New York/East Coast bias in photography considered to be art

[phyrpowr]

Rather than the "East Coast" call it what it is: New York. Fairly small group who talk to and at each other, have to create new vocabularies to impress, and who won't look at you if you show up in last year's Prada (sp?).

 

I don't make any attempt to sell my work, so I have no need to pay attention to them...do you?

[jason_carreira]

There's a couple of concepts mentioned which, to me, seem incompatible:

 

- pristine landscape

 

- intellectual honesty

 

There's very little pristine landscape around us, and to go and seek those views out and carefully compose an image which is probably a 20 degree turn from a building or strip mine, seems intellectually DISHONEST to me. Those images are selecting the one bit out that hasn't been touched from a landscape which has been altered on all sides by the activity of mankind. Eggleston's work is much more honest, to me, in all of its banal attention to the details all around us. That's where people really live.

 

As other's have mentioned, the art world is about more than beauty. In fact there's been a radical movement away from beauty for the last 150-200 years, so it's hardly a new or "East Coast Art World" trend. Art is much more conceptual and more about the intellectual engagement of the viewer than it ever was under the influence of the Renaissance aesthetic. The fine art photography you mention is centered around a theme, an idea, and the images are used to express and convey that theme. Sometimes it means individual works wouldn't stand on their own, but it's the larger work which is being presented, not each individual image.

[don_e]

"Art is much more conceptual and more about the intellectual engagement of the viewer than it ever was under the influence of the Renaissance aesthetic."

 

Not so. The painting of the Renaissance is intensely intellectual, intentionally so. We just don't know how to 'read' it anymore, but art historians and philosophers do beginning with Vasari. They aren't making it up.

[jason_carreira]

I'll take your word for it, but you don't find Renaissance art where the concept carries the work without a beautiful subject, which was my real point.

[al_kaplan1]

...is a documentary which will be shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, FL at 2 pm on Saturday, March 24th. "Award winning filmmaker Peter Rosen will lead a discussion following the screening." (This came in today's mail.)

 

RSVP and information 305-893-6211 www.mocanomi.org

 

The Museum is located at 770 NE 125th Street in North Miami.

[justinblack]

A favorite slight of landscape and nature photographers has been that they are pollyannas

who delude themselves with their quest to find wild, pristine, and sublime subject matter

when the harsh "reality" of the modern world is one of human impact and the remaking of

the landscape. However, both points of view are "reality." While I agree that we are not

artistically informed by more photos of Delicate Arch (unless interpreted in a radically new

way), there is still a surprising amount of territory around the world (even outside of parks

and preserves) where the landscape is wild, human-induced climate change and the

occassional power line or road notwithstanding. Vast swaths of Northern and Central Asia

come to mind. In any case, I don't think of the landscape as a series of spots or vistas on a

checklist that are to be catalogued and then eventually disregarded as "done to death."

The great thing about photography is that there will always be new ways to see and

photograph the world.

[engelgrafik]

It's funny that sometimes the people who accuse others of being snobs are usually the actual snobs. You'll rarely find the supposed "east coast snobs" actually attacking pretty nature scenes from California unless they're ASKED for an opinion. But us "city folk" are always open to attack for doing the things we simply want to do. You ask us, we give you an opinion. Perhaps we're simply not interested in the same old thing done to death. One asks for an opinion, and when they get one, they don't like what they hear so they accuse that person of being a snob. Interesting.

 

Think about it. Next time you are hanging out with a group of people, watch how people always accuse those "city folk" of being such snobs and how they can't stand them because they are such snobs. Oh those city folks and their unfair snobby arrogant ways. We should never associate with those snobby snob snobs!

 

It's funny when you realize this... you realize it's not always the city folk that are snobs.

[don_e]

"A favorite slight of landscape and nature photographers has been that they are pollyannas who delude themselves with their quest to find wild, pristine, and sublime subject matter when the harsh "reality" of the modern world is one of human impact and the remaking of the landscape."

 

I think the real problem is that they cannot see the modern world as anything but harsh reality, and never sublime. If anything human makes it into landscape photography, it is "picturesque", like a ruin, otherwise, it is all enviro-aware stuff anymore, expressing a longing to ctrl-alt-del the human.

 

This was not always the case. Older landscape photography seems to be a lot less delicate about the real world.

