Art of photography in decline? Interesting article...

[richard_f1]

Readers might be interested in this article from "The Australian" newspaper (a major

serious newspaper in Australia, where else?).

 

Lots to agree with, lots to disagree with, but interesting reading:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20876,18925277-16947,00.html

[peter_hovmand]

Well, this is in my opinion a very stupid article. The man is more or less an idiot. The fact

is that photography finally is being recognized as an art form world wide these days. Yes,

it is easier to take pictures now. Yes, we are drowning in images every day. But I should

say that we in this way can get a very good sense of communication in the visual culture

we live in. We have to!

 

http://studio135.net/

[matt_needham]

90-some percent of everything is crap. Every technological advance in photography has made it easier, so more people become photographers, so there is more crap to wade through to find the good stuff. There's more good stuff too.

 

The writer says that people have lost their fascination with photography. That doesn't fit with almost everyone owning (and using) a camera these days. Maybe they are so excited about photography that they are too busy photographing the world to hang out at the art museum?

[robert x]

Well he seems to spend most of the article saying photography is no longer a valid art form

then ends by saying there are some exciting photographic artists producing great work.......!?

[jpb]

The author, Sabastian Smee, writes," Thanks to the digital revolution, there is virtually nothing that can't be done to a photograph to alter its once unique relationship to reality."

 

Such a sentence betrays his totla lack of knowldge (or even thought) about the medium... for anyone who thinks that film=truth, I have a bridge to sell you... you does such an ignoramus get a job at a newspaper?

[jpb]

(please excuse my typos, etc... using a tiny keyboard and it's early in the morning)

[vcallaway]

The same type of drivel was written when automatic cameras came out.

 

Canons AE-1 probably did more to get people interested in photography than any art show ever could. They advertised that with its advanced metering and low cost you could shoot like a pro without worrying about exposure.

 

While it was all about sales hype there was a rapid rise in interest in photography. I see the same thing happening because of low cost digital. Just like it was 25 years ago.

[michaelaly]

<i>"no great photography exhibitions have been mounted in Australia's main public galleries in years. Overseas, it's much the same story." </i>

<br>

Really? I had the great fortune to visit France in 2004 and spent days and days looking at photographs in galleries. I'm in DC now and have seen numerous photo exhibits here.

<br>

Photography was never about 'truth', as we all know. These silly ideas about digital not being art have been passing around for a while. The way I see it photography is about reality just like James Bond movies are. <br>

And he refers to Sally Mann as 'true art'. Granted Sally Mann is a fantastic artist, but I wonder what criteria he thinks makes it 'real art'. Maybe it's the age old stigma that 'color is commercial and B&W is art'.<br>

 

Too many people(especially in photography I believe) concentrate on the tools instead of the art...they determine wether or not they like a photograph by what tools were used to create it. I'm not sure exactly how photoshop became considered 'bad art' by some even if used skillfully, it seems we'll have to take up where Steichen left off and convince the world that just because it came from a computer doesn't mean it isn't art. No one asks a painter if he used the brand new 2010XL-D2 Super Powered Hand Grip Action Carbon Fiber Oil Paint Brush.

<br>

Digital I think has definatly increased the quantity of photographs out there, but that doesn't mean that photography sucks just because more people are doing it. Contrary to popular belief the new cameras don't do everything for you. And photoshop can't quite conjur up everything that some think it can.

[gary_ferguson1]

Interesting article, thanks for posting it.

[kelly_flanigan1]

EVERYONE is a fine art photographer today! We had one Thursday who we made Nine 24x24 and 24x36" posters for. They brought in a fine art album with prints off their digital to have us scan. When asked for the origial files to make better posters, they "a fine art photographer" brought crappy back 200dpi scans of their prints; which where about 2.5x2.5" square and some 2x3 some 4x6". They had lost their digital files, and the album was off at a art show Friday, so we had to use the garbage input and press on. Alot of the defects in the customers scans due to their crap printer had to be retouched out. Part of the "art of printing" is dealing with Photoshop certified folks, artists, dealing with sub par inputs with a tight deadline. An amateur can wait for perfect swing. Scanning folks prints is very typical, they loose their files, or dont have them with them, and need giant posters the same day, and want them laminated and mounted too. Photography is real old, the talk of art in photography is well over 150 years old.

[emwalker]

Everyone's a photographer... cell phones appear to be the next great leap in the medium (LOL)<div></div>

[b_hall1]

Well consider digital photography. Digital is young and widespread but there is a lot of DSLR digital result is soft and dull while there is a lot of point-and-shoot digital result is sharp but artificial. Also there is a common DSLR digital result that is sharp but artificial.

 

So anyone with a digital result that is sharp but natural gets an accentuated attention. In other words the leaders of the medium are artists and there is reason to look for them...

 

But a master inkjet printer might get the same attention...

 

Or a master composer of scenes might get appreciation for low-volume hand-made optical enlarging from film...

 

Of course someone who reaches or creates original scenes is all composition...

 

So in any case either the art or the craft or both must be extraordinary and the reason that art is hard to find is that it is extradordinary...

[andy_laycock]

I mostly agree with him, but I would add that not only is it digital photography that is to blame, but also online posting and not just the Photo.net type. There are so many blogs and forums where people are including their photos that they have become more commonplace than ever before. Prior to the internet, if your photos were 'published' they had to be of a certain level of competency. So what was available was of higher quality in general. Now, you need no skill or artistic talent. Just as text messaging has dumbed down the written word, digital and internet posting has dumbed down photography. On the other hand, the one good thing about internet posting is that we can now see great works that would never have seen the light of day. It's a double-edged sword.

