... Are Monet's Water Lilies mediocre? Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring" mediocre? Rembrandt's self portraits (when he was young) mediocre? Da Vinci's "The Virgin of the Rocks" mediocre?
Yes. But first you must be quite sure you know what 'mediocre' actually means.
Originally posted by marnet:
I am speechless.
Of course you are Margaret. That's the whole point of art; to overwhelm your faculties and render you mute. Glad to have been of some small service, to you and to the wider community.
Are Monet's Water Lilies mediocre? Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring" mediocre? Rembrandt's self portraits (when he was young) mediocre? Da Vinci's "The Virgin of the Rocks" mediocre? I am speechless.
Before I read the extensive verbiage already here, I'd like to make some comments fresh from your essay.
Your thesis is untenable, but all the more fun for it. Art, as you say, is transformation, and you transform the snapshot with your essay. In fact, that is what's wonderful about your essay, and not because it proved anything.
Your snapshot, for which you bent down in the grass to create effects of light, your snapshot, behind which is a story that you explain to us, a story that fills the snapshot with metaphor and meaning, is no longer a snapshot, not for us.
I think your notion of snapshots is on thin ice, and that's what makes it so vivid. Just today I was throwing rocks and sticks on thin ice. Sometimes the stick would break apart and the pieces would slide along the ice. Sometimes the rock would crack the ice but then bounce up and slide along the top. Once, the rock pierced right through into the lake. But each time a rock or stick bounced, it played the ice like a drum. A wild, seemingly artificial noise of vibration wobbled the lake.
Thin ice is where all the action is. When snapshots are more important than photographs, it's because of a delicacy, a fragility, as though that frozen moment might crack, and then... what then? What happens then to time and moments and memory?
You’re also quite right about the legitimacy of artworks celebrating positive, uplifting feelings and emotions, and inspiring pleasant contemplative diversion. But that is, by virtue of its intentionally limited ambition, mediocre art. Don’t self-ignite over that: ‘mediocre’ doesn’t mean bad … it specifically means ‘neither good nor bad’ in the sense of being inoffensive and unobjectionable. Middle of the road. Most art critics and commentators (and most artists) won’t give that stuff much credit, because they hold art to a higher – or al least more ambitious – standard regarding its purpose and possibilities.
That’s not really the elitist view that it appears to be. It’s just a question of distribution curves. The middle of the curve is by definition mediocre; that’s what the word means. So if an individual’s expectation of art is that it specifically sets itself in opposition to the mediocre, it’s only to be expected that that observer will eschew the Pollyanna kind of art, and champion the less comforting kind. No choice.
None of that was at all relevant to my lion kill picture, by the way. Its transformation was inspired by classical religious art that in its day was intended to be inspirational and positive.
Having said all that art-snob stuff, I don’t ask anyone else to agree with my views. I’m not interested at all in what you or anyone else believes on this subject, only in what I believe and why.
Originally posted by marnet:
... I think you don't really like photography as most people see it ;)
And you’re right again, about my views on photography. I’m not much interested in it as a craft. Photography for photography’s sake is, for me, the epitome of dullness. What I like is photographs. I don’t care who took them, or how, or with what.
For me the most interesting photographers in the digital age are the young people who love pictures but wouldn’t be caught dead in a photography store or reading a photography magazine. These people don’t know what they’re doing but they take most of the interesting photographs … again, don’t burst into flames over that claim; they also take most of the awful photographs (because they take most of the photographs).
Committed photo hobbyists are the least interesting photographers. Almost all their pictures are simply boring. And apparently deliberately boring too. Many are able to take interesting pictures, but seem to be reluctant to do so. The point of photography for them is not the photograph; it’s photography. Photography to produce photography. It’s one of those circular arguments, pointless and eventually self-consuming.
Professional photographers are mostly dull unless they are very good indeed, in which case they are (based on the few I’ve met) mostly mad.
Paul, it is an essay about a photographic ideology rather than a photo essay. Your writing skills are amazing, I am very envious. I don't see however the significance of your snapshot to anyone else but you and your wife. A casual observer will have no reaction to it. And if that's the case the image has no wider audience, does not exist outside your space.
Your second image will have impact on most people by creating negative reactions to the image - fear, disgust, horror. WHY only negative emotions are considered art? I will never understand it. The art history has many images which were painted to evoke positive feelings, contemplation of the natural world, experience the strength of human nature. Are they no longer art?
PS I read now your replies to the comments others made. I think you don't really like photography as most people see it ;)
First I want to say the Trent Parke video was wonderful (thanks John) and I will go find what I can on both Trent Parke and Paolo Pellegrin.
Paul, as always you bring up so many ideas, and many that have never occurred to me. I have read the essay a few times and each time I come up with more thoughts so I'm going to write a few down.
I never look at any of my old photographs. Not the snap shots nor the "non snap shots". I never print anything up-to my husbands chagrin. I always say I will do it when I'm old but I won't. I asked myself "why then am I taking pictures?". I like making pictures. Maybe I could/should do more with them. Don't know.
In regards to snap shots. I had been feeling a bit regretful after a recent visit with my grandchildren. I had taken a lot of pictures of them instead of joining them in the activities they were doing. I will never remember how much I enjoyed taking pictures of them. That won't be one of my memories. I'm not sure I want the snap shots if they steal from precious memories. Just not sure how to make sense of this.
