Book Discussion Group Recap: It's Art, But Is It Photography?

© Luc Delahaye, 132nd Ordinary Meeting of the Conference, 2004

I recently joined Flak Photo and Andy Adams to host an online community conversation on the Flak Photo Books Facebook page focused on essays from Gerry Badger’s book of essays, "The Pleasures of Good Photographs."

This public discussion provided a structured setting for expanding our understanding of the essays by reading collectively.

I am following up on these community conversations with posts that will recap a selection of the ideas we discuss.  These follow-up posts will necessarily be an abbreviated selection given the length and quality of the conversation in the community discussion threads. In many cases, what arose from the conversation were questions, points argued from different sides, and ideas to continue to explore - not conclusions or consensus.

My goal with these follow-up posts is to pull out threads from the weekly discussion that can be applied beyond the individual essays to inform our general understanding of the medium itself.

The follow-up post to the essay, "Literate, Authoritative, Transcendent: Walker Evans's American Photographs" can be found here, to "A Certain Sensibility: John Gossage, the Photographer as Auteur" here, to "Without Author or Art: The 'Quiet' Photograph" here, and to "Elliptical Narratives: Some Thoughts on the Photobook" here.

Today we finish with the follow-up to the final essay "It's Art, But Is It Photography? Some Thoughts on Photoshop." (page 234)

___________________________________

Photoshop’s Effect on Belief in the Photographic Veracity of Photography
London-based photographer Pete Massingham summarized the core issue of the chapter: the effect of Photoshop - and especially the seamless photo montage - on the belief in the veracity of photography.

Massingham wrote: “Photography's relationship to infrastructures of the real (both time and place) is no longer a scheme that we can depend on for evidencing fact. It has always been a sensitive issue, but it is now imbued with far greater uncertainties. Time and place may now be blended without apparent disruption to historical or physical accuracy. But no matter how seamless it might appear, it is nonetheless an illusion at best and a deceit at worst.

The tools within Photoshop represent a radical shift in our ability to re-present not only a more convincing image (in terms of its 'believability') but a more convincing deceit! Consequently, we have now extended and radically altered the parameters in which the visual veracity of reality is experienced and understood.”

Late in the week he added a comment that continued to elaborate on the idea. “Simplified, I think the point I was trying to make was that Photoshop has freed up the potential for ‘photographers’ to explore these possibilities in a seamless manner. The medium [is] no longer grounded in the here and now!”

Has Photoshop indeed changed the way time functions in an image by introducing seamless montage? Does the photograph no longer relate as absolutely to a singular time and place? Or does the alteration of that relationship make a photograph into art or something else?

The “Compugraph”
Going with that last idea of certain types of - or perhaps just extensive - alteration making a photograph into something else, Massingham added a term of his own to the conversation: “Perhaps some images are so heavily altered and affected by Photoshop tools, that they are no longer classifiable as photographs. I have fabricated the word ‘compugraph’ to differentiate between a photographic print which is ‘straight,’ and one which has been heavily manipulated or altered.”

Another contributor raised questions about how and who would define the line between photograph and “compugraph.” She wrote, “The question is: what is the dividing line between record of reality and the more heavily manipulated version? Taking out a factory? Infusing a patina of fog to create mood or mystery? What role does cropping play in creating a ‘fake’ image? Who decides when the photographer has ‘tricked it up’ (Badger’s term)?”

Massingham responded with a proposal: “I think for me the dividing line is when the material of the original scene observed is altered in such a way that it loses a sense of its original authority or semblance. What I am suggesting is that the boundaries of what constitutes photography are being stretched to the point where we may have to consider the possibility it is no longer photography but something else!”

Badger and Photography As Art
Contributor John Armstrong questioned Badger’s claim that Badger views certain types of photography - photography in the documentary mode and phenomenological-based photography generally - as separate from art.

Armstrong writes, “Just ignore temporarily all the stuff he says about art and just pay attention to what he says about photography. How does he talk about it, how does he conceive it, what does he value about it?...Basically, he talks about photography in artistic terms, he conceives of it as art, he values it as art. Aesthetics, formalism, cult of the medium, a self-justifying pursuit with no practical purpose (X for X’s sake).”

Armstrong goes on to suggest a reason Badger wants to make this separation: “He just doesn’t want to call it art, because to do so would be to admit that it’s the same basic stuff as all the art he doesn’t like. Instead he calls it photography, which for him effectively means a second art, separate from but equal to the first. Or if you want, a ‘secession’ from art.”

