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The Art of Photography from a Traditional Posture

paulraphael

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I went to school in Colorado, so there were a few cold days. The bigger problem was the many places you might want to bring a camera that required walking. I have no idea why the art department refused to get some cheap field cameras.

I think the ones we had were Calumets. They weren't monstrous, as studio cameras go. The hard cases they came in were a different story. They looked and felt like something from World War II. It was a terrible way to learn how to use a big camera. And the center support things on the big bogen tripods were always pinching my fingers.

These unpleasant setups really belonged in a studio, where they'd never be moved more than a few feet. But in my years there I never met anyone who was interested in large format studio pictures.
 
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nobodynoz

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Zone IV didn’t exist for 30 years after that photo was made—Moonrise over Hernandez NM was made in 1941. I don’t know what tripod he used, but Ries was making that style of tripod at the time.

He knew the luminance of the full moon and keyed his exposure to that. But it underexposed the foreground badly which challenged him when making prints. He later treated the bottom of the negative with chromium intensifier to make it easier to print.

As he got older, his interpretations became more intense, and he printed Moonrise with a darker sky.

Rick “yes, he owned a station wagon with a roof platform” Denney

ZONE VI not ZONE IV.... but you're right, Zone VI didn’t exist for 30 years after that photo was made.
 
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StevenEleven

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. . . It's also worth thinking about when you make art. It's your job to do your work, and then, to the degree it matters to you, find your audience, wherever they are. It's not a failure if it doesn't connect with everyone. . .

This I found insightful and helpful in my day-to-day. Thanks. :)
 
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LanceLewin

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The Art of Photography

Good day, Paul, Steve, everyone! It has been a while since I last visited this website and want to say
Paul has led me to the “Rabbit Hole”, but I very willingly ventured down into it! Paul had
suggested one important means of helping me convey my thoughts was through engaging
the already, sometimes, heated debates within the philosophical community, and specifically,
the philosophy of photography. Thank you Paul, for urging me to explore this wonderful community
of thinkers.


Though I had read one or two important essays prior to Paul’s suggestion, since our last time
together on these pages I have read about 70 different essays/books by various leaders in the
this community, while also enjoying conversations with these authors! Not being a trained philosopher
the task at times has been arduous, it has also been exciting, and most important, enlightening.

Going back to some of my comments as it relates to excessive use of post-production software
in the creative process – and I am not speaking about Adams heavy use of Dodge & Burn techniques
in the wet darkroom (or similar techniques in a digital workflow), but instead where the use of
elaborate artificial intelligence (AI) based software that transforms, fixes, or otherwise replaces the
mind-dependency of human agency, with a workflow more focused on automaticity. It is here
where these digital tools have the ability (when not used appropriately), I suggest, interfere with
students of photography learning the techniques, concepts and values within The Art of Photography
from the “classic tradition” of photography (Barbara Savedoff 2000).

(The “classic tradition” is mostly viewed through optics focused on 20th century photography).

Alternatively, the use of AI based software (including “presets” and “sky-replacement” for two
popular examples) and then identified by the artist-photographer when presenting her work, I also
suggest, helps spectators appreciate the work more. These types of work are more appropriately
identified as, what I call …” photographic mixed medium” or Dr. Claire Anscomb refers to as
Hybrid Art”, where she expands on ideas made popular by Jerrold Levinson Hybrid Art Forms
published in 1984. Here, my thinking leads to proper identifying photographic work helps
improve “appreciation”: in this sense the often, what I refer to as … “viewer apprehension” …
is squelched and allows spectators to more freely enjoy all types of work and appreciate the
techniques and visualizations skills in creating a final piece, regardless how the work was created.

The following (draft) Abstract summaries my current thinking and where my work is pointed….

Copyright: Unpublished Work © 2021 Lance A. Lewin
(Do not circulate or cite without written permission from the author).