[justinblack]

Don, that's a very good point and you're right that many landscape photographers avoid

evidence of humanity in pictures as if it were some as a kind of rule. However, one reason

photography of "wild" nature interests me is that it deals with natural phenomena that are

bigger, more enduring, and more universal than humanity - geological forces, the physics

of light, natural cycles, order and chaos, etc. I don't believe for a second that humanity

ought to be excluded from landscape photographs, but does it need to be included in

order for landscape photography to be taken seriously as art? Since we interpret any

photograph in relation to our own human experience and consciousness, it seems to me

that nature photography can make some very powerful statements about humanity by way

of saying something about nature.

 

Oh, and Jeffrey, though I live in the Sierra Nevada now, I'm an east coast city boy who grew

up in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC, and studied in an east coast

art program at George Washington University. I'm actually rather fond of city folk.

[jason_carreira]

Justin,

 

If you start with an idea, and make images around that idea, I think you'll be more successful in art whether those images are landscape, portrait, etc. The idea is the central tenet of the art world now.

 

The problem I think you'll run into with expressing your idea via nature photography is that, as people become more and more disconnected from the pristine natural world, images of that natural world become more and more disconnected from the viewers of the images and any emotional or intellectual content tends to fall flat because it is not understood. You'll have to re-invent and re-define a language to communicate what you're trying to communicate, because it's not people's common experience anymore. Making it even harder is the familiarity with the works of great landscape masters like Ansel Adams and how your work will be interpreted in relation to their work. It's a heavy burden for a current landscape photographer to carry, and it's a reason that a lot of new landscape work I've seen has started to be more abstract, to break that relationship with the old.

[beauh44]

I guess it's easy for me to say but shoot what speaks to you. If others want to hang it on their walls or galleries - be them east coasties or west coasties - and pay you for it, well that's just gravy.

[don_e]

For the record, I'm a Pittsburgh boy born on dream street who now lives a few miles from Delicate Arch. I know several landscape or nature photographers and cine-photographers, at least one whose work you've seen on TDC and in NG. I also hike off-trail in the national parks and forests.

 

One thing I've learned is that if you can walk there, someone was there before you. They settled there, hunted there, mined there, knapped tools there, strung wire there, made drawings there (maps and cartoons, mostly, I think, 'Kilroy was here'), left tin cans there, built fires, built hunting blinds, broke pottery, chopped down trees for firewood, and if it is in a 'national' anything, they left survey markers, stakes, sensors and camera kit. Below Delicate Arch is a treasure-trove of lens caps.

 

All the above things are there in the landscape in the common framing we see in photographs of Delicate Arch. I know they are there because I've photographed them. When I find Fremont-era pottery and knapping sites above Courthouse Wash, I can reconstruct the scene, create a narrative, even. I know with fair accuracy what happened then.

 

The landscape is full of human presence lingering in the sand and rock. My brief against the common run of landscape photographers is that they are uninterested in just what is in the landscape they photograph. The "main subject" is all for them, excluding everything else. They do not see.

 

Landscape has become as pretentious a genre as whatever it is that some refer to as bum photography in NY.

[beeman458]

""Who Gets To Call It Art?""

 

In all seriousness, I do, you do and anybody who wants to, gets to, but in "acceptable" terms, I would have to say the gate keepers of the contemporary artistic aesthetic are the MoMA curators.

 

After putting a great deal of personal effort into understanding this aggrandized word, "art," which somehow has obtained mythical stature, I found that it's really a term of pedestrian pedigree; a skilled product of an artisan or craftsperson; nothing more; artisan, "art" for short. For purposes of aggrandizement, some have chosen to elevate themselves (this term) above the pedestrian roots of it's reality. Aaaaah, the fragilities of the human condition, egocentricity. :)

[michael_alpert1]

I realize that I am coming very late to this discussion. One thought that comes to mind is that the terms of the question are inaccurate. The division is between urban consciousness and rural consciousness, not between East and West coasts. Art has historically been an urban activity, with artists and their audience making trips in the country for vacations. Urban people not only have a hard time understanding rural and wilderness situations, they often are frightened by them, just as rural people are frightened by cities. The fact that rural populations are considered by city-dwellers as ill-mannered and stupid only adds to the miscommunication. Artists who live outside cities often feel that the art-world of cities is populated by Martians. Cultural misunderstandings are very hard to overcome. They often operate at the level of first assumptions and emotional habits.

