The joy of photography

[Alex Benjamin]

And now that I think about it:

Why can't art be entertaining ?

 

[nikos79]

Dang ! Beat me to it...



Why can't entertainment be art ?

It can be but very rarely
Because you have to please a big audience. Also because entertainment hardly ever challenges you to think. I doubt Tarkovsky can be entertaining to watch and definitely when I want some entertainment I will watch an action film instead

 

[koraks]

It can be but very rarely
Because you have to please a big audience. Also because entertainment hardly ever challenges you to think. I doubt Tarkovsky can be entertaining to watch and definitely when I want some entertainment I will watch an action film instead

I will refrain from it.

It's hard, isn't it?

One (more) reason I'm pressing the point is that it seems to happen without your realizing it.

 

[nikos79]

It's hard, isn't it?

One (more) reason I'm pressing the point is that it seems to happen without your realizing it.

It is hard indeed. Especially when it seems our opinions differ so much.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

Because you have to please a big audience.

Well, huge audiences in the 18th and 19th century used to flock to the opera house to be entertained by the works of Mozart, Weber, Berlioz, Bellini, Rossini, Verdi, Wagner, etc. But I guess none of their works are art.

Now if "Must have very few people able to appreciate it" is a criteria for a work to be art, this is going to leave a lot of stuff outside the Realm (dare I say Walhalla ?...) and make a lot of people feel very stupid for thinking they were in contact with art while in fact they were merely enjoying entertainment, or something worse.

So a new Zen koan could be: If a Henry Cartier-Bresson exhibit is organized at MoMA and attracts and pleases huge audiences, are his works just mere entertainment ?

Other interesting question would be: how many of the chosen few are necessary for the chosen few to stop being the chosen few and becoming a huge audience ?

 

[Don_ih]

I believe that by criticising the work of photographers is what can make us appreciate their flaws and which ones we like and why.

Condemnation is not criticism. In order to criticize, you must first attempt to come to some understanding of what you're seeing/reading/hearing. What you mostly have been doing is praising or dismissing. And the praise is issued on the basis of attributes you deem worthy. Praise is fine, Condemnation is fine. But both of those things are more reflections of your feelings rather than anything critical.

As for art and entertainment: they're not related. You can entertain yourself with as pickle on a fork.

 

[nikos79]

Well, huge audiences in the 18th and 19th century used to flock to the opera house to be entertained by the works of Mozart, Weber, Berlioz, Bellini, Rossini, Verdi, Wagner, etc. But I guess none of their works are art.

Now if "Must have very few people able to appreciate it" is a criteria for a work to be art, this is going to leave a lot of stuff outside the Realm (dare I say Walhalla ?...) and make a lot of people feel very stupid for thinking they were in contact with art while in fact they were merely enjoying entertainment, or something worse.

So a new Zen koan could be: If a Henry Cartier-Bresson exhibit is organized at MoMA and attracts and pleases huge audiences, are his works just mere entertainment ?

Other interesting question would be: how many of the chosen few are necessary for the chosen few to stop being the chosen few and becoming a huge audience ?

The audiences in the 18th century were more trained to appreciate art. Similarly to the audiences in the last century. Just watch the "entertainment" films of the 1950s and compare them with the ones of today. The first bear a quality to them we cannot find anymore.

Cartier-Bresson is a paradox. I find him the only "difficult" photographer that had such an appeal. On the other hand his most famous photos are also his most obvious ones.

I laughed with your last part. It is a bit cryptic indeed. I really have no clue. Or perhaps just speaking nonsense

 

[nikos79]

Condemnation is not criticism. In order to criticize, you must first attempt to come to some understanding of what you're seeing/reading/hearing. What you mostly have been doing is praising or dismissing. And the praise is issued on the basis of attributes you deem worthy. Praise is fine, Condemnation is fine. But both of those things are more reflections of your feelings rather than anything critical.

As for art and entertainment: they're not related. You can entertain yourself with as pickle on a fork.

Probably some of you might already get a feeling of what my evaluation criteria are when evaluating a photograph:
Honesty, directness, simplicity, balance of form vs content, transformation of reality, dialogue between its parts, innuendos, reference to prior art, and most important of all abstraction. Good photographs win in a few or all of them. Bad photographs usually in None

 

[nikos79]

But again most of them I feel it I cannot really explain them as we concluded with @koraks

 

[Alex Benjamin]

The audiences in the 18th century were more trained to appreciate art.

