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

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

Post by joolsb » Mon Aug 22, 2011 4:26 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

That fellow doesn't even operate the camera himself, anymore.
Is he a photographer? An artist? A charlatan?
Crewdson's latest project is a bit more 'back to basics'. He may even have operated his own camera... :wink:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=gregor ... d=0CDQQsAQ

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

Post by Marizu » Tue Aug 30, 2011 6:03 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

I visited the Thomas Struth exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery (London) at the end of last week.
For the most part, it was a breathtaking and thought provoking experience.

There was a really enlightening video interview with Struth where he explained many elements of his vision and ways of working.
As this is a retrospective, you can trace Struth's journey from the late 70's to the present day.

The older work is largely B&W silver gelatin and moderate in size wheras the newer pieces are largely colour and imposing. His gargantuan image of a Semi Submersible Rig (google it and then try to imagine it 3 metres high) in South Korea is testament to the descriptive power of 10x8 film. Struth's perspective on this 'chained beast' reflecting shifts in world power is insightful.
I particularly enjoyed the pictures of wires, too. They showed that the artefacts of mankind's great scientific achievements are at times an anonymous bundle of wiring as opposed to the great engineering feats of the past which were visible to and understandable by all. Society can no longer understand our progress and yet we benefit from it on a daily basis whilst simultaneously ostracising the square headed boffins that craft our futures.

Nigel, if you have 90 mins or so to dedicate to seeing this then I am happy to pay for you to go. PM me. I'd be interested in hearing what you think about the work.

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

Post by John Hamlen » Thu Sep 08, 2011 12:16 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Crewdson operating his own camera?! The global downturn must be worse than I thought! :D

I did look at his new book with the Italian filmset body of work linked to above but was a little disappointed. They were beautiful images but were too "un-crewdsonlike" for my taste. There is something to be said for being able to recognise a photographer from his images....

Like Marizu, I too am freshly back from the Struth exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery and agree that it was quite something. Recommended, though if anyone wants to see it they'd better get their skates on as it closes on the 16th.

Wasn't so keen on paying £8.50 after the Paul Graham exhibition was free, but seeing the video of Struth working was worth the price of admission alone. I thought of particular interest were:
1) The amazing detail of Semi Submersible Rig proving what is possible with LF (detail in the guy with the bike's hair!)
2) That Notre Dame was what appeared to be a crop from a 4x5 negative and took 3-4 days to shoot.
3) Up to 200 extras were hired as the viewing crowd in one of his museum shots
4) He uses a Leica digicam to find and compose a shot before deploying the 10x8 and assistant!

Fascinating stuff.

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

Post by deadpan » Sun Sep 18, 2011 9:49 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Interesting thread...

I believe that in fact Crewdson 'worked light' on this project, taking with him only his "Camera man" and "Digital co-ordinator", but they did have a team on standby to build camera platforms, wetdowns, fog etc.

Not wanting to flog a dead horse, but an analogy that I often use with students is not a food one, but rather a writer. Does one see sections in novels titled 'Author's equipment', where the author might talk about computer types, monitors, typewriters etc.? Further to this (and this is more the point I personally feel), if a writer dictates to a typist, do we presume the typist is now the author, or in some way the author is less of a writer? Surely the author comes up with the ideas, be it writing, painting, (cooking) or photography. This is not to undermine these debates, because they are indeed important, but they are a small (and one could argue far less important) part of the process between an idea and it's reception/ interpretation by an audience.

On an aside, can we embed youtube/ vimeo clips into these posts?
joolsb wrote:
That fellow doesn't even operate the camera himself, anymore.
Is he a photographer? An artist? A charlatan?
Crewdson's latest project is a bit more 'back to basics'. He may even have operated his own camera... :wink:

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

Post by Joanna Carter » Sun Sep 18, 2011 10:59 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

deadpan wrote:On an aside, can we embed youtube/ vimeo clips into these posts?
I have posted a new sticky on this subject.
Reassure yourself - stroke an Ebony

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

Post by Neil Barnes » Mon Sep 19, 2011 8:39 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

I'm not at all sure the comparison with a writer is valid. The fundamental point about the writer is that it is his words which tell the story. Whether they are mediated through a typist is immaterial; the typist may as well be a speech-to-text program and has no input save the mechanical transcription.

On the other hand, a 'photographer' who has the idea but performs none of the physical tasks of realising it? I think the technical term might be better 'director'.

