Has there really been progress in photography? Reflections upon viewing the works of Käsebier, Stieglitz, and Steichen.

<blockquote>

<p>Nobody was at their best today</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Please don't speak for me. Or for anyone else, for that matter. Speak for yourself if you want.</p>

<p>Are you speaking of your own posts, Jeff?</p>

<p>My post was very clear. Once again, disingenuous. If you want to pretend not to understand, we can help you find a new sandbox.</p>

<p>I call 'em like I see 'em, Jeff.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>I have asked two questions about Serrano that no one has tried to answer yet. Here is the first:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>I was hoping that perhaps someone can tell me what is so great about Serrano's work--<strong>the entire corpus, not that one only</strong>. (Emphasis supplied.)</p>

</blockquote>

<p>So far, everyone has been fixated on the one that brought him widespread notoriety. </p>

<p>Here is the second question which does deal with his most (in)famous work (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ</a>):</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>There is one more issue about the Andrés Serrano picture that might be of interest: the title. I wonder if leaving off the title would have affected the evaluation of the photo. . . .<strong> [W]</strong><strong>ould we even remember it without the title?</strong></p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>--Lannie<strong><br /></strong></p>

<blockquote>

<p>I have asked two questions about Serrano that no one has tried to answer yet.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Including you, Lannie. It is your turn to show some meat. You bring up yet another sub-question (not at all related to the original subject anymore), while still leaving the original question dangling. Again, with no insight of your own at all, just a wide open question.<br />At the beginning of this thread, people tried to respond to your question. You did not respond or said "I have to think about it and get back to you", only to go off for another question. We reply because we feel a subject is worth discussing and put in an effort to structure our thoughts, write it out as coherent as we can and offer with that food for further thoughts and discussion. You simply seem to disregard those efforts. Please, you should realise that people get fed up with this.<br>

So, stay on-topic, work on your own answer to the question, express it and discuss it, reply those who address it, and give us something to work with. Maybe then, we can call it a discussion.<br>

Now it's just spray and pray. A bad photographic technique, and an even worse debating technique.</p>

<p>To remind you: this thread was not about the effect of a title, nor about Serrano.If you want to discuss that, start a new thread.</p>

<p>I've given my own answers as I see fit, Wouter. Just because someone does not like my answers has never troubled me, nor is it going to start doing so now.</p>

<p>The Serrano questions stand, and the first of them has been up for days. If you don't wish to go down that road, then no one is compelling you to do so. No one can demand that another answer their questions.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>I've arrived late on this thread, so forgive me if I'm repeating anything that's gone before.<br>

The original question touches on something I've pondered for a long time, and really without arriving at any personal answer, but first I'd like to repeat a quote that I think is very apposite.</p>

<p><strong>"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."</strong> <em>- Leslie poles Hartley (1895-1972).</em></p>

<p>Worth reflecting on in relation to the question in hand, I think.</p>

<p>I'm not sure that we can ever separate the "foreignness" of the past from its aesthetic attraction (or repulsion or derisibility). And I'm equally unsure whether we can define and separate "progress" from "improvement" and either of those from simple change. The width of debate here is surely proof enough that we all perceive the meaning of those words slightly differently and shaded by our own age and experience. However, I'm making a plea to try and get back to the original question with hopefully a more open, less partisan, less nationalistic, less parochial and less personal bias. Let's try to forget the specific photographers (or even genres and genders) cited and focus on the wider issue of whether aesthetics and art can only be fully appreciated in their own time or at any later date.</p>

<p>Is Time the ultimate and unanswerable critic? Or is art like the metaphorical Buddhist river - something that we can never step into for a second time?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Unless we are doing the commercial thing or looking for fame and fortune....</p>

<p>We are taking photos for our personal enjoyment and vision.</p>

<p>Whether we are better or worse than those who have walked before us does not matter. What matters is that we are creating our own vision and enjoyment.....</p>

<p>A million words are just are just a million words. We are not just words but the very creation itself... feelings, emotions and awareness. Art in its ultimate form.</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>Let's try to forget the specific photographers (or even genres and genders) cited and focus on the wider issue of whether aesthetics and art can only be fully appreciated in their own time or at any later date.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>What a great take on the original question, Joe! I can almost see everyone digging out their favorite quotes having to do with beauty and timelessness. The moving finger writes, yes, but is the language in which it writes intelligible across generations? We are certainly still discussing issues and questions set forth by Socrates and other ancients. "What is justice?" comes to mind, for example. "What is beauty?" was recently discussed on a thread on this very forum. It is an old question, of course, but one does get the same sense that in some way the old values have a way of coming back around in new garb.</p>

