is there any art in point and shoot?

[jwallphoto]

Take a point-n-shoot camera, nail it to an old boot. Mount the boot on a pile of banana peels. Douse the pile with gasoline and set it on fire. Videotape the whole thing with another point-n-shoot. Now you are an artist. ;)

[Norma Desmond]

Steve--

 

I agree that Dan has posed an interesting question. I have just begun Sontag's On

Photography and would prefer not to form a strict critical opinion until I've read it

through, but so far I find her feelings about photography quite distinct from my own

experience with it.

 

I have found, by the way, that many artists tend to downplay their art and, sometimes,

their own role as artist. They are not always the best people to analyze or even discuss

their work, even though they may be great at doing the work themselves. That they

simplify what they're doing and tend not to think of it as being as deep as it actually is,

doesn't convince me of much. Sontag seems distanced in her talk about photography, like

she does not have a very intimate relationship with it, or a creative one for that matter.

She seems overly intellectual about something that is not intellectual, taking quite literally

something as visceral, visual, and figurative as photography. But I could be mistaken and

won't comment further about her thoughts until I've finished.

 

I do think what you say about the difference between photography and other arts pertains

to some cases. But not all. It is easy to be a nonartist and take pictures with a camera. But,

because that can be done, and done in mass quantity, does not mean that those

approaching it as artists aren't every bit as subjective, personal, visionary, and creative as

any other artist working in any other medium.

[steve_sharf1]

Fred: Continue reading Sontags work. It has been many years since I read it though certain points in the book have stuck with me for a long time. I thought that the book raised some very interesting issues.

 

I have problems with the process of critiquing any art form whereby someone tries to relate to someone else what they think is being conveyed in the art. Art, I think, is an experience. You look at a photograph for example, and it says something to you. You are in the state of experiencing. Once you start to relay what you feel about the photograph, you begin to stray from the experience, I believe, and you get lost in a process of trying to find words that relate to a personal experience. You really cannot relate an experience. You can only participate in an experience. The more you try to express your feelings , the further away you take yourself. The British philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, explored and wrote of the problems of using language to explain art and his writings have affected my feelings about critiquing. Maybe Sontag, and the other artists you speak of have the same reservations.

 

A number of years ago my street work was on display at an exhibit of photography put on by Canada's National Ballet. It was a big event that drew many photographers from around North America and Europe. The press was invited to the opening and a number of tours of the show were provided by some photography experts, critics, professors etc.. I joined one of these tours and stood at the back of a large group of people, waiting to hear what the guide had to say. When he arrived at my work, he proceeded to relate what the photographer was thinking when he took the photographs. It was bunk. He was well versed in technique and darkroom process, but as for the message; he was not providing any useful information. I don't believe that anyone could have. The message you receive is yours only. It is your experience.

 

Fred: I agree with most of your last paragraph except for your words : "aren't every bit as subjective". I still do not believe that photography can approach the level of subjectivity that a painting or sculpture, for example, can provide. The process of the image being produced from a mechanical device prevents a huge degree of subjectivity.

[don_e]

Would you say that the paintings of, for example, Vermeer, who used "mechanical devices" (perspective tools, grids), exhibt less subjectivity than the paintings of, for example Millet, who didn't?

[Julie H]

<p>Steve,</p>

 

<p>If I go shopping for a pair of socks, I can't settle for something that speaks to me of "sockness". Only socks will do. If I go hunting for deer, I have to find a deer. I can't shoot whatever beastiness I may become aware of. In other words, I can't conjure up my "prey" from within. I have to go for the literal thing.</p>

<p>Or, to put it another way, there must be several thousand photos on photo.net titled "Alone" or "Lonely". None of them are of the same place or time, but all (or most) are indeed lonely or alone.</p>

 

<p>How many photographs do you <i>not</i> take? How many of those that you do take do you reject for whatever reasons? Why? What's missing? Are these choices not subjective?</p>

<p>For a crude example of how a photographer can artfully make you see what he intends that you see, look at <a href="http://www.photocritic.org/2008/food-photo-tricks/">commercial food photography.</a></p>

<p>A person who strives to make art is potentially an artist, but I believe art can come from anything (including, for example, the Mars rovers). In a few thousand years, nobody will know what was made by an artist and what was not; what was made by machine and what was not. I expect there are remote communities on the other side of the world today that wouldn't know how or by whom (or not) something was made but would enjoy the thing as art.</p>

<p>-Julie</p>

[Norma Desmond]

Steve--

<p><p>

If you could say more about <i>why</i> the mechanics of photography hampers or

prevents the degree of subjectivity you think it does, that would help me discuss it with

you. What's the difference you see between a brush and a camera? Between sculpting tools

and a camera? What exactly is getting in the way of a photographer's subjectivity. I don't

get your statement about light waves being there already and photographic individuality

(which you are skeptical about) being reproducible. All the molecules and color bases to

create various pigments of paint are there already as well. It's the imagination and the

gesture of the painter that creates art. And so, it seems to me, imagination and gesture

with the camera is what creates the photograph as art.

