.

 

[Vilk]

what he did best

this "what" may just be the heart of the matter... a "what" that mattered for a limited time to a geographically-limited cultural fringe... the river picked a different bed, followed wars, social change, riots loud and quiet, took us from cartier-bressons of the 30s through franks and winogrands, to nachtweys and salgados, with those rare poetic flash floods of larrains, pellegrins... matters of life and death, disguised as aesthetic... no moonrise in sight on that trail

ok, let me try, most underrated? depardon - his errance alone can turn about a life...

 

[DREW WILEY]

Some of you guy obviously didn't grow up just a few miles from Yosemite like I did. I really admire AA's sensitivity to the light in the Sierras because I recognize it far better than most. But he certainly wasn't the first great photographer working with that genre, or even necessarily the best. Want to talk about an under-rated photographer (even though famous) - take a hard look at Carleton Watkins' mammoth plate work. One of the very few true abstract constructionist photographers well before that terminology ever existed, well before Sheeler - and he did it with natural themes including Yosemite. Most of his sales were rather boring stereopticon shots, just like most of AA's income was from routine commercial work. But those mammoth plates had a more personal character. Sadly, few remain because most were destroyed in the 1906 SF earthquake and fire, just a day before the whole collection was due to be delivered to the purchaser, Stanford University. He died broke in an insane asylum.

E. Muybridge was also in Yosemite before AA. The most stunning photo I've ever seen of El Capitan was a mammoth plate print of his own - pale against a white sky - enormous sense of scale. Totally different style than AA. There were several other highly competent practitioners there before AA. My own very elderly babysitter when I was an infant was allegedly the first white woman ever there, when she was a little girl. In those old tintypes and ambrotypes there were still bark Indians huts in view, with their inhabitants completely unclothed. Once tourism became a realistic topic, all that immediately changed!

 

[AnselMortensen]

Most over-exposed: Cindy Sherman , Annie Liebowitz
Most under-appreciated: Arthur Tress

 

[DREW WILEY]

Although I never even saw an actual AA print until I was exhibiting my own color prints almost in his back yard there in Carmel, I did subsequently have the opportunity to see quite a number of his prints up close. Most people see only a few classic images over and over again in published fashion, and mostly the more dramatically contrasty or theatrical ones, for lack of a better term. But he had a tremendous capacity for sensitive poetic expression that is overlooked by those who, as you imply, have come to think of this as just an easily cloned genre or zone system cult or whatever. Even in his own heyday, quite a few commercially-minded photographers despised him as "that rocks and trees guy", even though he was a highly competent and successful commercial photographer himself.

Eliot Porter is another person who people now tend to devalue just because so much of his subject matter has been nominally copied, though seldom equalled for nuance. Now it's all about some knot-head "its the subject which counts" mentality, whatever that means. I deliberately try to keep my own prints nuanced and layered rather than in your face like a pie or advertising photo. The objective is to keep rewarding the viewer over and over again, year after year. Any "subject" too accessible is likely to be shallow. But that's the whole point of the advertising "gotcha" mentality - grab you attention instantly; after that, who cares.

I've never personally been to Precipice Lake because it's actually on a popular major trail. I've always tended to be an off-trail type, and one of the last holy grail sanctuaries I've gotten into in recent years, while I still can, was several off-trail divides behind that area, without any evidence of human presence at all, though climbers do sometimes get in there. My 70's are getting to be quite a challenge in terms of both including LF gear in my pack and still hoping to do a certain amount of off-trail travel. More secluded trails in combination with somewhat less rugged off-trail terrain might be my only way forward. That's what I found in the northern Wind River range for a couple weeks last year; and some of those trails were pretty darn rough and unmaintained themselves. More moose than people.

 

[Pieter12]

Pie can be nuanced.

 

[DREW WILEY]

What amazes me about the pie-fight slapstick Three Stooges genre which as kids we thought was meant for us, is how layered with political and social satire those films were in their own time, and therefore once wildly appealed to adult audiences too. Even more so with WC Fields' antics. Nuanced pies for sure.

