I've been left pretty speechless by where everyone has taken this thread. So many excellent, excellent contributions. At times I have had to fight back tears... the good kind. And not simply because people have been so kind. It has been like lifting the veil off the big Elephant in the room. I get the feeling we have all been in need of cutting ourselves some slack. I have had some of the most thoughtful and heartfelt PM's throughout this as well. One that pretty much reduced me to a blubbering idiot. (thanks a lot Matt!)
Many of us have given more of ourselves to the chase of this crazy carrot than anything else in our lives. We've sacrificed financial security, personal relationships... it has in many ways guided our lives. It is of utmost importance not because it is what we do or because it is how some of us make our living, but because it is what we have to do. I don't know about others, but I am lost without it. Like I said to Matt, sometimes being so close to something, you lose perspective. Reading other's can help. In this case a great deal. It's good to know you're not floating alone out there in the big sea.
I didn't start this thread to be about me, only to draw from my experience and make it about all of us. But, I would be remiss in not acknowledging the extremely kind sentiments that have come my way here and in PM's. I had no idea such things could hit the emotional chord they have. I'm also very happy with the "starfleet" (as my wife would say) attitude everyone has taken. Such a nice, calm thread. Many of us are our own, worst enemies and there is no point to making more.
There's always someone who will make a reference to somebody else's work in looking at yours, because they are more known to that individual. What pisses me off is the sometimes assumption that you are copying or emulating if that similarity exists. As CJ said about hers, she had no idea what Mann and Smith's work was about.
In any event, how could any of us not be influenced by what precedes us? What's important I feel is how we allow that influence to interject itself in our own work, whatever medium.
In this context, it is equally important to say "how could any of those who look at our work not be influenced by what they have seen before".
It is just natural for us to attempt to draw parallels with other work. Strictly speaking, a photograph is meaningless to an observer if they don't have anything in their past experience to compare it to.
Gallery owners and critics may suffer because they are familiar with too much.
This was a thought provoking post, Struan. But do photographers really see "artists" in a different way from painters? And what is the "romantic notion" you refer to?
There are plenty of photographers with a wide and inclusive sense of what it means to make or experience art, but photography as a body, and particularly enthusiast amateur photography, is frustratingly ready to put the blinkers on and look at art through a sort of Readers' Digest version of Romanticism. Artists should follow their unique vision. They should innovate, and while doing so should express their inner emotions. Art should be spontaneous, should avoid logic and analytical thought, and most of all should speak directly to the viewer's intrinisic sense of feeling.
This is no so bad in itself, but is has a habit of hardening into an exclusive dogma. Forms of photography that do not conform to this narrow view are rejected as 'not photography', or are simply rubbished with playground jeers. The idea that there might be other approaches to art, and to photography in particular, is buried in a dark hole and the earth stamped down.
Such photography rejects much of the last hundred and fifty years of art history, and most of the millenia before that. Quite apart from ignoring the pictorial traditions of vast parts of the world that are not derived from the self-examination of C19th European newly-urbanised men. The irony of the way modernist photographers are fetished while the central tenets of modernism are vigorously repulsed would be amusing were it not so prevelant.
So I think the whole idea that we should consciously avoid influence is suspect. It presupposes that we are making photographs - art - for the sole purpose of advancing the medium, or for engaging a public audience, or with the valuation of posterity as our main consideration. Just as many people derive great joy from hacking their way through the Goldberg variations in the privacy of their own homes I see no reason why photographers should not adopt accepted, even clichéd styles, to document and examine their own lives. It is possible, rewarding and enriching even, to climb a mountain that many others have climbed before you, especially if you are doing so only to satisfy yourself.
In this context, it is equally important to say "how could any of those who look at our work not be influenced by what they have seen before".
This is an important insight. I suppose it should also be expected that viewers are likely to be less aware of the nuances of a photographer's style than the photographer is themselves. Food for thought...
This has been a thought provoking thread, in a good way of course. I want to thank everyone for their ideas, and thank Bill for starting it. I hope people continue to contribute to it in a positive way.
Patrick
Sponsored Ad. (Subscribers to APUG
have the option to remove this ad.)
