Aesthetics Of Art Form

[thronobulax]

This thread puts me in mind of the many and long debates I witnessed when synthesizers came of age. The traditionalists bemoaned that the piano (and, later, drums) would be made obsolete and that digital would overcome all things analogue. (N.B. The Moog synthesizer, first of its kind, was analogue.) What happened, of course, is that electronic music became a form in it's own right, and people still play Beethoven, Chopin, and Mozart on Steinways.

I feel much the same way about all digital vs. hybrid vs. all silver photographic flows. They are each - in their own right - an independent stream of creation. Each serves the vision of its users differently. As I said above, to my eye, there's nothing more beautiful than a silver (or platinum or palladium ...) print produced traditionally. But that's my eye, and I remain open to seeing better and more interesting options in the future.

I am approaching 50 years as a serious photographer. If I've learned one thing, it's that we tend to overextend on mechanics and spend not enough time on aesthetics. As a young man I worked as an assistant to the local "professional" briefly. One summer, he gave me the task of developing and printing the film shot by a class of young children he was teaching. This was the age of the Kodak Instamatic, and I spent many hours cracking open cartridges, developing film, and printing those tiny negatives. The negatives and prints were technically dreadful. But the images were just amazing. The purity and simplicity of a child's vision have stuck with me, lo all these years. To this day, when I am creatively "stuck", I will sometimes reduce myself to a child's height to try and see things the way they do ... admittedly, I am considerably creakier these days in that process

 

[David M]

No doubt there were similar discussions when traditional flint-knappers encountered that new-fangled bronze.

 

[Marley's Ghost]

This thread puts me in mind of the many and long debates I witnessed when synthesizers came of age. The traditionalists bemoaned that the piano (and, later, drums) would be made obsolete and that digital would overcome all things analogue. (N.B. The Moog synthesizer, first of its kind, was analogue.) What happened, of course, is that electronic music became a form in it's own right, and people still play Beethoven, Chopin, and Mozart on Steinways.

I feel much the same way about all digital vs. hybrid vs. all silver photographic flows. They are each - in their own right - an independent stream of creation. Each serves the vision of its users differently. As I said above, to my eye, there's nothing more beautiful than a silver (or platinum or palladium ...) print produced traditionally. But that's my eye, and I remain open to seeing better and more interesting options in the future.

I am approaching 50 years as a serious photographer. If I've learned one thing, it's that we tend to overextend on mechanics and spend not enough time on aesthetics. As a young man I worked as an assistant to the local "professional" briefly. One summer, he gave me the task of developing and printing the film shot by a class of young children he was teaching. This was the age of the Kodak Instamatic, and I spent many hours cracking open cartridges, developing film, and printing those tiny negatives. The negatives and prints were technically dreadful. But the images were just amazing. The purity and simplicity of a child's vision have stuck with me, lo all these years. To this day, when I am creatively "stuck", I will sometimes reduce myself to a child's height to try and see things the way they do ... admittedly, I am considerably creakier these days in that process

This is why I love to go out sometimes with a most part automatic SLR like my Nikon F4 and simply blast film for she hell of it - shoot whatever pops into my head - like a kid, unencumbered by technicalities. Personally I'm large format because of an addiction to the smoothness of gradation and general fine negative quality ... not the faff ... if they made a motor drive, autofocus aperture priority 10x8 ... I'd buy a slice of that!

 

[David M]

For some reason, photographers are not good at aesthetics. All too often a discussion of photographs decays into one of two paths. Firstly, the accursed Rule of Thirds with its fellow villains - leading lines, foreground interest and so on. We can probably live with all that, but the second trend seems to me to be much worse. The photograph itself is simply ignored and some item within the frame is chosen as a hook for a moralistic lecture on whatever obsesses the writer’s peer-group. Currently, we seem to be obsessed with race and gender.
I don’t suggest that these subjects should be ignored. Far from it, but they are not discussions of photography.
On the other hand, to be fair, the tools and materials of photography change and develop all the time. It seems to me to be a legitimate subject of study, as long as we don’t mistake it for a study of photography itself.
Other branches of the arts are not so blessed; a sculptor from the Pyramids would be able pick up modern chisels and continue uninterrupted. He would marvel at how long a steel edge lasted, of course, but no more. He might well be astonished at what‘s incuded under the banner of sculpture today, but that returns our minds to aesthetics.

 

[Marley's Ghost]

The photograph itself is simply ignored and some item within the frame is chosen as a hook for a moralistic lecture on whatever obsesses the writer’s peer-group. Currently, we seem to be obsessed with race and gender.
I don’t suggest that these subjects should be ignored. Far from it, but they are not discussions of photography.