 

[Deleted member 88956]

Regarding AA I am both and have frequently brought up the greatest disservice to his legacy in the "400 photographs" and for at least two reasons. Print quality being sub par for a photo book and shear quantity exposing repeat subjects. While the former can be overlooked due to much better options available, the latter is near impossible not to have a lasting negative impact on how one sees his work.

My favorites of his are almost none of the always talked about, seemingly always on display in all kinds of forms. I really wish AA' Estate would have exercised far more control over what is being done to and with Ansel's images. Too late for that though and I don't blame anyone who sees nothing spectacular as it has become almost impossible to see what has not been seen. With some effort however, there are still few pieces to be found and truely appreciated. Start with ereasing all memories of the moon and el capitan.

 

[DREW WILEY]

His very best El Cap picture in my opinion has been published only once, and I've seen an original print of it displayed only once. Even though I've driven right past Yosemite Valley at least a hundred times commuting from east side of the Sierra backpacking trips back to my ranch on the other side of the range, I've taken only about six shots in the Valley itself. One of them was a unique 4x5 shots taken from a platform I chiseled off the top of a giant ice cone directly below Horsetails Falls using an ice axe, a dangerous spot under such conditions. I reprinted it a couple months ago. I'm quite certain nobody has ever taken a similar shot. My nephew wanted to go there to plan his next route up the rock. He climbed El Cap at least 150 times, using only the very most difficult routes. Most of my own experience in the Park per se involved backcountry hikes. One can walk a week without seeing another person in certain sectors of Yosemite high country. The Valley itself is only 8% of the official area, which itself is just a slice of the much greater whole of the high Sierra.

Several times I've accidentally stumbled right onto the exact spot where AA took a high country shot decades before me. But it's amazing how different I see things from the very same tripod position, even in similar weather and lighting. One such instance in the upper reaches of the South Fork of the Kings River, I glanced a different angle from one of his famous early shots, and thought to myself, how the heck did he miss thaaaat? Totally different shot from the same conspicuous rock platform, about the only dry spot around there where the view wasn't blocked by trees. On a more recent trip I stumbled smack onto where he had taken a couple of classic shots in the upper Lyell Fork of the Merced, a lovely off-trail area with no people around anywhere. Again, there were only so many options to place a tripod unimpeded. But the lighting was totally different than the two times he had been there in his earlier years, and my shots taken even in the same direction have a totally different feel - very high key and atmospheric rather than dark and brooding like his. I don't know which I like better, maybe mine. But I can't afford one of his prints of that spot anyway, so that pretty much settles it.

 

[MattKing]

I like Cindy Sherman, but I believe she is more of an artist that uses photography than a photographer whose work constitutes art.
Stephen Shore and Jeff Wall are similar, although Jeff Wall's early backlit Cibachromes are photographically extra-ordinary.
Cartier-Bresson is interesting. I would have said he suffers from diminution through over-exposure (similar to Ansel Adams) until I actually saw an exhibition of original prints.
Even though Cartier-Bresson didn't make those prints himself, he supervised them, and seeing those fascinating, surprisingly small, powerful prints, and thinking about how they captured the attention of so many once they were published, made me realize how relatively unimportant being "highly rated" really is.
If there is a "delayed recognition" category, how about Fred Herzog?
(the Kodachrome lovers here will love Fred Herzog)
https://www.equinoxgallery.com/our-artists/fred-herzog/

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

This is still my favourite “El Cap”
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/262578

That's also one of my favourites. I believe he shot that on Polaroid Type55.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Yeah. It has been a while since I’ve read about it but I think that morning he did a bunch of exposures of that scene on regular and Polaroid film and one of the Polaroids ended up being best shot.

I'll have to check his Making of 40 Photographs. I believe this one is in it. He used the Type 55 negative for the print.

