civilized ku # 54 ~ a brief history
Thursday, August 23, 2007 at 09:09AM 
Salad bar, pizza, wings, pies and internet access • click to embiggenBeau Comeaux wrote; ... I find myself less interested in imagery where someone with a camera has found a subject of visual interest and rendered it plainly. This is, in effect, simply "pointing at" the subject. As a photographer, saying, "I liked the way this looked. Here, you look at it." I have coined a phrase for it: "plagiarizing nature." ... This "pointing at" style? of photography seems to be limited arbitrarily by the history of the medium. I get much more excited by new uses or approaches to image-making ... Perhaps this could be the start of an interesting conversation about the medium and its varied permutations ... Your thoughts?
From its inception, the medium of photography has had its status as an Art form challenged by the accusation that the medium was little more than a lowly artisanal (or mechanical) trade that produced 'documents' - detailed 'copies' of the contingent features of the actual world (plagiarizing nature). 'True' Art (idealized forms that were not copies of imperfect nature), it was said, was always characterized by its distance from the contingent features of the actual world and the amount of obvious mental/intellectual effort the Artist infused into the work. None other than the Royal Academy in London and the Academie Royal de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris declared this to be so.
The result of all of this, photography-wise, was the movement known as Pictorialism. Pictorialist Art was intentionally and self-consciously 'arty' and the pictures most often displayed a soft-focus technique that suppressed the contingent features of the actual world. Pictorialists also favored 'difficult' printing techniques and they used brushes, sponges, pencils, etching needles, etc., on the negative and print to add layers of 'handcrafting' to their work. Pictorialists were driven to even greater heights of retched excesses in an effort to separate themselves from the hordes of snappers that George Eastman unleashed upon the photographic world with his easy-to-use Kodaks.
As always happens, all good things must come to an end and Pictorialism eventually gave way to the the influences of Modernism most notably at the hands of Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz (who championed Strand). Strand's approach to picturing was based on what he considered to be the inherent qualities of the medium - direct, optically sharp images filled with details of the contingent features of the actual world. He also believed in the modernist idea/ideal of 'truth to materials', aka, 'medium specificity'.
Medium specificity suggests that significant Art is created by concentrating on those characteristics inherent in a medium. It also tends to feature the means of depiction over what is depicted and, most often, highlights those characteristics of a medium that separate it from other art forms.
The eventual result of medium specificity in the medium of photography in the Postmodernist world is what has been come to be known as the 'snapshot' aesthetic (pointing-at style) - an approach to picturing that suggests a photographic gaze of 'detachment' and 'coolness' and one that seems to let the camera 'do its thing' so to speak. One, that retro-like, returns photography to its origins of 'copying' the contingent features of the actual world. One which gives the appearance of an invisible hand of the photographer.
Now, I would be the first to admit that, in the age of digital picture making, the term 'medium specificity' is a moving/evolving target. One could opine that, with the ease of digital manipulation (Photoshop is just brimming with 'pictorialist' tools), Pictorialism - third-wave edition - is rearing its head (some might say, 'ugly' head) once again.
Beau, your pictures are a fine example of the New Pictorialism and maybe, just maybe, the Art world is ready for a swing away from the decades of the 'cool' Postmodern photographic gaze.
gravitas et nugalis
Featured Comment: Beau Comeaux wrote; "... The far flung after-effects of the German coolness and detachment (as initially? proffered by the Bechers) has worn me down a bit as of late. The ironic pointing to empty, banal spaces has run its course for me, failing to interest or engage me.
I hope that doesn't sound too cynical - it's simply that I am tired of seeing that type of work. I am always ready to explore the farther reaches of the medium and it's possibilities (whatever that really means these days). I suppose what I'm really talking about here is the straight rendering of a subject isn't really telling me anything other than an accurate (I know the fallacy in labeling photos as accurate!) depiction of what was before the camera ..."
Reader Comments (3)
Beaux:
As a way of beginning, one might compare the art of photography to the act of pointing. All of us, even the best-mannered of us, occasionally point, and it must be true that some of us point to more interesting facts, events, circumstances, and configurations than others. It is not difficult to imagine a person-a mute Virgil of the corporeal world-who might elevate the act of pointing to a creative plane, a person who would lead us through the fields and streets and indicate a sequence of phenomena and aspects that would be beautiful, humorous, morally instructive, cleverly ordered, mysterious, or stonishing, once brought to our attention, but that had been unseen before, or seen dumbly, without comprehension. This talented practitioner of the new discipline (the discipline a cross, perhaps, between theater and criticism) would perform with a special grace, sense of timing, narrative sweep, and wit, thus endowing the act not merely with intelligence, but with that quality of formal rigor that identifies a work of art, so that we woud be uncertain, when remembering the adventure of the tour, how much of our pleasure and sense of enlargement had come from the things pointed to and how much from the pattern created by the pointer.
To note the similarity between photography and pointing seems to me useful. Surely the best of photographers have been first of all pointers-men and women whose work says: I call your attention to this pyramid, face, battlefield, pattern of nature, ephemeral juxtaposition....
more:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Museum/7101/szark1.html
Szarkowski on Atget - Pointing
from the introduction to Atget At Work
Do you think the snapshot aesthetic descends from Strand and Stieglitz, or through Walker Evans and Robert Frank? I guess my mind is still on Papageorge's great essay that was featured on Eric Etheridge's blog:
http://ericetheridge.com/wordblog/archives/2007/08/the_missing_cri.html
Cheers,
Joe
Indeed, my friends, anything "photographic" must begin with some pointing. I suppose my focus lies on the "some" aspect as it were. I can only hope that "the Art world is ready for a swing away from the decades of the 'cool' Postmodern photographic gaze." (Well said).
The far flung after-effects of the German coolness and detachment (as initially? proffered by the Bechers) has worn me down a bit as of late. The ironic pointing to empty, banal spaces has run its course for me, failing to interest or engage me.
I hope that doesn't sound too cynical - it's simply that I am tired of seeing that type of work. I am always ready to explore the farther reaches of the medium and it's possibilities (whatever that really means these days). I suppose what I'm really talking about here is the straight rendering of a subject isn't really telling me anything other than an accurate (I know the fallacy in labeling photos as accurate!) depiction of what was before the camera.
There will always be that causal link between camera and subject but I really enjoy pushing, pulling, bending and twisting it beyond what was simply "there."