The difficulty many experience with critical theory is that the theorists base
>their arguments upon theories and concepts invented by themselves which have no
>intellectual or cultural value outside critical theory.
Roland Barthes wrote a book about one photograph of his mother, that made
him feel a particular way. He appied those feelings to photography in
general, creating his own language for things like: how does an image make
me feel and why (nothing new). He shared his own personal, highly subjective
ways of seeing (ack), and shared them with me so that I might gain a little
insight into how a) someone else who cares about images thinks b) someone
else who cares about images feels c) someone else who cares about images
wants to communicate his thoughts and feelings on a topic, in a common
language. All theory is is analogy and metaphor, and we each use these tools
as a means of communicating thru words (and images) to one another. No great
emphasis, just another way of trying to understand one another. If this has
nothing to do with culture, then I'm a lonestar trying to find a twin.
It is because this is such an incestuous world that ordinarily one would leave
>the incestuous to their own devices. Unfortunately this approach has invaded
>photographic education so that unsuspecting innocents have this aberration
>imposed upon them to the extent that photographic degree courses do not
produce
>photographers.
qualifying statement: my school had 2 photo instructors, they didn't talk to
one another. These were studio instructors. The theory courses which I took
were not from within the photography department. As a matter of fact, the 2
photo instructors had no theoretical background or leanings. As a matter of
fact, they had no strict technical background - they each had plently of
personal experience, but I'm certain that neither of them has ever used a
step tablet, and that neither of them could calculate the dloge of a sheet
of film.
given that, I was never ONCE forced to examine the conceptual aspects of my
photography. There was such a "to each his/her own" attitude, good to some
degree, but this attitude was so prevalent, that I was never required to
speak regularly and in depth about my images.
The photograph is an artefact produced by a tool. You should be differentiating
>between the photograph and the image. In no way can the phrase 'post
>photographic' accurately describe your experience in this context.
there's a pull between 1) making pretty photographs (includes technically
beautiful ones) 2) applying theory to the making of photographs/making
photographs apply to theory and 3) image making (based on concept).
Now, I'm tired of hiding behind technique and the getting of it, in lieu of
pushing myself on the conceptual level. About 6 months ago and earlier, I
was confusing a conceptual basis for my image making with a theoretical
basis for my photography. there's a difference.
When Peter Bunnell dismisses Cindy Sherman as an interesting
>>artist but not an interesting photographer he's acknowledging that,
>>somehow, he feels out of photography's historical loop, that her
>>photographs meet his expectations of photography problematically.
>
>Peter Bunnel's comment makes his point but it is silly to put it on the rack of
>analysis. Cindy Sherman is using photography as as a tool.
I am more recently equating photography for photography's sake with a very
formalist and modernist point of reference. I am tired of making pretty
photographs (formally and technically), because they don't speak to me any
longer. It's easy to make a viewer go "oooh ahhh" with a technically and
formally beautiful photograph. It's a heck of alot more difficult, but
infinitely more important with respect to communication, to engage a viewer
in something more thoughtful. Just because someone uses photography as a
tool towards communicating something other than "ooh ahh", doesn't mean that
the photography isn't interesting as an art. It means that for some, it is
somehow no longer acceptable to make a photograph for its own sake.
>> And expectations are important because photographs engage us according to our
>>expectations.
>
>Perhaps, as critical theorist your expectations are too narrow.
Perhaps there are too many photographers working in the ooh ahh to engage in
something more expansive.
>
>> What we see depends on what we expect to see, and what we
>>expect to see depends on some basic shared assumptions between photographer
>>and viewer.
>
>What we expect to see depends upon the breadth of our cultural vision as both
>photographer and viewer.
>
> I feel sorry for those poor souls whose vision has been blinkered by critcal
>theorists.
I'm angry at all the people who encourage mediocre photographers, because
they prefer to gasp rather than to communicate.
>> Just as Freud inaugurated a new experiences of reality that
>>didn't exist prior to his theory of psychoanalysis,
that was jung ;)
so, too, ideas
>>associated with words like "detournement", "signs", "codes", "symbols" and
>>"systems", offered a cognitive context in which to understand or at least
>>discuss the photographs of Sherman, Kruger, Prince and Levine.
>
>Only in terms of critical theory.
I'm still waiting for alternatives from you Terry. Do you suggest we speak
of photography only in terms of the zone system, ooh ahh in the gallery, and
move on to the next picture?
>
>
>>The other day a radio commentator described Shannon Lucid's landing to
>>earth as "picture perfect." By referring to an actual landing in terms of
>>its photogenic qualities, he presumed that his audience had or could summon
>>to mind an image of what a perfect landing would look like.
>
>He was sayinhg that it made 'a nice picture' ! To take it any further than
>that is breaking a grasshopper on the rack.
CLASS: put your hands up if you're tired of seeing the same old shit day
after day, even when the new superbookstore opens, has 15 square feet of
photo books, and they're all ansel adams or freeman paterson. put your hands
up if to say "what a nice picture" just doesn't cut it.
{Risa's hand is up}
I'll walk away from anyone from now on, who says to me of my work :what a
nice picture.
>> It is not that photography ceases to exist (our post-industrial age surely
>accommodates industry), but
>>that it refers only to itself.
SO, I hope someone has hung on this far.
I recently spent a week visiting a university, meeting with a huge variety
of faculty and students, meeting with people in groups (to discuss
photography) and one on one (to discuss my photography). Two things really
stuck with me: "Your photographs are technically and formally beautiful,
they're nice to look at, but I want more, I want to be confronted, I want to
look at images that engage me in some sort of dialogue" and "it seems in
these gum prints that it's the borders/edges that hold the series together,
more than the images themselves." I got my ass kicked, and it was great, and
it wasn't because of lack of shadow detail.
There's got to be a balance, at least in myself, to find between technique
and theory. For me, it is an idea based image making (note the difference
between making photographs and imagemaking). Those ideas come from me,
they're about my personal feelings, tabbos, fetishes, insecurities. But
remember, I do these things in an continual effort to connect with other
people, and therein lies "cultural value"
Also note, that one of the ways that I've personally been able to develop
and articulate my thoughts (at least to myself), is to use a Hegelian
triadic construct.
I think there is a balance in the world of photography that can be found. If
one wants to find it.