Photography is Dead Again, Says Newsweek.

This week’s issue of Newsweek includes an interesting essay on photography by critic Peter Plagens, and it’s worth reading, even if Plagens's points aren’t terribly new. The headline asks “Is Photography Dead?” I’ve heard the demise of the art predicted so many times that I’ve given up worrying. But I’d like to hear your opinions.

Plagens’s comment come as a response to two new exhibitions: the first, “Depth of Field,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's new Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography, includes work by Cindy Sherman, Andreas Gursky, and Adam Fuss. The other show is “The Art of the American Snapshot, 1888-1978” at the National Gallery of Art. After looking at the two exhibitions, the critic wonders whether photography has lost its soul by embracing art that isn’t based on reality:

Yet wandering the galleries of these two shows, you can't help but wonder if the entire medium hasn't fractured itself beyond all recognition. Sculpture did the same thing a while back, so that now "sculpture" can indicate a hole in the ground as readily as a bronze statue. Digitalization has made much of art photography's vast variety possible. But it's also a major reason that, 25 years after the technology exploded what photography could do and be, the medium seems to have lost its soul. Film photography's artistic cachet was always that no matter how much darkroom fiddling someone added to a photograph, the picture was, at its core, a record of something real that occurred in front of the camera. A digital photograph, on the other hand, can be a Photoshop fairy tale, containing only a tiny trace of a small fragment of reality. By now, we've witnessed all the magical morphing and seen all the clever tricks that have turned so many photographers—formerly bearers of truth—into conjurers of fiction. It's hard to say "gee whiz" anymore.

I personally have been in search of the photographic soul for many years now, and I find that it keeps turning up in a variety of styles and approaches. I suppose it might be easier for a photographic artist to misplace his or her soul these days, especially given the enormous amounts of money being paid for photo-based contemporary art. But I think it's also necessary to give artists the leeway to use new technology and explore where that technology takes them. I think that Plagens is wrong in assuming that photographers using film could only photograph the reality in front of the camera--many artists used film photography in other ways, very successfully. But fundamentally, I look at the pieces in the contemporary art show at the Met, and I think, "What is He Talking About?" There is a lot of reality to be seen there--though not always framed in the classic 35mm way of Life magazine. The photography of Rineke  Dijkstra (above, her "Kolobrzeg, Pland, 1992") and Adam Fuss couldn't be more photographic. In essence he seems to be covering old ground about the validity of work by artists like Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince, who comment on the self-sustaining power of modern commercial imagery itself.
--David Schonauer

Comments

[J.M. Giordano]

Dave,
Peter Plagens is yet another critic trying veinly to justify his existance in the blog age. I'm SERIOUSLY tired of critics and their "____is DEAD!" (fill in the medium) this glib and alarmist column is nothing new.
Plagens is like the Whos. Screaming at the top of their lungs "we're here! We're here!" to an elephant, in this case the blog world.
I think the better arguement is, with the advent of Flickr etc....how are the REAL fine art photogs being discovered, not that they're not out there.

[András]

Well, yes, Photoshop is like a program with a giant button that reads "press this to photoshop your image". Creativity isn't dead, vision isn't dead. Nobody heralded the death of painting when people painted kobolds or dragons, instead of hyperrealistic landscapes... This is just another critic who admires the medium more than the message.

[Bruce DeBoer]

"This is just another critic who admires the medium more than the message." - Excellent point.

Strictly in passing I've wondered where the line between photography and photo illustration will fall now that it's often so hard to tell.

Technically speaking, digital image capture isn't photography. But regardless of definition, if I add a dramatic sky to a landscape, is it still a photograph or is it now a montage? Neither is a more valid art form than the other; each contains the vision of the artist. I am, however, against deception even in the name of art.

[Gabriel Neto]

I'm happy to see that others are seeing something I saw at the beggining of the "digital boom".
The end of photography as we knew it. Now, any imbecile with a digital camera calls him/herself a photographer, an artist.
Gone is the study, the discovery of light, the perfectioning of the sight.
Image quality,composing, lighting is no longer needed for these non sense parasites that produce only junk and call it photo-art.
The days when a camera knows a lot more than the person behind it have arrived, my friends.

[billy]

Photography is dead for those old dead wood. Who is not willing to keep pace with the change in time.

[K]

I don't think photography is dead, at all. I think much of it is as it ever was, sloppy. A ton of people have digital, point and shoot cameras. These people take pictures of everything. In doing so, they never bother to analyze and interpret their image, in pursuit of improving the way people feel when viewing their images. But, that kind of thing has been around for a long time. Since Brownie cameras. Since 110 film or, worse, film discs. Millions of photo albums filled with mediocre, but historically significant (to the shooter) images. Then, now and then, is someone who pays attendtion to light and composition. Digital or film, those individuals stand apart from the group.

