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02/13/2003 08:13:19 AM · #1 |
What do folks make of this.
I would guess that the picture would score a 4 or less here.
Its one of the winners in the
Citibank Photographers Prize 2003. |
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02/13/2003 08:24:35 AM · #2 |
I would score it a 3 or less.. maybe an outright one depending on the challenge... I check the site and I think it is just one of that phootographers photos and not one of the winners... if it is a winner, what a joke.. and we think the voting around here is bad.. :oP
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02/13/2003 08:32:47 AM · #3 |
| FYI those are all photos done by the high end of the field, you know the ones who can take a strange photo and place it in an upperscale gallery and have it sale for a ludicrious amount. In other words it is ART! |
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02/13/2003 08:35:43 AM · #4 |
Originally posted by PHOTOCHlX:
FYI those are all photos done by the high end of the field, you know the ones who can take a strange photo and place it in an upperscale gallery and have it sale for a ludicrious amount. In other words it is ART! |
Really???? BLEH! Thank god for DPC for inspiration!!!! :-)
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02/13/2003 08:49:19 AM · #5 |
Yes those are all the top of the field photographers. There are a few international freelance photographers there as well as a high fashion photographer.
Most people don't understand art until they are actually involved in the making of it...I didn't understand it till I teamed up with an artist and even today after working with him for almost a year I still don't understand all of it. Check out this gallery  Those images are old yearbook photos cut up soaked in chemicals and then reassembled to create the collages...and creating a photo of someone you think should exsist but actually doesn't. |
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02/13/2003 08:50:05 AM · #6 |
oops not sure what I did wrong witht that link but here is the address so something works...
//www.riccomaresca.com/C/ARTISTS/Photo/Monteith.htm |
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02/13/2003 09:26:05 AM · #7 |
It is one of the winning pictures (4 collections are selected) and is one from the following collection:
The Dutch photographer Bertien van Manen's last publication, shown as an exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery in 2002, was a powerful series of images made in China from 1997 to 2000, entitled East Wind West Wind. As a Western photographer, her work represents a view from the outside looking in, yet unlike photo-journalism, her images reveal a rare intimacy, opening a door onto a domestic reality usually hidden from our eyes, so much so that they seem to engage all our senses.
All of van Manen's images are colour, and taken at close range to her subjects. Avoiding stereotypical views of mass gatherings and staged events, her story offers glimpses into the everyday lives and experiences of the people she has encountered. Returning to China over a number of years, she has sustained a loose network of friends, their families and acquaintances, stretching thousands of miles. Her images encapsulate the dynamism, vibrancy, colour and human warmth of people living in a diverse and rapidly changing country. Her approach is not to construct the Chinese as 'other' by exoticising her subjects. Instead, she portrays them as she would her Dutch friends and family.
The flow of images in East Wind West Wind features young women out clubbing, a man getting dressed in drag, friends posing with shopping bags, family meals, and images of soldiers packed in a van taken in moving traffic. The work gives an unparalleled view across China, from big cosmopolitan cities like Shanghai and Beijing, to remote villages where tradition still persists. Typically, the wider picture of change is seen in the details.
Previously, van Manen has made large photographic projects about particular communities or groups, ranging from the liberation movement, Polisario, in the Western Sahara, to the lives of miners and their families in the Appalachian Mountains, U.S.A. Some of these series have been brought together in books, including, in 1984, work made in Nicaragua, and, in 1985, images of women in the Roman Catholic Church in Holland. Perhaps her most famous body of work, A Hundred Summers A Hundred Winters, dealt with the collapse of the communist state. Harrowing images showed Soviet citizens living on the edge, surviving without food and heat.
Alongside a selection of images from East Wind West Wind, Bertien van Manen will be showing new photographs of refugee families and individuals in their new found or temporary accommodation in Paris.
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Often a lot of the photography that is considered art is based on the content or background, rather than the particular image - it isn't the
idea that the photograph should stand on its own, but that it is a work of documentary or art that can be given much more context by explaining the situation - something I don't think anyone has ever achieved in a dpc entry! Some days I wish we'd allow the 'details' field to be viewable when voting, but then I realise that most of the entries don't have anything to say anyway. Often the difference is that the photographer is attempting to say something beyond 'look at my kids' or 'here's my pet' or 'this is pretty'
Message edited by author 2003-02-13 09:29:43. |
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02/13/2003 10:26:32 AM · #8 |
as if knowing that context makes it any more appealing
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02/13/2003 10:45:12 AM · #9 |
Sorry Gordon, but I don't see a good picture after reading the article. I cant see a person being a great photographer from photos that look like a snapshot or even worse then a snapshot. My kids can take better pictures.
