A photographic imagination

How did ‘Art bollocks’ become the default way of writing about visual culture? Could Mao have the answer?

The results of this conceptual approach are not so much art as a commentary on art – and, inadvertently, a commentary on the shortcomings of art education. And one should not discount how readily egalitarian assumptions and economic influence can be brought to bear in this realm. Whereas creative genius is, by definition, unequally distributed and often expensive to develop, theoretical facility is cheap to disseminate and all too easy to regurgitate. While very few of us can hope to create things of extraordinary beauty, rather more of us can learn to ‘reference’ things of beauty or, better yet, to say why beauty doesn’t matter. Interviewed in The Guardian last year, artist Gavin Turk said: ‘My work is full of quotations – as though I’m a dj recycling other people’s work. I’m just doing what everybody else does, but more explicitly. What really interests me is the charade of creativity.’

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Whatever Happened to Art Colonies?

To have art colonies, you have to have artists as outcasts, which, of course, really didn't happen until Romanticism. But now, because of the lifestyle revolution, artists aren't outcasts anymore. Mothers and fathers used to weep when their offspring announced they wanted to be artists. Now the folks just send their kids to Yale and put a down-payment on a loft.

But why would artists want to hang around with one another? The past is a weird place. Artists used to cluster. Certainly, a common belief-system would explain a lot, along with mutual protection, sharing information, hopping on to one or another stylistic train, mate-swapping, binge-ing, philandering and the thrill of hand-to-hand competition. Artists learn from each other. And, according to Romanticism, they need inspiration: a muse, a myth, a drug, or a landscape.

There are no more art colonies because we no longer need them. We fly here; we fly there. We form our own little art networks. There are no art colonies for the same reason there are no art bars. Where is the Cedar Bar or the Max's of yesteryear?

Young artists used to pray for Pollock, de Kooning, or Barney Newman sightings. Nowadays, I don't think anyone would blink an eye at spying Jeff Koons or Matthew Barney. Every artist is now the star of his or her own movie.

No one wants to talk. If you go out, you go to a club to dance your brains out. Art now is serious business; you cannot risk being seen drunk in public, being heard saying something passionate -- or saying something really, really stupid. Groupies might be carrying guns. Your image is all.

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I am hoping to add a few new regular things:

More images
Audio interviews
Video slideshows

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Maybe play to the system ...

John Szarkowski on playing the gallery system

So that’s the big change. Now you go to schools like Yale and — [the students] would deny it, but they’re lying — their real ambition is to be stars in the gallery system. And I wouldn’t want those young people to know this, but there is actually a substantial market for new people doing something that might look flashy for a moment, because of the fact that there are, you know, a million new billionaires in this country, and they or their wives want to be on the boards of museums. And you can’t collect Jasper Johns anymore. I mean, forget collecting Matisse or Picasso. You can’t collect Rauschenberg or those people — all the good stuff is already in captivity! So you’ve got to find a new guy.

"there's a new kid in town..."

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In one of Time's features on "You" they write:

Even more than blogs or video-sharing sites, Flickr has the power to forge international bonds because it works in an entirely nonverbal medium.

They mention two Flickr users Ali Khurshid and Lavannya Goradia but don't provide links to their work. How lame is that!

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From Teaching online jounralism

Between You and Me.
A film by Patry Krebisz

A friend recently bought the Canon EOS 20D. I tried its burst mode and was in seventh heaven. In this mode we could record at five frames per second (as opposed to film’s 24). We could shoot for about 12 seconds before the camera’s memory buffer would fill up, so our takes had to be really exact -- no long, hypnotic shots. I did a series of tests beforehand to find the best setup ...

I have been working on some still image based products for the last few months. I have a created a few prototypes and a couple of small films of my own photographic works.

This flip book style is an interesting approach that I hope to incorporate in the next interations.