<p><p>

I'm less familiar with Wittgenstein's writings on art than I am with his writings attacking

the notion of private languages. Your talk of the inability to relate an experience verbally

seems very much at odds with Wittgenstein. He goes so far as to say even something that

most of us consider as personal as "our own pain" is in fact not personal at all but more a

matter of observable cues and public perceptions and rules. Experience, for Wittgenstein,

to a great extent, is behavior, not something that can't be named or discussed.

<p><p>

I may be reading you incorrectly, but I see a contradiction in what you're saying. You're

troubled by photography's inability to relate the internal workings of the artist. But later

you suggest that art itself boils down to the experience and you speak as if the internal

workings of the artist can't really be discussed intelligibly. So, using your own definitions,

photography seems to be no different than other arts.

<p><p>

I have experienced what you did at your gallery show many times. People often discuss my

photos in terms very different to what I was actually thinking or feeling myself. Suzanne

Langer talks extensively about symbolism and, more importantly, <i>significance</i> in

art. Basically, her point is that emotion translates through from artist to artwork to viewer

or audience through significant forms. That I may be expressing loneliness or that

loneliness may be stimulating my artwork does not mean that "loneliness" precisely will

be read or experienced by everyone, nor should it. It means that something deeper,

something more significant about the sort of purity of emotion is being conveyed in art. I

agree with you that "interpretation" <i>per se</i> is a troubling aspect of art, because it

often gets way too literal. Langer uses music as an example because, even though some

fall into the trap of being literal about it, most don't provide the same sorts of narratives

to musical pieces that they do to visual ones. She abstracts from that and says that all art

is more akin to the way we relate to music, on a more visceral and symbolic level even

when the words and visual imagery is quite profound. That, I think, is the transcendent

nature of art. Although I respond to a lot of very earthy and down-to-earth art, it is in the

transcendence of that earthiness that I think the vitality of art is to be found.

<p><p>

--Fred

[bler]

isn't a paintbrush as much a mechanical device or tool as a camera(except not as complex), if you fingerpainted, your fingers would also be a 'mechanical device'

 

they are devices witch allow us to capture and create

[don_e]

Photography is fundamentally different from the "visual arts" (meaning mostly painting and drawing) because photography participates simultaneously with the light "captured", which precludes consciousness and therefore subjectivity. "Subjectivity" (and therefore art or artistry) can occur before and after, but not at the instant of capture. This holds true even for a long exposure because no thought of the photographer during that time changes anything of the capture underway.

 

But I disagree that the moment of exposure is merely mechanical. I have no idea how many photos are taken every day. Due to the internet, it seems like it must be millions. I also have no idea why any particular photograph can be powerful and evocative and the few million others 'just like it' are not. Is it "artistry" that makes it so? If you wish to use that term for it...but I choose not to.

 

The hypothetical of the photographer's shadow, the "one" who stands beside Ansel with the same kit at the same time before the same scene and who develops and prints identically to Ansel so that you cannot tell which one is Ansel's, is just that, a shadow. It seems logical because it is all so rote and mechanical, but as I pointed out nobody captured (nor could they) Moonrise Over Hernandez until Ansel did.

 

No one can explain the powerful evocative photograph in terms of mechanics or art. Sometimes it is magic.

[steve_sharf1]

Julie:

Choosing your subject is a subjective process, but it is not a subjective artistic process. The process of producing the image is what I am discussing.

 

 

I take a photograph of a landscape, and the image of the landscape is recorded on film or on a sensor. That is a process governed by the laws of physics. The image of the landscape is "out there".It exists externally. I have relied on a lens and camera and have captured that image. I then print or develop the image. I may do so with great skill and technique but most photographic images are not manipulated to the extent whereby the image is profoundly changed. If the image is profoundly changed, then I would argue that the degree of subjective interpretation has risen.