<p>I like the quotes about time and the past that you have offered. Faulkner's view on the past is one of my favorites: "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past." The ultimate nature of time will continue to elude us, but it is clear that we can recognize the beauty of what past generations have also appreciated. One does get a sense of the timelessness of beauty, or even of what I referred to as the Eternal Present above--but who coined that phrase I do not know.</p>

<p>The news this past week that neutrinos had been measured going beyond the speed of light also raised questions about time as well--even though it is quite possible, perhaps likely, that the measurements were wrong and that Einstein's claims about time still stand. I have no idea, of course, but it is likely that, if we understood both time and beauty in all of their fullness, we would understand many other ultimate questions as well.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>"even though it is quite possible, perhaps likely, that the measurements were wrong and that Einstein's claims about time still stand."</p>

<p>We move forward,</p>

<p>Photography or othewise that is what we do.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>We move forward,</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes, of course, in some sense we do, inevitably--but in what sense? That was and is the question, but I think that the fact that reminders as to how the same lovely artifacts are revered over the generations indicates that in some ways we as human beings do not change as much as we think--at our core, that is, I doubt that we are much more sophisticated, if at all, than previous generations when it comes to appreciating beauty.</p>

<p>I do wonder if evolution will produce beings who have a greater capacity for esthetic appreciation and creativity. Just an idle thought. . . .</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>"human beings do not change as much as we think--at our core,"</p>

<p>We do. World wars are a thing of past. We understand more.</p>

<p>Generally we are becoming more educated and we move on. Perfect I think not. But we are trying.. what more can you ask?</p>

<p>Allen, you sound a lot like Dr. Pangloss. Optimism is good within limits, but it must be tempered with a strong dose of realism.</p>

<p>Not that any of that has anything at all to do with photography that I can tell. . . .</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Not that any of that has anything at all to do with photography that I can tell</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It does have something to do with photography, or at least to do with this very, very long discussion on progress. Earlier on we seem to have agreed on using the term"change". Joe's marvelous quote above tells us that the past "is" a foreign country, but, as Lannie is right to remark, some artifacts and mental entities travel with us throughout the ages. This is why works of the pictorialist movement, like the <a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_lu1bFCWB3e0/Spx7JLT-N6I/AAAAAAAABdw/zwawCPU3CtU/s400/steichen_flatiron.jpg">Flatiron</a> or <a href="http://img.artknowledgenews.com/files2008a/13steichen.jpg">Solitude</a> shots of Steichen, move on with us and are still admired, despite the "progress" made by Stieglitz and Strand toward straight photography. Good museums are filled to the roof with such "artifacts" for us all to admire and learn from. Admission if free in many cases.<br>

(I have uploaded three modest shots of mine to illustrate my remarks)</p>

<p>Issues about "progress" have certainly come up in the thread, Anders. I was speaking, however, of discussions of optimism/idealism v. realism as reflected in Allen's comments about how far the human race has come with regard to societal ills: "World wars are a thing of [the] past. We understand more." Are they? Do we?</p>

<p>I would like to believe that we are slowly making progress on many fronts, but some of the horrors of the Twentieth Century (combined with continuing evidence of genocide around the world) do not make me optimistic. I am afraid that our technological progress has not been matched by our social progress. Hitler's use of new technology for horrific ends comes immediately to mind, but there are many others. (Going back one hundred fifty years to the U.S. Civil War provides another case in point in which technological progress outstripped societal progress where bigotry and "progress toward peace" are concerned.)</p>

<p>It was those kinds of issues which I was saying did not have a lot to do with photography. "Progress" as a single, monolithic entity is not a particularly useful concept to me. We have more scientific knowledge, even as a higher percentage of persons are slipping into poverty right here in the United States every day. I am not saying that there is no such progress on certain fronts, but in any case that kind of issue seems factorable to me from issues that are relevant to photography and art in general--or to the development of what one might call, for lack of a better term, an "esthetic sense."</p>

<p>Individuals may progress in their esthetic sense or insight, just as individuals may progress in their moral insight and understanding. Making the leap from that to claims that the human race is making such progress seems to me to be another issue entirely, and I only made reference to it by way of reference to Allen's comments about war.</p>

