Bored by Photography

There's a wonderful link posted by Robert Johnson deep in <a

href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?

msg_id=005A8o">another thread</a> that I think deserves more

exposure, so I'm giving it more exposure!

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<a

href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,963891,00.

html">http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,963891,00.

html</a>

<p>From The Guardian (UK)<br><em>

<b>I can't face it. I'm not going</b><br>

We tried to get Jonathan Jones to go to an exhibition of the world's

most wonderful photographs. Here he explains why it is his idea of a

nightmare </em><p>

<em>...To be bored in advance seems rude. But recently I've had to admit something to myself. I find photography in art galleries, framed and hung on the wall, almost entirely unrewarding. It was never my favourite, but I always thought it was, you know, modern and progressive, something to be taken seriously. The rot set in while looking at an exhibition of classic photographs of New York at the city's Jewish Museum. Here was a great Weegee image of people at the beach at Coney Island in the 1940s. A wonderful picture that I first saw in a magazine or somewhere years ago, and always loved. Here it was, a silvery print, on the wall. It was disappointing...

</em>

Jones begins with an interesting premise: Photography has little merit apart from context, that context best being a document of the times, generally being photojournalism. Unfortunately his premise drifts a bit as ennui sets in.

 

Still, I tend to agree more than disagree. I admire painting enough that I've tried my hand at it, seldom successfully. Creating one's own images without the constraints that some photographers like to place upon their craft is liberating.

 

While other artistic expressions have grown beyond self-imposed contraints, photographers seem to revel in limiting themselves. There is no photograph so secure in its own merit that it cannot be assailed by zonie nerds ("Lacking shadow detail!" "Blown highlights!") or white-robed purists ("Screams PHOTOSHOPPED!").

 

There was a time when new painters were assaulted for trying something new. Now they're more likely to be dismissed for being derivative. Yet photographers take great pains to be derivative. The state of the art is bankrupt for lack of currency.

I enjoyed the article and felt there is a good deal of truth in it. As a piece of writing it succeeds well because Jones manages to retain his tone all the way through, without it degenerating into a rant. The argument is not crystal clear everywhere, but it's only a newspaper article after all. It will not alter my approach to photography.

There is a book 'David Hockney in photography' (or with a similar title which I cannot remember for sure) where David Hockney himself, perhaps the greatest living painter in the tradition of Picasso, explains his views on art and photography and relations between them. The book is illustrated by many paintings and photographs made by Hockney. In short Hockney's views are similar to that presented in the above article. Highly recommended reading.

Thanks for pointing that article out, Bob. The Guardian is often the home of poseurs and nitpickers but this article is only too accurate.

 

Funnily enough, I just discovered that my local library is running a photo exhibition by the grandly named 'West of England Photographers' or something like that. All the photographs were perfectly exposed, beautifully printed and, in the mass, dead boring.

 

I've always thought that photography is at its best when it illustrates something and its natural home is on the printed page (or these days, the web) as part of a written article or when it's in a family album or on a book cover. In other words when it's doing something rather than sitting in a frame expecting to be admired.

I've enjoyed the article. It's good that there are still people able to speak up for real things, for instance painting and sculpture.

I am finding that one of the most educational things one can do is sort through someone's old photos, deciding which are keepers and which are losers. This is what I have been doing recently with my father's old photos (colour slides and black-and-white) from the 50s and 60s (I'm gradually putting a few up on this site for those interested). Some were thrown out without a second glance. The first to go were all those animal photos taken with a telephoto lens. Next went all those flower closeups. We see so much of that stuff done so well that such photos have to be exceptional to be of interest once the memory of the particular outing has faded. Next went a large number of holiday photos. A few were kept if they a/ included an interesting portrait of a family member or b/ reflected their times in an interesting way. The ones we instantly decided to keep fell mainly into two categories a/ a few informal family portraits that we all agreed were particularly successful b/ a group that fell within the rough category of photojournalism or historical record. I intend to have fairly large prints made and put them in an album (I love the fact that one can now get enlargements from slides relatively cheaply, especially since I much prefer to look at an A4 than at a 10x15 cm print, and who has time for slide shows?). Not one would I frame and put on my wall.

