The Most Important Photographer of the Late 20th Century(?)

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Re: The Most Important Photographer of the Late 20th Century

Post by Mick O'Connell » Thu Aug 18, 2011 7:10 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00

I would like to add my Big Influence to large format fine art photography - John Blakemore
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Re: The Most Important Photographer of the Late 20th Century

Post by Nigels » Thu Aug 18, 2011 9:29 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Another definition of fine art photography exhibitions - £8.50 to get in!

I went to see Joe Cornish's exhib at Faringdon a few years back - £0 to get in!
Regs, Nigels.
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Re: The Most Important Photographer of the Late 20th Century

Post by Joanna Carter » Thu Aug 18, 2011 9:40 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Nigels wrote:Another definition of fine art photography exhibitions - £8.50 to get in!

I went to see Joe Cornish's exhib at Faringdon a few years back - £0 to get in!
Is it no wonder that Joe mentioned to me that he wished he had another job to bring in the living he had hoped to get from photography? :wink:
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Re: The Most Important Photographer of the Late 20th Century

Post by Matt_Bigwood » Thu Aug 18, 2011 12:55 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Chris Killip springs to mind for his documentary work in the North East in the 1980s and his book In Flagrante. A lot of that work was shot on 5x4, as was his series on the Pirelli tyre factory.

http://www.chriskillip.com/

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Re: The Most Important Photographer of the Late 20th Century

Post by Marizu » Thu Aug 18, 2011 1:11 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Charles Twist wrote:But it's not just the lack-lustre colours that irk. It's also the composition. I get the feeling - sadly, I don't have enough experience to amount to knowledge - that the fine artists are laid back. They capture the whole scene and let the viewer find the narrative. Which is then open to misinterpretation. And there is little form / structure to delight and surprise the eye. The work I have seen, tells me that the artists are either shy or lazy.
There are many different approaches to expressing photographically and I think that is the important point.

It is quite difficult to express and concepts in a photographic image.
Much of the landscape photography that we are familiar with is essentially aspirational in nature. It seeks to express the wonder and beauty of the natural world. The man made is a blight to be avoided unless it is a solitary cosy cottage and even then, for some reason we remove the electricity and phone lines using Photoshop. We don't remove the equally man-made stone walls delineating the fields.
This type of representation is highly sylised. The photographer is making executive decisions about that which is worthy of depiction within quite well defined boundaries. The ideas and feelings being expressed are largely positive and warming.
Then we go home to our terraced houses and wires.
Last week, I went home to a riot (Manchester).

A strong movement in contemporary photography is Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). When Otto Dix came back from fighting in the trenches in World War 1, the aspirational, idealised paintings that had been in vogue in Germany appeared meaningless to him so he started painting in a way that reflected the world as he saw it rather than as he wished it to be.
The Becher's realised that these realistic, unflinching images are precisely the kind of thing that the camera is well suited to capturing and used (large format :) ) film to document their interest in the emergent qualities of industrial structures.

Individual images, like individual pages in a book, are sometimes incapable of expressing ideas so contemporary art photographers often produce bodies or series' of work. The dialogue can only be expressed by showing a number of the images.
Charles Twist wrote:Or possibly they are wedded to a dogma ("Rule 1 - I mustn't put any of myself in the picture") which is not shared by non-initiates. So I can imagine that a lot of folk don't get it.
If you take a picture of an old castle in bright sunlight, it might look like somewhere that you want to visit on holiday. If you shoot the same castle on an overcast day with lightning bolts, it might look foreboding and haunting. The Becher's didn't want to impose these tropes onto their subjects so they captured them in flat lighting with as little dramatic shadow as possible. This was in an attempt to allow the structures to speak for themselves.
I would suggest that most contemporary art photographers do not work in this way, but I would expect them to be highly conscious of the emotive effects of the light and express accordingly. You can't avoid putting yourself in the picture.

The lack-lustre colour pallets favoured by some of photographic artists are much closer to reality than the high saturation representations from Fuji's finest.
dennis wrote:Surely Martin Parr is merely a snapshooter, who, like some over-celebrated 'fine artists', is adept at getting himself noticed. His pics are nothing more really than colour versions of what can found in many a box Brownie collection. Emporer's clothes.
Initially, I had the same feeling about Nan Goldin. Many of her famous photographs simply look like snaps, as do Parr's. The ideas held within them can not be expressed by single images. They need to be viewed as a body in order to experience the narrative. As with any film or piece of music, any particular photographer will not necessarily be to our taste but that is no reason to discard the whole genre.

