civilized ku # 793 ~ say what?

Flowers in decline / advancing snow ~ on our porch / Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenI've been in the habit of starting my computer day with visits to a number of regularly visited photo blogs / sites. One in particular, TOP has begun to feel a bit like a bad habit.

Despite the fact that the blog's owner / author / editor, Mike Johnston, might be the most sincere and hardest working man in the photo blog-o-sphere, TOP, on average, is much too gear oriented for my photo tastes. Not that there are not occasional entries that focus on pictures, because, in fact, there are. But, once again, for my for photo tastes, they are far too occasional.

In any event, it was via TOP that I was directed to a PBS video clip about a photo exhibition of the work of Alec Soth at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. In the clip, which is narrated by Soth, there is a short segment from Siri Engberg, the Center's Curator - curator of what, I don't know, but I sincerely hope that she is not the curator of photography (for reasons that will become apparent). In that segment she states that ...

Alex Soth is an artist who uses photography to really tell stories, but he's doing this in a way that is not the traditional way of storytelling with photography - his idea of finding the beauty in the unexpected, looking in out of the way places for subjects in scenes that somehow invoked America or a place that people would not really anticipate.

Holy shit-on-a-shingle! Are you kidding me? That statement is so far off the mark, recent past and present state of the medium photograph wise, that it is almost unforgivable coming from a art curator of any stripe ....

Re: "artist who uses photography" - as far as I know, Alec Soth is considered to be a photographer's photographer, not an artist who uses photography. The differences between the two distinctions are manifold but, in this case, suffice it to say that Soth does not set out to make Art by using photography. Rather, he is a photographer whose pictures are considered to be worthy of being called "Art" in the Fine Art world.

Re: "not the traditional way of storytelling with photography" - if, by "the traditional way of storytelling with photography", she means storytelling with pictures in the manner and photojournalism / documenntary style of W. Eugene Smith's Country Doctor (Life Magazine - September 28, 1948), in as far as that goes, she's right.

But, that said, the photojournalism / documentary manner of storytelling with photography has hardly been the only traditional way of using photography "to really tell stories". Photographers aplenty have been using photography to tell stories (in non-photojournalism / documentary ways) since the days of Eugene Atget, Josef Sudek, Paul Strand, Walker Evans, and others too numerous to mention here. And, IMO, the picture making of Alec Soth owes much more to this "traditonal way" than it does to that of W. Eugene Smith, et al.

Re: "his idea of finding the beauty in the unexpected, looking in out of the way places" - IMO, this is the most egregiously ill-informed part of Engberg's statement, re: the medium's history - even its most recent and obvious visibly visual history. Once again, almost since the introduction of the photographic process, so many prominent and well respected photographers have sought and found beauty in people, places, and things - in both the unexpected and out of the way places, that I don't even know where to start in listing them. GFG Charlie Brown, hasn't Engberg ever heard of Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, or William Eggleston?

Now it seems quite obvious to me that Siri Engberg is either ill-informed or ignorant (quite possibly, a mixture of both) on the history of the medium, the apparatus and its image, and/or, PBS did her an extreme disservice in the editing of her remarks. But, in any case, my understanding of (or lack thereof) and comments regarding her remarks should not be misunderstood as an unfavorable critique, re: Alec Soth's pictures.

Soth's pictures are built upon, aka: stand on the shoulders of - and to certain extent expand upon - the foundations laid by many of the medium's giants both past and present. But, in fact, and most notably by the standard of current quasi-postmodern picture making practices, Soth is looking in all the places that we would expect him to be looking for "subjects that somehow invoke[d] America" - that is to say, as the picture making world has come to know it, he is most definitely looking at the expected and in not-so-out-of-the-way places. The only people who might think that Soth is looking at the unexpected and in out of the way places, picture wise, must be those who are living in a world of, picture wise, Sierra Club calendars and cuddly kitten greeting cards.

But again, let me be perfectly clear - none of the above should be considered a criticism of Soth's pictures. In fact, for the most part, I like them very much. But to suggest that he has broken with tradition, picture making wise, in any way is both ill-informed and grossly misleading. IMO, Soth is good at choosing & seeing but his work, as good as it is, is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

On the other hand, Sis Engberg needs to bone up on the medium and its history if she wishes to be taken seriously in some quarters. Either that or, if she was the victim of a poor bit of editing, perhaps by someone who him/herself doesn't know crap about the medium, she needs to get on someone's case at PBS.

Comments

[Bill Gotz]

She also misses the mark on Soth's work in "finding the beauty in the unexpected". He's not finding beauty, he's finding the odd or weird, and I would argue he's forcing people into the category of weird through his photography. I saw the show at the Walker, and I came away feeling uneasy. Soth seems to me to be victomising his subject, creating them as weirdo more so than reporting about weird people.

[the wife]

You are not allowed to play with my mother's vase outside!