 

It is partly for this reason that I am suspicious of the current cry to simplify! simplify! ones composition as if that will finally create photography as art that will last far into the future, because what interests me so often in these old photos is context, and all that stuff going on in the background. I can't help thinking of some puzzled person in the future looking through someone's slides of closeups of perfectly focussed vegetables and feathers (on tasteful black backgrounds), and landscapes featuring a dark blue sky, turquoise sea, no more than one palm tree and one perfectly placed, but totally anonymous, boat.

I could say the same thing about much current painting and

sculpture - and also about music. Eighty-five percent of what I

see and hear just doesn't move me. It's not the medium that's at

fault, it's just that it's all so formalised. It amazes me that many

of my students in their mid to late teens are into such as Pink

Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Captain Beefheart. This suggests that

much of what is currently available musically doesn't fire them up

either.

 

Finally it's all down to content and no amount of academic

critique can give significance to the thoroughly tedious. For me

the power of photography lies in its literalness and its

documentary capabilities. I use it as a diary. It's a form of

collecting and I accept the futility of collecting since one cannot

collect everything. but it's a record of my own particular

observations.

If Jones' take is correct, then Toronto is in the arms of a month-long nightmare. Each May there's a city-wide(OK, make that downtown-wide)exhibition scattered across dozens of venues.It's fitfully successful.Some venues are painfully unflattering, thanks to bad light, short hours, poor display, no parking, etc. It's work to see much of it and much of it isn't worth the trouble. What I admire is the collective delusion that it matters enough to many photographers and non-gallery going types to provide prints and eyeballs in sufficient numbers to keep the sponsors interested.Far more deadening is the ocean of schlock online(see Sarah Boxer's "Prospecting for Gold Among the Photo Blogs" NYT May 25, 2003).

Thanks for posting this link. On first reading I was struck by the "Bored by yet more empty, posturing pseudo intellectual claptrap" feeling. But to be fair, it was entertaining and well put together in a journalese style, so I gave it another run through and on reflection... I concluded my first impressions were spot on.

 

BUT, he struck one chord, the feeling of tedious despair that sometimes overwhelms me when I take a look at sites like photosig. The sheer volume of competent but largely uninspired photo after photo is almost enough to put you off the hobby altogether....then I come across an absolute stunner of a shot and the faith is restored.

 

I've no doubt that if fine art paintings and sculpture were churned out at the rate photos are, the senses would be quickly dulled.

 

Perhaps the moral is that while you can have too much of a good thing, you can much more easily have a surfeit of a mediocre thing...

 

Regards

 

D

For those of you about to be frustrated by the NY time's search engine, the url is: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/25/arts/design/25BOXE.html"> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/25/arts/design/25BOXE.html</a>

I think that Jones is correct; I, too am bothered by photography that tries hard that tries hard to be art.<p>What bothers me is a sort of anti-photography position that is frightfully prevalent among European art critics. Have you ever met someone who stoutly denies the artistic value of photography on the grounds that either the influence of the artist's hand is lacking or that it's a commodity, a utility? Try to find an intellectual in Europe who asserts that photography is art and you'll find a guy who poses as a proponent of an "art must be democratic!" position. (And if he thinks he's at the cutting edge of postmodern art theory he's correct.) In other words, being "pro-photographic" is a sort of pose. In turn, it makes being "anti-photographic" a pose, too.<p>All theories why photography is or isn't art are void, given what art was: a craft. To be precise, art as such didn't exist for a long time. The painters of Lascaux probably didn't intend to make art. The sculptors and painters who decorated the pharaos' graves certainly didn't intend to make art. Neither did the architects who built Angkor Wat. Bach's contracts included the number of music pieces (sonates, fugues,...) he had to deliver per week. Could it be that the idea of art as something non-useful is rather recent? That this idea of art being beyond the realm of the quantifiable gave birth to the idea of art being elitist by principle?<p>I happily assert I'm no artist because I prefer my photographs to be of use, and be it only that someone enjoys looking at them. I like the recent threads on art and photography--but let's not forget that photography itself is often fun. As at least 75 per cent of all Photo.netters are amateurs, why would most of us engage in it otherwise?

