civilized ku # 789 ~ unintelligence / on seeing
Tuesday, November 30, 2010 at 10:43AM 
A water world of sorts ~ Plattsburgh, NY • click to embiggen
The unintelligence of present-day photographers, that is of so-called pictorial photographers, lies in the fact that they have not discovered the basic qualities of their medium. ~ Paul Strand
As noted in civilized ku # 781, Paul Strand also stated that ...
The photographer’s problem is to see clearly the limitations and at the same time the potential qualities of his medium ...
Now, it should be noted that anyone can do any thing he/she chooses to do with the medium and its apparatus. And, by virtue of the modern digital domain, there are easily "mastered" cheap tricks aplenty with which, when used, one can pretend to be "creative". But, really, how much creativity does it take to, as an example, move the Hue / Saturation slider to "11"?
That said, it should also be noted that many of the cheap-trick pretenders - like, say, so-called / self-described artistic nature photographers - do, in fact, make some visually pleasing Decorative Art. The fact that most of that Art is very formulaic and concerned primarily with the surface of things (albeit an excessively distorted representative thereof) makes much of that Art eminently forgettable. On the whole it tends to disappear into the fog of so many one-dimensional crowd pleasing look-a-like pictures.
If the forgoing sounds like a put-down of Decorative Art, it should be stated that, in the Fine Art world, it most definitely is. In my Art world, Decorative Art has a valued place but, make no mistake about it, that "place" is, IMO, a step or two below Fine Art.
In the Fine Art world, pure snobbery aside, Decorative Art is demeaned, diminished, or dismissed because ...
A decisive turning point in artists' protracted struggle over status occurred with the establishment of the Academie Royal de Peinture et de Sculpture (Paris, 1648) and then the Royal Academy (London, 1768). The painter-theorists who directed these institutions established "rules" and precedents that were designed to assert the intellectual (emp. mine) content of their work and raise the standing of their art ...
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. In the hands of one man it makes the highest pretensions, as it is addressed to the noblest facilties: in those of another it is reduced to a mere matter of ornament. ~ an excerpt from PHOTOGRAPY - A Very Short Introduction by Steve Edwards
This rule / precedent was a prime motivator in the emergence of Pictorialism in the medium's early years - a time when the nascent medium was laboring under the dismissive cloud of being a "mechanical" endeavor. Consequently, many early practitioners resorted to emulating, by the use of then readily available "cheap tricks", the painting and etching of the times - in essence, photography as art simply because it looked like paintings. That and the fact that the hand, not the mind, of the artist was everywhere evident and obtrusive. All of which was a wonderfully fine example of missing the point, photography wise.
IMO, and that of the Fine Art world (in general), if a picture does not produce "mental pleasure" in equal or greater measure than that of the visual pleasure it produces, it is "reduced to a mere matter of ornament". But, on the other hand, IMO, and most definitely not that of much of the Fine Art world (photography wise), if a picture is all "mental" and lacking in any visual pleasure is tips too much in the opposite extreme - an intellectual exercise that lacks wall appeal.
All of that said, IMO, the best pictures are made by those who have learned about and understand the medium and its apparatus, its strengths and limitations, and who adopt and adapt that knowledge into making pictures that both illustrate and illuminate in equal measure.
And therein is the medium's real challenge - that which Strand called the "photographer's problem": a "problem" the solving of which is ill-suited to the "unintelligence" of present-day pictorial-ist photographers.
Reader Comments (3)
Mark you were looking for questions, How about "photographers block"?
This description of the mental pleasure vs visual pleasure is one of the best articulated descriptions that I've ever come across.
Yes, there's a sliding scale (or continuum) from illustrative to illuminative. As individuals we might bounce around the scale, and our images (at the time) would follow suit.
It's been some of your writing Mark that's made it clear to me that such a continuum exists - and what's at either end of it!