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Francesca Woodman's haunting vision

Francesca Woodman explored the ephemeral realm between what is/isn't

Woodman probed the nature of photography and its uneasy relationship with reality. She relentlessly explored what Townsend calls the "spatial and temporal mismatches" between image and object.

She wanted to evoke the elusive, transient realm between what is and isn't, constantly depicting herself as a kind of specter, disappearing into or emerging from floors and walls, depending on the viewer's perception.

On of my favorite's. She seems to capture the "duration of time" in every frame. An uneasy yet formal approach.

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The revolution's question is Amateur v. Professional where are the boundaries, what makes it so and does it matter.

In Amateur v. Professional Coxsoft art writes:

Many people find art an agreeable hobby and produce good quality work. And there are many professional artists who make a living selling junk: rusty bicycle parts cobbled together as a "profound statement" on our throwaway society! So what makes the difference between a talented amateur and an untalented professional who has the cheek to sell rubbish? Art School. At the end of it, the "artist" has a diploma.

It seems that the writing is on the wall for most forms of expression and the "arts" are not an exception. However, the world of the "collector" still has a way to go to be transformed by the disintermediation that most other areas of free exchange are evolving to.

Your audience should be in conversation with you not just the gallerist.

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I was reading on Alec Soth's blog on "The Sentence"

But while photographers can help shape their sentence, they can’t control it. No matter how many times Cartier-Bresson called himself an anarchist it would never make the sentence. And if Paul Shambroom ends up taking a picture of George Bush’s assassination, that will be his sentence. Unless you change your name, the sentence can only be shaped, not controlled.

and then ran into this

From Mark Mothersbaugh, 2002 with Andy Spade

It takes a masterful artist to have his art embraced by popular culture and not turn to shit. You have to be really clever or really subversive. Target used the Devo song "Beautiful World" in a commercial last Christmas. That was one of my favorite moments for us as a band, even though they didn't include the punch line of the song, which is, "It's a beautiful world for you, for you, but not for me." That song was basically a diatribe against mindless consumerism. It's very ironic but also very satisfying that they'd use it.

Makes me wonder if it is better to have a hand at writing your sentence and have if forgotten or embracing the open source nature of one's own reputation and go with the flow.

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From 2point8's conversation with Nils Jorgensen

Q: I’ve mentioned elsewhere here (or at least I thought I did) that there are two strong and particular streams in street photography: the Sander/Arbus/conversation side and the H.C.Bresson/Winogrand/candid side. Can you talk a bit about how you ended-up on the moment-based Winogrand side? Have you done much conversation-based portrait work, or is it always candids?

A: Getting involved and talking to people is simply not the way I like to work, nor has it ever occurred to me to do so. It is not in my nature to approach people unless forced to for some reason. It could be that early on I was too embarrassed to approach people, and have simply kept working like that ever since. But the truth is I don’t really want to disturb the flow of life around me. I much prefer waiting and hoping for something to happen. It’s also much simpler. For me the whole point of photography is not to interfere with what is happening, or might be about to happen. It could be more interesting than what I might have in mind anyway. If nothing happens, that’s just too bad.

Q: Why street photography? It takes a lot of time, it’s potentially troublesome, and sometimes people yell at you. Are the rewards worth it?

A: It is a question I have never contemplated too much. It is just something I do. Of course, it’s relatively easy to get started. To start, all you have to do is wander around aimlessly, with a camera. This bit comes naturally to me, and I have no urge to be more constructive with my time. But of course, as you say, it takes a lot of time, and you can wander the streets all day and maybe not have anything to show for it. So that aspect is much less easy. To create an image which remains strong year after year is extraordinarily difficult. The images which remain good over the years become precious to you, as you cannot easily go out and get a few more. Then there are the doldrums, from which one cannot believe one will ever come out of. It can all change in one quick moment. And one may think one can artificially speed things up, (and naturally it helps not to sit at home all day), but in the end there is nothing you can do, except wait and wander. For me an image is just as likely to come to you by just waiting for it to arrive, rather than to go searching for it.

