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.

Stephen Shore:

Joel Sternfeld:

Mitch Epstein:

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.

I was reminded of the Sally Mann documentary What Remains recently when I was discussing museums and galleries with fellow Pause, to Begin blogger Susan.  We had both just seen the Edward Hopper exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.  As you might expect, it was a crowded show, but it was well put together containing not only the greatest hits, but also a majority of his successful earlier work.

Discussing the exhibit afterwards, I realized that since this collection of nearly every important painting Hopper made in his life was in an established museum it was bound to tell many of the holiday gallery goers that Hopper is a definitive, masterful painter of the 20th Century. That sentence may sound overly obvious, but my point is as soon as a work of art is displayed in a museum, opposed to a gallery, it has been decided by at least one person (the curator) that such artwork is of a quality that it is to be shown in an arena that is geared towards the masses, not simply the art community. Museums are also more of an educational space than a gallery. Museums inform us about things ranging from art to insects to dinosaurs. Galleries mostly show us popular art that can sell, and if the artwork in a gallery is not know to be popular then it still most likely looks contemporary. In other words nothing overly new and strange.

Hopper’s most famous paintings look an awful lot like photography created within the last several years. From color palates to composition and themes, visually a Gregory Crewdson photograph looks a lot like a Hopper painting. Clearly, Hopper has served as an influence to photographers beyond just Crewdson, but he is perhaps the most famous example. I think it is safe to say the Crewdson was educated in part by looking at Hopper’s paintings.

Somehow all of this reminded me of Sally Mann and one sentence that she said in the film. As she reflected on the whole process of the What Remains opening being canceled at the last minuet by Pace/McGill Gallery and instead opening at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., Mann said something about how in a way it worked out better because the show was now more accessible to her friends, and the Corcoran was showing the work because of it’s artistic merit not it’s salability. Mann also went on to speculate that Pace/McGill canceled her show because they thought that they could not sell her work.

Sally Mann was at a point in her career where she no longer needed a Chelsea Gallery opening to solidify her place in the contemporary photography art world, after all she is still represented by the Gagosian Gallery.

All of this brought to mind some of what I consider to be the most influential photography to young photographers today. The likes of Stephen Shore and William Eggleston come to mind, and they both had early prominent exhibitions at the Met and MoMA respectively. Their photographs are now iconic, just as Mann’s photographs are. To be shown in a gallery is wonderful, especially since there are some amazing galleries that only show the very best work, but to be exhibited in a museum is a testament to the artist’s place in their generation as one of the most important artists of the era.