Only four truly great photographers

[adrian_tyler]

tim, if you gotta haved 4 then robert frank has to be one of them, ditch eggleston, photography has to be more than arranging the colours in your back yard.

[adrian_tyler]

ps right on mathew stanton, great photography is MUCH more than having friends in the moma.

[tim_atherton2]

>I like this kind of discussions, because it can be a playful way of >rethinking the own view-/standpoint.

 

Nice to see someone got the gist of the post - pehaps it took a European? Even after 15 years Is till forget how literal NAmerica can be.

 

>with a false pathos.

 

Ansel Adams in four words - perfect

[tim_atherton2]

"tim, if you gotta haved 4 then robert frank has to be one of them, ditch

eggleston, photography has to be more than arranging the colours in your back

yard."

 

Well, Frank is certainly up there, but what about colour (I don't want to get into the old "is colour a ligitimate form of photography" or B&W is better than colour" - we've done that too many times) BUT, who are the innovative colour photographers - as opposed to illustrators of postcards and calendars (i.e. no more pictures antelope canyon thanks...). Photographers who know how to use colour and take it well beyond the snapshot, out of the pretty and on to somethng else?

[adrian_tyler]

i agree with you as i work principally in colour, but it ain't enough to get a top 4, you can't include eggleston just on the ground of "he's colour", and he was a pal of szarkowskys and got an epo. at the moma. sorry his work is good but it doen't say enough as the big guns. over to frank.

[jorge_gasteazoro4]

<i>Well, Frank is certainly up there, but what about colour?</i><p>

AA in color....lol...

[joe_davis]

Tim,

 

Since you are looking at the greatest of the greatest, then you ought to cross off Evans from the list. As great as he was, he�s just an American copy of Atget, who shamelessly stole ideas from Atget, Paul Strand and Ralph Steiner and promoted his art as if he was the first to come up with that style of photography. Eggleston shouldn�t be even mentioned in the same breath as Atget. Eugene Atget was the greatest photographer who ever lived. Period. Is there another photographer who has influenced others like Atget? Documentary and typological styles became what they are because of Atget. Evans, Sander and the Bechers wouldn�t be where they are without Atget�s gift to them. Atget didn�t coin the catch phrases of the art movements, but he was the first to do it. He was the granddaddy of them all. What would drive a man to such an enormous undertaking of photographing a disappearing Paris as he knew it with the simplest of equipment with no financial backing, and in absolute anonymity?? A true artist.

[carlos_loret_de_mola1]

Tim,

Your gang of four is actually quite accurate and the reasoning behind your list is sound. I'm not sure why you've chosen to share this in a forum filled with members who are so entrenched in their own points of view that they cannot see beyond their opinionated limitations. Perhaps you enjoy being playfully cruel. I read this forum for technical information and it has proven to be quite helpful. Unfortunately most photographers, particularly here in America, are not very knowledgeable nor all that interested in the history of photography except as it relates directly to their own points of view. Whenever members discuss aesthetic or academic topics here the threads are usually either laughable or painful to read. I commend you for your intelligent postings and apparent desire to raise the standard of quality discussion on this forum but I think your efforts end up being more entertainment than enlightenment.

Also, the only flaw I could find in your list is that you completely ignored the nineteenth century. How could there be an Atget without the pioneers of the medium? And if you had to pick the ONE greatest photographer of all, that would have to be, without question, Atget.

 

Carlos Loret de Mola

[mclaine]

Although Dombrovskis is at the top of my personal list, it's not so much because of his pictures, but what he did with them. It's often suggested by historians that the publication of his "Rock Island Bend" in all the major newspapers of Australia in the week of the '83 election dragged Hawke across the line as PM, saved the wild rivers of Tasmania, changed the course of environmental politics in Australia and helped to raise the status of the conservation movement worldwide! To me that's more significant than the work of half the people listed above.

 

And there's been no mention of Frank Hurley, who out-Anseled Adams, over-Roberted Capa and was more Galen than Rowell, all before the end of WWI! He was the first truly great adventure photographer, the first truly great war photographer, and just as dedicated to image perfection as Ansel. Definitely top 4 of the greats, but being from the southern hemisphere, is perhaps too easily forgotten by those in the north.

 

BTW, I agree with those who argue that debating lists of artists is pointless and meaningless, but it's also harmless.

[tim_atherton2]

Joe and Carlos - I would have to agree with you 100% on Atget - indeed my post was almost just that - just Atget. (though I disagree somewhat on Evans, Joe).

