FYI ~ how's your ontology doing?
Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 10:47AM 
My projects - a 'warning' from the wife • click to embiggenOK class, today's assignment is to read this little ditty.
In truth, it's not really a 'little ditty'. It's a long-ish essay that is written in some (at times) rather obtuse academic-speak but please don't let that discourage you from reading it - just open up a dictionary (http://www.dictionary.com) and dive in.
The reason I encourage you to read this piece is simple - just about everything you need to know about photography as an Art form is contained in this essay. Really. I'm not kidding around. More than a month's worth of fodder / food for thought for journal entries on The Landscapist can be had in this ultimately interesting and challenging piece of writing.
gravitas et nugalis
Featured Comment: Steve Durbin wrote; "Bedford takes three pages to say that there's no good art criticism of photography because art critics--including himself--don't understand it. I'd pretty much agree. (Of course, I happen to think most photographers don't understand it very well, either.)"
my response: I also happen to think most photographers don't understand it very well, either.
Reader Comments (7)
Bedford takes three pages to say that there's no good art criticism of photography because art critics--including himself--don't understand it. I'd pretty much agree. (Of course, I happen to think most photographers don't understand it very well, either.)
"The ultimate referent is, therefore, not the form or content of his images, but the authorial concept."
Bingo.
"The photograph is simply the incidental conclusion, the polished index of a more complex backstory to be researched and unpacked by the viewer/critic. In this sense, the photograph is not independently productive of meaning but is rather the document that records and implies the extended process behind the image."
Bingo, again. Unless there is no process behind the image, and then what?
"Photographers who instrumentalize photography as one component of a broader practice have therefore accrued far more critical and commercial traction than photographers who hue more closely to the essentialist, “observe and record” model of photography, simply because their work is more accessible and intelligible to art critics. The latter process of seeing, electing, and shooting is too connoisseurial, too ineffable, and too intuitive to qualify as an intelligent and intelligible conceptual strategy according to the imperatives of the contemporary art world, where a premium is placed on conceptual sophistication. As Maurice Berger has noted, such work is assumed to be “weak in intentionality.” "
Is this so much a matter of actually doing something outside of photography that is really different than what most of use do? Or just a result of beating you a chest a little more about what you do?
I wish I could put a sign saying "Mark's projects" on something a little more substantive.
Mea Culpa!
Gravitas seems to think my comment was a cheap shot. I hope people realize that is not a cheap shot at all, but in fact is a very expensive shot...
If a work of art is not criticized in the woods does it still exist in the woods.
If a work of art is not criticized in the woods, is it still art?
laswor e3d3fd1842 https://1776.army/fluvebdenut