decay # 21 ~ it's a competition
Friday, June 27, 2008 at 10:13AM 
Apple and strawberries • click to embiggenI am not a fan of photographers who are basically, consciously or not, trying to be painters. To quote Edward Weston:
People who wouldn't think of taking a sieve to the well to draw water fail to see the folly in taking a camera to make a painting.
My distaste for such photography is similar to August Sander's:
Nothing is more abhorrent to me than sugary-sweet photography full of pretense, poses, and gimmickry.
That said, I read the following in the introduction, by Kerry Brougher, to Joel Sternfeld's American Perspectives:
... Sternfeld chose to expand photography, corrupting its purity by injecting it with elements from other media. If photography was going to move forward, it would have to travel beyond the photographic community and into the art world in general, yet be more than a conceptual snapshot and replay of Evans and Frank. It was going to have to compete with painting. (my emphasis).
Whoa, Nellie. Photography vs painting. Shades of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. A Battle of the Titans. Godzilla vs. Mothra ... (need I go on?)
A visit today to any Art museum with any pretense of a Photography Department will confront (some might say, assault) the visitor with BIG photographs. Really BIG - museum-wall sized prints. The Artist who uses photography, Jeff Wall, is the reigning champion of BIG pictures - up to 30 feet - because he deliberately set out to "compete" with painting.
The other thing one will notice in these museums is the nearly overwhelming presence of photographs that are staged or contrived. Again, Jeff Wall, is one of the foremost practitioners of this approach. Once again, because he deliberately set about to "compete" with painting.
The key to understanding the fascination in the Art world with staged / contrived pictures is fairly simple. One has only to look back to 1768 and this from Sir Joshua Reynolds writing for the Royal Academy in London:
The value and rank of every art is in proportion to the mental labour employed in it, or the mental pleasure produced by it. As this principle is observed or neglected, our profession becomes either a liberal art, or a mechanical trade.....
Hence, the statement from American Perspectives that photography must "be more than a conceptual snapshot" to be taken seriously in the general world of Art.
I mention all of this because of my continuing interest in building my decay & disgust body of work.
While I did not intentionally set out to compete with painting, one of the qualities that I deliberately created for the work is that of the paintings of classic Flemish / Dutch Still-Life Masters. Not only the visual characteristics (primarily the quality of light), but also the propensity of those painters to paint, with great detail, that which they found all around them - the everyday objects of their life and lives. And they did so without what the Art world calls "an ideal of form and expression", and with a "tendency to realism, to the exact copy of Nature in its most material forms."
My intention for the work is to print it big, or, more accurately, by today's standards, big-ish.
So, am I competing with painting? If you consider my painting referential approach in form, content, and concept; the obvious manifestations of my "mental labour employed in it" (authorial intent) which also derives from the "staged and contrived" arrangements of my referents; and the potential for "the mental pleasure produced by it" (contemplation of many meanings and associations that can be derived), I guess that the answer is yes.
All of which I have been aware of from the very start of this body of work. I think that this explains, to some extent, my recent diminished enthusiasm for my landscape ku - I am not so certain that it can "compete with painting" as well as my decay & disgust work can.
On that note,let me leave you with this:
A good photograph, like a good painting, speaks with a loud voice and demands time and attention if it is to be fully perceived. An art lover is perfectly willing to hang a painting on a wall for years on end, but ask him to study a single photograph for ten unbroken minutes and he’ll think it’s a waste of time. Staying power is difficult to build into a photograph. Mostly, it takes content. A good photograph can penetrate the subconscious – but only if it is allowed to speak for however much time it needs to get there. - Ralph Gibson
As always, your thoughts are appreciated.
gravitas et nugalis
Featured Comment: Joe Reifer asked: "Size matters ... So how big are you going to print, and how does the price tag match the size?"
my response: I agree that size does matter, so, 36×36 inch image on 48×48 inch paper, editions of 6, priced at $2,500 (1-4), $4,000 (5,6)
Featured Comment: Mauro wrote: "I do not agree on the term competition. To compete you have to be in the same temporal/space dimension with your competitor."
my response: the same temporal/space dimension, aka, the "playing field", is the general world of art. And make no mistake, on that playing field in the world of contemporary Art, photography and painting are competing for collector's dollars.
decay
Reader Comments (8)
If you look at what paintings sell for, it's no wonder that some photographers are trying to place their large prints on the same playing field. Make it big. You need to impress people. Size matters.
So how big are you going to print, and how does the price tag match the size?
I do not agree on the term competition. To compete you have to be in the same temporal/space dimension with your competitor.
It seems instead that you are grabbing experiences from painting, exactly in the same way you are doing with the photographers you studied.
I fear that this of competing with painting is a manifestation of the inferiority complex a lot of photographers have. As you correctly pointed out it is due to the scarcity of knowledge among photographers. It could also be that getting older one tends to view new things as worser than they are but i fear that the above-mentioned scarcity is going to grow.
There is an historical reason (and justification) for our photographic ancestors not being very cultivated, technique, once not now, used to require lot of time to master. But the problem today is an other. To much time spent studying things useless at least.
I still have to understand why there are schools for photography, we shared with image making the same history till today. The various optical effects we use today were well known and used by venetian landscape painters like Canaletto, Guardi, Bellotto et al. British topographers and army painters applied the same rules current documentary photographers apply. Monet was said to be in competition with photography. Roberta is a painter and is a reader of a photography blog.
what really interested me in this one is the Gatorade. Even though the images in this series are identifiably modern, they appear timeless for some reason...except for this one. I was almost fooled into thinking that crappy $2 Gatorade packaging was an ornate glass vase of some sort. Then after meandering around the sink and other areas it hit me when I saw "thirst quencher" printed small on a lime green background. To be honest it really irritated me, I felt like asking it what it was doing there. Why it was intruding on this scene. You don't rot and decay, you linger forever in the gutter of a NYC alleyway.
Aaron that's hilarious.
Ku. Is it in you?
Who is Edward Western?
Mike - That would be Edward Weston who was a Western photographer.
Thought so — just needed reassurance. Watch the punning!
Although I'm not crazy about the trend, it does seem that size does matter. The prints for my newest exhibition were 20" x 30" with one 30" x 45" print.
I envy your pricing; I live in Mexico and if I priced my photos anywhere near that range I'd soon fill my house up in unsold prints. Hey wait a minute; my house is already filling up with unsold prints! Hmmm, maybe I need to re-think this.