civilized ku # 2224 ~ kitchen garbage / out with the old, in with the new
Monday, June 18, 2012 at 05:28PM ;)
Trash and foot ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenOn a recent entry, Photography After Photography? (A Provocation) by Joerg Colberg (on his site, Conscientious), Colberg posits that:
Photography has finally arrived at its own existential crisis ... photography has long been running in a circle. Over the past ten years, it has increasingly become dominated by nostalgia and conservatism. Even the idea that we now need editors or curators to create meaning out of the flood of photographs ultimately is conservative, looking backwards when we could, no we should be looking forward ... Who - or what - can move photography forward, looking forward?
When Colberg suggests that the medium has "become increasing dominated by nostalgia and conservation", he bases that notion (in part and as I read it) on the fact that "every picture has already been taken". "How", he asks, "do we get to use all these new tools to create photography that is not just some new looking variant of the old but, instead, something different, something genuinely new?"
Colberg places much of the responsibility for the medium's current "existential crisis" squarely upon the shoulders of digital photography and the fact of "the idea that we now need editors or curators (who are, in my words, the lunatic academic fringe who have insisted that a picture must be more about art theory and meaning than about what is depicted in order for a picture to be taken "seriously") to create meaning out of the flood of photographs".
There is more to Colberg's essay than I have presented here (you should read it in its entirety) but I want to address a couple of his points which I have mentioned here ....
First, I disagree with his notion that digital photography has created a medium based "existential crisis". As "proof" he cites the work of 2 analog/film-based photographers, Matthew Brandt and Marco Breuer, whom he believes "are attempting to move if not forward then at least sidewards ... trying to escape the narrow photographic confines we’ve built around ourselves".
Leaving aside the merits of their work, IMO, there is little, if anything at all, they are doing in the making of their work which could not be accomplished in the digital domain. However, the fact that they have decided to use film (a nostalgic and somewhat conservative act in and of itself) does not justify in any way Colberg's assertion that "it’s actually in the analog area where artists are producing the most interesting work right now". IMO, as is always the case, it's not how you make pictures, it's about the end result, the pictures themselves.
But that minor quibble aside, I read Colberg's essay at about the same time as I was experiencing my own every-picture-has-already-been-taken crisis. Except, to be honest, calling it a "crisis" is way overstating the case. It was more of an internet-based looking-at-too-many-pictures-which-have-already-been-taken fatigue while in search of new and interesting pictures-which-have-already-been-taken.
I search for such new and interesting already-taken pictures because I know they're out there and like Robert Adams stated in his essay Making Art New:
Although as a practical matter we might wish that art made clear headway ... this tempts the artist to try to slip one over on us, to give us the look-alike for progress - novelty
In the same essay, Adams also stated:
... the only thing new in art is the example; the message is broadly speaking, the same - coherence, form, meaning. The example changes ... we respond best to affirmations that are achieved within the details of life today, specifics that we can, to our surprise and delight and satisfaction, recognize as our own.
I am no fan of novelty for newness sake, but it is with Adam's second statement that I find my basis for disagreement with Colberg's notion that; a) the medium is suffering an existential crisis, and, b) the digital domain is the cause of that crisis. To wit:
a) there are plenty of examples of pictures-that-have-already-been-taken which, using examples of the details of life today, express coherence, form, and meaning. And, it is precisely because of the fact that those details are ripped from life today and that I recognize them as my/our own, that I find those pictures to be both "new" and interesting.
IMO, quite a few regular followers of The Landscapist are making such pictures - Mary Dennis, Juha Haataja, Anil Rao, John Linn, Colin Griffiths, and the More Original Refrigerator Art guy (although I don't know if he follows this blog), to name just a few. FYI, don't be offended if your name isn't the short list because, as stated, I named just a few.
b) it is my opinion that digital photography is not the cause of Colberg's so-called existential crisis. In fact, I believe digital photography is moving the medium away from such an event inasmuch as the digital domain has made making pictures, lots of pictures, very inexpensive. Add to that fact, the fact that so many people have a digital picture making device of one kind or another which makes everybody a photographer.
Consequently, both of these digital domain attributes have led to an explosion of pictures which are ripped from the fabric of life today. Granted, there is a lot chaff to wade through to find the wheat, but, IMO, there are more new and interesting already-taken pictures than there ever were in the analog/film days.
And, IMO, that's a good thing. And a new thing. And a moving forward thing.
Unfortunately, digital photography's discursive promiscuity - as I have labeled it - has yet to surface, in any meaningful way that I can detected, in the curatorial / editorial / art world, Photography Division. If any thing, the digital medium's discursive promiscuity is perceived as negative.
Perhaps that's because, in the curatorial / editorial world, there's just too much chaff to wade through to find the wheat, which makes being a curator / editor more tedious than fun.
Not to mention the fact that digital photography's discursive promiscuity challenges and, IMO, fractures many of their cherished canonical presumptions and beliefs.
Reader Comments (4)
The more I think about this the more difficult is becomes for me to nail down. Personally, I see technology evolving, and the possibilities for the medium evolving a well.
I think there are some people out there grappling with this evolution, and trying to use standards they are more familiar with as ammunition. So you have someone stating emphatically that art cannot be made with a camera phone, for example.
On reflection this is not really anything new. Art has always evolved and grown, and there have always been voices against that growth.
Digital photography allows us to make images more easily -- the "low hanging fruit" is even easier to pick. But it also allows us to create images that are difficult to do using film cameras. For example: http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/05/random-excellence-john-slaytor.html
BTW, I like the image you have used to illustrate this post. It's a kind of daggy Still Life and the bare foot operating the foot-lever is a great touch (pun intended).
at least he didn't pick on my google street views and he only hinted at Doug Rickards in his comments.
Too bad about the blue berries.