Malraux once asked if we can only value art after we have first robbed it of its proper content and function and �buried� it in a museum? It�s a bit of a joke, of course, but it�s something that really makes me think. If art belongs to the �human environment�, why is our primary (and sometimes only) confrontation with it in the cold abstraction of art galleries and dinner parties generally removed (culturally and otherwise) from the realities of day to day life and the world that gave birth to a large part of photography as an art form to begin with. There�s something frightfully odd about viewing Weegee inside the sparkling façade typical New York galleries offer, no? I can understand the boredom (or at least the schizophrenia) of most (though not all) big-name museums, simply because the content is so often divorced from any trace of the realities that gave these images (paintings, whatever) birth. Something more immerse (and there are some galleries who have done this well) adds not just to the experience but the ability to truly appreciate the content and context of the items on display.

 

[The paraphrase above is from A. Malreaux, La métamorphose des dieux, Paris 1957, if anyone is interested in it.]

Photography is to Art what Journalism is to Literature.

In some way's I'm kinda sick and tired of the elitism art gets in the modern era. It's not art it's vanity pure and simple most of the time. It's oh look I can paint or photograph this nifty pointless still-life. Art has to have a purpose other than it's own existance I'd say. Most of cubism just seems like an experiment in preparation for Guernica. The atmosphere of a gallery seems to be one of those environments that meshes perfectly with the elitist art simplification theme. It's sterile, completely devoid of all life. It is a house that one looks at and says "This is a place meant to be shown off, not a place where people live."

 

Am I the only one who thinks sterility is butt ugly anymore?!

I know that feeling too. I do not get it from photosig though; I get it from visiting modern art museums such as MOMA or the Guggenheim in New York. To be fair I found most of the exhibits in the Institute of Photography (also in New York) equally tedious.

 

I find most modern art to be a struggle between pretentiousness and political correctness. Talent seems to lose out and everyone is too scared to admit that the emperor has no clothes lest they be accused of not getting it. I am not sure if photography is to blame for modernism though, perhaps it was the impressionists that started painting down that path.

 

My favorite art museum in New York is the Frick Collection, the former private collection of a Steel Baron with exceptional taste. BTW The most modern piece of art in his collection is a Monet (just the one though).

I see the point but I disagree on the fundamentals.

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Photography, as much as anything, can be art. Confining the realm of "high art" to autographic processes (painting, etc.) is pure intellectual snubbery.

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Now, I have to agree that I find it very hard to find photographs that can actually rival, in my own appreciation, paintings from, say, Tom Thompson. But that dosen't mean it can't and will never be. It just means that there are fewer people in existence or history that have produced works that tickle me the right way. Going to see a roomful of Weegees has about the same attraction to me as going to see a roomful of sixteenth-century religious art; I would go as a historical reference, but I don't expect to be moved.

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I think photography still has room to evolve. I suppose the same can be said of painting, but I tend to look at contemporary photography for interesting works, whereas I find that the best paintings are hanging in museums.

<i>I find most modern art to be a struggle between pretentiousness and political correctness. </i><p>

 

I find gross characterizations of modern art to be meaningless, especially when they are just gross characterizations and provide absolutely no other information.<p>

 

Art is fairly complex and requires more than just a surface look. The negative comments here about modern art (and elsewhere on photo.net) seem to carry that "surface look" to an extreme. It's a rant that has been going on for centuries, somewhat pointlessly, it's worth noting.

I find it easier to think about art when I don't think about 'art'.

 

What I mean by that (you're forgiven for asking) is that the word 'art', alone, is useless. This is primarily because it's one of those words that's been so utterly overused in such a miriad of contexts and applications that its meaning has become diluted to the point of worthlessness. By extention, the pursuit of art in photography (or any genre, for that matter), is equally worthless. How can your goal be the undefinable?

 

The logical (and ultimately much more satisfying) reaction to such reasoning is to forget about 'art' altogether and define your photographic goals in other ways and using other words. Whatever those goals may be.

 

If someone should call the result of my photography art, that's nice, I suppose, but I'm honestly left none the wiser. If someone (even if I'm the only someone) expresses admiration, affinity, or even honest distaste for it, that's much more important and meaningful.

