The Problem with Aesthetics
I believe that one of art’s purposes is to challenge our very notion of aesthetics.
The following is what I typically think when I look at photography. I consider the aesthetics, maybe too much, but I consider them and constantly question them. Almost everyone, myself included, reuses known successful aesthetics in their work. It seems that photography today is less innovative visually and more conceptually innovative than it has ever been. There is nobody that needs to prove that color photography is artistic, or that a point and shoot camera is. All of these types of arguments have been made. I wonder where we are going to push the aesthetics of photography.
It is no secret that some other more popular blogs than this one show work that is confined to a specific aesthetic or two. In other words, a great deal of the work posted on other blogs looks quite similar to the post they made last week. As a young photographer and co-founder of Pause, to Begin, I am much more interested in seeing aesthetics pushed to a unique level, or viewing something that challenges the way I see, than I am interested in seeing the same types of things over and over again. Perhaps, you can consider this post part 1 of commonly found aesthetics: the landscape, cityscape, anything not portraiture.
There is an awful lot of large format color photography in the contemporary art world, and I see some trends that can look more like bad habits. Now, to make myself perfectly clear, this post is not directed at anyone nor is it intended to suggest that I do not enjoy some of the large format color photography out there. I both enjoy a healthy amount of such photography and the purpose of this is to inspire at least one person to try and push themselves to do new things.Here are some examples of work by photographers that I believe have helped to create the influx of large format color photography today. The examples are of well known, older work because I think they help to explain why people may try to replicate their style.
Let us examine the photographs.
All of three these images are successful in part because they have wonderful depth, and they are extremely structured photographs. The other important element in each of these images is the use of color and the palate.
In Shore’s photograph, the amount of rusty oranges and reds with bits of green throughout the frame keep the photograph active in a still frame. Each of the colors exist in all three planes in the photograph. The depth is enhanced because of the color that is so perfectly coincidental. Even the light, which is fairly typical, plays an important role; it creates a shadow that seems to bring attention to the open car door.
In Sternfeld’s image, which was taken in my hometown of McLean, VA, has more of an intellectual depth created by the subject matter. Once the fireman is spotted picking pumpkins a great deal of irony becomes the focus of the photograph and your eye goes back and forth between the fire and the fireman. That said, the rotting orange pumpkins in the foreground, the pumpkin stand, and the fire in the background allow for a visual flow to make the photograph complete. The photographic depth is quite similar to the actual depth at the pumpkin stand.
Finally, Epstein’s photograph is of essentially a flat field, yet with the use of the reflection in the window and the oranges against the blue, he creates five planes for your eye to go though starting with the oranges, the blue curtain, the car, skyline, and the sky. Some of these elements actually sit on the same plane but because of the color, shape, and light these elements separate and sit individually. Here the photographic depth is much greater than the actual depth.
Again, the color of the three photographs helps to make the images as powerful as they are. One of the main culprits of boring color photography that seems to be everywhere these days is that fact that the color has nothing to do with the image. In other words it is ignored. In the cases that color is not ignored there are sometimes other problems. Some are, the lack of form, the over use of space as a compositional tool, and the lack of depth.
According to Jay Maisel, a former student of Josef Albers, Albers said that color and form compete against each other. This means that to make a photograph in color as opposed to black and white one must compose differently because you cannot use form and color simultaneously, they will counteract. Edward Weston discovered form in black and white. If you only photograph color, however, you might get something like Pete Turner. He became famous for doing just that, but thankfully some of his photographs still have depth while maintaining the sense of color. I particularly enjoy this image of his from Times Square.
Perhaps Alber’s various “Homage to the Square” paintings are the perfect example of how to deal with the problem of form versus color. Do you focus on the squares or colors more? In most cases, I believe your eyes must choose one to see first.
Using space to compose seems like an easy way to get around the problem of form versus color because adding relatively empty space to the frame automatically minimizes the visual effect of the subject and it’s form. More space often means more color and less form (Turner did this many photographs). This stagey tends to quiet the photograph, unless the color itself is so powerful that it is loud (Turner, again).