By questioning Badger’s separation, Armstrong reframed the conversation, arguing that the larger discussions in the book on the relationship between art and photography reduce to smaller questions about two different types of art: “Once you make this step, you will see that all his discussions of the ‘big’ questions, what is art, what is photography, when is photography art and vice versa, etc. reduce to frankly much smaller questions about one kind of art (‘art’) and another (‘photography’). They reduce, essentially, to questions of taste, couched in theoretical (or at least rhetorical) language.”

© Jeff Wall, Dead Troops Talk, 1992

Luc Delahaye, Susan Sontag, and the Constructed Image as Documentary
Armstrong also raised idea that the constructed image may have the ability to function as documentary image. “I think people also need to consider the possibility that the manipulation helps more than it hurts – that is, in terms of strengthening the documentary force of the works in question. It’s worth remembering – and I remind people whenever I get a chance – that in her last book...Susan Sontag singled out as an exemplary documentary photograph none other than Jeff Wall’s 1992 work Dead Troops Talk.” He later added, “What I think Susan Sontag is telling me, so late in her life, is: it’s a very good picture, it makes people think and leads them to understanding; the person who made that picture has done a good thing, whatever was going on in their mind as they did it.”

Digitization Enables the Grand Photographic Gesture?
One of the most interesting conversations of the week revolved around the idea of the artistic “Grand Gesture” in photography.

Massingham started it by writing that the ability to create large images of high fidelity through digitization processes may have given photography the opportunity to make the "grand gesture" in art akin to, for example, history painting: “I do believe that certain galleries are still uncomfortable with photography as an art. I think it is because much of photography, until the advent of digitization, lacked the potential for the grand gesture of painting, as something removed or at least distanced from a utilitarian function. Even when it aspired to such lofty intent, it was still imbued and anchored with that ever-present condition of veracity.”

Armstrong replied by writing, “For me the ‘grand gesture’ is possible with straight photography (i.e. no manipulation), but it does require two technologies that have not always been around: high quality color and high quality prints at very large sizes... Between color and printing technologies it is now possible to make photographic pictures that are as big and as dramatic as history paintings.”

George McClintock countered by asking, “A grand artistic gesture cannot be a small black and white print? I hope the ‘grand gesture’ is a metaphor, not a creation of the art market.”

Massingham responded with his definition: “I think the term is ambiguous at the best of times, but in the context of art and specifically painting, it seems to be used (rightly or wrongly) in contemporary discussions as an indicator for the expression of an alternative, radical, or overt ‘narrative’ - the work more often than not of a large scale.

Personally, I have always felt that scale plays a key part in the definition, as do the technical issues you have highlighted. I am less convinced by the arguments for pre-digital high quality colour - at least in the context and parameters of Badger's essay and what I am alluding to as ‘Grand Gesture.’

I also associate the Grand Gesture with notions of History Painting and the dramatic - often of a moral, religious, or mythological nature. For me the term implies a desire on the part of the artist to communicate a narrative, experience, or issue of immense importance, and in a manner where the physical presence of the work is evocative of the value of that idea.”

Problems of Photographic Acceptance in the Digital Age
Massingham also added in a comment on photography and its historic relationship with the fine art world that, “Photography with its ‘basic simplicity,’ ease of execution, and cultural pervasiveness, all contribute to an undermining of High Art's process of rarification, and as such, it must be shunned until certain strategies are found to make it conform. These may include scale, limited editions, and a return of ideas of authorship, to name but a few. Photography for many is quite simply not enough, not sufficiently and inherently modifiable to suit the ambitions or critical criteria of fine art practice.”

Massingham wrote later in the week about the lack of the maker’s “hand” in the seamless montage photograph, building on the idea that it is photography's ability to hide its modifications that has created its complicated relationship with fine arts.

What he wrote is worth quoting at length to keep the full idea intact:

     What role does individuality (I didn't want to use the word ‘authorship’) play in our acceptance
     or appreciation of a work? Bear with me - I know this isn't a new argument, but perhaps it is one
     that has shifted ground slightly. It is a fact that the art world was resistant to photography due to
     its lack of individual identity. Photographs were too realistic in appearance, too mechanical in
     their production to be art.

     Perhaps the seamless nature and net result of digital works is what makes people (and photographers
     and critics of Badger's ilk) uncomfortable. On the one hand we are presented with a technology that
     expands our ability to Create rather than Take pictures. On the other hand however, this new
     window of opportunity (for the manipulation of events, time, narrative, space, etc.) seems even more
     heavily tethered to the illusion of descriptive reality.