Now,(if I may use Bresson's example) if I see that same image and decide to sketch it with a pencil, all it takes is a few strokes with the pencil, and I fundamentally change the image. The image is produced within my brain, but must be rendered with the complex personal wiring of my brain, nervous system, muscles, tendons and so on,. As a result, the image has been deeply and subjectively altered. It may be a highly realistic interpretation, but the image has been fundamentally refined by the personal, subjective workings within me.

 

Fred:

I do not believe that I have contradicted myself at all. I have stated that I believe that there is much less of the subjective process in producing most photographic images in comparison to painting, but I have not suggested that a photographic image cannot elicit an experience. Quite the contrary I believe. I wouldn't be a photographer if I believed that I could not produce something of interest. It is the degree of subjectivity or the lack of it in photography that concerns me.

[steve_sharf1]

Fred:

I disagree with your statement about the inability to relate experience verbally being at odds with Wittgenstein. In fact you use the example of "pain" which he discusses in a well known passage of, (I think) "Philosophical Investigations" and where he uses his "beetle in a box" analogy. This very discussion deals with his ideas on the difficulties of relating inner experience, which I mentioned earlier. He states, I believe, (and I stand to be corrected as its been a while since I read it)that there is no methodical way to use language to relate inner experience. When we speak of pain we understand it in terms of of what we see externally; a grimace for example. These words can only be useful in describing visual cues, not in relating the experience of pain. No words can truly relate the experience of pain as it is an internal experience.

 

 

This was exactly my point Fred, in relation to experiencing art.

[steve_sharf1]

Fred: A camera hampers subjectivity as the image that it records does not enter the brain. The final image may be altered but much of the subjectivity has been quashed. A brush or sculpture tool is expressing something that has gone through the brain and the process is therefore totally and completely subjective.

[Norma Desmond]

Steve: In your process of creating a photograph, don't you ever previsualize? Doesn't your

camera sometimes simply serve what's in your brain, or your gut? My images may, at

times, enter my brain long before the camera gets involved. I don't generally use my

camera solely as a recording device. I use it as a means of expression. Or at least toward

some combination of the two. Photography, for me, is a process. The camera is a tool used

in that process.

 

If the process completed with a brush were "totally and completely subjective," how would

anyone other than the person who's brain you're talking about know about it? The brush

or sculpting tool is needed precisely because the image is not to remain subjective. The

camera and the brush both bring the artist's vision to the world.

 

P.S. I'll do a little rereading of Wittgenstein myself and maybe we can pursue his place in

this discussion by email (but I gotta finish Sontag first . . .)

[Julie H]

Steve,

 

It's the realization, the knowing that matters, not how that gets put onto paper. The what, not the how.

 

The painter or sketcher realizes, knows in his mind's eye. The photographer realizes, knows while looking through his camera. How both go about getting what they know/realize onto paper is not what makes it art. It's the what, not the how that matters.

 

Is what one realizes directly from the entirety of the real world more or less limited than what one realizes from imagination (which requires prior experience)? In both cases, one image must result; the plasticity of the imagination doesn't remove the requirement that one, actual image must be realized.

 

-Julie

[steve_sharf1]

I'll make a quick response:

 

I really do not understand that the concept is a problematic one. I understand that it concerns photographers and has for 200 years. It is troubling as it challenges the concept of true subjectivity.

 

A camera,( you can argue all you want) will produce an image. It requires a human to work it and plan out the image, yes. And the image requires further input, before it becomes a print yes. But...the image is one that is mostly formed without the brain. A painting image is produced entirely from within.

[Norma Desmond]

I hope you'll give us credit for not seeing it as simply as you do. It's not the concept that's

problematic, it's our disagreement on the concept that's problematic. We may not resolve

it to where we agree, but it's not any more troubling or challenging to me than to you.

 

Again, if a painting image was produced entirely from within, only the mind's eye of the

painter would ever see it and no one else would. And what the mind's eye of the painter

has seen is vastly different from the eventual painted image. The image that we know as

the painting is formed not in the brain of the painter but in the process that sees the

painter take the brush to the canvas. A photographer may see first with his brain (some

photographers just shoot and don't first visualize and some photographers visualize first

in order to fulfill their vision) and a painter sees first with his brain. A photographer then

picks up a camera and uses it to create a shareable image and a painter picks up a brush

and uses it to create a shareable image.