No they weren't. You got it all backwards. They didn't hear opera as "art". They heard it as entertainment. And they didn't consider Bellini first and foremost as an "artist". They considered him someone whose job is to make music that would entertain them.

The "high brow vs low brow" way you have of talking about art is a pure invention of the very late 19th century and early 20th century.

You obviously have a lot more reading to do on the subject.

Cartier-Bresson is a paradox. I find him the only "difficult" photographer that had such an appeal.

Have you noticed that nearly every time an example is given that convincingly invalidates your position, you resort to a variation of "this is the exception that confirms the rule" trope?

Condemnation is not criticism. In order to criticize, you must first attempt to come to some understanding of what you're seeing/reading/hearing. What you mostly have been doing is praising or dismissing. And the praise is issued on the basis of attributes you deem worthy.

100% this. Koraks, Don and I have been hitting that nail over and over again in different ways. Nail keeps breaking for some reason...

Honesty, directness, simplicity, balance of form vs content, transformation of reality, dialogue between its parts, innuendos, reference to prior art, and most important of all abstraction. Good photographs win in a few or all of them.

I can think of many Helmut Newton photographs that check one or more of these criterias.

 

[nikos79]

I can think of many Helmut Newton photographs that check one or more of these criterias.

For example?

 

[zaneman]

"What men really want is not knowledge but certainty." -Bertrand Russell

@nikos79, have you asked yourself why you want to generate these rigid hierarchies of photographers and artistic modes?

 

[Alex Benjamin]

For example?

Nice try. But that isn't how you play this game.

These criterias and their role in "evaluating" photographs are all yours, your "bag of tricks" you fall back on when trying to exercice your critical judgement. It's for you to look at Newton's work and see if your prognostic is correct, not me.

Me, I don't care about "evaluating" photographs. I love photography too much to do so, and I have long abandoned the idea that having a tranchant, ruling opinion about things is in any way a sign of intelligence, of discernment, of being able of critical judgement or of a strong personality, artistic, intellectual or otherwise.

My quest is for knowledge, and knowledge is impossible without inclusion, and inclusion is impossible if I'm constantly judging according to criteria that are only meant to exclude, not to help me understand.

 

[nikos79]

Nice try. But that isn't how you play this game.

These criterias and their role in "evaluating" photographs are all yours, your "bag of tricks" you fall back on when trying to exercice your critical judgement. It's for you to look at Newton's work and see if your prognostic is correct, not me.

Me, I don't care about "evaluating" photographs. I love photography too much to do so, and I have long abandoned the idea that having a tranchant, ruling opinion about things is in any way a sign of intelligence, of discernment, of being able of critical judgement or of a strong personality, artistic, intellectual or otherwise.

My quest is for knowledge, and knowledge is impossible without inclusion, and inclusion is impossible if I'm constantly judging according to criteria that are only meant to exclude, not to help me understand.

You got me wrong. I look at Newton and immediately know he is shallow or that I don't like him. I don't go through each of his photographs to evaluate them. This procedure is instant, internal, and almost automatic. It is called cultural education and taste. But if you challenge me to explain it to someone who sees very differently than me unfortunately I have to resort to some "made up" rules. But the truth is I don't need any ot them. Ideally, I could just tell you Newton is a phoney and you would get it. Sadly, you cannot...

And as about enjoyment this is my primary force. If you actually enjoy Newton then for me I believe you because you beat all my arguments. If you really enjoy him then who is me to tell you he is a bad photographer? I agree with you the purpose is to enjoy and then we are both happy

 

[Alex Benjamin]

Ideally, I could just tell you Newton is a phoney and you would get it. Sadly, you cannot...

I cannot?...