[justinblack]

This discussion has reminded me to make the photographs that have meaning for me,

regardless of external factors. Thanks everyone for your thoughts.

 

Hey Don, say hi to Foote for me the next time you see him.

[gwebster]

<center>

<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/5704130-md.jpg"><br>

<em>Unfocused patch of grass with nothing much happening</em></center>

<br><p>

These are sad times indeed for the struggling artist. The big As of the "big A art world" continue to ignore masterpieces like "Unfocused patch of grass with nothing much happening" (hereinafter referred to as UPOGWNMH) and yet it is little consolation to have to hear once more how other great artists (such as myself) have met their demise penniless and unappreciated, only to be lauded for their work years after they have started to smell so bad that nobody could bear to be in a room with them to laud them anyway.

<p>

In this era of trendy fads and celebrity for its own sake, UPOGWNMH has been sadly overlooked in spite of its carefully crafted mediocrity and the fact that it is a truly savage indictment of something or other that sorely needs to be savagely indicted. Still, Sysiphus-like I continue to toil in my wilderness, hoping that my voice will one day be heard and regretting my decision to roll such a heavy stone while wearing open-toed sandals. Adieu!

[phyrpowr]

Gordon, Gordon, Gordon, you didn't use the right vocabulary to describe/explain/elucidate/obfuscate your masterwork here (I personally see the juxtaposition of the..sorry, my last years' Pradas wore a blister, got distracted) . Get the latest criticisms from the Times et al, cut and paste an essay, resubmit

[pico]

Just thank god that this country is so large and diversified that Art is not as unified Mac

Donalds, Holiday Inn and all the rest of the crap that promises that wherever one is in the

USA it can look the same as long as one is indoors. It IS NOT THE SAME. But those who wish

it to be so, will see it so. And they are just bloody stupid.

[iliafarniev]

I say good ones don't care the schmoorz or no schmoorz, they just do. True art is not a intelectual product backed up with smart strategia, it is a ultimate maifestation of beauty, harmony or truth in context of humanity. Then Art occur true it has naive ability to go thorough all the security of establishments appealing to the best part of common human nature universaly. I has much greater value then any kind of judgement may be passed on it. Cut thorough like a diamont.

[john falkenstine]

There's a lot more to the west besides landscapes.<div></div>

[justinblack]

A few final thoughts:

 

- Gordon, I think your park photograph makes a statement regarding the contemporary

urban greenbelt monoculture. ;) Thanks for posting that - hilarious!

 

- Someone said that Galen Rowell's work isn't strong enough to make the leap from the

pages of the Geographic to the walls of MoMA. I think it more or less meaningless for an

individual to make a statement like "his work isn't strong enough" about one of the most

influential, insightful, and widely respected photographers of the 20th Century who at 42

years of age had a major show at the International Center of Photography curated by

Cornell Capa. You may or may not like his work, but it is certainly "strong enough." There

is plenty of photography that makes it into modern art museums that is not particularly

strong or that fails completely in the eyes of many sophisticated viewers, though the

curator has decreed it to be fine art.

 

- To Al Kaplan, who saw fit to belittle my own work when I didn't even bring it up once: If

you had the opportunity to review my prints before making ad hominem attacks, you

would find that they look like my original transparencies, and aren't "overly

Photoshopped." They are in fact actual moments in nature. I do not remove or add content

or alter colors away from what was on the film. The prints are appreciated very much by

those who see them on the walls in the gallery and they sell well. I do think that the

images on my website look a bit punchy on some monitors, especially PCs, and I am in the

process of addressing this issue.

[noahfactor]

Justin, your last comment demonstrates that there is in fact NOT a bias in "the East Coast dominated "big A" Art world." If Galen Rowell got a solo exhibition at ICP then clearly there cannot be too much of a bias in the East.

[gwebster]

Justin - Thanks for a very thought provoking thread. I think that art often does get institutionalized just like pretty much every other human endeavor. There's always an "elite" ready to plant their flag and claim the territory as their own.

[beeman458]

"They are in fact actual moments in nature. I do not remove or add content or alter colors away from what was on the film."

 

And would you be using Velvia or other "saturated" films by chance?

[don_e]

"And would you be using Velvia...?"

 

One of these days I'll have to shoot a roll of that stuff just to see.

 

Saturday, it was very bright...<div></div>