Isn't it funny how one is made great by the life they led or how popular they are or how many times they were in the newspaper. When really we have done almost the same, but no one knows it.
Just a thought, Do you buy Nike shoes because of the name brand or because they are comfortable?
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02/13/2003 10:50:03 AM · #10 |
The Citibank winners are always a really interesting bunch of photographers. I think Rineke Dykstra won that prize last year or the year before (I featured her in my last Art Appreciation thread).
This thread shows just how hostile DPC can be towards artists. It's a real shame. The photos featured on that site are amazing. In my opinion, the more people are encouraged to break through the rigid barriers of amateur photography and truly express themselves through their work, the better. |
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02/13/2003 11:03:23 AM · #11 |
OK, lisae: I think the image displayed here is junky and I would have scored it 3 here at DPC. I have a long history of involvement with "art", I know how it is produced and I still think this is a junky picture. Instead of suggesting without ANY evidence that we are "hostile" towards artists -- quite a nonsensical and rude suggestion, by the way -- please supply a detailed crit as to why I should think this image is anything more than a badly composed snapshot.
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02/13/2003 11:06:57 AM · #12 |
I guess they are interesting to look at. But to say it is good or that it is art. I would have to disagree. There is nothing about it that would make it good. Lighting, framing, the angle and so on. I don't get what you are seeing.
I don't mind looking at snapshots. I still take them, but to call it art, I don't think so.
Please don't take this to be an arguement. Just a disagreement. :-)
Message edited by author 2003-02-13 11:08:16.
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02/13/2003 11:21:44 AM · #13 |
| I like Simon Norfolk's photos but the others aren't very impressive to me. I'm not sure how I'd vote on those photos here, they probably wouldn't do well. |
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02/13/2003 11:30:18 AM · #14 |
I think most of what you need to appreciate this photo is contained in the passage Gordon quoted:
"a view from the outside looking in, yet unlike photo-journalism, her images reveal a rare intimacy, opening a door onto a domestic reality usually hidden from our eyes"
"Avoiding stereotypical views of mass gatherings and staged events, her story offers glimpses into the everyday lives and experiences of the people she has encountered"
"Her images encapsulate the dynamism, vibrancy, colour and human warmth of people living in a diverse and rapidly changing country. Her approach is not to construct the Chinese as 'other' by exoticising her subjects. Instead, she portrays them as she would her Dutch friends and family."
You have a very intimate image of the interior of a bedroom somewhere in China, taken by a Dutch photographer. Elements of the photo seem foreign to us - the furniture is an ornate, highly polished Asian style, the couple in the wedding photo have Chinese faces, the doll on the bed has a Chinese face and is wearing very Asian-looking clothes. But the arrangement of all these things just seems normal and mundane to us. There is both familiarity and foreignness all wrapped up in one image. And yes, it's framed and lit like a snapshot because as I said in another thread, the GENRE of the snapshot is often used by photographers to communicate a sense of urbanity and normalcy in a photo. But when you look at it, the composition obeys the rule of thirds, etc. The colours are rich.
You are all reacting to it as though it's an unremarkable photo precisely because the photographer intended it that way. She is documenting a way of life in a visual language that we will respond to with familiarity. |
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02/13/2003 11:34:37 AM · #15 |
Hehehehe.... I knew this topic would create some small DPC tensions. :-)
I actually agree with all that is being said here, being a poet and painter myself. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholer.
We are taught how photography should be taken (focus, lighting, cropping, ect...) as a global rule and our perceptions of what "good photography" should look like. We got used to seeing "good" pictures so anything outside the box looks "bad".
I would be the first one to admit that I find these pictures far from inspiring or even worth a second glance. But who knows.... maybe it's realy realy difficult and takes lots of talent to compose such a "bad" shot. :-)
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02/13/2003 11:35:52 AM · #16 |
I love art, but the picture in question leaves me completely flat. I studied it, seeking the virtue in in, and I just can't find it.