     Perhaps digital works are experiencing the exact same issues that confronted their 19th-century
     forefathers - how does the artist generate a work of art that demonstrates authorship or individuality,
     through a medium whose infrastructure remains true or anchored to, the descriptive illusion of
     reality? ...The tools for manipulation have improved, but the same predicaments apply; for if you
     remove that photographic veracity (as I think Badger implies) it is potentially no longer a
     photograph. Finally, perhaps after all the considerations about the validity of photography, its
     inherent qualities, and the process of digitization or Photoshopping, the real issue and answer may
     reside within an unconscious desire for the human trace to be visible in a works production.

Film as Alternative Process 
Armstrong made an interesting and challenging proposal on the state of film photography by writing, “Film is not ‘dead,’ nor is B&W. But film must now be classed with the other alternative processes of bygone eras.”

Co-existence of Photographic Traditions
Photographer and educator Dawn Roe wrote about the contemporary dynamic between photographic traditions: “I’m not sure why anyone should feel threatened by ‘most contemporary conceptual photography’ – at least to me, different modes of working and of thinking about photography and the photographic (some of which may be considered ‘conceptual’) are not putting other (more traditional) modes or ways of thinking under attack, necessarily...I recognize this is a decades old distinction and discussion, but is it really useful or necessary to continue attempting or forcing ourselves to distinguish between these two camps, if they even exist as such?

I, for one, do not see ‘traditional’ modes of photography as being under any kind of threat. Nor, do I see one practice eclipsing another. What I (thankfully) see, is an amazing amount of incredibly interesting work being continually and thoughtfully produced by practitioners who remain energized by this fascinating medium, and choose to work with it in whatever way they see fit.”

__________________________________

Good words to end on.

I appreciate the quality of the comments of dozens of contributors during the ten weeks of conversation. The collective investment made developed the forum into a valuable resource for those interested in reading a text collectively. I enjoyed the chance to get to know participants through their contributions and look forward to the Flak Photo Books space being used for similar conversations in the future.

Book Discussion Group Recap: Elliptical Narratives

© Paul Graham, Las Vegas (part 4 of 6), from the series "a shimmer of possibility"

I recently joined Flak Photo and Andy Adams to host an online community conversation on the Flak Photo Books Facebook page focused on essays from Gerry Badger’s recently published book of essays, "The Pleasures of Good Photographs."

This public discussion provided a structured setting for expanding our understanding of the essays by reading collectively.

I am following up on these community conversations with posts that will recap a selection of the ideas we discussed.  These follow-up posts will necessarily be an abbreviated selection given the length and quality of the conversation in the community discussion threads. In many cases, what arose from the conversation were questions, points argued from different sides, and ideas to continue to explore - not conclusions or consensus.

My goal with these follow-up posts is to pull out threads from the weekly discussion that can be applied beyond the individual essays to inform our general understanding of the medium itself.

The follow-up post to the essay, "Literate, Authoritative, Transcendent: Walker Evans's American Photographs" can be found here, to "A Certain Sensibility: John Gossage, the Photographer as Auteur" here, and to "Without Author or Art: The 'Quiet' Photograph" here.

Today we continue with the follow-up to the essay "Elliptical Narratives: Some Thoughts on the Photobook." (page 221)

___________________________________

NARRATIVE, STORY, and the PHOTOBOOK
In “Elliptical Narratives,” Badger makes a differentiation between “narrative” and “story.” By using “story” to describe basic and linear narratives, Badger frees the term “narrative” to be cast very broadly and - with the term “elliptical narrative” – includes photography such as the Provoke photographers and their “radical deconstruction of narrative” as well as books like Germaine Krull’s “Metal” in which viewers construct the image sequence by shuffling them.

By stretching the idea of narrative far enough to include such work, I asked readers if we arrive at the point where we could say Badger believes narrative is inherent in a book format, no matter how aggressively it is attacked.