If you are making an already quite photograph and you quiet even more by adding space it is probably going to reach a point where it becomes boring. Joel Meyerowitz’s Cape Light photographs are quiet and use a lot of space to excentuate wonderful color. His career long method of “pulling back” from his color street photography to ultimately Cape Light and Bay/Sky did quiet his photographs, but it did not make them boring. It makes you notice something else. So the tactic can work, but one must be aware of what it does.
Perhaps everyone should ask themselves as Tod Papageroge asks his students, “Why Color?”With all of the above in my head as I look at color photography, I wonder if I can ever look past the aesthetics and just focus on the concept, the thought, what the image is about. The answer is yes, but the concept looks much better if the aesthetics are pristine as well. Perhaps photography is lacking a certain number of brilliant visual thinkers to go along with the sophisticated image making you read about. I hear about and read of wonderful ideas in photography every day online, but how often do you see a wonderful new photograph online that is as awesome as the idea? I feel like this does not happen nearly enough.
January 28th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Great post. Nice to see that there are some photography blogs with A: an actual subjective opinion about photography, and B: the guts to do so.
I agree with most of your claims about aesthetics, in particular a lack of thought when tackling the unity of form and colour. I think as photographers, artists, and even writers, we are all a tad bit guilty of copying cliché structures that are so intrinsic within the medium. I know I am; but I’m still in art school.
Being a Canadian photographer I think I know all to well the power concept has gained over aesthetics (Jeff Wall) which is not always such a bad thing. However, I think that in an art world where high production values are valued so high, as well as equipment/materials becoming so much more expensive, it is hard for many emerging photographers to bank on completely experimental work. We all have to live somehow. That being said, there is no excuse to become a clone by following a pack of trendy market ideals, one must innovate. This is of course the hardest part of being an artist.
January 28th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Noel,
Thanks for the comments, it is nice to know people are reading.
I agree with you about the high production value being rewarded in art, but consider this, every photograph takes some production. It requires the use of a machine to make an image. I believe work like Jeff Wall and Gregory Crewdson is praised in part because of how it resembles film, which has the greatest production of them all. Film is also the highest form of art in the contemporary world, that is why Matthew Barney seems to be at the pinnacle of the art world today.
I think a photographer must understand that they are producing with a machine that is built to record like every other camera. This makes it more difficult to develop a specific aesthetic than it is in painting. Really I just want to see something pushed to the limit, innovation is needed. Visuals are imperative to the visual arts to make the arts grow the visuals must be challenged and expanded, I think it is the natural progression.
January 29th, 2008 at 12:24 am
Ethan,
Thanks for the response. I completely agree with you that film is the highest art form in our contemporary culture. Yet, this has always troubled me. The spectacle like affect and effect that film, or cinema, operates within today is perhaps something that the visual arts has to work twice as hard to achieve, all to grab the viewers attention. This makes me wonder what photography, a medium that exists within the photographic just as film does, has to do to evolve into a popular form of image consumption? I don’t mean this in financial terms but more in line with a continued popular interest that cinema operates within.
I also think it is interesting that you bring up the camera’s mechanical function. The view camera, which is core to this argument of innovation within photographic aesthetics today, is the most basic and controllable of all the machines used to record light. It is at its core the starting point of the fixed image and thus presents an interesting juxtaposition between the digital infinite, and a perceived outmoded form of art production; the view camera.
This brings up a significant point within the almost redundant digital photography question/argument. Are we stuck aesthetically because of the limitless possibilities of digital imaging? Has the line between photography and painting finally been crossed, or is there still new and exciting avenues to explore with the photographic? I think there is.
January 29th, 2008 at 10:52 am
[…] 29, 2008 Thanks to Mr. Colberg for alerting me to a new blog, Pause to Begin, started by a group of creative’s who are also hosting a photo contest of sorts. They have a […]
January 29th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Noel,
I think that photography is just as popular as film in the public’s eye. The difference comes in how it is viewed and perceived. When someone goes to see a film they usually plan to do it, and it is a serious commitment because it takes some time to watch. People see photographs all the time to the extent that it can be ignored fairly easily. I think viewer-ship is pretty equal of the highest art photographs and art films too.
Yes a view camera is simple in how it records light, but to the untrained photographer I doubt that it is easier to use than a digital camera. Also, a pinhole camera or even a camera obscura is more simplistic than a view camera. I do think that today the view camera is partly responsible for the aesthetics of many contemporary photographs. Although I would like to suggest that the camera does not make the picture, the photographer does, so innovative aesthetics should be possible within an antiquated tool.
