It takes some effort now to remember clearly modern photography before Winogrand. The most adventurous work of his immediate predecessors now seems in comparison almost simple, and has receded into the security of history, where problems seem clear and solutions inevitable. Winogrand's work in contrast remains difficult and problematic. It is possible that his vision of photography's potential finally led him to problems too complexly difficult to allow rational hope of success. Photography is based on the faith that there is a relation between aspect and meaning, but how does one describe the meaning of chaos without submitting to it? Younger photographers may retreat a little from such Faustian ambition, in exchange for the reassurance of a greater measure of control. Even so, Winogrand will have made their problem more difficult, for his work has demonstrated that photography can give visible and permanent shape to experience so complex, unpredictable, subtle, and evanescent that one would have thought it uncommunicable. John Szarkowski, Winogrand: Figments from the Real World (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1988), 40.
More people currently know the appearance of Yosemite Valley and the Grand Canyon from having looked at photographic books than from having been to the places them-selves; conservation publishing has defined for most of us the outstanding features of the American wilderness. Unfor-tunately, by perhaps an inevitable extension, the same spectacular pictures have also been widely accepted as a définition of nature, and the implication has been circulated → that what is not wild is not natural. This restrictive interpre-_tation is unintended and demoralising - a reading that conservationists must now work to correct if their efforts are not to prove counterproductive. Nature photographers particularly need to widen their subject matter if they are to help us find again the affection for life that is the only sure motive for continuing the struggle toward a decent environment. Robert Adams pg 103 C.A.Hickman Essays in defence of traditional values pub. Aperture 1981 ISBN 089381080
I understood from the beginning that a camera doesn’t point, it frames. I also understood the gap between the world of the photograph and the world we experience – the world of the photograph has to make sense on its own, out of context Steven Shore
Painters start with a blank canvas and make marks to add complexity; photography is the opposite – you start with the whole world,” he says. “I don’t know what to do with a blank paper – but put me on a street corner and my imagination goes off!” Steven Shore
A personal anthropology
Adams is known for his subtle yet searing critique of urban sprawl and environmental degradation, in compositions serene yet static and often shaped by a sense of alienation. In iconic series such as “The New West” and “Prairies,” he turns to light as both subject and symbol, allowing it to transcend the ordinary and hint at more enduring forms beneath the surface of American life.
But art is an attempt to capture – and convey – something true about the world, and the human emotional experience of it. When the rational world has committed itself to a path that leads to destruction, perhaps those dedicated to beauty can, with what Keats called a “negative capability” to perceive truth, bring us back to both. Steidl’s new book on Adams and Albers Alexander Hurst
The painter constructs, the photographer discloses. Susan Sontag
I was often told to avoid shooting still lifes or tabletop assemblages because they have been done so thoroughly and so well in the tradition of photography. The other reason provided was that it is hard for this type of work to raise questions beyond formal and aesthetic concerns. To be honest, I still do not really know what any of that meant. Early on, when I started photography, I did photograph some still lifes on tabletops. I made some rudimentary clay forms and had them act out scenes on my study table. Now that I am older, I am of the opinion that we should be free to photograph whatever it is we are drawn to at each period in life. Even seemingly futile attempts at something are part of the journey. There should be a special place in art for projects that went nowhere and amounted to nothing. —Sean Lee pg 262 Photo No-Nos ISBN 9781597114998
Despite its consistent presence, suburbia as a geography is hazy and ill-defined. Delineating where the suburbs start and end can prove difficult. So too the images of the suburbs we carry are unique and conflicting.
For some the suburbs are the pinnacle of middle-class advancement. A landscape of little kingdoms. For others they are a trap of drab conformity. Where the dreams of youth go to die.
My internal suburb has a nostalgic topography. It bathes in the endless sunshine of the halcyon days of boyhood. It was mapped on a BMX and surveyed by climbing trees.
Suburban Fantastic takes the reader on a journey through my remembered suburb. A playground of shifting spaces and geometries is presented here in book form. The material nature of the book reflects a sense of discovery and expectation. A longed-for state of child-like apprehension; where an exciting unknown waits around every corner
SUBURBAN FANTASTIC — CHRISFINNEGAN//ART
Collected Memories
Mark forbes
The more we see imagery of people, places and spaces, the more our individual memories are shaped by the photographs that we choose to hold onto. As time passes and details fade, these photographs become our memories. As a result when an image is made, explicitly or subconsciously, decisions are being made about how things will be remembered. While these images are my collected memories, they are here to be shared and possibly become yours too. The series has evolved over the last five years and has coincided with a focus on mindfulness and meditation in my life.
Collected memories - signed monograph - Mark Forbes - Melbourne Photographer
Over the years he has also published four small books of essays and interviews (Beauty in Photography, Why People Photograph, Along Some Rivers, and Art Can Help). Of these the critic Richard Woodward has observed that they “are defiantly free of postmodern attitudes and theorising, arguing that one of the chief purposes of making art is to keep intact an affection for life.”
At other times, however, photography is more like hunting and gathering, a much more random pursuit where serendipity rules. While all of the above ways of working are part of my personal experience to a greater or lesser degree, it’s interesting that almost all of my best-known (and by coincidence, favourite) images were taken fleetingly, spontaneously.
photography can no longer be seen as: a uniform practice with a fixed cultural meaning: Photography is a complex and diverse practice across time and space, and it would be naïve to assume that all photographers confer the same meaning on photography or even that they are following the same practice … photography must be understood simultaneously as a social practice, a networked technology, a material object and an image.
