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From: jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos)
Newsgroups: net.rec.photo
Subject: Re: Art vs. Technique
Message-ID: <1496@peora.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 18-Aug-85 00:46:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: peora.1496
Posted: Sun Aug 18 00:46:28 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Aug-85 06:14:21 EDT
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Organization: Perkin-Elmer SDC, Orlando, Fl.
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> That's all well and good, if you're into Realism. But isn't it time for
> photography (especially color) to explore other things, like impressionism?

Certainly... though nowadays Realism doesn't get too much support, hence my
comments on it.  (Except that recently there have been some really out-
standing examples of that genre in the popular magazines; even a photograph
called "Homage to Edward Hopper"!)

As for exploring impressionism... well, wouldn't that be sort of a step
backward?  I mean, Group f/64's formation back in 1932 was a reaction to
attempts to make photography emulate genres analogous to impressionism (well,
it was (is) called "pictorialism" in photography).  Nowadays, we can do it
all over again, due to all the photographs out there whose whole reason-for-
being is to "explore" or make some "statement" on the nature of Color.
There was a really amusing commentary on that in a recent issue of _American_
Photographer_, which I encrypted into my signature line awhile back:

	If any general statement about photography could be discerned from
	this exhibition, it was that the Cibachrome print has become the
	photographic medium most acceptable to art curators.  Of course,
	it is Cibachrome's specific, unlovely quality that makes it
	absolutely right to those for whom art need not please the eye or
	in any other way seduce the senses.
				* * *
	At least one of the Whitney photographers seemed to have decided
	that Cibachrome by itself was the pure stuff of art.  Like the
	work of certain painters in the late abstract expressionist
	period,  presents color for its emotional effect
	alone, without imparting any intellectual spin to give the
	emotion a meaning.  Alas, that is also what interior decorators
	do, but nobody displays their work at the Whitney.

				(From Owen Edwards's "Photo Disdain Lives,"
				 Am. Phot. 15(1).)

> Unto each, his own.

Certainly!  I am not attempting to suppress anybody else's view of what
their photography should be; only to try to discourage the commercial-art
attitude so popular nowadays.  (Why, in fact, I spent most of the day today
making 3 Cibachrome prints, for that matter!  Though that was mostly to
retouch them... who ever heard of a terrier dog with bright blue eyes?)

Ultimately, I sometimes feel that many photographs exist, not to say or be
anything themselves, but to make some unrelated statement about the
photographer.  I don't think this is a good thing.

At the same time, there's something else, too; something having to do with
my own personal feelings about prints-from-transparencies, photographs which
have their basis in strong colors, etc.  This all has to do with a lack of
moderation.  I think one of the appeals of Cibachrome print material (in
particular) is that it is so easy to use... there is something absolute and
extreme about them.  This is also true for strong color.  It is harder to
use print materials that require very exacting color balancing and exposure,
and harder to photograph "natural" colors.  Yet they tend to be more
pleasing because of this, in my opinion, because there is something
pleasing about precision, a sort of optimality rather than absolute
maximization.  But that's just my opinion...
-- 
Shyy-Anzr:  J. Eric Roskos
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