 

If you're boiling this down to the painter paints a picture based on what's in here and the

photographer creates a picture based on what's out there, then we're in Descartes's

dualistic trap and I'd prefer to stick with a more contemporary notion of reality that doesn't

pit inner against outer and recognizes a more fluid relationship or even lack of necessity

for objective vs. subjective, even though language hasn't caught up with concepts to where

I can avoid using these terms in this discussion. Any reality out there that is defined from

an omniscient perspective instead of from an individual one is of little interest to me. So

the reality the camera captures is no more or less real than the reality of the image in the

painter's head.

 

By "true" subjectivity, do you mean Descartes's or Quine's? If you mean Descartes's, I'll

concede the entire point. Because, indeed, Descartes's notion of subjectivity should and

has been challenged.

[steve_sharf1]

Fred: You state:

"And what the mind's eye of the painter has seen is vastly different from the eventual painted image."

 

 

...Thats it!!!

 

The eye is a lens and forms an exact image on the retina. The retina sends the image to the brain via the optic nerve and the brain "interprets". Does it come out as a photograph?

 

You go on: "The image that we know as the painting is formed not in the brain of the painter but in the process that sees the painter take the brush to the canvas. "

 

What do you mean exactly? The image has to be rendered using the brain as well. What else is controlling how the artist takes the brush to canvas? The liver?

 

Psychometrists, who work in conjunction with Psychologists and Psychiatrists, are able to interpret the workings of the brain by the interpretation of drawings. This is a long established analysis used within the psychiatric medical community. They are not concerned with non-neurologic problems. They understand that the drawing produced is fully related to the workings and interpretation within the brain.

[steve_sharf1]

and...(continued from above)if these same psychometrists think that a better degree of subjectivity can be obtained through the evaluation of photographs, then why doesn't the psychiatric community rely on photographs for the analysis of these patients as opposed to drawings?(I'm referring to house, tree, person tests whereby the patient is instructed to draw a house, tree and person)

[steve_sharf1]

Fred: (I'm sorry for chopping up my responses, please excuse me, but I have another)...you also state above:

 

"My images may, at times, enter my brain long before the camera gets involved."

 

 

but then... your camera gets involved.

[Julie H]

<p>Steve,</p>

 

<p>You are conflating conception/realization with execution. They are two separate processes.</p>

<p>Here is what the conceptual process of a photographer might go like:</p>

<p>He is considering what he is seeing <i>in his mind</i> (vision happens in the mind, not the eyes) -- delivered via the camera lens.</p>

<p>"No, no, no, maybe ...., no, almost, no, no, no, oh!, interesting ... but no ... no, no, no, there! that's it ... almost, a bit more to the right, wait a minute or two for the light, let that thing move, and .... CLICK."</p>

<p>Here is what the conceptual process of a painter might go like:</p>

<p>He is considering what he is seeing <i>in his mind</i> whether from imagination or from observation.</p>

<p>"No, no, no, maybe ...., no, almost, no, no, no, oh!, interesting ... but no ... no, no, no, there! that's it ... almost, a bit more to the right, maybe a different light, move this about a bit , and .... (picks up his paintbrush or sketchbook)."</p>

<p>The photographer does not accept whatever his camera gives him. He accepts what it gives him <b>when he says YES. And that YES is entirely subjective.</b> If, later, he finds that the camera did not give him what he saw in his mind when he said YES, then he discards the picture -- or looks at one of the fifty other frames he took of the same place.</p>

<p>Likewise, the painter can revise his conception as he executes it -- because what he sees on the canvas does not match what he was after in his mind. This may be seen as a shortcoming, not an advantage; that his conception is less clearly envisioned (than the photographer's) due to the limitations of "manually" converting memory and imagination into a single visual embodiment.</p>

<p>The photographer gets his fruit from the tree. The photographer also gets the whole tree, the sky, the meadow, and the wildlife, etc.</p>

<p>The painter picks the fruit and takes it home, puts it in the fridge (his memory), and uses it later if it's still fresh enough. On the other hand, the painter can make a fruit pie ... and so on. There are advantages to each, but the choices (conceptions/realizations to do with the fruit) are all subjective, regardless of how those conceptions are executed.</p>

<p>-Julie</p>

[don_e]

A photograph can be an art work, and, in the moment of capture, subjectivity is absent. There is no "image" in front of the lens, nor is an image captured. I do not think there is an image in the photographer's mind.

 

The moment of capture is, natively, a moment of blindness that artistry attempts to control by pre-visualization, by 'posing' subjects, by reshooting to "get it right", by adroit creativity in development and printing -- by making art. Iow, to eliminate the accidental, the unseen beforehand, the unique -- to normalize the photo according to something outside of the moment. Sometimes art goes so far as to make the photograph the content of an art work. The final step is to convert it into language, meaning that the art work's subject is the photographer's "subjectivity". The photograph then is merely an occasion for artistry.

