From: Christina Z. Anderson (zphoto@montana.net)
Date: 10/05/03-07:36:37 AM Z
Hi Shannon!
Look at Gerhard Richter...I've been watching the use of blur in all facets,
painting, photography (photography is where it first occurred to my
knowledge) and in the last couple years it has crept into the media, even,
but Richter was doing photorealist works that were blurry, and swiping his
wet paint to blur his photorealism way long ago. Now, if you look at art
mags, there are painters painting in this style frequently enough to show a
trend. Have yet to figure it out--just thinking about it and I throw it out
to the group to think, too. I'm not suggesting Richter is a
neo-pictorialist by any means, just that the trend away from sharp edges has
been a long time coming, and is not only occurring in photography.
I think neo-pictorialism has a less romantic edge to it, or, at least, mine
do. Romanticism has succumbed a bit to reality of life to produce imagery
that has more of a postmodern feel. Pinhole landscapes with a discarded
apple core, you know...Weston may have photographed a dead pelican but it
was more formalistically done, whereas nowadays the perfect neg and form
would take a back seat to the fading emotion of it. Maybe we'll see the New
Topographics photographers (Lewis Baltz? The Bechers watertowers?) go
pinhole...:)
My *very* off the top of my head 2 cents.
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "shannon stoney" <sstoney@pdq.net>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2003 8:41 AM
Subject: neo-Pictorialism
> I am working on a little paper about neo-Pictorialism and regular old
> Pictorialism. My idea, which I thought I invented but which turned
> out to be sort of a commonplace once I started researching it, is
> that the antiquarian avant-garde and Holga users and pinhole folks
> constitute some sort of revival of the old Pictorialist aesthetic of
> the late 19th and early 20th century. You know, soft focus,
> vignetting, romantic subject matter (sometimes), fooling with the
> negative, alternative processes, interest in dreams, memories, and
> visions as opposed to just the hard-edged, scientific, f64 world out
> there. This is an over-simplification but you get the drift.
>
> I was wondering if anybody has some ideas about why this "trend" has
> occurred, when it started, what it was a reaction to, where is it
> going, what is its relationship to other "avant gardes" that it is
> contemporaneous with, how it relates to so-called postmodernism,
> whether it is a form of postmodernism, whether it is just retro or
> truly avant-garde, how marginal it is, how academia and institutions
> see it, and any other questions you can think of. Of course I will
> credit you in my paper for any of your ideas, although I have no idea
> how to cite emails in the end notes. Maybe like: "Jane Doe, email
> communication, 10/4/03" ?
>
> Also if you have images that illustrate your idea about this, that
> would be great too (attached to emails to me off-list of course), or
> links to websites could be sent to the list or just to me, as you
> wish.
>
> We had a fun meeting in Houston yesterday at Clay Harmon's house, and
> I saw a lot of stuff that fueled my interest in this question, and I
> heard a lot of good ideas about why we do what we do. Thanks,
> Houston and Austin folks, and especially Clay.
>
> thanks in advance for your thoughts,
>
> --shannon
>
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