From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 02/12/01-09:09:20 PM Z
On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, Sandy King wrote:
> If on the other hand we were to list several of the most essential
> characteristics of pictorial photography we would find that many, if not
> all, continue to play a major role in contemporary photographic aesthetics.
> Which of the following qualities, for example, which I consider to be the
> most essential characteristics of pictorial photography, are absent from
> the contemporary aesthetic?
> 1. presentation of the picturesque
Whoa Sandy, what the hell is "picturesque"? Do you mean the criteria of
the 1930s where a scene had to pretend 20th century didn't exist, and
no power lines or automobiles permitted? Can you define? (I have a recent
book called "On the Picturesque" but not read.)
> 2. a concern with making art, as opposed with making a record
Isn't a great art photo both?
> 3. the concept that the work reveals the subjective of the maker through
> signs of conscious manipulation
It's all *conscious* unless it's sureshot & machine print. You might say
*visible*... or *obvious* tho that would cut out a LOT of "pictorial"
work.
> 4. an interest in the effect and patterns of natural lighting
Artificial lighting can be extremely picturesque -- & look natural.
> 5. landscape as one of the major themes
Like Ansel Adams?
> 6. overall effect of an image considered more important than the
> detail therein
Thus risking sum of the parts, which is greater conundrum. Again hard to
separate.
> 7. the use of non-silver printing processes, particulary carbon, gum,
> platinum, oil and bromoil.
Strange, isn't it, that that looks like current criterion by common
consent... even though platinum can be totally unlike anything known as
traditional "pictorial." Maybe "pictorial" is like old joke about
"pornography": I know it when I see it (?). Tho one person's porn is
another person's art -- AND plenty argument about that, too.
> Anyone who seriously believes that pictorialism is dead and longgone
> should reacquaint themselves with the true tenets of the movement and take
> a wider look at some of the current manipulative manifestions in
Yeah, but people who had to swallow a rule book to be "in the know" & then
zoned out apparently think so. Teachers at least have students to clue
them in. Who at the NY Times knows any MORE than Ms. B?
Judy
> photography, manifestions prompted in part prompted by the new digital
> technologies, but which also date back to the re-emergence of alternative
> printing processes that began in the 1970s. What if not Neo-Pictorialism
> are we to call the photograhs of Ed Freeman, featured on pp. 42-49 of the
> October/November 1999 issue of Camera Arts. How if not pictorial are we to
> label the cyanotype images featured in the article by Ken Boyd and Heathe
> Kyatt in the January/February issue of View Camera?
>
> Sandy King
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