<p>As for your own photos, I am not sure which ones you are referring to.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>Lannie, three last - but it might not make a difference ! <a href="../photo/14279873">Here </a>is one of them.</p>

<p>Anders, Allen's digression on social progress <em>per se</em> also raises issues as to what really is progress. Here is a case in point:</p>

<p>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/us/san-francisco-nudity-restrictions-provoke-the-nakedly-ambitious.html?_r=1&hp</p>

<p>Anyone who has seen Shawn Shawhan's folder on Solstice celebrations in Fremont, Washington (v. Seattle, for example) realizes the societal tension that inheres in these and related issues--including Gay Rights parades in both cities.</p>

<p>Such issues will remain controversial--and I am not at all certain that we can be sure that this country, at least, has really turned the corner where tolerance of persons' differing sexual orientations, for example, is concerned.</p>

<p><strong>I DO think that disputes over what is social progress in certain areas do tie in in the strongest possible way to the issue as to whether or not there is progress regarding esthetic ideas and ideals--or esthetic valuations, if one prefers.</strong></p>

<p>Simon Croft's challenge to me (above) come to mind regarding my negative valuation of one of Fred's photos. Although I think that I effectively rebutted the implicit claim that homophobia informed my judgment, I think that it is certain that such issues are not gong to go away.</p>

<p>So, at least in certain areas and on certain issues, it would seem that issues of social progress would tie in in the strongest possible way to issues of progress in, for lack of a better term, "esthetic sensibility."</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

"Simon Croft's challenge to me (above) come to mind regarding my negative valuation of one of Fred's photos."

 

 

But you didn't give a negative evaluation of his photo. You didn't give any evaluation at all. You didn't even manage to

say that you didn't like it. And you never explained the relevance of it to the thread. Which has been the main problem

with this thread - an almost total lack of substantive content (other than a few flickers of interest, notably Fred's attempt to

quantify the appeal of Serrano), hand in hand with implied slur on Fred's image without having the courage to explain

what the criticism or slur was, or even to say that there was an criticism of it. In the absence of you attempting to explain what you meant, you can hardly be surprised if people took the obvious interpretation of your posting it.

 

Also, sorry about this, but as an aside: why is it that weak discussions on almost any subject inevitably descend into discussions of Hitler and the World Wars? At some point the debate will no doubt reach the conclusion that World Wars in general and Hitler in particular are a Bad Thing and to be avoided. And the whole discussion will have been an awful waste of time - already is, but it will become a banal waste of time.

 

Wasn't this discussion supposed to come to an end a while ago? If you want to carry on discussing Hitler and

progress, then please feel free, but please leave out any pretence of debating contemporary photography, anything

that I said, Fred's picture, or Fred's analysis of Serrano, unless you want me butting in from time to time. Why not start

a separate 'have we made progress since Hitler' thread and banal away to your heart's content?

<p>Simon, you were over the top and off-target almost all of Saturday. I suggest that you stop the personal attacks and offer your own substantive views of something, anything, beside the value of the thread.</p>

<p>If the thread is that worthless, then ignore it.</p>

<p>You are again off-target. <strong>Please do not try to wreck the thread again, as you did for almost the entire day on Saturday--and, above all, please do not make inferences about my motives. Your inferences are not only offensive, but in error.</strong><br /><strong></strong><br />The question, the thread, is not about me. Please cease and desist--and please do not come back with a bunch of counter-accusations. No one is going to want to post a question if this is what happens--and it happens all too frequently.<br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>I repeat: PLEASE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING BESIDES THE VALUE OF THE THREAD, AND PLEASE STOP ATTACKING ME PERSONALLY OR PRESUME THAT YOU KNOW MY MOTIVES. YOU DO NOT.</strong><br /><strong></strong><br />I was hoping that we could get started again without this sort of nonsense, but it appears that you are determined to start it up again.</p>

<p>If this happens even one more time, I am abandoning the thread--and the forum, for all time. Go back and read your attacks on Saturday, September 24, starting at 9:58 a.m. and continuing for the entire day. <strong>STOP MAKING INFERENCES ABOUT MOTIVES, AND STOP THE PERSONAL, <em>AD HOMINEM </em>ATTACKS.</strong></p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

"I was hoping that we could get started again without this sort of nonsense, but it appears that you are determined to start it up again"

 

Simon had bowed out of the thread until you brought up his name and referred to earlier arguments in your 9:19 a.m. post.

 

I'm shutting down this thread before the smell of urine overpowers the entire forum.