The center of the image is burnt out, the photo within, of the wedding couple is cut off, There seems to be no real balance, the colors clash, some of the furnishings are cut off, and underexposed.
I could go on, but I see no point.
If I took this picture, I'd have thrown it away. If I were voting I'd reluctantly give it a 3, and critique in an honest yet encouraging manner.
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02/13/2003 11:48:36 AM · #17 |
it's like the simpson's episode where homer buys a backyard grill but can't figure out how to put it together because the instructions got destroyed. all the parts get mixed together in a big block of cement and then some "artist" comes by and sees this great context and deep meaning behind the disaster homer created.
hell i could splash paint on a canvas as well as pollack did, and then create some story about how i'm legally insane and quite a deep thinker, who is worried about terrorism and saddam hussein, and sell many of these works to people who buy into that junk
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02/13/2003 11:51:23 AM · #18 |
Originally posted by lisae:
You are all reacting to it as though it's an unremarkable photo precisely because the photographer intended it that way. She is documenting a way of life in a visual language that we will respond to with familiarity. |
Ok so that is what she intended but I think the average populace on this site who I don't think follow art would vote this photo down for its unappealing quality. I bet if you look in the photographers portfolio you will see a lot of photos that would do well here. I think most artists must break-in to the "scene" by copying someone else and than taking whatever the hell they want after that. Once your known you can "experiment" and it will be called art. If I go and take a picture like this it will be looked at as just another photo. |
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02/13/2003 11:52:17 AM · #19 |
It's odd how a lot of people have said what score they would give this photo. It wasn't taken for DPC, it didn't have a challenge in mind, it probably wasn't digital, it was probably processed in many DPC-illegal ways, and it would not have been taken in any limited time frame. It was part of a series. It is not meant to be judged and given a number alongside 200 or 300 photos by amateurs.
Do you go to an art gallery and go "Eww, 3! Hmm, 5. Ooh goody, 10!"? Or do you stand in front of each image and work out what it means, why it was taken the way it was, what the artist was trying to say? Art isn't about "good" and "bad" or scores out of 10. Don't look at it that way. If you don't like it, that's fine, no one's asking you to. But if you can see why it was taken the way it was, and what it's trying to say, that's a separate issue. Art isn't intended to be appealing, just expressive. If the idea being expressed is appealing, the image will be appealing. If it's disturbing, the image will be disturbing. In this case the message is normal, everyday life, and the visual language used reflects that. |
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02/13/2003 11:56:52 AM · #20 |
is it possible lisa that even after close examination and understanding of the background of the photo that i will still not like that photo?you can't just have a piece of art stand on context alone
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02/13/2003 11:59:00 AM · #21 |
Originally posted by lisae:
Art isn't about "good" and "bad" |
My art teachers must not have agreed with you. They failed me:( |
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02/13/2003 12:01:26 PM · #22 |
Originally posted by achiral:
is it possible lisa that even after close examination and understanding of the background of the photo that i will still not like that photo?you can't just have a piece of art stand on context alone |
As I said in my last comment:
"If you don't like it, that's fine, no one's asking you to. But if you can see why it was taken the way it was, and what it's trying to say, that's a separate issue."
Understanding or appreciating an image and liking it are two different things. I think it's worth trying to understand what the artist is doing before you make up your mind on the like/dislike factor. It seems, though, that a lot of people here dismiss anything that looks unappealing as though it can't have any meaning. |
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02/13/2003 12:05:44 PM · #23 |
Looking at this in the context of THIS site...a challenge site based on scores, and in response to the original post, where the author scored it a 4, I evaluated the image in that context. There is absolutely no hostility towards the artist/photographer. I've done images that bad myself, and I still love me....tehehe.
It's nothing personal...the picture just isn't appealing. :-)
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02/13/2003 12:09:38 PM · #24 |
| Gracious, I can see you don't mean any hostility, but the first 3 replies to this thread are definitely quite rude about this artist and indeed the whole concept of art gallery style photography. |
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02/13/2003 12:11:47 PM · #25 |
When you photograph in that style, you aren't trying to appeal to the masses -- and I think that is the response you can expect. You know?
Drew |
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Those images are old yearbook photos cut up soaked in chemicals and then reassembled to create the collages...and creating a photo of someone you think should exsist but actually doesn't.
