From: Rod Fleming (rodfleming@sol.co.uk)
Date: 09/25/00-03:14:58 PM Z
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nick Makris" <nick@mcn.org>
> Pretty slow on the list recently - maybe a discussion of what makes
> photography art or "fine art" will liven things up????
Ah, Jeez, Nick, a sucker punch if ever there was one. Now I need four cups
of very strong black coffee, several cigarettes (except I don't smoke any
more) and to have lived on nothing but the above for the last few weeks to
really get back into this sort of thing, but hell, let's give it a whirl.
> I don't mean to imply that any of these styles create the basis for
turning
> photos into fine art.
I don't think you can do that at all- I mean I don't think that the
application of style or technique will make art from non-art. Either a
picture is art from the start or it's not. To me, it's all about the
intention of the original statement, the rest is the realisation of that
intention.
For me, art exists in its own terms. That is to say, it is not created to
sell something else, be it material object or idea. It exists from beginning
to end and is complete within itself. An artist is someone who is driven to
produce things for no other reason than the need or desire to create, to
make statements.
Although this has been challenged in the 20th century, I do believe that a
work of art should be conceived as it will finally be seen. In some media-
for example sculpture and painting- it is common to go through many sketches
or maquettes before arriving at the conception of the finished work; in
photography this is less the case, it is more common to make a series of
essays, any one of which might be correct for the finished work, and then
to make a choice later.
The artist, therefore, is someone who is in the business of taking a raw
germ of an idea and translating that into a finished piece.
I think, unfortunately, that somewhere along the line a confusion has arisen
between "art" and the "fine print". I have seen it suggested that
photography becomes an art as a result of its being "a form of
printmaking", according to the printmaker the status of artist by definition
and suggesting that the photographer only becomes artist when he/she becomes
"fine printmaker". This is a complete nonsense, of course. (Howls of protest
off.) Photography is an independent visual art, like drawing, painting, or
sculpture. We do not suggest that because the majority of etchings are
drawn, drawing is a "form of printmaking".
One could consider the great bronzes of Rodin or Moore- pieces which were
worked up in clay and plaster, often not even on the same scale as the
finished work, pieces which, without the presence of the midwife of a
skilled bronze caster, could never have been realised- never have existed in
a permanent form- yet do we suggest that sculpture is a form of
metal-founding? No. Printmaking is a technical process which exists, in some
part at least, to serve the vision of the artist, be that artist draughtsman
or photographer- and this is not to decry the highly skilled craft of the
printmaker at all. But you can take the most beautifully executed print in
the world, and lest the creator had some artistic drive, some will to create
a finished work, some desire to communicate the essence of vision, call it
soul if you wish, then that print will just be that- a beautifully executed,
sterile exercise.
So though printmaking is an important part of photography, and certainly in
the past it has been the most common way that photographs have been
disseminated, the turning of an image into a beautiful print, or a
particularly stylised print, does not a piece of art make. So I think on
that basis your experiment, though fascinating, is flawed.
Will that do? I imagine it will "liven things up" :-))
Rod
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