david_blackett Posted November 16, 2003 Share Posted November 16, 2003 John, If A) you think everything has already been photographed, and B) you think that matters, why are you a photographer? Maybe the answer to this question will help with the answer to your question? David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david_blackett Posted November 16, 2003 Share Posted November 16, 2003 I'd also add that maybe the most exciting frontiers for a photographer to explore - if it's frontiers he's looking for - are of a more inner and personal nature. David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hans_beckert Posted November 16, 2003 Share Posted November 16, 2003 There is considerable copying of others' styles, and far too many clichés, as you say. Even talking about clichés itself has become a cliché. Perhaps the best thing to do is not to take pictures, but just imagine that you have. Or to take pictures of other people taking pictures of other people taking pictures..... When I travel, I take pictures of the tourists, not the scenery... Professional portrait photography tends to look too 'stagey' and calculated, and amateur portraits often verge on the grotesque.... It's getting rough out there... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jake_tauber Posted November 16, 2003 Share Posted November 16, 2003 Asking the question, "Does anyone know of any really ground breaking artists working in this medium?" tells me you aren't looking very hard. Check out: Andrew Bush, Barbara Kasten, Vic Munz, The Starn Twins, Roger Ballen, Barbara Ess These artists, to name a very few, show that the only innovation left is not technological. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
erin_____grasshopper__rice Posted November 16, 2003 Share Posted November 16, 2003 John- If you want an answer to your *real* question- then why are you wasting your time and energy in this forum? There are 400,000 pictures on this site. From pretty roses, to pretty girls to pretty sunsets. From mass, to rallies, to marches. The span of light to dark in every possible way imaginable (and some that aren't) is here on this site waiting for you to see it. Despite what prejudices the "big" photographers have on this site towards the "masses" of photographers here, I believe if you take the time to truly look at all the work presented here you, John, will find what you're looking for. Just because they're not famous doesn't mean they don't exist. Remember, those we fail to understand, or osteracize, are usually the ones that turn out to be right along. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john meehan Posted November 17, 2003 Author Share Posted November 17, 2003 Jake THANK YOU! Your point has been proven. I need to get out more. Of those you mention I was only aware of the Starns. In checking out the others I discovered two really interesting (to me) artists: Susan Leopold and Oliver Wasow. Ballen and Ess are also tremendous! Erin, this is why I like PN. Every now and then someone prises open your blinkers a little. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brainbubba_motornapkins Posted November 17, 2003 Share Posted November 17, 2003 >You can paint or sculpt anything you want - but you can't take a picture of an idea. This is not right. All media have limitations. You cannot 'paint or sculpt anything you want', but only what you are technically capable of doing, in the specific medium, e.g. in the field of painting you have many, mutually-exclusive choices (oil and watercolor being the most obvious), and the same goes for sculpture. There are many considerations about selecting a medium that has the right character for the ideas you want to express, and its durability, as well as logistical and cost considerations. What becomes of it after it has been created? How do you 'express' an idea without an audience? Photography is ideally suited to be a modern, digital medium (as an end product, regardless of how the image is crafted) because it has the most economical form of distribution. And it is certainly well-suited to portray and express ideas that are as powerful and eloquent as anything that has been created in other media. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jake_tauber Posted November 17, 2003 Share Posted November 17, 2003 John, I don't know where you live, so I can't recommend where you might go locally to expand your view. I'm lucky enough to live in LA and I travel a lot, so I get exposed to quite a bit of new stuff. A couple of things I recommend. Go to galleries and not just traditional photography galleries. Also, subscribe to magazines. Here are a few you might check out: Art Forum, Bomb, Blind Spot, Contact Sheet. Happy viewing :>} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobatkins Posted November 17, 2003 Share Posted November 17, 2003 Perhaps you cannot "Paint or sculpt anything you want or can imagine", but you can certainly paint and sculpt obejcts which have no existance in reality. Unicorns would be a trivial example. You can paint a Unicorn, you can sculpt a Unicorn, but you can't photograph a Unicorn (unless you have a white horse, a fake horn and a tube of glue). Thus photography has been limited in its expression of ideas by technological factors. Digital changes this. It also changes the very nature and even the definition of photography - or at least it will in the long run. It's also possible that other technologies will change the nature of photography. For example the fact that you can now put a camera in almost anything. Photo cell phones now outsell cameras. You can put a camera in a watch. The very ubiquity of these devices may result in a whole new genre of "reality" photography. