civilized ku # 154 ~ REAL pictures
Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at 10:36AM 
Lights in the night • click to embiggenWith Super Bowl XLIII only a few days away, it's only natural that my thoughts turn to the relative absurdity of the Art World. Which, in its own way, merely mirrors that of the World at large or at least as the mass-media would have us believe.
The mass-media has increasingly slouched towards being little more than purveyors / promoters of the next big thing. It has adopted a Super Bowl mentality of hyping the hype. Glitz. Glam. Marketability. It's all about Bright Lights and Stardust. Infotainment rules.
IMO, the slide started at about the same time as the Big-3's (ABC, CBS, NBC) decision to make their news operations more profitable. Ever since then, in true free-market fashion, money became the thing and the sizzle became much more important that the steak.
That said, let's get on to the Art World, Photography Division where, IMconsideredO, a similar evolution has taken place.
Now, let it be known that I enjoy and appreciate visiting galleries and museums in to order to view pictures. It can be a very rewarding and a most stimulating experience. The best of exhibitions can really get the juices flowing and it should be understood that, despite what I am about to write, I don't intend to give up gallery/museum crawls until I'm 6 feet under - even if, before that time, the wife has to push me around in a wheelchair.
Re: Art World absurdity, Photography Division
Let's start with this:
There are no minor leagues in photography. Your pictures are either as good as the greats, or they're not. Period. (and welcome to the big show) - Priscilla Ferguson-Forthman
In theory, I completely agree with this statement. Period. (and welcome to the big show). In actual practice, I think that it full of gaping holes. Period. (and welcome to the little show).
Right from the start, let me make it perfectly clear that one of those gaping holes is not the intellectually lazy sophism most often heard regarding what is and is not Art - the notion that "it is all in the eye of the beholder". That's unadulterated bullsh*t. Period. Unless, of course, the eye of the beholder is the one which is firmly embedded in Father Time. Period.
Without knowing anything else about Priscilla Ferguson-Forthman other than her preceding statement, I assume that "the greats" she is mentioning are those whose work has survived the test of time (and maybe even those who work seems poised to do so at this time). That seems to be a pretty safe assumption as far as assumptions go - so, for what it's worth, I'll just go ahead and base my speculations on that assumption.
It is on this point - good as the greats - that, IMO, her statement starts to leak water, re: her hero-worship (implied, not stated) gold-standard of what constitutes good pictures.
There was a time - before the advent of photography's admittance to the big show - when pictures where exhibited on a much more level (democratic?) playing field than they are today. The stakes ($$$$$$$) where so much lower then than they are now in the high-powered / high-priced world of Art. A time when the steak was more important than the sizzle. The pictures were at least as important as the maker, if not more so.
In a very real sense, the medium of photography seemed to flourish in a much more invigorating environment than it does today. For much of its fledgling years - in fact, its first century - it operated well below the radar of the Art Establishment. With only a few notable exceptions, high-priced Art galleries and high-powered museums just weren't interested in any sustained and committed fashion.
So, picture makers, to include many of the "greats", just carried on and exhibited whenever and wherever they could - small "off-Broadway" galleries, bohemian coffee houses, small bookstores, libraries, schools, movie theater lobbies ... the list went on and on. Photography seemed to be breaking out all over the place. It flourished in way - actual prints on walls - that the web, even with all its quantity, simply can not match. Not even close. Period.
BTW/FYI, I repeatedly kick myself in the ass every time I think about passing up an opportunity to buy a print, not a poster or a reproduction, of a J. P. Morgan portrait made by by Edward Steichen in 1903 for the princely sum of $600. The year was around 1980 and the place was an exhibit in the art department at Sibleys department store (Rochester, NY). That's right - the art department in a department store.
Think about that one for minute or two - a department store with an art department selling pictures made by "the greats". The mind boggles, especially in light of today's Art World, Photography Division, at the idea of buying made-by-the-greats pictures in a department store.
In any event, here's my point - unless you are a devotee of hero-worship, one has to wonder, even in the aforementioned heydays of picture exhibitions, how many "greats" were simply overlooked/undiscovered. IMO, given the present hero-worship mentality of the high-priced gallery / high-powered museum world where $$$$$ matters, there are even greater legions of "greats" out there that are just not seeing the light of exhibitions lights.
More's the pity. I, for one, long to see good pictures made by the non-hero/non-"great" picture makers out there. My picture viewing diet is overly sweet with work from the hero-worshipped "greats". I want to see work that is not preceded by layer upon layer of hype about its "greatness". I want to see a vastly expanded "gold standard" of what is "good" work.
It's out there. I know it is. But I also know that it has a snowball's chance in hell of ever being exhibited on any of the hallowed walls of the Art World, Photography Division. I also know that I stand a snowball's chance in hell of finding it on the web - unless I wish to devote all of my remaining days (and nights) on earth to that tedious and exhausting effort.
But here's something else I also know and it is one of the most depressing things I know - if I were to announce here and now that I am opening an actual brick and mortar photo gallery with web-based marketing (say, something like this) - a veritable "minor-league" (welcome to the little show), in defiance of PF-F's assertion - and put out a call for print portfolios, they would be very slow in coming. That's because it seems that, with of the web and its ease of posting pictures, not that many picture makers actually make prints anymore.
Pictures on paper. The web is Krapola-On-A-Stick by comparison. Period.
Reader Comments (2)
It strikes me that you're dealing with two issues here: getting work seen, and web-quality vs. paper prints.
For the "work seen" part, there is another question: Why? If someone's looking to sell prints, paper in a gallery (or something similar) is probably the way to go ("There's the print. I like it. I'll buy it."). But, for just getting work seen, the web beats paper hands down. My stuff gets seen by about 500 people a month on the web (not huge figures, I know, but...). That ain't ever gonna happen if I put the things on paper and try to find some public space willing to show them.
As for web vs. paper, no question, paper's better.
Well if the goal is get it seen, then your done. Now what? And I don't have an answer.