On the subject of memories, your photo of the lyons has burned a spot in my mind. I have thought of it many times. It pops up when I am struggling with atrocities in the world. I bet in 20 years I will have a memory of that image. Maybe not the exact image but how I remember seeing it. Your processing exaggerated the horror for me and I was horrified when I saw it-and I find it oddly comforting to realize not all of the horror in the world is instigated by humans-it is an integral part of our existence.
This is not the first time you have stirred up a hornets nest of ideas for me. As always I am very grateful.
Thanks for the Trent Parke link, John. He is one of my two most admired and influential photographic heroes, the other being his fellow Magnum Paolo Pellegrin.
Both are documentary artists; both exert a personal transformative effect on reality. But the reality remains key. The staging, if it can be called staging, occurs only within the photographer's mind.
They're both supreme essayists, not just in their 'formal' essays but in every individual image.
They're both technically competent of course, but they never let photography get in the way of a great photograph.
They are, for me, the two most interesting photographers on the planet
An interesting proposition Paul. In my limited capacity, I considered your essay and points from as many perspectives that I could, but still couldn't find a way of expressing myself the way I was feeling. Just as I was about to put finger to keyboard I remembered seeing this video today about Trent Parke, and in particular the second half of his story. That kind of nailed it for me (at least for the moment). So I'll leave it at that for the moment until I can summon the what for to make a response.
Thanks Paul. I got it now. Yes, the lifeblood. (Picasso would probably disagree but his ego was of a cosmic size and his vanity so far, unsurpassed!)
There are also the little secondary arteries.
As the Ecclesiastes said:
All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after
We are just trying. Therefore your essay is a little jewel with many facets.
Naively, I never really asked myself what is photography. It started for me as an adjuvant. An extension to memory and to the way to try to capture one single moment of understanding before it vanishes in thin air.
I used what it was at hand. A pencil, a brush…Never thought though of playing an instrument.
We live quite fantastic lives scattered here and there and photography is one way of learning about each other and the world.
Well, what I mean is that there can only be one snapshot of this woman in this field at this time. No other superficially similar photograph (woman in field) can be compared with mine. For me. And for this kind of picture, nobody's point of view matters but my own.
The lions are not so personal. Yes it was an event I witnessed, but another photographer's picture of another lion kill can legitimately be compared. I make such a comparison myself, and my picture is merely middle of the pack in the genre. Easily trumped.
No so my snapshot of my wife in that place at that time. You can't take that particular picture (that woman, that field, that occasion), nor can Annie Leibovitz. So I win, forever and ever.
The point is that snapshots have more meaning to particular viewers than do any high art photographs, even their own. And Leibovitz no doubt treasures her own private snapshots more than she does her most celebrated work, And so do you.
That's the lifeblood of photography. The glue that makes it stick. All else is vanity, by comparison.
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
This came to my mind as I briefly looked at your two-photo essay.
The happy family/snapshots and the unhappy family/the elaborate tragedy snapped and subsequently processed by mechanical methods. This consideration came to my mind only because you put into balance the value of the two hypostases.
This is not a comment on your essay but a string of questions.
Why do you question such different images in terms of "better or worse"?
When you question their importance you rightly add "for whom" one will be more important then the other and add that one of them has sentimental value for you.
You wrote:
"The lion kill photograph is already at a disadvantage because there are plenty of other similar pictures, or at least pictures of much the same thing". Is it not an image with a woman in a field equally common?
I seem to miss your point completely and am deeply curious to understand it.
Perhaps instead of the lion picture you should have put a studio shot, or a "studied" shot, a gravely edited one by means of all these digital applications. But it seems to me that you compared two quite similar types.
Paul, do explain to me that I am wrong. I value your thinking a lot.
This is the reason why I love the photo essays for all these questions.
I like the first one because it shows the loving feeling of a precise moment. I like the second one because it shows the cruel reality of life.
I agree with you, one of the photographs will eventually fade. To me though, the second one will not be the one that turns grey.
It’s not because the person in the first photograph is unknown to me. It’s not because the second snapshot is more appealing to my eyes. It’s just that, as time passes, I’ll only remembers the teeth of that lion.
Just like, I still remember your last essay, the girl standing under a cloudy sky.
Looked twice already and my mind's mechanism is in full action to respond to the impulse.
I need a few calm days .... Your essay needs a thorough reply.
Your essays, photographs for that matter, always make me stop and think. You have a private guest house in the bush?
The snapshot is probably the most important photograph for most of us. Family, friends, and events that we didn’t seek out. It’s life unfolding while we’re making plans and go about our business. We might not remember the capture date but we know our outlook at the time.
For the analog snapshot, in particular the polaroid you mentioned, there is typically only one. We can make copies but there is only one original. It’s the photograph that’s been passed around and viewed by so many. The finger prints, rubbed edges, creases and maybe handwriting become a part of the photograph. It’s a fragile piece of our history. A matter of fact document.
All that being said, it’s just a photograph. Photographs are flat, silent, have no odor, and ignorant of everything outside the frame. The photographer, you in this case, knows so much more. It’s history now and can’t be recreated only interpreted.
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