A lot of philosophical writings are directed in helping photography find solid footing as an art, where alternative inquisitions look to pull out the rug from under these often-rickety legs. Instead, my focus solidly secures photography as an art: here my attention focuses on the “Art of Photography” born from 21st century ideals juxtaposed against “classic tradition” (Barbara Savedoff 2000) ideals, and the volatile climate it has manifested from an artist and spectator perspective. A volatile climate perhaps from the sometimes-complex nature of 21st century photography compositional structure: here a combination of photographic techniques from the “classic” era of photography combined with the ever-increasing automaticity through computer based digital software programs (used in the manipulation of digital image files) as the basis for many compositions often resulting in complex visual narratives. Currently, discussions with fellow photographer-artists have anchored between what constitutes photographic concepts and techniques from the classic era in photography, and concepts and techniques prevalent within the context of 21st century photography (aka, the digital photography revolution). I argued the latter injects distinctive traits that destabilize the virtues that, at its core, prescribe photography as a unique and proprietary genre of art. As a result, questions on a photographs authenticity loom more regularly, maybe even more then at the turn of century, during the so named “Pictorial Movement” in photography, which also enjoyed similar inquisitions delineating between proper and improper photographic technique. What do I mean by the destabilization of proprietary attributes traditionally assigned to photography? How and why do I suggest this has manifested the volatile climate I speak of? The following essay hopefully provides answers.

Thank you everyone!

Best Wishes,

Lance

visualizingart.com
 

rdenney

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The author has never seen the work of Jerry Uelsmann, perhaps. Artifice abounds in photography throughout its history.

I rather prefer that we don’t define art such that examples we think unworthy for any reason are defined away as a means of disregarding work that is merely popular.

C. S. Lewis defined literary art as being any literary work that was read and loved. It means that a work is art if someone receives it as art. Critics may think it irrelevant or trite, but the definition of art should not depend on whether they do or don’t like or respect it. There are many who believe that classical music, or Sherlock Holmes, or movies for children, are artistically irrelevant. But just as many (and perhaps many more) appreciate them in artistic terms.

Part of these lofty writings about what is art hinge on who gets to define the canon—the examples worthy of representing the medium to future generations. That seems to me a power play among academics and gallery owners.

By the way, I eschew the use of AI to create content in photos, and still depend on the indexical relationship between subject and photo. But that seems to me more about the definition of photography as a medium rather than the definition of art. But I don’t demand that art avoid mixing media.

Rick “regular people like (some of) his photos” Denney
 

JeffS7444

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I do wonder if an essential part of having one's work elevated to the status of "art" involves the ability to articulate one's vision in a persuasive manner, and to promote it effectively. In the case of Vivian Maier, posthumously via individuals she didn't know in life. Or in the case of Ansel Adams, though his friends and mentors, including Alfred Steiglitz (photographer, gallery owner, magazine publisher) and Beaumont and Nancy Newhall (MoMA curators).

I'm curious to know what your feelings about a work like Andreas Gursky's Rhine II:
https://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1999/rhein-2
Which, if I'm not mistaken, is a multi-image composite, originally shot on film, and digitally reworked with elements including buildings removed.
I wasn’t interested in an unusual, possibly picturesque view of the Rhine, but in the most contemporary possible view of it. Paradoxically, this view of the Rhine cannot be obtained in situ; a fictitious construction was required to provide an accurate image of a modern river.

Andreas Gursky in Andreas Gursky: Fotografien 1994-1998. Tate.
 
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LanceLewin

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The author has never seen the work of Jerry Uelsmann, perhaps. Artifice abounds in photography throughout its history.

I rather prefer that we don’t define art such that examples we think unworthy for any reason are defined away as a means of disregarding work that is merely popular.

C. S. Lewis defined literary art as being any literary work that was read and loved. It means that a work is art if someone receives it as art. Critics may think it irrelevant or trite, but the definition of art should not depend on whether they do or don’t like or respect it. There are many who believe that classical music, or Sherlock Holmes, or movies for children, are artistically irrelevant. But just as many (and perhaps many more) appreciate them in artistic terms.

Part of these lofty writings about what is art hinge on who gets to define the canon—the examples worthy of representing the medium to future generations. That seems to me a power play among academics and gallery owners.

By the way, I eschew the use of AI to create content in photos, and still depend on the indexical relationship between subject and photo. But that seems to me more about the definition of photography as a medium rather than the definition of art. But I don’t demand that art avoid mixing media.

Rick “regular people like (some of) his photos” Denney
RD, ... indeed, mixing techniques between media is most adventurous, surely creative...and its identification (or tag) of such diversity can only solidify a more deep and intellectual interpretation and / or appreciation of the work.
 

rdenney

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I do wonder if an essential part of having one's work elevated to the status of "art" involves the ability to articulate one's vision in a persuasive manner, and to promote it effectively. In the case of Vivian Maier, posthumously via individuals she didn't know in life. Or in the case of Ansel Adams, though his friends and mentors, including Alfred Steiglitz (photographer, gallery owner, magazine publisher) and Beaumont and Nancy Newhall (MoMA curators).