Me too, although his latest stuff has more of Martin Parr's sour observations than Friedlanders wry affection. Tunbjörk cites Friedlander as a major inspiration though.
Click on the yellow squares after following the 'exhibition' link. His sense of composition and quiet, unjudgemental composure strikes me as very like Friedlander, especially F's more recent work, but also going back to my personal favourite: the dog behind the lampost.
Just as many people derive great joy from hacking their way through the Goldberg variations in the privacy of their own homes I see no reason why photographers should not adopt accepted, even clichéd styles, to document and examine their own lives. It is possible, rewarding and enriching even, to climb a mountain that many others have climbed before you, especially if you are doing so only to satisfy yourself.
This is an important insight. I suppose it should also be expected that viewers are likely to be less aware of the nuances of a photographer's style than the photographer is themselves. Food for thought...
I have been thinking about the relativity aspect of style. If you shoot square black and white landscapes the average person will say your work looks like Adams, a person with a more sophisticated compartmentalization and knowledge of photography will say your work looks like Kenna's, and to those that can see the nuances of similar works, you will stand on your own. The more familiar you become with any given world, the less you will generalize, after all, Eskimos have a bajillion words for snow since they are intimately familiar with it, and we have but one.
I have a related thought for you as well. I have always believed that the only people that will truly know if you are good at something are the people who are better than you at it. If you get frustrated by comments of an average person about your work just repeat this to yourself. If someone says your work looks like Adams' or Kenna's just say thanks for the compliment. It is way easier that way. Don't waste your time trying to teach them the difference, or insist that it is different. The best compliments you will ever get are from an Adams or Kenna if they appreciate what you do because it is you who has done it.
So I think the whole idea that we should consciously avoid influence is suspect. It presupposes that we are making photographs - art - for the sole purpose of advancing the medium, or for engaging a public audience, or with the valuation of posterity as our main consideration. Just as many people derive great joy from hacking their way through the Goldberg variations in the privacy of their own homes I see no reason why photographers should not adopt accepted, even clichéd styles, to document and examine their own lives. It is possible, rewarding and enriching even, to climb a mountain that many others have climbed before you, especially if you are doing so only to satisfy yourself.
I don't think we can, even if we truly wanted to. In order to do something different, you have to have something to be different from. Therefore, you have influences, even if they are "negative" influences. While I agree with you that there is no harm to the individual who practices in a cliched style for the sole purpose of their own pleasure, I think we're addressing those who aspire to something more than "Painting Lessons by Morty" on sunday afternoons at 2 on public access cable.
I wrote a nice long (for me) thread late last night, but instead of hitting "Post Quick Reply" I clicked on something else... way too tired! So I am not going to recreate what I wrote, just gonna start over with similar thoughts.
I know that I am influenced by the work of others, photographers, painters, sculptors etc. But my style, if any, is based on my art background. I have a MFA in sculpture and taught it along with 3D Design and drawing. The realization of my working methods came about on a rather cloudy day up at the Quabbin Reservoir when I was photographing a rock split into sections by the cycle of water freezing, thawing, freezing and so on. Composing on the ground glass I noticed I set up a composition similar to some of my old paintings. Hmmmmm I said. Later on I went and looked at many of my older photos and saw that I indeed use many of the compositional skills learned in art school.
When it was bright and sunny, I concerned myself with form, texture and scale... sculptural elements. On overcast days, line, shape, tone and other elements from 2D design filled my thoughts. This had been going on from the beginning of my photographic pursuits.
Another thing that I knew I was doing was in my still life work (I really haven't posted much of that, probably out of laziness or absentmindedness) I used the same conceptual themes that I had been working on in my sculpture right up to the point when I no longer did sculpture and painting and switched to photography (think caring for a daughter full-time during the day, teaching part-time and working in a camera store six nights a week!).
So what I am saying is that there are reasons why I take the photographs the way I do and they are deeply rooted in my experience. But I also know that I have been and am still influenced by others. To me, if you stop being influenced by the work of others (in any medium) you will also stop growing as an artist.
gene
__________________
Long live Ed "Big Daddy" Roth!!
Linear Mode