One contentious issue within contemporary art is that the artists are often trading in ideas rather than artefacts. This means that as long as the quality of the artefact is good enough to express the idea, then the art work can be considered successful. The separation of art(expression of ideas) and craft(realisation if art) is problematic to a lot of people. I think of it a bit like someone writing a fantastic novel with a load of spelling mistakes. As long as I can figure out what they mean and benefit from the story (without exhausting myself), I wouldn't consider it to be a failure.
Nigels wrote:Another definition of fine art photography exhibitions - £8.50 to get in!
The price is a bit of a downer as it pretty much restricts entry to the exhibition to people that already have some knowledge of and value the work of the artist. They're preaching to the converted.

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Re: The Most Important Photographer of the Late 20th Century

Post by Neil Barnes » Thu Aug 18, 2011 4:20 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Like it or not, photography has had since its inception an image of 'poor man's art' - photographers are often seen as 'artists who can't paint'.

And yet that ignores the basic fact that a painted image takes hours or days to make and includes only what the artist intends - while the photograph can take fractions of a second (long exposures for other than scientific reasons are, I feel, uncommon in photographic art). The painting expresses an idealised image, while the photograph can express so much more: instantaneous shots of, say, sporting events, of riots, of murder and mayhem which simply can't be done by a painter except after the fact. Think of the work of Cartier-Bresson, or the Magnum group.

There are cases where the two overlap: portraiture is an example where the prime requirement is to make an image the sitter is happy with, irrespective of the medium. But I think that the documentary nature of photography allows its use in so many areas where painting is simply not an option. E.g. you may well see an artist with his easel and the sunset on the mountain, but it's not often you'll see him in the abandoned factory, or trying to get the geometrical shapes of, say, a housing block in Berlin, onto his canvas.

I may be the odd one out. I don't have a problem using technology to improve the technical quality of my images. I'll use The Gimp (Linux house, here) to change black levels and white levels and the gamma of the image, and I'll spot out a defect in a negative (not that I ever have one, of course!) but it would never occur to me to paint out a barbed wire fence or a power pylon; I may choose not to include it in the shot in the first place, but I wouldn't take it out.

Hmm. It occurs to me that one of my first prize-winning photos was a combination of the standing stones at Callanish with a sunset from the other side of Scotland, done in the enlarger in the traditional fashion. I suspect that I could do a rather better job of it - though at the time no-one realised it was a composite without being told - in The Gimp. I may be suffering from a slight case of double standards there...

I wish I could remember what my point was when I started this post!

Neil

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Re: The Most Important Photographer of the Late 20th Century

Post by Ed Moss » Thu Aug 18, 2011 6:04 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Matt_Bigwood wrote:Chris Killip springs to mind for his documentary work in the North East in the 1980s and his book In Flagrante. A lot of that work was shot on 5x4, as was his series on the Pirelli tyre factory.

http://www.chriskillip.com/
One of my favourite ever books, would love to see an exhibition of his work.

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Re: The Most Important Photographer of the Late 20th Century

Post by Matt_Bigwood » Thu Aug 18, 2011 6:21 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

I was lucky enough to go to an exhibition at the V&A in 1989 celebratIng the 150th anniversary of photography and there was a huge print of the picture of the skinhead sitting on a wall with his head in his hands which stopped me in my tracks .

I'd recommend the recently-published 'Seacoal' book which contains an extended series of some of the pictures from In Flagrante.

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Re: The Most Important Photographer of the Late 20th Century

Post by dennis » Fri Aug 19, 2011 8:05 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Neil Barnes wrote:
Like it or not, photography has had since its inception an image of 'poor man's art' - photographers are often seen as 'artists who can't paint'.
And yet that ignores the basic fact that a painted image takes hours or days to make and includes only what the artist intends - while the photograph can take fractions of a second (long exposures for other than scientific reasons are, I feel, uncommon in photographic art). The painting expresses an idealised image, while the photograph can express so much more: instantaneous shots of, say, sporting events, of riots, of murder and mayhem which simply can't be done by a painter except after the fact. Think of the work of Cartier-Bresson, or the Magnum group.
Neil
It is interesting in this regard that paintings of say birds for a reference book are better than photos because the 'idealised image', i.e. painting, is of a generic bird of that type, while the photo is of a specific bird which may not be entirely representative. So I guess I am disagreeing with him. Dennis.