The draw to street photography is strong particularly when it is what in front of you. For me photogrpaghy is like sex, the intersection of what you're intereseted in and what you can get.

I have not ever wanted ever to strike up a conversation with anyone who has found their way in to my image harvests. Perhaps said best by one commenter on my images at Flickr when they said, "You like people. But don't worship them. People lost in space."

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Much has been said how the new digital technologies are rehaping the face of news gathering, presentation and distribution.

In Doom and gloom for photojournalism? Mindy McAdams discusses a slideshow from Yahoo! News -- In the Wake of the Coup -- is wholly composed of photos from Flickr.

Reports of the death of painting, however, were an exaggeration. Painting did not die, but it was certainly transformed. You might think of the work of Jackson Pollack and react with distaste and displeasure (if abstraction offends you, that is); you might also think of Picasso, De Chirico, Magritte, or Cézanne. I'm not attempting an art lesson but rather advancing the idea that change is not bad, and what might seem to be a death in one person's view might be a rebirth in someone else's eyes.

I'm not ready to acknowledge the death of photojournalism -- but I am scanning the horizon for signs of its new forms.

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"Whatever you spend your time and money doing," said News-Press managing editor Mackenzie Warren, "is news" and when Martin Parr or Brian Urlichor Luc Delahaye photograph it , it is art.

I have been stuck on how these two ideas (in the three seperate posts) relate to each other.

Photography and blogs uses push botton solutions to simplify complex technical processes.

Curation influences: a blog post on a newspaper site makes it "news". A photograph on a gallery wall makes it "art".

"Hyper local "is niche in both the contemporaty gallery scene and street by street coverage.

Blogging and photography in practice are very plastic and elastic. The more widely distributed the tools become, the more pedestrian the output is. A "snapshot aesthetic" takes hold.

This quote for Sontag's On Photography

From its start, photography implied the capture of the largest possible number of subjects. Painting never had so imperial a scope. The subsequent industrialization of camera technology only carried out a promise inherent in photography from its very beginning: to democratize all experiences by translating them into images.

could easily be written as this

From its start, blogging implied the capture of the largest possible number of subjects. Journalism never had so imperial a scope. The subsequent industrialization of web publishing technology only carried out a promise inherent in the internet from its very beginning: to democratize all experiences by translating them into readable pages.

Or have I had too much coffee agian this morning?

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Being dead helps: the 'found' photos of Jerry Shore
From Tim Connor (colorstalker) on Flickr

Sure, it’s sad that a man of such talent & drive died unknown, believing himself a failure, that his work almost disappeared. But of course such things happen all the time. The real tragedy, the morbid joke, is that in the end the publicist, the curator and the collector are more important than the art. Without a collector/archivist like Daniel Wolf to buy up his prints after he died & a writer of Gopnik’s stature to analyze them in a major publication, we wouldn’t know anything at all – nada forever -- about Jerry Shore.

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From Thomas Hawk

Why after a year and a half can't Yahoo! get it together and get Flickr's interesting photos integrated better into Yahoo! Image Search? It's amazing that Yahoo! has a legitimate trump card where they could dramatically show their superiority to Google and it largely gets ignored.

I know I sound like a broken record but why doesn't Flickr just throw the video upload switch and let this very dedicated community develop into the leading shared orginal content video service.

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An interview with Alex Soth
Via Conscientious

The one caveat is that blogging is probably bad for one’s reputation in the art world. The art world is built on exclusivity. Blogs are built on availability. Most art stars don’t even have websites for fear of appearing pedestrian. But photography, for me, is a pedestrian art. It is democratic and accessible. So I participate in the blogosphere knowing full well that it probably hurts my art-world reputation.

This maybe true, but more and more artists may find a "direct to consumer" approach another path which opens doors to opportunity and audience. There is tangible value you have having people involved in your body of work over time even as you are striving for other things - gallery and books.