 

[macfred]

I've got my little box of wax and saving the good stuff for myself ..
Fran k.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Let's look at the conversation from a somewhat different angle. Generally under a like or dislike heading like this, we're comparing a variety of individuals who in one way or another inevitably get sifted in relation to the fine arts market and similar public display venues including museums, fine art auctions etc. involving a degree of general recognition. With people like Kinkade and Lik, you're dealing with an entirely different category of self-enclosed marketing to their own fan base, with zero recognition outside of that temporary circle. They aren't anywhere on the radar. I remember having these names momentarily brought up among a few museum folk around my own dinner table as the object of crude jokes using expletives I can't repeat here. By comparison, I'm rather gentle in my own statement of opinion. Yes, it's all about taste. Some people also think that a greasy burger from Jack in the Box is edible food. I don't. But at least they don't go around claiming it's filet mignon and charging those kinds of prices.

Art provides aesthetic, even spiritual feelings to the viewer. It is by definition, art. You or I might not think a particular piece or artist is for us. But that doesn't make it less so as art. Otherwise, why stop at Lik's over-the-top saturation? You get into no-win arguments like black and white photos are the only real photography,. Color is too gaudy. Or Kinkade just appeals to the religious. Do we burn all the Middle Ages art where 90% were scenes from the bible? Is that not art too? Should we melt down David?

 

[DREW WILEY]

I am primarily a color photographer, Alan. The only time I ever shared a major exhibition with AA, every one of my own prints was in color, and not one of them resembled a postcard image, or even resembled his own scenes. I move in a realm of perceiving modulated color, and not a "colorized" world. Less is more. It's just like your taste buds - hence my analogy to images which are simply all sugar - after awhile you can't taste anything. Color composition needs balance and relationship to be effective - saturated colors in relation to neutrals, and not just color volume or "noise". Just study some of those great colorists in art history - there was balance, sophistication. I even have a set of true hand-ground pigments equivalent to what Renaissance painters used, using ingredient which can't be bought in more than maybe two or three art stores in the entire world. I inherited them from my aunt, who was both an art history professor and a famous muralist at one time. There is quite a bit to color; and it's a topic far more involved and sophisticated than just saturating and blatantly colorizing things in PS.

I realize that framed prints serve more than one purpose, and am fine with that. But color is a topic I hold dear to my heart, and don't like it confused with colorization. Somebody like Peter Lik doesn't even begin to perceive color - he imposes it. He looks for crass stereotypes of natural beauty which he can slather with loud lipstick and cheap makeup to turn it into a gaudy whore. I find that mentality disgusting. He should rename his galleries, "Nature's Pimp" because he has no respect for the incomparably greater beauty of natural light itself. He doesn't even see it.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I am primarily a color photographer, Alan. The only time I ever shared a major exhibition with AA, every one of my own prints was in color, and not one of them resembled a postcard image, or even resembled his own scenes. I move in a realm of perceiving modulated color, and not a "colorized" world. Less is more. It's just like your taste buds - hence my analogy to images which are simply all sugar - after awhile you can't taste anything. Color composition needs balance and relationship to be effective - saturated colors in relation to neutrals, and not just color volume or "noise". Just study some of those great colorists in art history - there was balance, sophistication. I even have a set of true hand-ground pigments equivalent to what Renaissance painters used, using ingredient which can't be bought in more than maybe two or three art stores in the entire world. I inherited them from my aunt, who was both an art history professor and a famous muralist at one time. There is quite a bit to color; and it's a topic far more involved and sophisticated than just saturating and blatantly colorizing things in PS.

I realize that framed prints serve more than one purpose, and am fine with that. But color is a topic I hold dear to my heart, and don't like it confused with colorization. Somebody like Peter Lik doesn't even begin to perceive color - he imposes it. He looks for crass stereotypes of natural beauty which he can slather with loud lipstick and cheap makeup to turn it into a gaudy whore. I find that mentality disgusting. He should rename his galleries, "Nature's Pimp" because he has no respect for the incomparably greater beauty of natural light itself. He doesn't even see it.

I was in Dunkin Donuts once when a guy had them put in six sugars into a coffee. Not my taste. But that doesn't make him wrong. Just different. I don't like heavy metal music. Too loud. No melody that I can decipher. But can you imagine if there was only jazz?