By 'not discussions of photography' what exactly do you mean?
Surely photography is composed of two strands: 'purpose and method'.
The obsession on pretty much every internet forum is 'method', what film, what chemicals, what camera even what composition rules etc.
The 'purpose' conversation is normally ignored. Or worse than ignored, blatantly condemned as not proper subjects for photographic discussion because they may be contentious. I would say that discussing social issues explored through our medium is just as legitimate as which developer we use!
Throughout the long history of photography, photographers in all formats have made bold statements about the societies they lived in and world events around them: from Dorothea Lange to Don McCullin.
Frankly I don't give a damn about what method a photographer uses to create an image that makes me think, or that touches on a part of my life experience, and I take a great deal of exception to someone suggesting that there are areas of photographic conversation that are somehow 'off limits' or not fit for photographic discussion.

 

[David M]

I see that you divide discussions on photography differently from me. As you put it, I can’t disagree.
A bit of history: I did a MA in photography. Interesting but not life-changing. At that time, all photographs seemed to be feminist tracts, whatever their subject, whatever their purpose. I found I could take random objects and devise ways that they illustrated and confirmed that Men are Horrible. You’re seeing my reaction to that.
My objection was to applying one simplistic method to everything and excluding or decrying others.
Photographers should certainly be involved in the world around them, but so should plumbers and mathematicians. Naturally, a concerned photographer would use the tools they have.

My original point was about aesthetics. We seem to be embarking on something more fundamental.

 

[Marley's Ghost]

Surely declaring something/things 'not discussions of photography' you are 'applying one simplistic method yourself!

 

[David M]

Good point.
I began by deploring the paucity of aesthetic criticism in photography in contrast to the known and observed abundance of discussion on equipment and method.
However, I was trying to draw a distinction between the discussion of aesthetics and the discussion of morality. No intention to decry morality, but the same moral argument may be made from diverse beginnings. A written text may provide the origin, or a set of statistics, personal observation or a conversation. As may a photograph.
It seems to me that morality and aesthetics are distinct fields of thought, hence my “…not photography…” comment. I should have been more precise and written “…not photographic aesthetics…”, but qualifying every statement would make my ingrained prolixity intolerable.
I hope this is clearer.
Perhaps we should have a thread for the moral uses of photography.

 

[Marley's Ghost]

My own background was not in photographic academia, but in a burning desire as a child and a teen, to earn my living doing what I loved most: taking photos. My parents however thought professional photographers were somehow 'itinerant' and that this wasn't a fit profession for their son. I rebelled totally, and became a punk rock musician who spent 50% of his time playing, and 50% of his time as a photographer. Politics, society and our place in it is baked into the way I see things, both musically and photographically. To me you can't separate the elements.
Agreeing to differ is part of a rounded approach to life and photography though

 

[David M]

Marley,
Can't disagree with any of that. My background isn't in academia either. I was surprised at what I found.

Back, as Joanna rightly says, to the original subject.
The Canon printer sounds excellent. There are smaller printers that used refillable inks, but not intended for fine photographic prints.

 

[martin-f5]

at the darkroom course with John Blakemore in Nottingham some years ago he showed us a fabulous print with rich tones, beautiful black & white.
He then hold a "simple" J. Blakemore print side by side to the digital print and it was stunning what you could see.
I think this can not be described with my poor English I learned at school in Germany but I felt like I saw a peace of heaven, it was nearly something which reminds me of the paradise which is promised and it also said don't bite in the alle from the tree of wisdom.

Do you guys know TDL studio monitor speakers?

Have you ever heard that sound?

Compared to normal speakers they sound a little conservative in the first minutes,
but after a while it's more and more natural and deep and not aggressive.
And this is the same with darkroom prints the are something which remains which needs some more seconds to be understood.

 

[thronobulax]

The photograph itself is simply ignored and some item within the frame is chosen as a hook for a moralistic lecture on whatever obsesses the writer’s peer-group. Currently, we seem to be obsessed with race and gender.
I don’t suggest that these subjects should be ignored. Far from it, but they are not discussions of photography.

They're not even actually about race and gender, nor are they particularly "moral". They are inevitably thinly-veiled political screeds demanding that we worship at the altar of the writer/speaker/photographer's self-proclaimed superior standing in virtue.

We have the various "theory" schools to thank for this trash. Postmodernism and Deconstructionism eviscerated aesthetics by means of a mindless reductionism to enable the aforementioned table thumping. When the socio-political leanings of the artist came to matter more than the art and artifacts, aesthetics were doomed.

A particularly brilliant disquisition on the whole business can be found in "The Rape Of The Masters" by Roger Kimball.

 

[David M]

Well, they may be espousing meritorious causes. I don't want women to be oppressed anyway. My objection (which I don't seem to have expressed very well) was that every photograph would be pressed into the service of The Cause.
As you say, these considerations elbowed out any aesthetic discussion. By aesthetic, I don't mean How to Make Your Pictures Prettier. I mean something like asking why we prefer to look at this one, rather than that one, and for longer.
Forgive me for the stereotype that follows.
We may postulate a fond grandmother, looking at pictures of her grandchild and we suppose that she's automatically interested in looking at them all. That's what grandmothers do, isn't it? But some will make her look for longer and with more attention. The subject remains the same in all of them so we may subtract that factor from both sides of the equation. What remains is something else. Can that be the arrangement of the shapes and colours in the frame? Can this be aesthetics? Some other word might be useful.