Thanks Joanna.
Last edited by dennis on Fri Aug 19, 2011 8:51 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: The Most Important Photographer of the Late 20th Century

Post by Joanna Carter » Fri Aug 19, 2011 8:38 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00

dennis wrote: - sorry can't do the 'quote' bit
Hi Dennis

Just to let you know that, if you want to quote someone's post then the simplest way is to hit the "quote" button on the top-right of every message. Of course, that will quote the entire message but you can always remove the excess bits, as long as you don't remove either of the "tags" (the word "quote" between two square brackets).

If you want to '"have a go" at doing that with Neil's post, please repeat this post, starting by hitting the quote button on his post. If you make a mistake, don't worry, I can always edit/remove stuff to help :)
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Re: The Most Important Photographer of the Late 20th Century

Post by Marizu » Fri Aug 19, 2011 11:23 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Neil Barnes wrote:Like it or not, photography has had since its inception an image of 'poor man's art' - photographers are often seen as 'artists who can't paint'.
Absolutely!

That is actually one thing that is quite interesting about Thomas Struth. He studied painting under Gerhard Richter before switching to photography. This background has honed his eye and informed his work.

There is a belief that art has to be manually difficult in some way. If it is as easy to produce the artefact as pressing a button then it can never be worthy. Certainly not worthy of paying for.
Whilst we are all capable of writing, most people accept that some writers are better than others and consequently, their books are worth paying for. What we are actually buying is the ideas rather than the actual writing.
Neil Barnes wrote:There are cases where the two overlap: portraiture is an example where the prime requirement is to make an image the sitter is happy with, irrespective of the medium.
That is only the case with certain types of portrait photography. Richard Avedon consistently made portraits (in later years, often on 10x8) that the sitters were unhappy with but to sit for him was a real indication that you were a somebody so they just queued up and swallowed their pride.
He seemed to be attempting to reveal something of his subjects and regardless of whether they wanted to share it or not. The question then becomes, was he sharing some hidden aspect to their personality or was he simply projecting his prejudices and judgements upon them. Looking at his work, In The American West (all 10x8), I would suggest the latter but his portrait of a contemplative Munroe the former.
The ability for a painter to express multiple elements of someone's personality in a single portrait always amazes me. In my opinion, whilst photographs may well be able to capture the surface of somebody at a particular moment, they struggle to capture the complexity of a whole person.

Years of attempting to take an adequate photograph of my Grandmother have led me to making a portrait of her through the items in her house. I think that these tell us more about her life and her journey than an individual picture of her weathered face ever could.

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Re: The Most Important Photographer of the Late 20th Century

Post by Marizu » Fri Aug 19, 2011 11:39 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Thomas Struth's family portraits are a study of family dynamics, but you have to ask yourself, is he projecting his perceptions on to the photograph or is he actually capturing a natural interaction.
In his family portrait of The Queen and Prince Phillip (shot on 10x8), I detect that they are at ease with each other but beyond that, I'm not sure what to think. If he would have moved his camera slightly to the right, then The Queen's head would have been turned a bit more away from her husband and they would have looked more distant.

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Re: The Most Important Photographer of the Late 20th Century

Post by Charles Twist » Fri Aug 19, 2011 12:20 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

So are you saying that photography can't avoid being superficial? That would explain why many don't see it as art.
Regards,
Charles

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Re: The Most Important Photographer of the Late 20th Century

Post by John Hamlen » Fri Aug 19, 2011 2:03 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

dennis wrote:Ed,
Surely Martin Parr is merely a snapshooter, who, like some over-celebrated 'fine artists', is adept at getting himself noticed. His pics are nothing more really than colour versions of what can found in many a box Brownie collection. Emporer's clothes. Dennis.
Though he might not me my nomination, Martin has been enormously influential on social/street photography for decades. In your face with a ring flash and saturated colours made them instantly recognisable as "Parrs". Of course not so much any more because lots of people have duplicated the same style!

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Re: The Most Important Photographer of the Late 20th Century

Post by Neil Barnes » Fri Aug 19, 2011 4:39 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Therein may be a pointer: once a style is defined, it's reasonably easy for anyone with a similar skill set to replicate that style, given sufficient [s]£££[/s] encouragement.

And to some extent, are we not as large format photographers deliberately choosing a technique which while superficially similar to point'n'push is self-selecting in that it requires a greater technical expertise?

(I banged a roll of 35mm off this morning: 1970s camera, 1950s film emulsion, 1930s developing tank, 1890s developer - and managed to underdevelop it. Though it was a deliberate decision as part of a sequence of experiments I'm doing with Adox emulsions).

Neil

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