From: Christina Z. Anderson (zphoto@montana.net)
Date: 12/14/02-02:56:42 PM Z
Katherine,
Thank you for your thoughts below.
This is such a timely subject line for me. Yesterday we had Senior
critique all day, and there was a heated debate over one student's work.
You must know that this student is Japanese, because some of his reticence
to talk is cultural. He produces exquisite, delicate, peaceful,
contemplative landscapes.
So the crit went thus (three teachers leading, including myself): one
teacher kept asking the student to explain why he took these photographs,
tried to get him to articulate his reasons and theories of why he does what
he does. The student who is deeper than most, quiet, avid photographer,
darkroom junkie, exquisite as I have known none like him, would not
articulate much. It got heated. I finally couldn't stand it, and asked the
room, "Why is it that every time we view _____'s landscapes that the room
goes quiet?" The students came back with these descriptive adjectives
above, including reverence, meditation, etc. I said, "Exactly". I then
continued to say, "________'s work is probably as close to Zen as an
American will experience. This is a very crass analogy, but trying to
describe ______'s landscapes is like trying to describe God". Needless to
say, I said the wrong thing. I must have hit a nerve, because the teacher,
whom I respect, who is an intellectual (and I certainly do NOT label myself
an intellectual but a gut-ellectual. I feel first, bottom line it in my
intellect later) swore at me and walked out.
I'm very sad. My question is this to the group: Must one always be
able to articulate precisely why, for what reason one did certain work?
Especially if it is really glorious? Must one always be able to clearly
articulate the why of a photograph? Can't one say: "Let the photograph speak
to you!"? Is this a cop out?
I've been contemplating this all night and now day--call it a crisis in
conscience about my relationship with photography and teaching. All I know
is that my favorite photographs, the ones that speak to me that I have done,
are those that I have shot from the gut. Sure I have done whole conceptual
projects, right now working on a nipple quilt for instance, but my
relationship with photography is deepened when I look at my contact sheet
and see on it the images that tell me something about myself and my world
that I might not have even known I was taking.
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Katharine Thayer" <kthayer@pacifier.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
Sent: Saturday, December 14, 2002 1:50 AM
Subject: Re: Susan Sontag article
> Jonathan Bailey wrote:
> >
>
> > But, I'd like to ask: at what point did it become necessary for artists
to
> > also be intellectuals??
>
> According to an article in the New Yorker several months ago about a
> crisis in the Harvard studio art program, artists started getting more
> intellectual when more of them started getting academic degrees, and
> it's my personal opinion (and as I recall it was also the opinion of the
> writer of the article, and no, it wasn't Jed Perl) that this
> intellectualism hasn't served art very well.
>
> But I'm an intellectual myself, and although I mostly keep art separate
> from my intellectual interests, as I've written before, I do have Sontag
> in my studio library, and after reading the current article on war
> photography, went out into a wild storm to retrieve her so I could see
> what the fuss was all about, since I couldn't remember anything about
> what she had to say in her essays one way or another. (In contrast, my
> copies of Robert Adams' books of essays are worn and written all over
> from many sessions of re-reading and writing comments in the margins,
> and I could quote at least half a dozen passages sight unseen.)
>
> But try as I might, I couldn't stay interested long enough to read even
> one essay all the way through.
>
> I think the crucial difference between Sontag and Robert Adams, for me,
> is that Adams is a working photographer, as is/was? Szarkowski, and
> that's what makes their writing worth reading.
>
> Katharine Thayer
>
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