What do you think?

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I am so often convinced the blogs, vlogs, pods are linked to the very modern tradition of photography.

Does this statement ring true?

Blogging is a modern invention—one that, from its inception, inspired a host of conflicts and anxieties. Indeed, when we talk about blogs we are talking about modernity; the doubts that blogs inspires are the doubts that modernity inspires. Blogging is a proxy for modern life and its discontents.

What are some of these troubles? From the first, the essential nature of blogging was puzzling. It tended to blur categories—which can be both exciting and unsettling. Was blogging a kind of art? of commerce? of journalism? of science? of surveillance? Was it a form of creativity, a way of bringing newness into the world, or was its relation to reality essentially mimetic or, even, that of a parasite?

The original:
The Treacherous Medium

Photography is a modern invention—one that, from its inception, inspired a host of conflicts and anxieties. Indeed, when we talk about photography we are talking about modernity; the doubts that photography inspires are the doubts that modernity inspires. Photography is a proxy for modern life and its discontents.

What are some of these troubles? From the first, the essential nature of photography was puzzling. It tended to blur categories—which can be both exciting and unsettling. Was photography a kind of art? of commerce? of journalism? of science? of surveillance? Was it a form of creativity, a way of bringing newness into the world, or was its relation to reality essentially mimetic or, even, that of a parasite?

Thanks to GalleryHopper for the pointer

What do you think?

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Eric Schmidt of Google estimated that on avergae every blog has only one reader....

Thousands of Words About Pictures
from Personism

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s some afoot in the world of blogs about photography (not to be confused with photoblogs). Lately it seems like lots and lots of smart people are writing interesting things on the subject. Some people, like Raul Gutierrez, have been writing interesting blogs for a long time now. Others, like say Brian Ulrich have recently stepped it up a bit, perhaps nudged along by Alec Soth, who only started his blog recently, but has already acquired an almost slavish following. (I too am one of those enthusiastic fans.)

I am pleased by this new development, but also somewhat dismayed. Pleased because the best of these blogs are enlightening about the discipline, but not single-mindedly about photography - they’re broader than than that and touch on life, inspiration and sometimes politics. It’s nice having a window into what makes the people who I enjoy and admire tick. I’m dismayed because, well, how’s a girl supposed to keep up?? I’m not just talking about my ever-growing list of bookmarks, a formidable undertaking in and of itself… I’m also talking about my own musings here. It’s a struggle to stay up to par. All these smart people are messing with the curve, damnit. Anyway, all of that said, here’s what I’m reading and why:

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A short film.
Words by John Dos Passos

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Toy fatigue
from Alex Soth

With the iPod I was able to watch every Magnum in Motion podcast. I’d seen a handful before but always became web-distracted. But seeing these programs on the iPod brought up some other problems. First, the image is ridiculously small. Most of the Magnum images were too rich and complex for the tiny screen (The exception was Thomas Dworzak’s ‘7/7 The Longest Week‘ which seemed to have been shot for the iPod). My second problem was with the brevity of the programs. On the web all you want is a little teaser. It is all you have time for. But with the containment of the iPod I wanted a fuller experience. The Magnum programs were too short. I searched the web looking for video and slideshow podcasts that would give me a more complete artistic experience; I looked for programs that could immerse me in their small-screen world. My search was unsuccessful.

Of course the era of the podcast is still quite young. So perhaps great artistry will emerge. But this is where I really get frustrated. I don’t think it has time to emerge. Next year the iPod will have a bigger screen. The year after that it will have a web browser. And the year after that it will be obsolete as some new unforeseen technology takes over. The medium only has time to be a toy. It never has time to mature into a tool.

I think Alex has stumbled upon the an interesting point which made me think that the web 1.0 bubble burst allowed the time and freedom to embrace and mature the tools. Will web 2.0 ever stop to breathe?

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