I'm curious to know what your feelings about a work like Andreas Gursky's Rhine II:
https://www.andreasgursky.com/en/works/1999/rhein-2
Which, if I'm not mistaken, is a multi-image composite, originally shot on film, and digitally reworked with elements including buildings removed.

Not my taste but then I’m no minimalist. Smart people admire it, so who am I to disparage it?

I think Adams still had to show his work to Stieglitz and Newhall, and in the former case had nothing more than a letter of introduction in the form of words. As I recall the story, he uttered not a peep of artistic explanation while Stieglitz was reviewing his portfolio. His work may be pretty rocks to post-modern eyes, Baroque in an age of Ligeti and Cage. But lots of people are still moved by much of it.

Rick “including me” Denney
 

paulraphael

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Part of these lofty writings about what is art hinge on who gets to define the canon—the examples worthy of representing the medium to future generations. That seems to me a power play among academics and gallery owners.
I've sat in the audience of a few panel discussions among curators and similar folks. I'm happy that for the most part they seem uninterested in questions like "is it Art?" or especially, "is it photography?" They're more interested in questions like: "is it interesting?"

Gallery owners are often more explicitly opinionated. They rule over a small and private domain, and can get away with caring about questions like "do I like it?" and "can I sell it?"

I think questions about when an image stops being a photograph, or when it stops being real, are more germane to fields outside of art. Like journalism and propaganda.
 
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rdenney

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I've sat in the audience of a few panel discussions among curators and similar folks. I'm happy that for the most part they seem uninterested in questions like "is it Art?" or especially, "is it photography?" They're more interested in questions like: "is it interesting?"

Gallery owners are often more explicitly opinionated. They rule over a small and private domain, and can get away with caring about questions like "do I like it?" and "can I sell it?"

I think questions about when an image stops being a photograph, or when it stops being real, are more germane to fields outside of art. Like journalism and propaganda.

Even the “interesting” question is full of bias. This is not a knock—a curator should be biased, unless all curators are biased the same way, in response to the same external pressures, at which point the line with propaganda gets even more blurred.

Photography is good at documentation, so people apply a “truth in documentation” principle to it. In some cases, this is explicit—I recall a period when the area of the film around the frame was included in prints to show that there was no cropping, as if the photographer can’t do the scene editing in the camera. But photography has always been full of artifice.

And there are traditional craftsmen for whom the craft defines the art. Or who believe that if it is difficult, the art will be more powerful. I admire craft and can recognize it. I pay for works of craft. I enjoy displaying examples of high craft in my home. But I try to maintain the distinction.

For me, the artist’s statement is often a sales pitch, with the goal of persuading the keepers of the canon, or at least the keepers of the checkbook.

Rick “an amateur’s view” Denney
 

Newman

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I know the OP has veered this thread into philosophical questions of 'is it art' and so on, but I want to comment on the original article's main proposition about how much digital manipulation of a photograph is 'acceptable' photographic technique.

I'm sorry to do this, but a lot of categorisation is necessary here.

Without mentioning it in the draft article, Mr Lewin has assumed a very limited scope of photography categorised by him as fine art photography.

So let's categorise photography itself, by purpose, not subject:-
  1. to produce a fine art photograph
  2. to produce a digital artwork that includes a camera image or images
  3. to document what is in front of the lens...for science, for law, for history, for recollection, for cataloguing
I'm happy to put #3 aside as sensibly requiring minimal manipulation other than to clarify the details recorded and make it conform with the way vision works, eg exposure and contrast adjustment, colour adjustment, a modest amount of sharpening and noise reduction, and lifting shadow brightness so one can see what lies there. No-one is trying to make it especially pretty, they are just trying to make sure what was there can be discerned. Record photography. Some of which definitely qualifies as art: just look at great documentary photography. And some has no artistic intent. All good.

Do we need to separate #1 from the artistic part of #3? I think yes, because the 'documentary' standards required of #3 are just too strict for #1, which prioritises appearance rather than depiction. Example: one might easily 'burn out' all the detail in a shadow area in #1, or dodge out highlight areas, in order to communicate the visual side of the art most effectively.