Photographer and educator Dawn Roe responded, “At first I objected to the insistence upon narrative and story as being what the photobook is ‘about,’ but Badger ultimately offers a fairly rich discussion of (almost) non-narrative / experimental forms in his discussion of elliptical and non-linear narrative strategies employed by [Daido] Moriyama and others.” She later differentiated between different types of narrative and added that she thought it possible to create photobooks without narrative: “I’d just like to emphasize the distinction (for me) between the inherent narrativeS implicitly contained within any subject matter or even medium or style for that matter (socio-cultural / personal narratives, or narratives of abstraction/realism or photography itself) and the deliberate construction of A narrative, of any kind. I tend to think it’s very possible for a photobook to avoid and / or play against dominant / expected narratives through selection and arrangement of images, and that even if A narrative can still be read into the work (as is possible with anything really), this does not necessarily mean the artist / photographer’s primary goal for the work has / had anything to do with its construction.”

Leeds, UK-based photographer and writer Lloyd Spencer agreed: “A lot of the ways in which we examine photos and respond to image collections or sequences draw on instincts and reflexes that are associated with ‘narrative’...but I would not adopt ‘narrative’ as a way to describe the kind of coherence in most successful photobooks. I don't think that that quite does justice to the ambiguity of photos...We can notice ... or fail to notice but still be influenced by... all kinds of themes and interrelations (such as the flags in Robert Frank's 'The Americans,' or the role of the car, or of the road) but it still stops short of being a narrative. It remains a collection of images. A powerfully coherent, suggestive, expressive collection but for me something short of what I would call ‘narrative.’”

San Francisco-based photographer Stefan Jora argued the opposite: “Great photobooks, like 'The Americans', certainly have a narrative; it may be not be the one you're looking for, and it's for the most part different from a film's narrative. In Frank's case it is not an all-encompassing encyclopedic narrative, but a personal and a very subjective one -- pretty much a statement in the from of an extended photoessay (contrary to what he wrote in his Guggenheim grant application). Every photobook has a narrative, whether it's linear, elliptical, or something else; and this is why most photographers turn to photobooks -- because they feel there's more to photography than the isolated, individual image.”

Contributor John Armstrong built from Jora’s comments by writing, “Isolated pictures can communicate meaning only in limited and hit-or-miss ways; a set of related pictures – pictures about the same thing – can do much better. As to narrative, everyone has their own preferred meaning for the term. I think Badger uses it in a very simple but also very appropriate sense. Etymologically narrate means to make known. But making known can happen in two basic ways, all at once – a revelation – or incrementally over a period of time. Narration normally refers to the second kind of making known, the one that involves a process that takes some amount of time to complete.”


ELLIPTICAL NARRATIVE
George McClintock presented a tight definition of “elliptical narrative” by quoting Badger and writing, “The 'elliptical or nonlinear narrative' form of the photobook 'solves the problem of photography's ineffability' by substituting 'poetry and mystery' for 'clarity and the concrete' aspects of linear narratives. (223-224) Words cannot speak for photographs, and sequences of photographs cannot constitute a linear narrative, thus ellipsis is the rhetorical foundation of the effective photobook...elliptical narrative simply means not making known all the information that could be expected, or making it known in a way that is not readily evident.”


THE STILL PHOTOGRAPH AND THE FILM FRAME
In the essay Badger writes, “A photograph is synonymous with the single film frame – in fact they are exactly the same thing – and as a collective entity, the photobook, as I hope to demonstrate, shares particular characteristics with the film.”

Roe wrote in response: “Of course the still and moving image are inherently different, but also share essential characteristics. When we can rely upon a viewer’s knowledge of both forms, we can potentially take advantage of the distinctions - between stasis and movement, arrest and reactivation – to address the very nature of our mediums, and how they work upon the viewer.”

She also added, “And, however we feel about "Camera Lucida," [Roland] Barthes certainly has some things to say on the matter including, 'The photographic image is full, crammed: no room, nothing can be added to it. In the cinema, whose raw material is photographic, the image does not have this completeness…Why? Because the photograph, taken in flux, is impelled, ceaselessly drawn toward other views…Like the real world, the filmic world is sustained by the presumption that, as [Edmund] Husserl says, 'the experience will constantly continue to flow by in the same constitutive style'.”

Armstrong disagreed with Badger in a longer comment worth quoting at length:

   The film theorist Christian Metz called out a fundamental difference  between the ways the audience
   relates to still vs. moving pictures, identifying still photography as fetishism (viewer in control) and
   cinema as voyeurism (viewer not in control). This distinction goes down through the pragmatic to
   the psychological and ultimately to the cognitive layer of seeing. It is the difference between actively
   examining an object and passively watching action unfolding before your eyes.

and:

   I’ve long been troubled by the idea that a moving picture has to be a sequence of still frames...In
   practice they normally are, given the way film and video cameras work, but they don’t have to   
   be...camera obscura and shadow projections don’t have this property, and a recording device that was   
   completely analog in the time dimension (in the way a traditional analog sound recorder is) would not   
   suffer the lossage you see with frame-based cameras, and would let you zero in on smaller and   
   smaller intervals until you reach the limits of its recording precision.


