Winogrand Interview (continued)

Travis you should not feel included into that category - because you did sound reasonable, as far as I am concerned. There were a number of people in this thread I feel were (more or less interested) readers, and none of my rougher pronouncements should apply to them

how can you argue something that is completely subjective. its moronic.

Chill out...<div></div>

I think this photo is rather.....<div></div>

Subjective is whether you like a song or not, but that minor chords sound "sad", and major chords are "uplifting" is not subjective. How a composer combines those very well-known elements into a whole cannot be formalized. But elements themselves have been well-described and are used in teaching music.

<br>

Same in photography: when your repertory of visual ideas/elements is good, you'll recognize them in the scene around, and will build your shot around them. If you are not aware, your shots will stay primitive.<br>

Everyone who does photography has talked about shadows, lines leading or framing something, light and colour contrasts, repetitions, similarities (e.g. in form between object, form echos), cut-offs, perspective effects, frozen motion effects, etc. Those are NOT subjective, and what out of these elements of a visual language is present on a photo will determine it's effect.<br>

No such artistic devices are interplaying - a photo is nothing.

I like this best...<div></div>

<img src=http://home.pacbell.net/vedmed/recent/teni-photonet.jpg>

i dont like it

let's get back to what is truly important to each and everyone of us. Be oursleves and let others be themselves.<div></div>

Like this...<div></div>

ur on a roll allen....u musta shot lately huh

All the stuff i post is recent Grant, i'm too lazy to scan my old stuff. Anyway it's more fun.

<I>but that minor chords sound "sad", and major chords are "uplifting" is not

subjective.</I><P>Actually that is a subjective judgement shaped by the culture you

live in. And you still seem unable to address any of the critiques that have been put

forth to challenge your judgements.

Ellis, you had asked what I don't get about the five Winogrand pictures. I think the major reason I differ from your interpretation is that I didn't grow up with the same stimuli as you, with the same education as you, with the same interests, etc. Appleby is haunted by one of the pictures, and still hasn't articulated why, so we may never know.

 

I prefer the pictures of some people who have posted on this forum above those of Winogrand. Appleby (or someone) stated that Winogrand is part of the pantheon of photography, in the company of HCB. Our own forum's redoubtable Dr. Jay thinks HCB is pedestrian trash, yet no one has ridiculed him about that the way Bender has been ridiculed over here.

 

Is it better to call someone's work trash and offer no explanation (the way Jay has repeatedly done so), or to try to offer explanations the way Bender has, and that open him up to ridicule? Why is the former forgiven and not the latter? Am I missing something?

...And if you can reduce all art to following a set of formulas that must be rigidly

adhered to then where is there room for human perception, interpretation of new

stimulus .. where is there room for getting from Bach to Mozart to Beethoven to

Copeland to Louis Armstrong to The Gershwins to Miles Davis to Chuck berry to

Leonard Bernstein to Philip Glass to music from China, the Arab world, to Klezmer to

The Beatles? or explain how you get from Michaelangelo to Picasso.

 

Your approach --and it is an old and discredited philosophy -- attempts to reduce

the

world and human creativity into mechanistic formulas & patterns. Anything that

doesn't fit this theory must be discarded as rubbish. As I've said before the world and

art just doesn't work that way. So my logical conclusion is that it is your theory that

belongs on the rubbish heap. Just because you don't "get" something only means

that you don't get it. There is no need to wrap your prejudices in pseudo-intellectual

jargon: just say "i don't like it" and move on. No one is forcing you to like Garry

Winogrand's photographs! Or you could actually try and comprehend it for yourself --

but then that might involve admitting that you are wrong. And if you find that you are

wrong about this, who knows what other prejudices you might find yourself re-

examining?

For what its worth, I'm with Bender. I don't understand much of what he's saying, but nonetheless, I agree.

