McCurry, Singh, and the boring "too perfect" photograph

AJHingel · April 5, 2016

"The photos you linked to could actually be considered "high-brow" eye candy"

So, if I understand right, McCurry are for those who like candy. Well, I would rather be without, at least when it comes to photography.

I have a dream of keeping McCurry away from color photography for the rest of his life and we might have a master for future generations. He has the eye, but is contaminated by : "candy".

Robin Smith · April 5, 2016

I reckon this was somewhat patronizing and denigrating myself

The pictures are staged or shot to look as if they were. They are astonishingly boring. Boring, but also extremely popular: McCurry’s photographs adorn calendars and books, and command vertiginous prices at auction. He has more than <a href="https://www.instagram.com/stevemccurryofficial/?hl=en">a million followers on Instagram</a>. This popularity does not come about merely because of the technical finesse of his pictures. The photographs in “India,” all taken in the last 40 years, are popular in part because they evoke an earlier time in Indian history, as well as old ideas of what photographs of Indians should look like, what the accouterments of their lives should be: umbrellas, looms, sewing machines; not laptops, wireless printers, escalators.

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The not-so-subtle equating of popularity with unrefined sensibilities. The tone of the article assumes that those who like McCurry need to get out more and become more refined and perceptive and (of course) more like the writer of the article. I found it rather preachy. "Boring" is not very appreciative either.

Of course, Singh is worthy of attention, although from what I have seen in the article I would rather have McCurry. But then, of course, I am a Western imperialist with a romantic view of India.

cyanatic · April 5, 2016

Robin Smith: I reckon this was somewhat patronizing and denigrating myself

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To be fair, yes. How does he know they are staged? (I honestly don't know one way or the other.) And "astonishingly boring" is admittedly over the top. Selective reading on my part because I concentrated more on the writer's theory of "messiness" vs "perfection" than on his claim that McCurry is "astonishingly" boring. But it has made for an interesting discussion. I'm not so sure I would even categorize his work as boring (unless only his color work is viewed for extended periods of time, but who would not suffer in such a test?). I just prefer the slightly "messier" approach that is alluded to in the article.

Norma Desmond · April 5, 2016

IMO, neither "astonishingly boring" nor anything else the author said is over the top in the context of art or photography criticism. It's funny that artists and photographers learn to have (or should learn to have) thick skins because putting one's work out to the public is bound to get both negative and positive feedback, and not always in the tone we would like. Art is so often about or the result of passion. The best artists tend to be the most passionate. It makes sense to most artists that responses to their work will often be passionate, both good and bad. Fans of various artists and photographers would do well to learn all that as well.

Uhooru · April 5, 2016

I guess I think I couldn't deny that McCurry is a great photographer. His record of success stands for itself. Saying that, I prefer Singh's work and I think the difference in preference is in the way they approach their photographs. McCurry takes these luscious photos but they are iconographic, its always about the subject isolated from pretty much everything around. He really approaches these photographs like a portrait artist. The uniqueness is in the person/s themselves. Everything else is basically a framing element that may provide some cultural context. Singh on the other hand approaches his photographs like a street photographer, still beautiful color, nicely composed but all about context. taking you to the place. Just really different approaches.

AlanKlein · April 5, 2016

A lot of McCurry's pictures look "too colorful" because he shot Kodachrome. Maybe we should blame Kodak.

His photographic essay "style" was to support written articles explaining faraway places to readers of National Geographic. Singh's "messy" pictures are not for these type readers. NatGeo readers read in simple declarative sentences; and view pictures that way too. The point has to be clear because in photojournalism, which is mainly what McCurry does, you want to understand what the writer and photographer is communicating. I'm sure if McCurry was a wedding photographer, he'd shoot differently as well.

cyanatic · April 5, 2016

Fred, you are putting me in the "astonishing" position of defending McCurry against being considered "astonishingly" boring. You know (or I think you know) that I am not a big fan of McCurry or the National Geographic aesthetic of which he is a prime exemplar, but adding "astonishingly" to boring does not seem supportable to me given McCurry's work. At the very least, I don't think the author of the article offers enough support in the article for "astonishingly" to be much more than hyperbole. Although anything may go in the context of art criticism, don't you think that it needs to be supported? I could say, "Ansel Adams sucks" but I'd better explain and support that if I expect it to be taken seriously as a critique of his work.