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grant_. Posted November 17, 2003 Share Posted November 17, 2003 if its new to you, its new Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bacsa Posted November 17, 2003 Share Posted November 17, 2003 There was no nude photograph made of me. <br>Anybody for a new subject?:o)(beware: i am a hairy, unattractive male person) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bacsa Posted November 17, 2003 Share Posted November 17, 2003 Btw, Andres Serrano is, I think, quite ground-breaking. Not through the method, but through some of his subjects / approach to subjects... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brainbubba_motornapkins Posted November 17, 2003 Share Posted November 17, 2003 <I>Unicorns would be a trivial example. You can paint a Unicorn, you can sculpt a Unicorn, but you can't photograph a Unicorn (unless you have a white horse, a fake horn and a tube of glue). Thus photography has been limited in its expression of ideas by technological factors. </I><br /><br />Yes, and so are all other media. Still photography excels at certain kinds of expression which are denied to all other media. When you say that one can 'paint [or sculpt] a unicorn', what you really mean is, you can depict the <i>idea</i> of a unicorn using either of those media. No one in their right mind is going to accept that such a depiction was based on direct observations of a living unicorn, because there is no such animal.<br /><br />You then go on to explain one method by which you can also depict the <i>idea</i> of a unicorn through photography. An easier way might be to simply photograph a preexisting sculpture (statuette/ceramic bricabrac/whatever) of a unicorn.<br /><br />In either case, you only have a representation of an idea about an unreal thing (i.e. a myth that may serve some large archetypal cultural purpose, ultimately grounded in reality). You cannot make something any more real by painting or sculpting it, than you can by using any other media, such as photography or digital methods.<br /><br />Although you can probably find a lot of <strike>elves</strike> people who may be taken in by this or that hoax. ;-)<br /><br />(incidentally I have <A HREF="http://members.rogers.com/inez.caldwell/gallery_pictures/">painted and sculpted as well as photographed</A>. But to my everlasting credit no unicorns.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ward Posted November 17, 2003 Share Posted November 17, 2003 I find it immediately overwhelming if I regard photographs as existing on a scale of 1 - 10, one being crappy and 10 being perfect, even though some photographs are clearly BETTER than others, and some seem to me to be perfect. There are other scales, originality and aestetics, for example, that are equally destructive to the heart of the artist. For me, photography exists as one side of a relationship and is essentially meaningless without its partner, which is life. I draw my only inspiration from the notion that this moment of life has never been lived before; for me, the process of photographing it helps me to understand it and engage with it. I can't think too deeply about it or I will stop doing it. It is very fragile. Nothing I have ever experienced (or photographed) is unique. If I ever begin to obsessively search for some way of twisting the lighting in a way that has NEVER been done before so I will be able to call it Cutting Edge, please shoot me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris_waller Posted November 18, 2003 Share Posted November 18, 2003 There is an infinity of possible photographs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris_waller Posted November 18, 2003 Share Posted November 18, 2003 "... you can't take a picture of an idea." A picture stands in relation to the subject it pictures. But the picturing relationship cannot itself be pictured. For further explanation of this read Wittgenstein. But the valid photograph pictures its subject in a way that makes the underlying idea clear to the viewer, albeit if the viewer is prepared to make the intellectual effort to engage with the picture. I once saw a sculpture by Jimmy Boyle. It is a small piece but when I saw it, for me it was almost an epiphany. The piece was so powerful, so dense with content, that my head reeled. Yes, there is cliche aplenty, but just occasionally something really monumental appears. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john meehan Posted November 18, 2003 Author Share Posted November 18, 2003 Chris If I understand the Wittgenstein reference correctly (i.e. the 'picture theory of meaning' logically negating its own possibility), I am not sure it does apply to photographs as you suggest. Doesn't the work of Robert Adams (albeit implicitly) refer to the 'picturing relationship' that exists between photographers such as Ansel Adams' images and their subject? Or is this simply an add-on to Robert Adams' work rather than a quality inherent within his images. This is perhaps getting too heavy. It does come as a change from 'which lens?' and 'great shot' though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil_baylis Posted November 19, 2003 Share Posted November 19, 2003 "Given that every conceivable physical subject has been photographed to the point of cliche and that reflexive approaches are now passe..." Was this true, the day before the 9/11 attacks? Not everything has been photographed yet, because not everything has happened yet. Neil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brainbubba_motornapkins Posted November 19, 2003 Share Posted November 19, 2003 The image of a modern urban disaster was/is indeed a cliche, brought to you by Hollywood. Everyone kept commenting how 9-11 was 'like a movie'... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil_baylis Posted November 19, 2003 Share Posted November 19, 2003 Elvis, it seems as though you're saying that because there had been many disasters photographed in the past, this one was not worth photographing. But surely that's not what you mean. Neil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brainbubba_motornapkins Posted November 20, 2003 Share Posted November 20, 2003 No, I'm saying that the imagery of a disaster (like 9-11) is a familiar cliche to all movie-goers of the past 30--50 years. In many other parts of the world, it is a horrifying reality, until 9-11 for most North Americans it was something happening elsewhere watched on the nightly news (which inspired widespread annoyance of the 'why should we have to watch furriners dying at the hands of our military and allies, it's depressing and besides who gives a sh*t' variety), or an unreal, special fx spectacle (for which the public has a seemingly limitless appetite). In the immortal words of Joe Flaherty, "They blowed up good". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris_waller Posted November 20, 2003 Share Posted November 20, 2003 John, My reference to Wittgenstein was something that came into my head but the idea is not fully developed. A photograph is a representation of the world, in the same way that words are a representation of the world. The photograph is a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional world. But it is not the world - cf. Magritte's painting 'Ce n'est pas une pipe', i.e. this is not a pipe, it is a picture of a pipe. The word 'chair' is not a chair. However, the photograph itself is an object in space. So we have the thing and the photograph of the thing. There is a relationshiop between the thing and the picture of the thing. The meaning of the picture arises from this relationship - it is epiphenomenal. I hope that in taking a picture, that is, in the selection of the subject and the manner in which I photograph it, its significance will become apparent. I looked at some of Robert Adams work and it intrigues me like Eggleston's, in that the pictures speak, to me at least, of the 'strangeness' in the ordinary. His picture of the cyclist on the road is a case in point. I am also fascinated by the work of Clarence John Laughlin who, again, seems to be seeking a deeper significance beyond the purely representational. Some of my own pictures are concerned with this 'strangeness', the odd, random juxtapositions of objects which, by that very juxtaposition, seem to assume a new meaning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rick_helmke Posted November 20, 2003 Share Posted November 20, 2003 John that's nonsense. There are beautiful women everywhere I look, interesting faces at every turn and nature never does the same thing twice. There are hundreds of sporting events on all levels and there is at least one shot that's never been done at all of them. I've been doing this since the 7th grade and haven't run out of something to shoot so far. Find a subject that interests you and go after it. You likely won't find a completely new way of recording it but if you try, you'll come up with something worth looking at, someone who hasn't been seen before. Keep in mind that there is more to it than the photography. Your best subjects will speak to you on many levels. My favorites are musicians, motor racing and brooding dark-haired women. I can't photograph kids or landscapes to save my butt. A good friend is one of the best travel shooters I know. Another shoots amazing air shows, to me one of the toughest subjects there is to do well. A lot of people here should probably get past what they are shooting with and pay more attention to what they are shooting at. Rick H. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
over exposure Posted November 22, 2003 Share Posted November 22, 2003 Partly true...but Even pretending the subject remains always the same way (improbable...) you and me will change in the process, and the way we look at what surrounds us will change by consequence...so two photos each one taken in another moment, often just some day after, looks different, facing your feelings.. Ciao. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
topher Posted November 24, 2003 Share Posted November 24, 2003 "Nothing I have ever experienced (or photographed) is unique." For me on the contrary, Everything I have ever experienced (or photographed) is unique. I am surrounded by a billion things that have never been photographed before. Here's an exercise: Take two identical pictures of your most patient model. The exposure should be at least a minute apart. Now run an objective comparison on them (say, diff the jpegs). Or even try to convince someone that they are two prints from the same negative. Thank You Kindly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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