 

[thronobulax]

Well, they may be espousing meritorious causes. I don't want women to be oppressed anyway. My objection (which I don't seem to have expressed very well) was that every photograph would be pressed into the service of The Cause.
As you say, these considerations elbowed out any aesthetic discussion. By aesthetic, I don't mean How to Make Your Pictures Prettier. I mean something like asking why we prefer to look at this one, rather than that one, and for longer.
Forgive me for the stereotype that follows.
We may postulate a fond grandmother, looking at pictures of her grandchild and we suppose that she's automatically interested in looking at them all. That's what grandmothers do, isn't it? But some will make her look for longer and with more attention. The subject remains the same in all of them so we may subtract that factor from both sides of the equation. What remains is something else. Can that be the arrangement of the shapes and colours in the frame? Can this be aesthetics? Some other word might be useful.

Art needs to stand on its own as art. When pressed into the service of commerce, it becomes advertising or marketing and no longer stands on its own . When pressed into the service of socio-political agenda, it becomes propaganda and no longer stands on its own. Kimball's book mentioned above goes into considerable effort to detail the damage done to art and aesthetics when allowed to be controlled by the agenda machines of contemporary culture.

As you point out, it's not that these subjects are not valid discussion items. They are - when the discussion is honest, grounded in facts, with a view toward remedies for genuine problems. But there are two very bad traps here: It is often the case the the agenda carriers care far less about the issue and far more about showing everyone how verrrrrrry noble and virtuous they are. Secondly - and arguably even worse - is when agenda is retrofitted onto art long after its creation - someting, again, that Kimball discusses in painful detail.

 

[David M]

I shall have to think about this.

 

[thronobulax]

I shall have to think about this.

I encourage this However, in the spirit of not descending into the political ratholes that seem to characterize public discourse, I tend to speak in pretty broad strokes rather than jumping into detail. Let's just say I am not a fan of propaganda, left- or right masquerading as art ...

 

[David M]

Hmmm… Well…
A great deal of universally admired art was produced at the behest of the uber-capitalist Borgias and Medicis and a thought-dominating Church.
Art was different in those days. It was bespoke. Nowadays we have readymade art, manufactured for the maker’s taste rather than the consumer’s and offered for sale in shops that we call galleries.
Academia inserts all kinds of mental hoops to jump through into this process. I suggest that it’s those hoops that are worrying us.

My apologies for diverting this thread away from preferences in printing.

 

[Marley's Ghost]

Art needs to stand on its own as art. When pressed into the service of commerce, it becomes advertising or marketing and no longer stands on its own . When pressed into the service of socio-political agenda, it becomes propaganda and no longer stands on its own.

So Picasso's 'Guernica' is dimished as a work of art because it served an anti war agenda. Orwell's 1984 or Animal Farm because of their political stance? Are the songs of Woodie Guthrie or the poems of Dylan Thomas not valid art because of their social commentary?
Art doesn't exist in some airy fairy void where the artist is so self absorbed that he or she retreats up their own fundamental orifice so far that they require sat-nav to find themselves.
Art is made by real people as an honest reaction to the world as they see it - if that vision has a political or social agenda it matters not - it's still art.

 

[David M]

I'd like to suggest that you are taking a wider view of art in society than me. Even bad art may serve, and serve well, a virtuous cause. It may serve a wicked one too. Consider how Nazi images of Jews served their own cause. A photograph of an atrocity or abuse reveals those things whatever its own aesthetic qualities may be.
I began by deploring the way that then-fashionable "political" dogma elbowed aside any discussion of the other merits of a photograph. There may be a parallel with the way that the intricacies of digital technique have supplanted discussion of the image itself.
When it comes to art used as propaganda, for good or ill, we can still distinguish between different works by what I'm calling aesthetics. I wish there were a better word. So the question for me is why Guernica or Animal Farm have impressed us more deeply than other works. Orwell wasn't the only person to disapprove of Stalin. My suggestion is that the answer lies in the quality of aesthetic craftsmanship. That's an even worse expression, but I'm searching for something better. The maker of a work brings something more than a bare transcription of the facts, and that's what is concerning me.

 

[Alan Klein]

So Picasso's 'Guernica' is dimished as a work of art because it served an anti war agenda. Orwell's 1984 or Animal Farm because of their political stance? Are the songs of Woodie Guthrie or the poems of Dylan Thomas not valid art because of their social commentary?
Art doesn't exist in some airy fairy void where the artist is so self absorbed that he or she retreats up their own fundamental orifice so far that they require sat-nav to find themselves.
Art is made by real people as an honest reaction to the world as they see it - if that vision has a political or social agenda it matters not - it's still art.

Can't we just enjoy art without having to write a thesis on why?