Landrum Kelly · April 5, 2016

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Thank you for this one, Barry.

--Lannie

Norma Desmond · April 5, 2016

In McCurry’s portraits, the subject looks directly at the camera, wide-eyed and usually marked by some peculiarity, like pale irises, face paint or a snake around the neck. And when he shoots a wider scene, the result feels like a certain ideal of photography: the rule of thirds, a neat counterpoise of foreground and background and an obvious point of primary interest, placed just so. Here’s an old-timer with a dyed beard. Here’s a doe-eyed child in a head scarf. The pictures are staged or shot to look as if they were. They are astonishingly boring.

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Steve, honestly, I'm of two minds about how much support needs to be given. On the one hand, photography elicits visceral reactions which don't necessarily need or warrant intellectual support. If a viewer says Adams sucks, I'm perfectly content to accept that at face value. It's an honest exclamatory response. Depending on the situation, I might ask why.

Now, as to the critique at hand, a critic's finding something "astonishingly boring" might well be an appropriately hyperbolic response to overly mannered and saturated photos. A response, as it were, in kind. Writing that way sort of mirrors the critique and the photography itself.

And I recognize that we should expect certain things from a published critic that we might not expect from all viewers by way of support for their own reactions to the work. So I quote the full paragraph above that ends with those two words because I think the full paragraph actually does provide the critical support for "astonishingly boring." I took the author to be astonished because it would actually be hard to take such boring pictures of such interesting goings on, in terms of humanity and culture. It's astonishing, on some level, that such crispness, clarity, and sterility would be thought of as the way to portray what's being portrayed. IMO, reading the entire article provides quite a bit of support for the claim of being astonished at how boring these photos actually are.

tholte · April 5, 2016

Phil S. You hit it exactly right! I was "bored" by the writers lack of knowing what the heck he was talking about.

Landrum Kelly · April 5, 2016

Part of being a good critic is being able to critique a work on what the maker is / was trying to achieve, not what the critic thinks the work should achieve.

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So, if somebody likes to shoot extraordinarily super-saturated sunsets, and manages to do so over and over and over, then I am supposed to applaud the photographer for having regularly achieved the (to me) nauseous effect which he or she desired?

--Lannie

Landrum Kelly · April 5, 2016

Phil, I am simply saying that no art critic is ever entirely value neutral. No one ever totally sets his or her aesthetic values aside and proceeds strictly objectively and analytically when making aesthetic judgments--and making aesthetic judgments is what we are doing in talking about McCurry's photographic work, or anyone else's. Art is not value neutral, and no art criticism is or ought to presume that it is or ought to be based on a value-neutral foundation. Nor need one insist that emotion has no valid role in such judgments.

This reminds me of discussions of the possibility of a so-called "value-free social science or social theory" except that aesthetics is even less likely than social science or social theory to achieve value neutrality. In the realm of aesthetics, such value-neutrality is not only unlikely; it is logically impossible. I would go further and ask why one would ever presume that it would be a desirable way to proceed.

Yes, we should go beyond our emotions and personal "tastes." Stopping at "This stinks" would be ridiculous in a formal criticism. That is obvious enough. But the gist of this thread not too far up the page was the issue of the efficacy of criticism in general. I am still responding to that turn in the road, since I found the idea that we ought not to be critical in our criticisms to be preposterous. Once we accept the necessity and desirability of criticism, then we must come to grips with issues of our own underlying biases, biases which cannot ever be escaped.

As for context, context is everything. That is beyond dispute, and no one has argued anything to the contrary here. Context simply is not the issue in the discussion above. It is never possible nor desirable to try to escape context, in my opinion, if one wants to offer anything of value by way of criticism, whether claimed to be unbiased or not.

--Lannie

Uhooru · April 6, 2016

Thanks Lannie:) And thanks Alan Klein, I think that is quite true about the role of his pictures and Nat Geo.