I remember a photograph of my mother, which was black & white, enhanced with hand-applied colored inks. What's the difference between that and "Photoshopping". I guarantee that my mother did not look like the photo, at the time the photo was taken. That was not reality.

As far as photography being a record of reality. I say no (not that my opinion matters). It never has been, and never will be. Yes, the camera, digital or film, is capable of freezing an actual moment in time. But, once the relatively narrow field of vision crops out the rest of the reality of the moment, the context changes. You can zoom in on a fist fight and get a great shot of the moment of impact, fist to face. But, without the reason behind it, it's just a frozen moment in time. The story that accompanies the image is what makes the reality. If no one knows the story, or the story is inaccurate, then the image is as much fantasy as any photoshop.

[Neil]

Photography (as we know it) is dead; long live photography.

One could say that visual Art is about selective vision - about choosing elements to reveal a thought, feeling or concept. The tool is not as important as the vision. Painters have long added and subtracted elements from their paintings to "present" their vision.

Not all photography is about "documenting" a time. Certainly some is, whether using film or digital. Some photography is about vision - whether using film or digital.

[nickclick]

I agree with Plagens insofar that what I also love about photography-as-art-form is its honesty and its immediacy. Painting, sculpture, writing.... it's all from memory. When taking a photo, you see what the artist chose to commit to memory, at that moment, from only the artist's point of view.

So yeah, photo-illustrations/collages/manipulations don't always fill that criteria for me. I appreciate those as another type of art form. BUT, they've all been around just as long as straight photography, just different tools.

I have formal art school training as a photographer, and I don't automatically assume anyone with a crappy camera or copy of Photoshop is not working within the original intentions of Photography. Again, they're just other tools to be creative with.

[misty]

I am deeply saddened by the critics of photography. Let alone digital photography. I'm all digital. I've tried to get into museums and galleries with my work. I do feel the pressure to do more edgy work to get into the galleries. I have also noticed being digital to most people is like a sin. I know in my heart of hearts that photography is an art form in any form it takes. It can be anything the photographer chooses to make it. It can be reality or it can be fiction. I think it should be up to the photographer to decide, not some critic.

[Jennifer]

I definately disagree that photography is dead! Yes anyone with enough $$ can purchase a great DSLR that will take okay pictures even if pointed at a brick wall. That camera cannot replace the artistry and the creativity of the photographer behind it. Speaking as someone relatively new to the field of serious photography I thought buying a really expensive camera would make me a photographer. It didn't take long (about a nanosecond) before I realized that I was completely in the dark about how to use the expensive camera I had just bought and how to take a creative, unique photograph. It is going to be a slow learning process and at the end of it I hope I will be somewhat above what I was before, an amateur taking thousands of pictures of precious little merit.

[Anthony Poyner]

It is so frustrating to hear someone say "Now anyone can buy a digital camera and take photographs." Can't you hear some long dead photographer calling from his grave "Now anyone can buy a Kodak box camera and take photographs."

Good tools will help those who know how to use them. For a photographer, that means your eye, your vision, your sense of composition, etc., must all be in place before you can make great art. I own a 4x5 view camera, and I assure you that NO ONE will mistake any of my photos for an Ansel Adams.

Yes, I have gladly traded the chemicals of my darkroom for the amazing versatility of digital - I manipulated film images - now I perform similar effects with much greater convenience, and much less time. NO, I DON'T think the change of medium has degraded my work.

[Ruben Gonzalez]

"Technically speaking, digital image capture isn't photography."

Actually technically it is. Photography means painting with light. Whether the 'brush' is chemicals and plastic film or a CMOS sensor it's still painting with light.

Postings like Mr. DeBoer's reek of elitism and the desire to eliminate the competition by default. (nice ads though)

[Jesus Ferraris]

photography is not dead, it is not the camera but the person behind who can make a photograph.

[Jacob K Reist]

To Whom It May Concern:

PHOTOGRAPHY IS DEAD. IT'S BEEN A WHORE FOR ALL OF IT'S EXISTENCE

AND NOW THAT THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION HAVE BEEN DEMOCRATIZED, EVEN

THE BEST COMPOSED SHOTS ARE LOST IN A SEA OF IRRELEVANCE.

Without exception, every self-identified photographer I have ever met has been either

a WHORE TO CONVENTIONAL, SAFE STANDARDS, a hobbyist with money to pay to appear

more professional, a wanna-be, and finally the most common of all, the VOYEUR.

Even the established "art" photographers are just another breed of whore.

Face it, "photographers", you are nothing more than a glorified button pusher.

A piece of machinery. An interchangeable part a a process which is owned by the

desk-top computer and the digital canvas where the real composition really occurs.

Sincerely,

Rev. Jacob K Reist
http://www.dearlosers.blogspot.com

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