I'm a great admirer of Ronis (less so Boubat, who I find a bit sickly-sweet sometimes), but I agree with one poster above that the choice is revealing: these are all 'warm' humanist photographers, whose intentions are celebratory and reassuring, rather than conceptual or challenging.

<i>However, there are 2 taboos in this thread: (a) never concede

G.W. is anything but a Great Artist and (b) never ever agree with

M.B.</i><br><br>Actually, I for one am happy to agree with the

very basic Bender premise that good art is objectively better than

bad art. What I personally cannot agree with is Bender's narrow

set of objective criteria based on the interplay of elements, etc.

As many here have suggested, the problem with Bender's

arguments is that they are presented (I guess deliberately) in an

overtly arrogant and pseudo-academic style. In my experience

it's a style usually the mark of an overconfident undergraduate

(fresh from school with a clutch of good A levels but finding him

or herself a bit out of their depth at University). Acting like a

pretentious twat usually only serves to turn what could be an

interesting discussion (of an easy to grasp argument) into

something turgid and tedious to follow. I think it was Rob

Appleby who mentioned the Casaubon character from <i>

Middlemarch</i> in an earlier Bender thread. I have to say that

personally, when reading a Bender thread, I am more reminded

of Forster's even more obnoxious Cecil Vyse character from <i>A

Room with a View</i>.

What anyone thinks of GW's work is not as important as what GW thinks/thought of them.

 

How do you think GW would have answerd anyone who'd asked him :"why do think your pics are so cool? what's so cool about them?"

 

Why are we questioning someone who didn't even question himself? Even HCB had some dull shots, shall we go picture by picture of every artists now? How can anyone read an artist's mind? How can you expect all artists to share one frame of mind? This is not being dump, this is a conscious choice, to be different.

 

GW probably knew all the rules of the game(compositions,light play etc) more than any of us here, but delibrately walked away from them doing what he liked. You can call him defiant, I think that's the word.

I would also like to add this:

 

THe success of a photograph or a body of work is not measured by how close the artist conformed to the rules(whatever that may be and depending on wh defines them) of the art in question, but rather to how viewers react to them. You can have the best composition in a pic but if it fails in front of the people looking at it, then it's of little value vice versa.

 

GW clearly had a group of followers and in that regard he had succeeded in a way. You cannot be someone else unless you be yourself. You cannot follow any rules unless you know how to break them too.

The one thing I've learned from following all this is that there is no one on this forum that makes me more interested in Garry Winogrand than Michael Bender.

 

Kind of makes me wonder if that might have been his point all along?

 

Regards,

travis, that's something I thought as well: how can you even start to try to use (e.g.) post-modern theory on pictures of someone like GW. What's the use? He's the 'shoot, don't talk' -type of guy so any talk of 'signifiers' would completely miss his point. But, understandably, most people cant resist this mechanism in order to narrow the gap between them and the artists they're talking about.

Bender...just how would you define, for example, love? Or any other 'feeling' for that matter. What you don't get is that to most 'art' is not cut and dried, something that you analyze and compare to a set of rules (which you seem to have a complete knowledge of), but is a 'feeling' that cannot be explained. Why do you 'love' the person you do (if you've ever experienced the feeling...I kind of doubt you have)...do you go by a set of hard and fast rules???...I doubt it. Art is the same...it is individual to each and every one of us. The reason some of the postings here have denigrated to name calling, which you seem to take offense to, is that you have this annoying habit of marginalizing what others 'feel'. It ain't all cut and dried Bender, and the sooner you realize this, the sooner you'll have a happy life and not piss off everone who comes into contact with you. Your choice.

Bob, I was also thinking along that line a while ago. Say I wanna find a companion, do I like check against a list of things invented by some experts? "How to choose a wife"? What if I really like a bad woman? Against the rule?

 

Grant's probably right, arguing over something subjective is moronic.

human creativity into mechanistic formulas & patterns

 

Key words among all these postings, Michael. Words to ponder.