Kill! Kill! Stabbity-Kill!

[compilerbitch]

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...

Comments

[doseybat.livejournal.com]

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.

[doseybat.livejournal.com]

can we call it "potmodern" now?

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

I think that's quite a good analysis -- you seem to have read me better than I read myself.

Yes, you're quite right, I think my taste in photography is quite narrow in some respects. Though I use fancy high tech gear, I'd probably have fitted in better 50 or even 100 years ago stylistically. My comparative dislike of colour photography is an example of this.

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.

Hmm... I wasn't aware of thinking about it in that way. I don't really think I felt jealous that the artist had a show and I didn't -- I've never *tried* to get a show, and I suspect it'll be some time before I do, so it didn't really occur to me. I think it just basically offended me because the gallery is very famous, so anything shown there has some kind of implied stamp of approval as being great photography and something that should be aspired to, and I didn't really see the exhibit as being photography at all in the usual sense. I'd probably have enjoyed it if I'd happened upon it somewhere like the Tate Modern.

[doseybat.livejournal.com]

I don't really think I felt jealous that the artist had a show and I didn't

It doesnt work overtly like that, for everyone the emotions about themselves and things that define them are so central to thinking that they colour perceptions of all sorts of tangentially related things.

I'd probably have enjoyed it if I'd happened upon it somewhere like the Tate Modern.

*nods* you should so talk to Olga about this - I think its a bit worse for her having actually tried to build a carrer from art considered by others to be outdated. Be prepared for expletives!

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

It's fortunate, I think, that I have no real intention of doing photography for a living, still less trying to live off fine-art photography. To a significant extent, I can do whatever I like to the best of my ability and enjoy doing that, without having to compromise for the purposes of needing to make a living. I honestly have no idea whether my photography will ever get anywhere, but it doesn't really matter if I'm enjoying the process of making photos. I think I have to accept (which is hard) that I'll probably never really have a friendly peer group composed of other photographers (other than people I happen to know coincidentally via other non-photography related routes) -- my experiences so far would seem to indicate that this is very unlikely, and I'm not sure I want to expose myself to the risk of further abuse by trying to move toward something like that now either.