I agree with most of the above postings regarding art. Art is a hypothetical construct, proposed mainly by collectors and dealers as a way of establishing value for the purpose of making a profit. I believe that what actually happens is that humans are creative by nature, and many of us simply create with the medium we enjoy the most. We create because its in our nature to do so. Its not art, its expression. Art is the lable attached later by other individuals who need to put value on such expressions of human creativity. Photography is one such medium of expression.

Harvey Platter wrote"it;s home(photography) is on the printed page!I agree ,with exceptions.Even on the printed page Photography can be considered art.A good photo does not have to be in a frame,hanging on a wall to be an exibit.Many sculptures in museums (art) were originally in gardens;in other words the venue does not make art!

Photography has become the art of the masses;is this such as bad thing?Photography due to its volume has possibly created every artistic thought ever made by man either by mistake or decision & we see it every day.Just how many paintings or sculptures do you see in a day?Maybe we are just overwelmed by too much ( photographic)art?

Art is about relevance. If J.Jones is not moved by these photos this doesn't mean much for another one who is...I personally like photos and I am not afraid to get bored by the boring ones and excited by the good ones.

Inarguably some photography is art in the sense that it is a greater whole skillfully created from lesser parts. Experience, consideration for composition, evaluation of light, knowledge of exposure, etc., all preceed pressing the shutter release.

 

Beyond that is processing and printing and that entails. Whether done in the traditional wet darkroom or digitally if it is done skillfully it is legitimate. In that sense photography also assumes that other definition of art: artifice. But we generally accept a certain amount of artifice, differing mainly in degree.

 

But the problem with photography as compared with other arts is that sometimes we just get lucky. Sometimes all the elements come together and all we have to do is snap the shutter. Sure, it helps to have enough experience to recognize that opporunity. But we've all seen excellent photographs taken by inexperienced photographers.

 

It is this element of pure chance, recognized by anyone who has ever picked up a camera, that introduces that nagging doubt about the artistry involved in photography.

 

Does a painter or sculptor ever just stumble across an excellent painting or sculpture? Oh, an idea or inspiration, sure. But the work itself? Never. Every single piece requires skillful execution to make it happen. There is no equivalent in the other arts to simply being there when the light is perfect and snapping the shutter. I may happen to find a piece of buried rock in the shape of the Pieta, but that doesn't make me Michelangelo.

 

And that's why we will always have to accept the nagging doubts about photography as a fine art form. Only the very few can appreciate the skill and inspiration that goes into *making* a photograph as opposing to *taking* a photograph. Fewer still can tell the difference.

In light of some other discussions going on, I find this one particularly interesting...

 

I must agree with a lot that has been said here... let's face it, there is a lot of photography out there that is both uninspired and uninteresting. There is a lot of work that is boring because the photographer is bored with the subject. I have run into an awful lot of photographers who are trying to create "art." You can see it in the work- and I look at a lot of work.

 

For a lot of reasons, photography does not work very well on the wall- it's natural venue is the book, or as said earlier, the printed page. Photography is an intimate expression- it is one photographer and one viewer. If the "purpose" of art is to interpret the world around us and present that interpretation to others, then art has certainly lost it's way. Art has become self-reflexive and the more self-reflexive it becomes, the more irrelevent it becomes.

 

Photography is one of two forms of expression that is the closest to us. The other is writing. And this is really the natural relationship-photography and writing, not photogrpahy and art. At some level, the author tells us who we are and at some level the photographer shows us.

 

I have a friend who is a middle school teacher (8th grade language arts and social studies). In her classroom is a little sign that says if you want what what you write to be interesting, first you have to be interested. I think this speaks volumes for photography.

At the risk of being labeled pedestrian, I would suggest that the author of the article has forgotten how to enjoy art altogether---a symptom not uncommon among those educated to appreciate art, including many artists, it seems, and most critics. He is, in short, guilty of that same elitism of which he accuses the snobbish among photographers. He may well be on point in some respects; but I doubt he appreciates the irony of the context within which he expresses his observations. I don't doubt that he is bored, but I gather even he doesn't realize why.