tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post3458749367839283389..comments2024-03-19T21:14:01.007-07:00Comments on The Compass Rose: Wessel's WorldCurtis Favillehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-47678410688998723172011-10-25T17:23:32.757-07:002011-10-25T17:23:32.757-07:00why yes, Sir Fagville, I couldn't help but n...why yes, Sir Fagville, I couldn't help but note the lengthy discussions of Kunt and Bagel. Voonderbar!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-25511844285994742522011-10-25T07:40:49.178-07:002011-10-25T07:40:49.178-07:00Anon:
Pls note the subtitle to the blog. We don&...Anon:<br /><br />Pls note the subtitle to the blog. We don't just talk about German philosophy and the blockbuster Modernist novels and poems. And politics usually descends into name-calling. <br /><br />In any case, blogs aren't the best place to do that. Books are better. <br /><br />No one lives by bread alone--or certainly not by choice.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-43547674774645621132011-10-24T17:52:19.094-07:002011-10-24T17:52:19.094-07:00Fagville's usual bland SF nihilismFagville's usual bland SF nihilismAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-1695506687273291412011-10-24T16:40:43.405-07:002011-10-24T16:40:43.405-07:00Conrad:
Thanks for the long detailed response. T...Conrad:<br /><br />Thanks for the long detailed response. This is real engagement.<br /><br />First, my comment about architects' intentions refers only to the picture of city buildings, not to any of the other images. <br /><br />The argument you're taking up about the valuation of photographic technology/technique in terms of the uniqueness of art is an old one which never seems to die. If you knew how hard it was/is to make a preferred photograph print which holds what you're trying to accomplish, you'd be more respectful (intellectually respectful, I mean) about it. These black and white silver images are located precisely in a segment of time linked to the technology. Prints made in the 1920's or 1930's, or 1970's, will all look different because the photographic paper (for silver prints) was changing. This may seem trivial but it's not. The "coolness" we perceive in Wessel isn't just his vision--it's the impact of his eye THROUGH the available materials. <br /><br />We're now entering the digital age for photographic print-making. What's done now won't bear much resemblance to work done before. It may seem superficially similar, but it will be different technically, AND aesthetically. <br /><br />The point about a good photograph isn't that "anyone could have taken it" or "you could make an unlimited number of copies of the original" (which isn't really true, but let's not deal with that for the moment). The point is that someone DOES take a certain picture, and husbands it all the way through the process of its chemical transformation and its "interpretation" into a final image (it's not easy--it doesn't just happen like magic). There's chance and opportunity, decision and impulse, and the whole process of making a print from a negative at a given scale involves many small or large adjustments, and it's a creative PROCESS, not a dull industrial procedure. Things keep changing, there's a synergy between artist and image that continues all the way through. You look at the print in the fixing tray, but it won't look that way when it's dried. Photographic prints paper (or the new digital printer papers) don't report necessarily what you expect, or what you want. They're obstreperous! Bear all this in mind in judging the apparent effects of a photograph. The process of deciding upon the effects possible in a photograph are no less numerous or challenging than a painter's choosing, say, in what color or texture, or at what angle an object is to be done. The efficiency of lenses doesn't cheapen the aesthetic challenge, but it's a different process from painting or sculpture. <br /><br />Photography influenced painting, in ways we probably can't summarize yet. Certainly abstraction and the manipulation of "reality" occurred because photography had appropriated that function away from painting. It was no longer necessary (or desirable) to "imitate nature" since it could be done so much more efficiently with this new tool. Was that a "bad" influence? It's a big question.<br /><br />There's so much more to say on the subject!Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-75759003885026860312011-10-24T16:10:23.082-07:002011-10-24T16:10:23.082-07:00Firstly, I agree entirely with Sunny West's es...Firstly, I agree entirely with Sunny West's estimation of Faville commentary on photography and art.<br /><br />Secondly, I'd just like to toss out the idea that photography cannot be considered a work of art in the sense that painting is—and I've had to work up some courage to say this since I'm not a photographer. My primary reason is that there can't possibly be the same artistic processes at work as in the case of artist with brush, palette and canvas. Are photographic and artistic processes, in other words, really the same?<br /><br />I'm inclined to think that 'imagery' is the limiting factor, and that we're really compelled to attribute the brilliance of simple light-effect (which is really what we must mean by great photography)to luck only: in fact, the 'man on the beach' photo could have been shot by an amateur.<br /><br />After all, how could the photographer have really intended the pant fold to represent a tension, except perhaps as a creative after-thought? Is not the resemblance to Gerald Ford, by this estimation of the picture, as intentional as the "fall of his seamed trousers"? How much more problematic are representations of "history, or a future, and a presence"?<br /><br /> On the other hand, judgements about tonality, contour and figural representations (as in a van Gogh or Francis Bacon) must be made by the artist both before and during composition. Really good sculpture or modern expressionist painting can never by nature be a one-off. Can they?<br /><br />I take issue here, most of all, with the claim that "Architects [and by analogy photographers) like views, but [that] most views are the residue of necessary choices, rather than the product of deliberate preference." I see, in fact, no "necessity" at work here at all. Slanting junipers or languid bodies or the "trimmed simplicity" of 50s Americana could in no way have been offered as "portraiture". Can the photographer-artist in 2011, restricted only to contemporary landscapes & human communities, capture a sense of the brutality & despaire of, say, 30s America that's every bit as moving as Dorothea Lange's? If s/he can, I'll call it art.<br /><br />If view alone then were necessary to produce the artistic "image", captured both in intention and the most adroit exploitation of "processes of exposure", the modernists & avant-gardists would have seen the "machine" as a real threat to human creativity. They didn't seem actually to be too bothered by it,at most a spur to more creative work. They had other things like an emergent film genre to worry about. Adorno, in his famous essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" mirrors this sentiment, saying "the difficulties which photography caused traditional aesthetics were mere child's play as compared to those raised by the film."Conrad DiDiodatohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18312831623791642286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-81008719666280765482011-10-24T08:21:54.284-07:002011-10-24T08:21:54.284-07:00Curtis,
I enjoy and concur with your thoughts on W...Curtis,<br />I enjoy and concur with your thoughts on Wessel's photos. Your commentary is an astute evaluation which illuminates both the poet and the photographer in you. As always, much food for thought for us readers.Sunny Westhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02314781286465226051noreply@blogger.com