Wouter Willemse · April 6, 2016

So, rather than discussing the merits of the reasoning behind opinions, we're now discussing whether we should have opinions at all?

I took the article as a well-meant attempt to critically look at the work of McCurry, by means of comparison of somebody else who for a part worked in the same area (*). It notes some differences between them, and touches on those (a bit shallow, but it isn't a thesis). In terms of opinion -whether the writer prefers one or the other- I don't care too much. He has his opinion, I have mine. But the writer did raise some points worth thinking about as to why he has his opinion, and for myself I considered those, and picked up on some things. That has helped me in rethinking my opinion a bit. End result: positive. Now I expressed what I think about McCurry before, so .... If people feel that a mediocre photographer as myself isn't allowed an opinion on a master, then I guess there is nothing left but stand in awe in front of every proclaimed master, whether you like it or not. And accept it as mastery, and..... well. I see little coming out of that, but again, it's all just opinions. But given that photography is for most of us a means of personal creative expression, sheepishly following without having some sort of critical thoughts about what you like and dislike, seems a rather silly concept.

So, does the more street-style photos of Singh show a more vibrant, interesting view on India than McCurry's portraits? Yes, you cannot compare them as their approaches are different, but what does one add, what does the other add? I think you can make a comparative analysis, figure for yourself what you find working better in terms of visual language, appealing to emotions and whatsmore... and I think that's always a useful exercise.

___

(*) I do agree that if read as a "pure critic", the article fails indeed and the writer would have done better expressing his opinion in a more balanced way. But as I read the article in a different way, it didn't bother me as much.

Wouter Willemse · April 6, 2016

Phil, I certainly agree that one should not try to state which style is better than the other; I added a small P.S. later to better express myself there. On a whole, I agree with what you state. I cherry-picked more what I got from the article, and ignored what I found of lesser value.

Landrum Kelly · April 6, 2016

If "critical" is defined as expressing a disapproval based on our own taste, then no we shouldn't be critical in our criticisms. If "critical" is defined as having an analytical ( which is how it should be defined in the context of a critique ) approach to a work in order to assess its artistic and emotional value, then yes we should be critical in our criticisms.

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Phil, what a horrible--and false and untenable--dilemma! The status of our "tastes" is indeed problematic, but to relegate "taste" to something categorically and totally unrelated to analysis is not useful to me. "I don't care for this" may indeed come out of an emotional revulsion to viewing something, but it may also come out of a plethora of other considerations--or some combination.

I think that you are still trying to hold onto a value-free concept of criticism, Phil. Many persons do. I have to respectfully disagree. I do understand that I am raising that ultimate epistemological bugbear of the status of both knowledge and opinion where aesthetics is concerned, but I do not see how to avoid it entirely. Reason, empirical data, emotions, intuitions, etc., all play a role in our value judgments, including those in the realm of aesthetics. How they are related to each other may well be unknowable, but that issue is in any case beyond the scope of any discussion on Photo.net that I care to get into.

--Lannie

ilkka_nissila · April 6, 2016

The discussion seems to focus on style and aesthetics but Cole's criticism of McCurry is more about the content: India is a complex mixture of modern and old, and McCurry applies extremely stringent selection to the subject matter and avoids completely any sign of what is modern in India. I think this is his main point. Singh by contrast shows a more balanced mixture of the society and does not avoid showing what is new and what is old, all seamlessly mixed as it really is. McCurry's photography isn't journalism or documentary - it is (mostly) advertising photography, of a fantasy to westerners so that they would travel to "exotic" India, which in reality is different from what McCurry shows.

Landrum Kelly · April 6, 2016

It's not about ignoring our opinion and being value-free but about being all the more aware of our opinions when looking at a work critically.

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Who is the offending party, Phil? The author of the linked article? Someone here on this forum? Who, that is, has shown your posited lack of awareness regarding their own opinions? I simply am not sure whom you are referring to. You seem to be either defeating a straw man or beating a dead horse. I'm not sure which.

--Lannie

tholte · April 6, 2016

McCurry is an American who visited and photographed India quite often, Singh is from India and lived and worked there. Shocking to me that their photographs would be different in so many respects. I don't think the writer quite grasped that simple concept.