 

As for Eggleston, I'm intrigued by the almost compelte hostility to him on here. On a couple of other lists I'm on - eg Streephotography, there is a clear divide - love him or hate him. Here it seems mostly sour grapes that he got an initial MOMA show? Personally, I think he is one of the first photographers to take colour and really use it - play with it, expirment, find new ways of doing things - and you see his influence from Sternfeld to Webb, to Parr to Struth. (and I'm always suprised by the number of people who just don't seem to get Eggleston - then - after a bit of thought and study, it seems to click and then make sense)

 

Inded I think colour is an important aspect of our medium that is not understood at all well (by photographers) and more often than not done very poorly. There seem to be very few good, unique, innovative colour photographers (and many seem to work in smaller formats). To the above I would have to add Allard and Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Paul Graham (as an example, his exceptional book Troubled Land about N Ireland and the Troubles - a place and period I know well, just would not work in B&W) but who else? The colour postacrd and calendar route is easy - who has trully made colour their own?

 

And I loved the little comment about Ansel Adams in Colour - what a terrible book - it showed me two thigns - how mundane many of Adams photographjs really are, and how difficult it is to really do colour work.

 

I have jsut started reading a little book called Chromophobia - "a fear of corruption or contamination through colour - has been a cultural phenomenon since ancient Greek times; this book is concerned with its modern and contemporary manifestations, as well as with resistance to it in art". Something this list often seems to suffer from as soon as colour work is mentioned...

[dean_lastoria]

Only one on my list: John Vanderpant. I'll bet none of you know him. His print is the first print (and realy the only one) that caused me an asthma attack. That's the mesure: "Does this one cause an Asthma Attack".

 

Dean

 

(PS. though Mann and Maplethorpe have causes some heart attacks I've heard)

[adrian_tyler]

tim, i don't think that the beef is with eggleston, it is the fact that you are proposing him as one of the 4 most important photographers of all time. sure his influence is undoubted, but can you stand back and say that he has left (will leave) a legasy such as atget?

 

well i mean its a dumb thread to get to worked up about that no one agrees with you on eggleston so while were here, here's one you all forgot: canaletto, first large format photographer ever, and in colour....

[tim_atherton2]

come on then Tyler - who would you consider the most infulential and innovative colour photographer?

[tim_atherton2]

Sorry, that should be Adrian :-) (just going by your email tag) - tim

[peter_galea]

Dean,

Which print from Vanderpant? I've got my inhaler nearby!

Pete

[adrian_tyler]

well you know the problem for me tim is that i don't really think that he/she exists, for me colour is about knowing how to use it not about ground-busting.

 

it's gradual acceptance into "art" photography has been just that, gradual. so if you really want a colour photographer who has broken ground and is expressing something way beyond photos, try nan goldin, of course she (we all) owe a great deal to eggleston, and i'm not putting her in your "universal heroes" list, but i think based on your criteria of truly great all time masters of the universe, it had pretty much been sown up before mass market colour reared its delightful head. colour just worked its way in there, like egglestones photos, they are beautiful, but they just "are", and the universal greats are a lot more.

[joe_davis]

Tim,

 

Eggleston is a great photographer, but not on par with the other three on your list. Just because he was the first to experiment with colour it doesn't mean he was the best. There were many before photographers before Atget, yet he stands the tallest among all of them. So being the first isn't all that important, in my opinion. Stephen Shore, to me, made more interesting photos in colour.

 

Now that we have agreed on Atget, Tim, here is a question you really should be posting on this board: If money were no object, and if you could own one photograph in the world (one only), which one would it be? I'd be very interested in your response. Cheers.

[dean_lastoria]

Pete:

Funny thing is, I saw it in a little gallery and it was so perfect but it wasn't "of" anything realy. It isn't published that I can see, or the his show at the V.A.G. so I gotta admit not knowing ... though if I'd have had the $5000 in my pocket at the time I'd have grabed it.

Dean

[jim_shanesy]

"'Adams just copied the great romantic landscape painters.'

Tim I disageee. His way of seeing the landscape is very different in spirit and philosophy from the romanic painters ofthe previous century."

 

I disagree, too. He only copied one romantic landscape painter; namely, Albert Bierstadt.