THE PHOTOBOOK VS. EXHIBITIONS AND MULTI-MEDIA
In "The Pleasures of Good Photographs" Badger writes that it’s in the photobook that photographs sing their loudest and most complex song. I asked readers if they felt that the possible expressive capabilities of multi-media and the exhibition were secondary to those of the photobook.

I challenged Badger’s idea by testing it against a list of some of the expressive possibilities of the exhibition: the ability to use a wider scale difference between prints for expression, arranging prints in space on a wall as a vehicle for meaning (witness Paul Graham), being able to take in the sweep of many images and their relationships at a glance, the importance of the photograph in space as an object (framing types, thickness, etc.), and lighting.

Jora replied, “All mediums of expression have both advantages and limitations, and the photobook is no exception. I think the main advantage of the photobook is its ability to preserve an underlining authorial voice (mostly due to the inherently linear layout that a viewer can break out of at any point, but never fully escape, at least not in the traditional format), while the greatest advantage of multimedia books that I foresee is the possibility they offer to decentralize the power of the narrative from the linear path chosen by the author into the hands of the more adventurous viewer.”

Armstrong responded with more questions: “If you take the photos and texts of a photobook and put them on to the gallery or museum wall, what do you lose? Certainly the tactile experience of holding the book in your hands and leafing through the pages, but what else? And what do you gain? If nothing else, showing real prints and, the temptation that’s hard to resist, large prints, much bigger than the reproductions in the book.”


PHOTOGRAPHER AND CONTEXT
Badger makes a series of comments in the essay about the photographer and their cultural context: “Like other major artists, both Frank and [William] Klein were closely attuned to the cultural zeitgeist,” and later on, “Through the medium of the book, [Japanese photographers in the 1960s and 70s] reacted in different ways, some obliquely, some directly, to the political and cultural events of their era,” and finally, “Clearly, most photography reflects – indeed should reflect – the age in which it was produced...”

Badger has formed this essay through the idea of a strong relationship between the photobook, the photographer, and the age in which they photograph. This lead to questions we left unanswered: What is our relationship to context as photographers? Are we inevitably shaped by the era we make work in? Do we have a responsibility to the era in which we photograph? Should photography reflect our times as Badger suggests? How much of our relationship to our context is conscious; how much are we just simply shaped by our surroundings, perhaps inevitably so?


ZEITGEIST
These questions raised the idea of zeitgeist. Armstrong asked, “It's easy enough to identify Zeitgeists in the past and see how they were reflected in art of the time, but what about now? What is our current Zeitgeist and how is it reflected in the art of today?..We are now well over a decade into the 21st century. Where is the 21st century art? There is no question but that the Zeitgeist of today is very different from that of the 90’s (just as the Zeitgeist of the 90’s was different from that of the 80’s and so on back)...At least for Americans, everything changed after 9/11...where is the art of the post 9/11 age?”

Armstrong later wrote that our conversation had perhaps gotten towards some answers to his questions, “Current Zeitgeist: backward rather than forward-looking, pessimistic, impotent, focused on loss rather than gain, nostalgic, savoring the smallest things because everything will be gone. 21st century Art (the first decade): expressions of the same.”


MISSED MOMENTS
Badger concludes the essay by using Paul Graham’s “a shimmer of possibility” as a case study for the idea of elliptical narrative and the final conversations of the week revolved around Graham's work.

Badger writes that Graham’s images look like “missed moments,” something between decisive and indecisive moments and that Graham’s images have the feeling of film grabs which “tend to have a different quality off stopped motion than still photographs.”

Roe replied, “For me, Graham is extending the notion of the moment and how it’s defined through his mode of image selection and sequencing. Or at least challenging the expectations of the photographic moment, or maybe instant would be a better word. They are not missed moments, as they are still moments. But are they ‘decisive’? And, do they need to be? I guess I think of these as anti-instants more than missed moments, if that makes any sense...it seems these shimmers of possibility (anti-instants, but poignant glimpses) provoke the viewer to think outside/beyond the frame and to rely on or call upon memory (of the preceding images/moments/details and in general) to fill in gaps.”