Photography is, like painting, an art in which one might reasonably expect the artist to take a leading role in the creation of the image... "Right, apprentice, use some blue paint and give it some sky. A mountain over there, perhaps, and a tree? Yes, and a girl in a boat - use left-right strokes for that bit, and up-down strokes over there, and perhaps some stippling...'

Can't see it somehow. I really do want my photographers to have not only the vision but also to demonstrate the basic task skills of focus and exposure, and if relevant, lighting.

Neil

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

Post by joolsb » Mon Sep 19, 2011 9:51 pm Etc/GMT-1+01:00

"Right, apprentice, use some blue paint and give it some sky. A mountain over there, perhaps, and a tree? Yes, and a girl in a boat - use left-right strokes for that bit, and up-down strokes over there, and perhaps some stippling...'
But isn't that how the Old Masters mostly worked? The apprentices would do the boring bits like sky and less important details leaving the Master to come in and do the 'fun' bits (usually a buxom nude... :lol: )

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

Post by deadpan » Tue Sep 20, 2011 6:55 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Neil Barnes wrote:I'm not at all sure the comparison with a writer is valid. The fundamental point about the writer is that it is his words which tell the story. Whether they are mediated through a typist is immaterial; the typist may as well be a speech-to-text program and has no input save the mechanical transcription.

On the other hand, a 'photographer' who has the idea but performs none of the physical tasks of realising it? I think the technical term might be better 'director'.

Photography is, like painting, an art in which one might reasonably expect the artist to take a leading role in the creation of the image... "Right, apprentice, use some blue paint and give it some sky. A mountain over there, perhaps, and a tree? Yes, and a girl in a boat - use left-right strokes for that bit, and up-down strokes over there, and perhaps some stippling...'

Neil
Perhaps you're right Neil, maybe the writer analogy doesn't quite fit either, but we're also talking about mediation/ interpretation. Authors are often unhappy with the translation of their work into another language, and so perhaps that is more of relevant comparison...
Neil Barnes wrote: Can't see it somehow. I really do want my photographers to have not only the vision but also to demonstrate the basic task skills of focus and exposure, and if relevant, lighting.
Neil
I agree, but I guess we're in a changing landscape (no pun intended). In the 1850's you needed to have an interest (or have an assistant) in chemistry, but film (and Kodak) changed all of that, and opened it up to everyone to make images of what they wanted in the way they felt appropriate. Now, as we all know, "~Everyone with a camera is a 'Photographer'"

I recently met Martin Creed, and whether you like him or not, he is a formidable creator - then even more recently, I met the owner of the company that (physically) built his 'Mothers' sculpture. Martin could not have achieved that work without the engineering company, and vice versa, but i'm not sure that makes him any less an Author of the piece? (that may be hugely off topic, but it's early and i'm rambling, but at 7am I do feel it fits in somehow).

Matthew

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

Post by Charles Twist » Tue Sep 20, 2011 8:20 am Etc/GMT-1+01:00

Doesn't it come down to a matter of honesty and expectations? If this painting or photograph is said to be by so-and-so, I expect so-and-so to have come up with the idea and taken a lead role in the execution. It might be s/he was influenced for the idea part and needed some help for the execution part, but I expect the work to be mostly that of the artist. You can imagine all manner of fraught cases like artist 1 saying to artist 2: "that tree at dawn will make a good a picture", leaving artist 2 to do the work. And what happens when a print is created anew from an old neg, or a new copy from an old canvas? Well usually all the characters get named. Seems honest to me. If the assistants are that important, then the work should be described as being of so-and-so's studio (and often it is, now even with older painters and sculptors), making the artist a project manager. Nowadays, the engineer gets a mention occasionally like Kapoor and Balmond's Temenos.
Different types of photography requiring different amounts of work. If you need a lot of staging & preparation for your photograph, then a team makes sense. If you're an urban photographer intent on capturing the moment, you'll probably work alone. There are cases where the writer needs assistants too. If you're a writer in to concrete poetry, then you might want to employ a visual artist. If you're a sketch writer, you'll be part of a team. If you're a journalist, you'll have reporters. Etc.
Questions of authorship in photography and writing can benefit from comparative analysis. I don't know if it's ever been done, but I guess somebody must have: take a random group of people and let them ad lib; record their words. Who's the author? Now carefully select a group of people and get them to talk about a topic. Now who's the author? Which one of those two cases is close to the Cartier-Bresson decisive moment case? Is HCB the owner of the moment? What's striking about a lot of the photographers named on this thread, is the amount of fabrication in their process. That's what makes them interesting in my view.
Regards,
Charles

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