civilized ku # 3034-36 ~ it is what it is

2 chairs ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
light on / in a bowl ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
poolside puddle ~ Potsdam, NY • click to embiggen

In an essay (under the title A Photographic Call to Arms) in ToneLit, First Anniversary Edition, Jason Hobbs included this quote:

'...photography for and of itself - photographs taken from the world as it is - are misunderstood as a collection of random observations and lucky moments, or muddled up with photojournalism, or tarred with a semi-derogatory 'documentary' tag.' (Graham, Paul: The Unreasonable Apple, 2010).

This sentiment followed a section of the essay which addressed "Artists who use photography" in which he wrote:

The 'real artists' feel the need to explain their photographic endeavors with this tag presumably because they are unable to lower themselves to the level of a mere photographer. The artist who uses photography has to explain that they are doing something really creative...that they aren't one of the fluky chancers who get lucky every few thousand clicks of the shutter.

What Hobbs is referring to are those artists who use photography for whom concept is everything. Or, in my words, the academically trained lunatic fringe.

Nevertheless, Hobbs believes that "photography that illustrates a concept is fine, but photography in an of itself in the eyes of the art world is the junior partner but only thrown a few scarps and then patted on the head and told to let the big boys get on with it."

All of Hobbs' opinions as expressed in the essay are smack-dab in the middle of my wheelhouse. However, that written, where Hobbs' thoughts get really interesting, iMo, is to be found in the remainder of the essay wherein he writes about photographers allowing themselves "to be held up to 'traditional visual arts' as a measuring stick". One which he believes "is not really the most suitable for photography to be measured against".

He believes this to be so because that measuring stick tends to pigeonhole artists into "...schools, movement or worse...". The effect of which is to "shrink the opportunity to be free to create as we wish to." To cause photographers to agonize "over their 'style' - wondering if it 'fresh' or has 'been seen before' or if in fact they have one at all."

As Hobbs sees it:

... if a photographer is happy to work in the same way over the course of their career then I'm really happy for them. Really I am. But I think there should be room for those of us that don't"...[W]e need to assert our independence and establish our own rules and labels, or as I would prefer our own lack of them, after all chaos is good for creation!

Stayed tomorrow when I will address how Hobbs' ideas might impact the 'traditional visual arts' measuring stick of thematic bodies of work which evidence a common referent and consistent manner of picturing it.