“It’s not just the meaning of the image that has changed – the act of looking does not have the same meaning. Now, it’s about showing, sending and maybe remembering. It is no longer essentially about the image. The image for me was always linked to the idea of uniqueness, to a frame and to composition. You produced something that was, in itself, a singular moment. As such, it had a certain sacredness. That whole notion is gone …. The culture has changed. It has all gone. I really don’t know why we stick to the word photography any more. There should be a different term, but nobody cared about finding it.” Wim Wenders, 2017.
If ICP wants to turn its back on art history (and its own collection), and conceive of all images as equally valid elements of one giant image stream, that’s its prerogative. But then do something with that vision; don’t junk art history just to reproduce the web! The role of a 21st-century photography museum should be to analyze, synthesize, and historicize our understanding of today’s dispensation of images, rather than just to replicate the products of the search engine and the hashtag. A museum, this museum, must be so much more than an aggregator – more than a collection of JPEGs to be fleetingly contemplated before we swipe past.
I’m not a premeditative photographer. I see a picture and I make it. If I had a chance, I’d be out shooting all the time. You don’t have to go looking for pictures. The material is generous. You go out and the pictures are staring at you. — Lee Friedlander
When you’re photographing and you’re walking through the world, something catches you, you notice something. You’re connecting with it and you’re responding to it. You’re basically saying “Yes” to it. You’re saying “Yes, it’s interesting.” You’re kind of like a free agent between your instinct, your anticipation and your intelligence and those things keep moving back and forth in a very fluid way while you’re photographing and that experience is really pleasurable. It’s really exciting and it’s the reason that I photograph. That and the way photographs look. The way they describe the world.
— Henry Wessel
These days I work more slowly. I currently favour square, rather than rectangular, photographs. I still use film (when I can afford it) but perhaps I’m more interested in the “stoicism of the lens and the enigmas of the light”. The pleasure I get from photography is much the same: the existential encounter with reality; the risk of failure and hope of success; the contest between form and content; the thrill of occasional, wordless ‘rightness’. Jon Nicholls
Photography is a system of visual editing. At bottom, it is a matter of surrounding with a frame a portion of one's cone of vision, while standing in the right place at the right time. Like chess, or writing, it is a matter of choosing from among given possibilities, but in the case of photography the number of possibilities is not finite but infinite. John Szarkowski
Art will always transcend life, because it remains essentially unimaginable to contemplate life without art. In the end we make art for what hides in the margins. We make art because we need to and we don’t mind where the revelations come from. We reproduce those things that matter the most to us, even though we may not consciously understand everything that we are doing at the time... It is a commitment to ourselves and the things in this world that matter most to us. Les Walkling
Empty stairs is one for me. I've taken hundreds of pictures of stairways to nowhere. And none of them are as good as the first one. Another photographer made pictures of pickup trucks for years, until she finally nailed it and moved on. To some, political content is a no-no; for others, every picture is political. One photographer might avoid using a tripod, while another avoids snapshots. Some will not photograph a person without their consent, others never ask permission. Some avoid distant cultures, others avoid their own hometowns. We reached out to photographers, curators, and writers, asking about things they avoid. Many who responded sent in lists of subjects, compiled here in alphabetical order. We then asked each contributor to write about one of the topics on their list. This book is framed in terms of negatives, but the stories highlight the reasons why people are motivated to make pictures in the first place, and the underlying message is positive. Rules can be useful, until they aren't. Things are subjective. There are no nos. You could even think of this as a challenging shot list. Editor’s note pg 11 Photo No-Nos ISBN 9781597114998
Described by some as straight photography, this work is characterised by a sense of disengagement; it is analytical and descriptive in its approach to society and the landscape. At the same time, this kind of photography also demonstrates a concern for subject matter. Lincoln Kirstein, in 1933, identified this paradox of seeming opposites when he described Walker Evans’s work as ‘tender cruelty’. This oscillation between engagement and estrangement features in each work on display, from August Sander’s remarkable study of the German people in the early part of the century, to Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s recent photographs of revealing city street scenes. Garry Winogrand observed: There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described. For the photographers in Cruel and Tender this means looking at the real world around us and avoiding idealised or fantastical imagery.
Cruel and Tender: The Real in the Twentieth-Century Photograph – Press Release | Tate
"I think it’s very clear that we need to come up with a name for synthetic generated images that look like photography. I’ve heard some interesting suggestions—some good, some bad. The best proposition so far, which I have from somebody commenting on my social media accounts, is promptography. I liked that a lot. It tells you that it’s something else, and it should not be mixed in the same category. We need to be clear to say it is not photography. It’s using the photographic language. With the same tool, I can use the language of painting, I can use the language of drawing, I can use the language of 3d animation… the options will become more and more. It’s an explosion since last summer, and by the end of the year, we can’t know where we’ll be." Boris Eldagsen, the creator of the PSEUDOMNESIA: Fake Memories
This is the visual end product of erasing a 868x1024 pixel jpg of Rauschenberg's "Erased de Kooning Drawing". I selected a 1-pixel diameter Eraser tool in Photoshop and erased the 888,832-pixel artwork over five sessions and a total of nine hours and thirty-three minutes (a total of 973 “Eraser” actions). The story of the erasure is encoded in the metadata in the History Log file. This 104-page text serves as a digital palimpsest; an epic poem which begs a more general question about how truth has retreated from our retinal environment. This text was published in book form, and I present to you the empty jpg, free of the load of its information - a very manual form of compression. For more information please see http://geraintedwards.com/?page_id=6388
Jason Farago