But when we put #3 aside and address #1 (art photographs) and #2 (art using images), those two still need to be distinguished, because although there is nothing wrong at all with #2, I propose that the end result is not categorised as a photograph. It is digital art, pure and simple, specifically that category of digital art that involves the (sometimes quite incidental) use of a digital camera...in which the artist might not even be the photographer.

Without that distinction, Mr Lewin's task becomes deeply philosophical and entangled, but with it, it's quite easy.

Let me give an example of #2, where a photographer produces (perfectly valid and potentially important) art using images, that I say is not a photograph. I could take a photo in northern England under the midday sun, of a few people going about their business in the foreground, with a modest mountain in the background, under a blue sky. (Okay, agreed, I can't be in northern England because it wouldn't have a blue sky, right? ;) )

Then I replace the sky with something much more dramatic, that I found in a photo taken in Canada, that may or may not have been taken by me. I replace the modest mountain with the Himalayan Alps, and replace all the people with Hollywood stars. I throw in some golden sunbeams at an acute angle from a sunset somewhere. In each case the replacement is an enhancement and looks better (for the purpose) than original. OMG what a great, errr, 'photograph' I, ummm, 'made'.

Then I get even more inspired by PC Power, and replace the sky with an underwater scene, the mountain with a factory, and the people with potato chips. Some of these elements are from photos, and some are actually just paintings. Not telling you. I'm a photographer.

Question: what is this final art object actually a 'photograph' of? And when and where was it taken? Answer: it's not a photograph of anything any more, hence not a photograph, and is #2 (art using images).

Contrastingly, if I cloned out of the original photo, a pole that was growing out of someone's head, but left the rest alone, it's still a photo of northern England under the midday sun, a few people going about their business in the foreground, with a modest mountain in the background, under a blue sky. It's a photograph, with (assumed) artistic merit, so it is #1 (art photograph). IMO if you want to debate the acceptability of cloning out the pole, then you are pushing for #3 (documentary photograph) subset 'with artistic merit'.

I think my proposal is a different way of achieving the same goal as Mr Lewin, to clarify how much manipulation is okay while still calling something a photograph. OTOH I don't think a test of "evoking a sense of reality and authenticity" is sufficient, because it would be very easy to achieve that with a lot of 'sky replacement' and 'sunbeams added' photos, that I say are not photos of any one thing and has crossed the line into #3.

cheers
 

rdenney

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Newman, the issue is the degree to which the content is one or the other. Paul Raphaelson—a real fine art photographer and not a dilettante like me—once long ago helped me understand the word “indexical”. The key attribute of all photography is the indexical relationship between the subject and the work. I define a photograph simply: a picture made using a camera. The camera enforces the direct relationship between features of the subject and features of the image, and that is the indexical relationship.

So, your boundary between 1 and 2 isn’t a line but rather a spectrum, and hinges on the dominance of the indexical content. No photograph is fully indexical because the medium itself imposes non-indexical features, even including such distortions (as we audio people understand them) as film’s characteristic curve, or the raw processor’s (or developer’s, or lens’s, or print paper’s—whatever) objective of emphasizing edges. At some point, non-indexical content dominates and the word “photograph” is taxonomically unhelpful. But that boundary is not obvious to me.

We agree that this has nothing to do with what is and isn’t art.

Rick “recalling Jasper Johns’s ‘paintings’ with non-paint things integrated into them” Denney
 

Newman

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So, your boundary between 1 and 2 isn’t a line but rather a spectrum, and hinges on the dominance of the indexical content.
I reckon any digital image art for which I know the provenance, I could clearly categorise it as #1 or #2, and not because I have made arbitrary, personal decisions on where I sit on your spectrum, but because the spectrum is so thin that it’s reasonable to call it a line. Start adding elements from a second photo to the first photo, and we are in #2.
 

rdenney

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I reckon any digital image art for which I know the provenance, I could clearly categorise it as #1 or #2, and not because I have made arbitrary, personal decisions on where I sit on your spectrum, but because the spectrum is so thin that it’s reasonable to call it a line. Start adding elements from a second photo to the first photo, and we are in #2.
Then we are back to Jerry Uelsmann, who did exactly that with no help from computers, and was hailed as a photographer.

