tourist picture / diptych # 149 / civilized ku # 2932 ~ I'm sick of it

Ironman staging area ~ Lake Placid, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
ice rink at 5:30 AM ~ University of Rhode Island ice rink / Kingston, RI. • click to embiggen
waxed concrete floor ~ 1980 Olympic Arena / Lake Placid, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

As most know, I have spent more than a little ink (if I used a typewriter or pen, which I don't but you probably get the idea) lambasting what I label as the Academic Lunatic Fringe. I.E., a group of educators and the educated in and spit out from photography graduate programs who have highjacked the picture making art world with their meaning-over-content fetishism.

IMO, the insidious effects of the ALF on picture making permeate the gallery and art institution world of photography inasmuch as many from the art school graduate programs have moved into positions as directors of picture galleries and institutions wherein they foster only those picture makers who ascribe to the meaning-over-content school of picture making.

FYI, just to be clear, what meaning-over-content means is, in most picture making cases, the idea that picture making is just a tool for working out some emotional issues / relationships / tracking therapeutic journeys by "exploring the intersection of" (a much favored phrase in ALF picture maker's artist statements) some part of the picture makers brain and some part of the actual world. Issues include, but are not limited to, such notions as death, interpersonal relationships, memories of places / events / persons, illness, fears, and the like. In effect, picture making becomes a part of personal therapy wherein ...

...people say they need to express their emotions I'm sick of that. Photography doesn`t teach you to express your emotions it teachs you to see. ~ Berenice Abbott

To be certain, the act of making pictures has at least a thousand and one uses and I suppose personal therapy is one of them. Nevertheless, I, like Brenice Abbott was, am sick to death of reading artist statements wherein, as Bill Jay stated:

"...it's been quite some time since I read an artist speak so eloquently and clearly about the world beyond his/(her) own asshole."

I am also sick of viewing what amounts to ALF picture cliches. One of the most pervasive of these cliches being pictures of individuals staring into a lens with sullen / dead expressions (ahhh, such gravitas) on their faces and body language - doesn't anyone smile or appear to be happy in the ALF picture world?

And, don't get me started on ALF picture makers who employ tried-and-true picture making strategies - the photo essay (always referred to as a "body of work"), as an example - or techniques - manipulation by means of distorting a picture making process to the point of abstraction - and then thinking that they have re-invented the wheel. I write this inasmuch as I have rarely read an ALF artist statement which acknowledges the work / lineage of the picture makers on whose shoulders they stand.

FYI, it is my fondest hope that, one day, this meaning-over-content too will pass - or, at least, move out of the gallery and art institution limelight so that a more well-rounded view of the picture making world will come to the fore.