 

My 'zenish' perspective is of no value to either side of this traditional debate, and I recuse myself from participation in any art discussions in this forum. I promise.

[Norma Desmond]

Steve/Julie-- I have out-of-town guests I'm entertaining right now, so Philosophy of

Photography has to go on hold for a couple of days while I watch them take snapshots of the

Golden Gate Bridge. I am following the discussion, and continuing with Sontag, who has

already provided some good ideas to further this discussion, but I won't be able to add my

thoughts until perhaps Tuesday. It is quite stimulating so I just wanted you to know I haven't

lost interest.

[steve_sharf1]

Julie: You have stated that I am combining conception realization and execution as one.

Please paste my exact quotes so that I may refer to what you think I have previously stated

for further discussion as I do not believe that I am making myself clear or possibly you are

not understanding what I am stating.

 

Whether these processes are separate or not is not the main concern of my discussion. I

have stated many times already that my argument concerns the fact that a camera

produces the recorded image mechanically and in so doing it bypasses the brain. Lenses

are adept at capturing the aspect of a thing but are blind when it comes to the concept of

a thing.

 

I am not discussing the pre-visualization or pre-exposing procedures. These are

subjective, I agree, I have been very clear about that. But I have also made the statement

that what goes into producing the image is craft, not art. Art, is what the final result

should be. A print that evokes an experience. What you did beforehand cannot be

definitively determined by the viewer and plays no part in the experience. ...You can think

all you want before you photograph but eventually you have to intervene with a camera

which cannot think when it records.

 

What happens after pre-visualization(if it does occur) is where the subjectivity is lost, or

becomes hugely abated in most of photography. No one can make a claim that a camera

can "see" or record a concept. You can argue until you're blue in the face about all the

subjective pre and post exposure work that YOU have put into an image but the fact

remains that the image was recorded by an external unthinking device and most

photographic images remain very close replicas of the captured image. They may

represent what you preconceived however you had to shop to satisfy the imagined notion.

 

Again I state that this lack of subjectivity was addressed by Susan Sontag in "On

Photography", by Henri Cartier Bresson, in (I believe) "The Decisive Moment", and in at

least a few notable interviews, and by Paul Levinson in "The Soft Edge" . Heres another

source from outside the school of photography if anyone wants more. John Sloan, the

famous American painter, member of the "Aaschan School" of American painting and

longtime esteemed teacher at the Arts Students League addresses this same argument

starting on page 43 of his well known book "Gist of Art"

 

While I was a teacher and lecturer of photography I am not in the league of those above

mentioned authors. Read them for further passages backing my argument,

 

Finally I ask anyone who still takes issue with my argument to answer my analogy that I

provided in my Mar 29 7:00 and 11:10 remarks. Namely: If photography is truly

subjective, than why is it not used in place of, or alongside of, drawing, as a psychological

tool in psychometric testing of personality and brain abnormalities.

[steve_sharf1]

Fred: Have your guests draw the Golden Gate Bridge.

[steve_sharf1]

Julie: you state:

 

"The photographer does not accept whatever his camera gives him. He accepts what it gives him when he says YES. And that YES is entirely subjective. If, later, he finds that the camera did not give him what he saw in his mind when he said YES, then he discards the picture -- or looks at one of the fifty other frames he took of the same place."

 

That is, to a large extent, the point.

 

 

What about this. I give you an idea and instruct you to go out and photograph. I have you take fifty photographs, and, if I find one that represents an idea I have, I will say YES, my YES being entirely subjective. I then sign it as my own and place it in a gallery.

[Julie H]

Steve,

 

If I make those photographs, my process would be as described in my previous posting. Whether I am trying to conceive of or realize your instructions or my own conceptions doesn't change how I use my brain to get the image.

 

If your instructions were anything other than minutely precise, I would have to develop and realize my own conception of what your words meant -- in my brain.

 

If you managed to give me an incredibly detailed description of what you wanted, right down to the tiniest detail, then I would probably not be able to get the picture you asked for -- because I would not be able to use my own brain to conceptualize what I would be after.

 

What you did with the picture after I brought it -- or fifty of them -- back to you is your business. Even if it was done as work-for-hire, I think there might be copyright issues (and I believe this scenario would play the same way with painting as with photography).

 

-Julie