Rick “montages of photographs are usually called photographs, with or without the qualifier” Denney
 

paulraphael

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Even the “interesting” question is full of bias. This is not a knock—a curator should be biased, unless all curators are biased the same way, in response to the same external pressures, at which point the line with propaganda gets even more blurred.
Sure, it's bias in the sense that it's subjective. I'm just suggesting that they're trying to do something different from the old-fashioned role of tastemaker. They're trying to get away from rigid ideas of what makes art great (or what makes it art), and also away from anything as limited as personal taste (thumbs up! Thumbs down!) The role is becoming more about reporting what's going on, especially anything that seems relevant to culture at large. They behave more like journalists and cultural critics than tastemakers. Even if the result is still subjective, and even if they still end up being tastemakers.

For me, the artist’s statement is often a sales pitch, with the goal of persuading the keepers of the canon, or at least the keepers of the checkbook.
Sometimes it's also a cry for help! Most artists I know write them because they're told they have to. The experience for them is pure misery. The easiest way through it is to copy the style of other statements, which are themselves probably the products of coercion and misery. The cycle continues.
 

paulraphael

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I felt cheated when word of extensive manipulation of Steve McCurry's works came to light some time ago, because I felt that the unspoken promise was that they were works of photojournalism.

I love the way you phrase this, because it hits a central idea that's quite elegant—it gets us out of trying to force photographs into a finite number of rigid categories (which history shows us is like forcing a room full of kittens into carriers).

Fiction writers often talk about a contract with the reader. The idea is that by the time the reader's made it through the beginning of a story, they've been told, somehow, implicitly, what they should reasonably expect. I don't mean spoilers. I mean basic things like 1) this is a story, not an essay or an ad or a piece of political propaganda; and 2) your curiosity will somehow be rewarded. It probably also means that the genre has been established, and won't be violated in ways that make you want to choke the author.

These are all unspoken promises. They're made through context that you share with the writer, and through association with other works in the history of the medium.

There are some ways to break the contract that can make you feel delighted rather than cheated—like, suppose the contract suggests the work is fiction, and it's totally satisfying as fiction—but then you learn it's a true story? Or what if there's a surprise genre shift that makes the story even better than you expected? This is like if I'm bound by contract to give you $10 and I give you $20.

But more often, a broken contract = failure. The beginning demands your attention, promising it will be worth it, and just at the climax, the protagonist wakes up from a dream. This only works for a shaggy dog story, where the whole point is annoy the audience.

It's a shame that contract with the audience hasn't been universalized to other art forms. I'm pretty sure it's what this whole discussion has been circling around.

It leaves some questions to think about: how does a photograph (or body of photographic work) establish this unspoken contract? To what degree are the cues inside the frame or outside? Could work that has cheated you been satisfying if it offered a different contract? how?
 

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Pornography has a great reputation for honouring the implied contract.

How, you ask, does it do this? By clear categorisation. Which you are against, if your first paragraph means anything.
 

JeffS7444

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I love the way you phrase this, because it hits a central idea that's quite elegant—it gets us out of trying to force photographs into a finite number of rigid categories (which history shows us is like forcing a room full of kittens into carriers).

Fiction writers often talk about a contract with the reader. The idea is that by the time the reader's made it through the beginning of a story, they've been told, somehow, implicitly, what they should reasonably expect. I don't mean spoilers. I mean basic things like 1) this is a story, not an essay or an ad or a piece of political propaganda; and 2) your curiosity will somehow be rewarded. It probably also means that the genre has been established, and won't be violated in ways that make you want to choke the author.

These are all unspoken promises. They're made through context that you share with the writer, and through association with other works in the history of the medium.

There are some ways to break the contract that can make you feel delighted rather than cheated—like, suppose the contract suggests the work is fiction, and it's totally satisfying as fiction—but then you learn it's a true story? Or what if there's a surprise genre shift that makes the story even better than you expected? This is like if I'm bound by contract to give you $10 and I give you $20.

But more often, a broken contract = failure. The beginning demands your attention, promising it will be worth it, and just at the climax, the protagonist wakes up from a dream. This only works for a shaggy dog story, where the whole point is annoy the audience.

It's a shame that contract with the audience hasn't been universalized to other art forms. I'm pretty sure it's what this whole discussion has been circling around.

It leaves some questions to think about: how does a photograph (or body of photographic work) establish this unspoken contract? To what degree are the cues inside the frame or outside? Could work that has cheated you been satisfying if it offered a different contract? how?
In the case of Nick Brandt's This Empty World series, I think the viewer would have the right to be upset if Brandt hadn't used some visual sleight of hand in order to have wild animals and humans share a space!
 
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