[john falkenstine]

Regarding that article. Smee appears to be an establishment art gallery afficionado of some renown, but has a noted disdain for anything done without a brush or tube of paint. http://artlife.blogspot.com/2005/01/in-interests-of-accuracy-most-video.html

[phyrpowr]

This just sounds like one more "oh, for the good old days...when I was younger" article. Could be rewritten to be about almost anything, cars, kitchen gear. I could probably redo it to show the decline in communication skills since cell phones

[Doug Keller]

Nice article. It adds some meat to some of the things that I've been ranting about on these boards lately. I think the reactions above are a little knee-jerk; and I'm not sure if everyone has sufficiently digested the points. Smee's a little more tongue-in-cheek than his words might indicate; or maybe he's got a cluttered mind, and just wanted to get it all out there before he'd drawn more careful conclusions. He does, in other words, leave open room for the art world to embrace photos; he even lists a few people who are examples of this "realer" art. I've also thought that photos would get less attention from the ruling elite classes once it got too easy to mimic the finest creations by less-advantaged pretenders. But, my ideas all came from outside of the art world proper; such a pattern seems to explain most everything social from my point-of-view. That said, elites who've invested tons of time and money in getting small advantages which prove their social status can re-group and simply raise the stakes a bit to regain the upperhand: they could, for example, redefine the role that various theories play in the value of the product of photographing; the "intellectual underpinning" so to speak; make it a barrier to entry that aspiring photo-artists assimilate such complex, ergo time-consuming and expensive, concepts such as philosophy and psychology and sociology, etc. etc. as prerequisites to fine art ... use their imaginations in over-complicating their artform. That might drag the gallery-goers back to the fold; for the art world is a macrocosm of social class structure, and the highest pretenders, those who shoot as a serious hobby, would get renewed warm feelings, when strolling through galleries and making the occasional purchase, from knowing that they're at least not at the very bottom of the social hierarchy; they are "arty," if not full-blown artists. The emotion blank being filled by a simply vicariousness. Thank you for sharing the article.

[ping_pong1]

Well said, Douglas. He's pulling a few tails to see who squeals.

[pico_digoliardi]

The author of that article is a gadfly, a moron who has no depth, one who would be over his head on a wet sidewalk, the epitome the Slacker Consumer as Critic, an oxygen thief at best.

 

I began a critique of his article, but don't want to be accused of shooting fish in a barrel. Leave it be and be happy you aren't him.

[john mackay]

I can't help but wonder if perhaps Smee's next article should canvas literature's obvious decline in the face of the personal computer.

[kai_griffin]

"Idiot", "drivel", "moron", etc, etc. Some of you have really deep analytical skills - lucky you don't try to do it for a living, or you'd have to do something else... like photography maybe :-)

[h._p.]

Careful there, Kai, you'll be accused of being me! I thought Douglas got it right. The author seems to be writing contentiously in order to stimulate thought in his readers, something that won't go down too well with people who think their view is the only correct one.

[robert x]

Sureluy there is a difference between writing contentiously to inspire thought and writing

things that appear to be simply inaccurate ? He says photography no longer interests the

real art world, yet we have seen some astronomical prices in the past few months for

photographs at auction. Gursky still continues to fetch enormos prices for his work. There

*are* major phorographic exhibitions being held (Jeff Wall at Tate Modern very recently

and also the first ever photography exhibition at London's National gallery) round the

world. In one paragraph he says there are more photograpers being shown in galleries, in

another he says galeries are now reluctant to show photographs.....He makes sweeping

statements of opinon, unsubstantiated, that we are supposed to assume as being true,

such as "In terms of art, something profound is being lost". He says, quite unequivocally,

"photography has become ubiquitous, frictionless and trivial", then ends the article by

saying that " There are photographers who are still making great art.". I mean, really,

which is it ?

 

Reading a recent copy of Art Review because a friend of mine just started a job there

( http://www.art-review.co.uk ) I was quite surprised to see so much photography inside.

Far from being an "art form" that has come and gone, it seems that photography is slowly

becoming a much more seriously regarded form from the point of view of galleries and

collectors.

 

His piece seems to be full of huge assertions of his own opinion and throwaway insults -

"so-called Dusseldorf school" for example and "photograic artists (as they are called)".

 

I don't see why I should read this as if there wre any intrinsic truth in it. When I was young,

I thought if it were written in a paper then it must be true. Now I know some journalists, I

realise that some of them are very good and some of them are very mediocre. I don't really

see this guy's opinion as being worth accepting without question.

[pico_digoliardi]

Kai Griffin" ""Idiot", "drivel", "moron", etc, etc. Some of you have really deep analytical skills""

 

Pot, kettle. Kettle, pot.

[kai_griffin]

Normally, you're pretty with-it, Pico. Witty, even. But today, it sounds like you've been dancing around the May-Pole a few too many times, or enjoyed one or two too many May Day grappas. Calling someone a "moron with no depth" on the basis of a single article, without even bothering to explain <i>why</i> probably says more about your state of mind <i>today</i> than in does in general. In this instance, you became the proverbial fish in the bucket and deserved a shot.<p>For the record, I'm with Robert X's line of thought on this one.

[j.kivekas]

This is getting to be a storm in a glass.<p>

So - digitalization has democratizised photography. It has made it possible for almost everyone of us to express ourselves in a way which can be shown to others and be documented.<p>

So - art is just a word with three letters. Anyone can give it a content of his own. Not all people think motorsport, snooker or cricket are sport. So what? They still give meaning and satisfaction to those involved. Art - just a stupid word.<p>

The first art was everyday tools, plates and vases, the first paintings were documents of hunting. Today "art" is mostly completely futile stuff. Photography on the other hand is most often funcional. Most all photos do have a function or another.

So - digitalisation has demolished the elitism of art. I don't shoot to be or become an artist. Long live photography!