Wel, just to be clear: I indeed can get that you deem Newton a phoney, and I can indeed get why you, personally, think as such. (I'm old, I'm not stupid)

What I cannot do, nor anybody else, is consider your judgement about Newton's shallowness or phoniness (is that a word?) as truth. You can devise a mathematical equation that proves according to your criteria that Newton is shallow and phony, that still doesn't make it true. And that opinion certainly doesn't make Newton's work unworthy of serious investigation — be it aesthetic, moral, technical, social, philosophical, etc. In other words, Newton's work has something to tell us about photography, about people, about the world we live in, and your opinion about him (as would mine, by the way) means squat.

One thing you cannot do, however, is tell people who disagree with either your opinion about Newton or the logic that led to them, that they are not, or can not, "get it".

Again, to state the obvious, you "get" much more "it" when you include — and try to understand what you have included on their own terms, not yours — than when you exclude.

 

[warden]

You got me wrong. I look at Newton and immediately know he is shallow or that I don't like him. I don't go through each of his photographs to evaluate them. This procedure is instant, internal, and almost automatic. It is called cultural education and taste. But if you challenge me to explain it to someone who sees very differently than me unfortunately I have to resort to some "made up" rules. But the truth is I don't need any ot them. Ideally, I could just tell you Newton is a phoney and you would get it. Sadly, you cannot...

The problem is if you can write off the life's work of a celebrated photographer as a phony after but an instant of exposure to the work and zero effort to learn more, then your dismissal has no value because is not based on "cultural education and taste" but instead is based on over-confident laziness. And then there is nothing left to talk about.

Earlier @Don_ih made a comment about condemnation not being the same thing as criticism, and he is correct. Condemnation is cheap and easy.

 

[nikos79]

I cannot?...

Wel, just to be clear: I indeed can get that you deem Newton a phoney, and I can indeed get why you, personally, think as such. (I'm old, I'm not stupid)

What I cannot do, nor anybody else, is consider your judgement about Newton's shallowness or phoniness (is that a word?) as truth. You can devise a mathematical equation that proves according to your criteria that Newton is shallow and phony, that still doesn't make it true. And that opinion certainly doesn't make Newton's work unworthy of serious investigation — be it aesthetic, moral, technical, social, philosophical, etc. In other words, Newton's work has something to tell us about photography, about people, about the world we live in, and your opinion about him (as would mine, by the way) means squat.

One thing you cannot do, however, is tell people who disagree with either your opinion about Newton or the logic that led to them, that they are not, or can not, "get it".

Again, to state the obvious, you "get" much more "it" when you include — and try to understand what you have included on their own terms, not yours — than when you exclude.

Sorry if I offended you I didn't mean to. I think each of us has their own "truth" that should honour. Maybe I miss something in Newton's work. For example in the beginning I didn't like/understand Walker Evans. But I am glad I didn't ditch him until later I started to understand him and begin to appreciate him (although not fully yet).

 

[nikos79]

The title of the thread seems almost ironic now...

 

[Alex Benjamin]

Sorry if I offended you I didn't mean to.

No offence taken. I thought it was rather funny.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

The title of the thread seems almost ironic now...

Well, lesson is if you want to talk about joy, maybe not bring in Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky as some of your main witnesses

 

[nikos79]

Well, lesson is if you want to talk about joy, maybe not bring in Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky as some of your main witnesses

Hahaha indeed!

 

[nikos79]

The problem is if you can write off the life's work of a celebrated photographer as a phony after but an instant of exposure to the work and zero effort to learn more, then your dismissal has no value because is not based on "cultural education and taste" but instead is based on over-confident laziness. And then there is nothing left to talk about.

Earlier @Don_ih made a comment about condemnation not being the same thing as criticism, and he is correct. Condemnation is cheap and easy.

"celebrated" ah grrr sorry here comes my last condemnation I promise to you all!
Can't you see his simplistic thematic fixations, like the recurring motifs of sex and violence?
That he tries all the time to substitute provocation for depth?
And then compare him with Adolph Meyer or George Hoyningen-Huene...

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Doesn't it all come down to whether you like the photo or not, whatever the reason?

 

[nikos79]

Doesn't it all come down to whether you like the photo or not, whatever the reason?

Not really because we are trying to search some "objective" artistic value to each of that. Otherwise we wouldn't argue at all

 

[nikos79]

Btw I watched the movie that won the Oscars "The Substance" might have been the most horrible movie I have ever seen... This is celebrated is that art? The new Eastwood movie was 100 times better than that