Landrum Kelly · April 6, 2016

To Wouter:

Wouter, I'm not sure that critiques of style are or ought to be necessarily out of bounds. Style and technique are closely related, although admittedly not identical. I am thinking here primarily about post-processing, although some others seem to be talking about composition, which is not, of course, about post-processing for most of us.

--Lannie

Landrum Kelly · April 6, 2016

Teju Cole's article--the article that we are discussing:

The line that has attracted the most attention here from that article is "They [McCurry's photos] are astonishingly boring." Read in the context of the first two paragraphs, which sound laudatory, the line comes off as a bit of a surprise itself, a shocker--perhaps even astonishing itself.

As a literary device, this "shock" has been quite effective. Indeed, it has driven a lot of the discussion here. The sudden counterpoint jolts us into the sudden realization that this article is not going to be another laudatory, uncritical affirmation of how great McCurry ostensibly is.

A lot of the blowback here from that line just might have come from the sense that Cole gored a sacred cow--no indirect pun about India intended.

In any case, there has been enough emotion to go around on all sides of this discussion, along with some truly rational argumentation.

Thank you for the great thread, Steve.

--Lannie

ilkka_nissila · April 6, 2016

I don't think McCurry does his own post-processing. For as long as possible he used Kodachrome and the colours and the "look" of his images is from that film, and after that, when he started to use digital cameras, someone else has done his post-processing, probably with the intention that the "look" should be similar to his earlier work shot on Kodachrome. Of course, selecting the subject and light in a certain way also contributes to the "look".

Wouter Willemse · April 6, 2016

Lannie, "I'm not sure that critiques of style are or ought to be necessarily out of bounds..." - not sure if we're talking the same thing now. I'm all in favour of open discussion, on whatever aspect in a photo (composition, post-processing, choice of content, use of light, you name it), even if the photographer is far more successful than any of us. Implying that we can't because it would only be a sign of our incompetence, as happened, is ... well, better ignored, really.

Discussing the way in which the author of the original link expressed the opinion, I think, is less interesting than eloborating on what he wrote, in the way for example Ilkka now has done, and several others earlier in the thread. As much as we learn from great photographers on what they do right, and vastly better than most of us, there is also learning from them what you don't want. And in this respect, I think the comparison between Singh and McCurry is interesting and relevant.

Ian Taylor · April 6, 2016

Say what you want about McCurry, he didn't spend his life sitting on a cushion playing on the intergoogle, typing about photography. He worked ridiculously hard for those images and put himself at considerable risk. Sure he has a shtick (who doesn't?), but he created his own look. When you think that he did much of it on 25 ASA slide film, that is quite a technical accomplishment as well. As a portrait photographer, I love of many of his images, like <a href="http://www.oldskull.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/McCurry-oldskull-09.jpg">this</a> or <a href="http://www.namespedia.com/image/Mccurry_5.jpg">this</a>. They look easy, but they're not. He is a master of soft directional light. (Sometimes I even find myself trying to find that <a href="https://www.facebook.com/IanTaylorPhotography/photos/a.673723966022928.1073741847.171846589544004/686342598094398/?type=3&theater">same light</a> for some of my subjects. Never quite get there though!)

I doubt he will lose much sleep over people finding him boring, he's probably out shooting. As an aside, I saw him speak once, and it was very dry. He seems like a private guy who would rather be out in the field than sucking up adulation, unlike many of his peers.

Norma Desmond · April 6, 2016

he didn't spend his life sitting on a cushion playing on the intergoogle, typing about photography

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That's very true, Ian. Just as I imagine it's true of you, who managed to find a few moments to post your thoughts here, just like the rest of us who managed to do so as well. Many of us, you'll find, can find the time to write a few posts on the Internet, shoot the photos we want to shoot, eat, sleep, play with kids, go to movies, and do a little charity work here and there. Doing one thing doesn't have to be seen as the sacrificing of everything else in life.

Working ridiculously hard at something and putting oneself at considerable risk are laudable. But photos resulting from such activity and dedication won't necessarily move me or make much of an impression on me, even if the person taking them does.

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McCurry, Singh, and the boring "too perfect" photograph

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