January 30th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Thanks for this post. I’ve been trying to form something like it for months, but the only thing I was concentrating on was the similarity in the colors in a lot of modern art photography. All I came up with was a list of links that illustrated what I was trying to say. This is great.
January 30th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
You’ve mentioned production in your comments. I’m often intrigued by how photographs, to the average man on the street, seem to be judged on how professional they are.
Well, man on the street may be replaced by man on myspace, with this generation.
For example, say a myspace profile picture, the one with the most comments, and the most “Wow! u look grate!” on it, is often one lit by studio lighting. In fact, when people look at such pictures, say of someone who goes to art school and has many different types of photos of themselves, this photo will have as a reply “It’s so professional!”
How professional is it? It’s five studio lights professional… in their mind, the more lights, expensive equipment, etc, the more professional it is. I’ve worked in studio and had magazine covers with this kind of lighting, subject matter unimportant, an onion, etc. But I also shoot with a disposable camera… a 54 year old camera, a polaroid camera, a digital snapshot camera, etc. These photos are still taken by a professional, are they not professional? Not at first glance, to most viewers, for some reason.
Now, though, I often get more emotional impact from less produced, less lit, more “real seeming” images. A video taken with a handheld snapshot camera seems to be a peak into daily life, a “snapshot” taken of a studio model makes it seem somehow more intimate than the medium format digital back shot. It’s something worth playing with, as an artist.
Certainly, since the 70s, these ideas have been pursued vigorously.
In fact, such images are often said to have “anti-aesthetic,” a term which I feel to be an impossibility. Also thrown around too much, “snapshot-aesthetic.” I don’t have any real answers about these issues, but it’s interesting to think about.
January 30th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Ian,
Thanks for the comment. Those are interesting thing to think about.
When the average person sees a photo that looks professional to them I assume they mean it looks like something from the cover of a magazine. So, yes, those are mostly artificially lit photographs.
That said, I would like to think that the average person can grasp a fundamentally sound photograph even if at first glance it looks like your mother’s snapshot. People use those kind of aesthetics for a reason. It conveys a feelings, either one of intimacy or a quickness, it lets the photographer live in the moment more, whereas using a 4×5 makes the photographer slow down and can remove them from the moment.
I guess what I am trying to say is that a average person can see production, but they may lack the words to describe it as such. For instance, if someone saw a Crewdson photograph they very well might exclaim that it looks like a movie. The reason they would be saying that is because they can see the lighting and production that goes into a movie.
January 31st, 2008 at 12:09 am
In the color v form competition it is interesting that color manipulation is the aspect of choice. With digital manipulation form manipulation is relatively easy with the add on of enhancing the conceptual.
Interesting article and new blog, keep up the good work.
February 4th, 2008 at 12:31 am
[…] sure I started from Doug Plummer’s blogroll) I found the pause | to begin blog. There is a well-written post that, among other things, talks about the role of color in art photography: "One of the main […]
February 4th, 2008 at 12:35 am
Henry: about color vs. form for manipulation: it’s still much easier to manipulate color than the manipulate form in photo editing applications (at least to manipulate form in any way that still seems “realistic”). You could argue that the color manipulation we see is no more realistic than distorted forms but I think we have gotten so used to a wide variation in color representation in photographs (from the first hand-tinted photographs to the effects of different films to the experience of seeing a photo on a computer monitor and then as a printed artifact) that color modification is almost expected.
February 8th, 2008 at 11:57 am
[…] See also: An essay by Robert Smithson (found via the Exposure Project blog) My old blog post about Antoine D’Agata’s new video work Pause To Begin’s post about aesthetics […]
February 12th, 2008 at 1:43 am
Good point, Ethan. The average person does seem to be much more comfortable comparing photographs to movies. In fact, I’ve often heard that said, be it about a party snapshot or an elaborately produced studio image.
“It looks just like something out of a movie” seems to be a common compliment. I suppose a compliment that would warm my heart more would be “that reminds me of (insert great work of literature here)” but I suppose I can keep that as a goal, haha.
Thanks for the response, I’m really enjoying the discussion on this blog. It seems many art blogs are curiously lacking for comments.