compilerbitch | Kill! Kill! Stabbity-Kill!

Kill! Kill! Stabbity-Kill!

I'm currently reading a book on art theory, specifically relating to criticism of photographs. It really quite severely gets my goat. In fact, it's pissed my goat off so much that she's going to strap a rocket launcher to her back and then go out hunting postmodernists.

It brings a bit of context to something I found deeply disappointing on my most recent London trip. doseybat and I visited the Photographer's Gallery, near Leicester Square. Other than a few badly displayed, though decent, prints upstairs in a poky little 'print sales' room, I have to say that the exhibition spaces were full of, well, crap. There wasn't a single decent print in there. Most of the walls were filled with an exhibit of 'found' photographs -- basically gone-wrong discarded passport photographs mostly. There were a few interestingly manipulated prints, but the interest was in the idea, rather than the execution. Another exhibit consisted of 15 or 20 black and white prints of a variety of wooden lookout towers, many of which were badly focussed, with blown highlights, plugged shadows or both. There was nothing to recommend the compositions either -- they were simply bad photographs. In the entire exhibit, nearly every print seemed to be glued or blu-tacked to the wall. It was clearly all meant to be a postmodernist rejection of modernist/realist photographic sensibilities*, but all it succeeded in doing in my case was have me wondering about the gallery management, thinking to myself, 'what the hell were they thinking?'

I am trying to understand photography at a deeper level, but I'm not at all sure that this stuff really helps. I suppose it never hurts to know your enemy, but I can't see myself going in that direction. It would seem to have about as much point as spending a year travelling the great sights of this planet, making thousands of amazing images, then exhibiting a wall-sized print of the directory structure of my hard drive. I'm not sure I'm a modernist/realist/f-64 devotee exactly, because I find their ideas a little too restrictive, but I'm sure-as-hell not a postmodernist.

* which sounds awfully impressive, but is probably bullshit. I feel like a full-fledged art critic after spending an hour reading that book...

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You have encountered art with a capital F.

Oh, amen.

I'm very much inclined to a similar position in terms of what's good and bad photography, though not being more than the most opcasional and casual of photographers myself it's not an area in which I tend to have this argument, but the argument applies equally well in text.

I think my visceral rejection of post-modernism is because post-modernism rejects the notion of quality, and without a notion of quality it's impossible to ever get better, so it's by definition destroying any skill having any value. I reject modernism, at least at the J. Alfred Prufock level of modernist malaise, both because that's totally incompatible with my life's experience of how the universe is, and because even if it wasn't, sometimes you just have to do things because you want to live in a world where people do those things, but I have no idea how well that reaction translates into photographic terms.

You should've found the gallery management and asked them what they were thinking, ina polite and curious tone, of course.

My big problem with modern art (and also photography) is the conceptual stuff, where the concept is good, but the execution is entirely unnecessary. Much modern art could be done in essay form.

ha ha! actually me and bat were in there sunday for a reviving cup and she mentioned your visit. it's one of my favorite places in london, as i'm sure i've mentioned before. not really very fussed about the current exhibition, the boy quite likes the Found magazine, but i find it a little dull and also find it rather contrived. there was a talk on last night that i meant to go to but ended up going home instead, about analogue photography and nostalgia and possibly touching on what implications it all has for that little section of art dealing with found things. as in, it's more immediate to stumble across a discarded photo, whether the next day or decades later, than it is a lost computer file. though the idea of 'found' archives of digital stuff is also perfectly feasible, there's an interpretive step involved in seeing whatever it is you've found. but i digress.
it's the only gallery i'm currently a member of, despite it being free to get into. so why do i value it? why does it merit my support? hmm...
well i like the whole way the gallery is set up, the print sales is a bit of a mess, yes, but you can wander in there and ask questions and no-one ever glares, the 2 houses embedded in the street, seperate and connected, 2 exhibitions of often very different work in format or style, but linked by an idea. a reasonable bookshop, a good cafe where you can go and sit with a cup of tea and the papers (an oasis of calm 1 minute from leicester sq) and completely ignore the exhibition if you choose, where the queue for the men's sometimes gets held up by a tramp washing in the loo...
as for the work on show, it's hit and miss, but i think it's to be supported that they don't really do the great safe stuff. it's not the place to see Ansel Adams, William Egglestone (the hayward), Robert Frank, Wolfgang Tillmans (tate modern) or Diane Arbus (V&A). it's things i've never seen and people i've never heard of. often flawed and not-entirely-accomplished, but some of it i've really liked. i don't like the current show or the last one, the deutsche borse prize, (i only liked a couple of the shortlist), so the last one i really liked was back in january. "bound for glory: America in colour 1939-1943" little-seen FSA commissioned colour photos, only a few years after Walker Evans. Guardian slideshow. i didn't like the way the photos had been printed pretty big, although i suppose the obvious digital step was part of the process of salvaging. it was just incongruous. there was a mini-black and white room at the back of some of the earlier FSA stuff, together with a camera same model as Dorothea Lange used and notes on how she worked. running concurrently in the cafe-gallery was a solo show by Bert Teunissen
- "Domestic Landscapes", a decade long ongoing project to photograph people and places across europe, the exhibition was simply beautiful prints covering most of the walls. there was a video in the entrance of Teunissen talking about the whys and hows, pretty simple and straightforward, inspired by the rural farmhouses he remembers from his childhood, his fascination with the lighting and atmosphere, his desire to record a disappearing way of life.
it's accessible. i think that's really important. a quiet friendliness.
the shows are subjective and risky (in terms of appeal), in a good way. there's a place for that unpredicatability.
and i like that they sell postcards of the guy that taught A-level photography at my school.
i actually think they might be quite useful for you when it comes to wanting to sell or exhibit your work. i think they might be quite approachable, or at least point you in the right direction. i was once offered a rehanging slot (the few days between shows when the cafe is still open) at a uni exhibition, by a tutor who claimed to have contacts there. i didn't really think the work was up to scratch though, so i never followed it up.
...

Which postmodernism don't you like and why?

"My own tendency is to reject postmodernism because it, in effect, rejects my own art and that of the artists who happen to be my main influences."

How does postmodernism reject your art? I'm confused.

(I'm sorry you didn't like the current stuff at the Photographers Gallery. I kind of do. But even though you didn't like this I hope it doesn't put you off going again, they exhibit other excellent work. Its where I first saw Joel Sternfeld who is probably my favourite contemporary photographer and I don't think you could fault the quality of his images.)

Can't comment, as I am about the least artistic of anyone I've met but... Have you seen the photography section in the V&A? Mainly old/historical photos, but some of them are really lovely and fascinating. *shrugs* Well, I liked it, anyway. :)

I think your negative reaction was not about what you saw in the gallery, but more about not seeing what you were looking for and expecting. The photography you are into is a fairly narrowly defined thing, technically sophisticated portayal of nature with quite a specific feel to it - and very good it is too.

The exhibiton we saw has nothing in common with that except the word "photography": it gave you little glimpses of bits and people in different places, and being low tech having no composition was part of the point.

I disagree with your statement that you dislike postmodern art; I have seen you like a great number of things I would call potmodern. Remember those weird bright plasticky shapes we saw in central London a few years back?

Perhaps another reason for your bad reaction is you seeing people being appreciated for zero technical skill photos, while you have had bad reactions in spite of the quality of your work and far greater time that has gone into it. Which is a fair point.

all it succeeded in doing in my case was have me wondering about the gallery management, thinking to myself, 'what the hell were they thinking?'

Isn't that what good art is?

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