[richard_walker]

The greatest photographers have the quality of abstraction. Ansel Adams came closest to greatness as an abstract artist � think Frozen Lake. Adams did not have insight into this, which is why a few pieces astonish but the bulk of his work is dreary. Mapplethorpe, another overbearing abstract artist. Strange to think that Mapplethorpe is a photographer who shares Adams� vision of monumental abstraction. Eggleston, hugely more sophisticated and delicate than either, takes photographic abstraction to a considerably higher level of achievement. Or back in B&W think Brandt, an abstract expressionist. And many others � documentarism is a limited space, but abstraction is infinite: ie, there is room here for more than four.

[tim_atherton2]

"'Adams just copied the great romantic landscape painters.' Tim I disageee. His way of seeing the landscape is very different in spirit and philosophy from the romanic painters ofthe previous century."

 

I disagree, too. He only copied one romantic landscape painter; namely, Albert Bierstadt."

 

I feel he is very much the photographic culmination of the whole "Cathedral Grove" school of American romantic painting Bierstadt, Cole, Church etc, following on from the photography of Watkins - look at Cole's Cross at Sunset and cf. Adams Moonrise etc etc.

Not just in style and influence but also, to some extent, with the sanctification of the wilderness in Adam's work, in terms of the Sierra Clib and legislation, in philosphy/ideology as well.

[justin_ames1]

there have been no great photographers as of yet. the medium is in its infancy, and as such, has had pioneers, but no epitomes; indeed, there may be such simple limits and constraits inherent in the medium that it will never produce an outstanding figure, one that we could call michelangelo, or rembrant. i hope that the digital transformation may be the next step up the hereditary ladder, for the number of variables the artist can control and manipulate has increased; or it may truncate the evolution, altogether, by over applying the technical in place of technique.

[lex_jenkins]

Whoo...just four, huh?

 

And Tim did specify "truly great photographers" not "truly great *printers*" so we can indeed safely omit Ansel Adams, Michael Kenna, et al, whose primary contributions, it may be argued, are toward the furtherance of great printmaking. (BTW, Adams photos of Yosemite and other of his standbys are indeed derivative of earlier work by lesser known photographers using inferior equipment, film and lacking his skills in exposure and printing. But Adams didn't pioneer photography of those wilderness regions.)

 

Okay, my choice of four great photographers. They may not have been the best at their niches within the craft, but they certainly might qualify as the best representatives of each niche:

 

1. Berenice Abbott - for her unromanticized views of Depression-era NYC. She may have been a pioneer in at least a limited sense. Her photography was a total and complete break from the earlier Pictorialist approach. She managed to get the government to fund her project, a neat trick in itself. And her catalog of NYC may be among the most exhaustive because she apparently had no philosophical or moralist agenda that would have limited her views of the city to mostly po' folks, dapper socialites, etc. She established a tone for straightforward, documentary style exterior architectural photography.

 

2. Weegee - C'mon, who could argue with this choice? He represents an entire era of photojournalism that we'll never see again. He may not have taken all the greatest photos of that era of unfettered access, but he's the one we think of in connection with that era.

 

3. Pompeo Posar - The definitive photographer of the zenith of pinup photography, before the "girl next door" deteriorated into "girls gone wild" (and the presumed next step, "girls on crack" and "girls phoning home for bail money"). Never again in this lifetime will we see such mixed messages and paradoxes in photos of nekkid wimmim.

 

4. Me. Yup. I represent the entire post-Modern generation of photographers, the entire lot of wanna-be's struggling to find an identity and a niche that isn't already packed to the rafters with self-important preachers of the Olde Lore on the inside and copycat HC-Bs and Winogrands sleeping on the porches outside, Leicas tucked 'neath their greasy jackets. I know just enough to be dangerous and not enough to be truly helpful. My meager successes are based more on luck and volume than skill and planning, but I'll claim the latter. I think cameras take good pictures and brand names inspire genius. I mourn the loss of favorite films and alterations to favorite developers all the while knowing that the only effect it will have on my photography will be to my endless series of test strips and densitometry tests. Meanwhile I hate the teenage girls who take more exciting photos with a JamCam than I have in my entire life. I preach to the choir and berate the unrepentant. I think of myself as the Jack Kerouac of photography; my kids think of me as the Orville Redenbacher of photography. I know more than you. I am Mr. Photo Net.

[jeffrey_scott]

Only four ,huh...

 

Well I guess I'll start with...Me, myself and I, and uh, I forget who the fourth is! ;-)

[sk_arts]

<<forget who the fourth is>>

 

The overly trigger happy grandmother who takes endless photos of her grandchildren.