From: Jonathan Bailey (quryhous@midcoast.com)
Date: 01/07/03-08:25:09 PM Z
Shannon,
I've been thinking about this and would like to offer the following
thoughts: (as over the top as this may seem to many of you...)
> Can photographers be Outsider ARtists or folk artists?
I asked the same question. Outsider art usually has to do with a body of
work that arrives almost full-blown - "mature" - at first flush, without
"development." Outsider art is not infrequently produced by people at or
near the end of their lives. A certain naiveté about "art" is requisite;
it's not uncommon that the work is produced in just a few years - not often
is it an entire life's pursuit. It's a very particular phenomenon and
photography, as a medium, is not much given to producing "outsiders" in the
traditional sense of the word.
Considering this work has done much for my understanding of the creative
process - or, at the very least, it's added much depth to my appreciation of
it.
As you many of you are no doubt aware - I believe that art as
"self-expression" is propaganda: a kind of self-aggrandizement. And, as
I've said recently in posts to the list, I believe it's useful to
de-emphasize the "me" and the "I want" in image-making; that it's perhaps
more useful to offer ourselves as a kind of conduit for the images. Whether
or not you believe images have a kind of sentience, or that they may have
reasons of their own for being, acting "as if" that were the case is, I
believe, quite useful.
Simply put - more than any other group, "outsider" artists seem to me to
demonstrate the autonomy of the images themselves; the necessity of their
being - and their finding a way "out"; and, further, that it is we who are
truly "the medium" in question....
Now, as I said last weekend - this in no way relieves us of our
responsibility (the ability to respond) in the process - but our
responsibility lies not *for* the images - but *to* them....
Cheers.
Jon
www.jonathan-bailey.com
Tenants Harbor, Maine
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