All art, music, writing, etc is built on the foundations of what went before it. Even if you're vehemently against everything that went before you still have to have a reference of what went before to know what to revolt against. I can't speak for anyone but myself, but i think it's a fair bet that most people, even if they are doing the most cliche work, are doing what they themselves like and want to see. We may criticize them for their lack of originality but ultimately you are the first person, and the most important one, that you have to please with your own work.
I read the OP and the first three or so following posts.
It seems to me, Bill, what you're asking is to define the line between "inspiration" and "imitation".
To my mind, the works of Steichen, Weston, St. Ansel, HCB, Arbus, Capra, Lange, Strand, Stieglitz, Evans, Liebowitz, Atget etc. etc. should be an inspiration that informs the work we try to achieve.
But ONLY an inspiration.
If, instead, we seek to imitate these masters/mistresses of the art form, then we limit ourselves.
Now it's a lot easier for me to say this because I am just a "duffer photograher" - an amateur. I can flip through an Aperture-edition of one of the aforementioned photogs and feel "inspired" by more or less simply "imitating" their eye. But you carry the more heavy burden of advancing the art by finding inspiration that informs you - but also demands that you go beyond simple imitation.
I think that is a bit of where you were going with your Brodie curtain thread.
In that subject - there is no current "iconic" version. Just the fact that the curtain caught both yours and Kevin's eye.
But, perhaps the real test would be to choose a classic "iconic" subject and see how different folk would shoot it. Would some seek solely to "imitate" it (with perhaps a slight difference to feign originality)? Would others use the icon image as a "take off" point and come back with something that "advances" the concept of the image?
All art, music, writing, etc is built on the foundations of what went before it. Even if you're vehemently against everything that went before you still have to have a reference of what went before to know what to revolt against.
Kind of remind me of the kid with the pink hair and the bone through his nose, trying so hard to be different, announcing to the world "IDGAF what you think."
If he really didn't care what anybody thought, he wouldn't need the pink hair and the nose bone. That is where I got to. Let my hair go back dark, and got rid of the bone, because IDGAF enough anymore to make an show of revolt. Nowadays, I just do my thing, trying too hard to be different is an affectation sure as mimicry. Do your own thing, untie your brain, and it will lead to "original and different" easy as pie.
FWIW Bill, I've never looked at your stuff and saw Kenna. I saw you.
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--J Brunner, The Prints of Darkness
"Nancy Newhall asked to see my portfolio. That was 1972, and I was very proud of those prints. They were fifteen black and white landscape photographs, selenium toned and mounted on white mat board. Nancy was a critical and negative person. Yet her talents and reputation were obvious. She told me that in my photographs she saw the influence of several other photographers. Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock, Edward Weston, Hal Halberstad and William Garnett. I was flattered. She did not mean it to be flattering: Her final question was to ask when I was going to stand up and be my own photographer:"
Al Weber
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What is at the heart of "style"; how is it defined in the context of photographic creativity?
John Sexton, who's mentor and was AA, and who photographs the natural scene, is he as well supposed to stand up and start being his own photographer? He and others produce photographs that are similar in style to something someone has done before? It's not wrong to seek to be as good as someone whom you admire? Like someone said earlier, they're not trying to find the tripod holes of someone who went before them and niether am I.
IMO, the bar was set long ago with the early masters as to what defines fine art black and white photography. I'm not referring to mere subject matter but rather that visual sense of beauty, tonality, and sharpness that is possible in a photograph that I may make. I choose to reach for that bar in the "style" of Adams, the Westons, Sexton, etc... I like how they "see" the natural scene. Does that admission make me a copy cat, someone who lacks my own personal sense of creativity? I don't believe that nonsense for a second.
Chuck
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"Photography is an illusion. It is amazing that human beings consider a photograph to be a representation of reality."
---John Sexton
So this Van Gogh dude was tripping on Japanese prints and most people don't think of Hiroshige when they see paintings he could barely give away. OK he was influenced, he borrowed, he stole but it didn't matter cause he was a failure. Some dude that I think was married to Georgia Okeefe made some fuzzy picture trying to imitate something that someone would paint. Smart people back then were deciding which side of their nose to look down at such a thing and now that picture rakes in a couple million bucks for someone.
Maybe the only style of value comes from definitive failure in imitation, maybe it comes from what is chosen to be imitated.
I wanna go back to the failure part of this though...especially in painting, I trip on the failures of representative artwork. If a painter was so skilled at replicating some scene in nature I would go "wow, I gotta go there sometime". But with a smart and lazy painter that took some shortcuts and shorthand tricks and just plain changed things up for the hell of it I would go "wow, I gotta meet that dude". And so it's the things in any given medium that fall short of what's expected that make for style in my eyes.
What I think is cool and how I fail is my style.
Another quick thought: I'm an artist. The pretty pictures I make serve no other purpose in this world therefore they are art and fine art at that (it don't matter what people think qualitatively of the term...it just means that it has no practical application). You can call me a sucky artist but I ain't gonna be bashful about stating the purpose in creating the things I create.
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"If I only had a brain"-Some badly dressed guy made of straw in some movie I think I saw
"Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures."
Henry Ward Beecher
This is very true Kevin, but what's in an artist's soul? Speaking personally, my soul has bits of Weston, Adams, Rodin, Moore, Modigliani, Cezanne, Monet, Bernini, Beethoven, Mozart, Respighi, Laclos, Dahl, and countless others who have created wonderful works of art which have enriched my life.
Am I supposed to amputate this part of my soul before I make a photo? If I were to do this I'd be commiting an artistic crime which, in my opinion, is on a par with copying the works of others.
Some people are so obsessed with creating "new" and "original" work (work which they want to be completely uninfluenced by others), that they fail to produce anything significant at all. I think that's a shame and a waste of potential.
Linear Mode
