January 19, 2005
Questions about Photography
As usual, another interesting discussion has popped up at 2Blowhards, this time about photography. The most interesting part of the discussion is the fact that amateur photographers are able to stumble into the occasional good or even great photo, something no other art form permits. As one who owns a pretty nice camera and is naturally pretentious, I try to take fancy/artsy pictures from time to time, the results of which you've seen—nothing terribly spectacular, but a few passable images nevertheless. Yes, you have to know about things like aperture and shutter speed if you want to increase your chances of stumbling into a good picture, but the primary requirement in black and white photography is an innate sense of composition and lighting; in color, well, I'm not sure, but it seems to be a feel for how colors work with and against one another, along with the other parts needed in black and white. Like with any other art, you either have a talent for this or you don't. The "rules" can be taught, but someone with talent will regularly outperform someone without. But that's the great thing about photography, especially with digital cameras. You can take a ridiculous number of pictures in the hopes that one or two will turn out well. Even without talent or skill, persistence and luck will provide. This makes photography by far the most democratic of artforms. Of course, persistence and luck are key factors to nearly any art. Practice is required and the ancient curse of living in interesting times always help. Even so, I doubt anyone has ever "accidentally" written a great poem.
I see a certain commonality between this and the "My FOUR year old could draw better than THAT" school of modern art critique. Because as much as it's true in theory, how many great photographs are you aware of that were actually taken by accident, by amateurs, and went on to iconographic status (Not including, of course, images whose significance is mainly historical, such as the Zapruder films)? Probably not many. What you have, instead, is a group of professionals who cultivate a certain accident-prone style of photography, much as the abstract artists honed a subtly directed sort of paint-smearing. That's how you get the "amateurish" look of something like Diane Arbus' photos of mentally handicapped women. An even better example, only slightly undermined by the fact that I can't remember the guy's name, is this one photographer who basically shoots everything as if it were do-it-yourself porn from the 1980's (Richard something). These are intended not just to look like the world of a certain era, but to look as if the actual photos were taken in that era, to capture that sensibility, to make it completely indistinguishable to something that would be found in a long-forgotten drawer in Mic***l's parent's house. But this amateurish look is coldly calculated and executed with precision.
And the last part of the argument, which I left out, is that this carefully cultivated "amateurishness" has the effect of (mis)leading true amateurs into thinking they could do just as well, if not better, dammit.
I hate to break it to you, man, but - I've seen Diane Arbus's photos, and your photos, sir, are not Diane Arbus's photos.
To response to the last point first, I never claimed to take great photos. I know I haven't. Nevertheless, there have doubtless been amateurs who have, in fact, taken the stray great one. Perhaps the reason they do not become famous has to do with how much importance we tend to attach to the artist of any given work of art in helping to determine the work's quality. I'm not claiming that there's not something objectively better about the great works of art than the typical product of amateurs and dilettantes, but for the average art-viewer, poem-reader, etc a lot of that judgment of quality is based on the knowledge that others have deemed the piece Great Art. A true evaluation of any given artwork's excellence (or lack thereof) requires a significant amount of taste and education that has been cultivated over many years, something which few people value enough to pursue. How, then, do most people know a good photo when they see it? How do you? Is it simply intuition, what strikes you as moving and beautiful? Or is it that because you know who the artist is, you look more carefully for *why* it's excellent, not whether? I'm certainly not allying myself with the group of people who make the claims that their child could do this or that, but there is, nevertheless, a certain and substantial amount of reputation that "makes" a work.
Regardless, that's all a digression from my main point, which you don't really deal with. Is it not possible, likely, and perhaps frequently occuring that amateurs take what turn out to be good or even great (maybe not the absolute greatest, but in the upper reaches) photographs? Or is there nothing different about photography as an art form from others that clearly require long apprenticeship and great talent to produce excellent works? Is the more accessible and democratic nature of photography an illusion?