London-based photographer Pete Massingham added, “I think what is interesting is the manner in which Graham's strategy emphasizes what is not seen - particularly the psychological space in an interrupted flow of time. The repetitions or slight shifts function as an almost lyrical device highlighting an experiential dimension perhaps not as readily found in the single statement. Graham like others, shifts our attention away from the single visual experience, to one where we are more inclined to consider the passage of time.”

Finally, another contributor said, “One of the most intriguing parts of this work for me is the use of repetition as a kind of memory trigger. In the book, an experience of the image is no longer a singular encounter, and like memory arises unexpectedly with a slightly different version.”


AUDIENCE AND THE MARKET
Massingham raised the issue of audience and the moral, commercial, and critical implications of promoting limited edition works. The point arose from the humbling current market value of the full, hardcover copy of “a shimmer of possibility”: £750.00. He wrote, “I have no qualms over Paul Graham or any other artist making a good financial return on his/her work, but at what point I wonder, does the market come into conflict with the very people who are interested in that work? So many books now are limited editions, immediately collectible and put out of the range of most people...I wonder who/what the audience for Graham's work might be. How diverse I wonder?” The conversation was raised, but not completed – I hope to see it resumed in a separate thread on the forum.

Book Discussion Group Recap: The "Quiet" Photograph

© Stephen Shore, Room 316, Howard Johnson's, Battle Creek, Michigan, July 6, 1973

I am joining Flak Photo and creator Andy Adams to host an online community conversation on the Flak Photo Books Facebook page focused on essays from Gerry Badger’s recently published book of essays, "The Pleasures of Good Photographs."

This public discussion provides a structured setting for expanding our understanding of the essays by reading collectively. All are welcome to join in! The conversation will continue the week of June 11th with the essay "Elliptical Narratives: Some Thoughts on the Photobook." (page 221) A full reading schedule can be found here.

I am following up on these community conversations with posts here on fototazo that will recap the ideas we discuss.  These follow-up posts will necessarily be an abbreviated selection given the length and quality of the conversation in the community discussion threads. In many cases, what arose from the conversation were questions and ideas to continue to explore, and not necessarily conclusions or consensus. My goal with these follow-up posts is to pull out threads from the weekly discussion that can be applied beyond the individual essays to inform our general understanding of the medium itself.

The follow-up post to the essay, "Literate, Authoritative, Transcendent: Walker Evans's American Photographs" can be found here and to "A Certain Sensibility: John Gossage, the Photographer as Auteur" here. This post is on "Without Author or Art: The 'Quiet' Photograph."

____________________________________

CRITICAL OBJECTIVITY
A dominant theme in all of this week's threads was the tone of the essay. Readers – save one - noted the more aggressive, less impartial writing in this essay.

London-based photographer Pete Massingham wrote, "It seems to me that more than anything, this essay reveals the limitations or parameters of Badger's analytical ideology. This essay is clearly riddled with contradictions and bias...Unfortunately, a subjective, emotional bias sometimes permeates through his work at the expense of critical objectivity - no matter how well it is disguised by fine words." Contributor John Armstrong added, "I sense a tinge of resentment, almost bitterness, in his book that may have to do with his perception that the artworld has definitively rejected the very kind of photography that he likes most."

 I wrote, "I keep comparing him to [Geoff] Dyer and [Robert] Adams and keep feeling like both Dyer and Adams do a great job of 'showing' the reader and letting the reader participate by observing the evidence the two writers present; I feel Badger 'tells' us the evidence and this attempt to be persuasive through force is off-putting, even for someone like myself who is sympathetic to the arguments and the positions he wants to defend."

THE QUIET PHOTOGRAPH 
Looking past the issues around critical objectivity in the essay, we discussed the main concept of the "quiet photograph" itself. Badger defines the term with words such as calm, modest, measured, grace, economy, and reasonable. He then reduces the work that he considers to define his term: no photography with propositions about art, no expressionist tendencies, no big prints, no heavily worked prints, no "self-consciously mediating between reality and image" (i.e. no readily apparent style).

Our conversation considered whether the "quiet photograph" was based in technique, form, or content. Armstrong wrote "I initially thought that Badger's 'quiet' thing was basically a formalist thing, i.e. defined by properties you could detect in a picture without knowing anything about the photographer or the circumstances of creation. But after reading the essay again I now think it's really mostly about that photographer's attitude towards his (Badger's preferred pronoun) practice and photography in general. I don't know whether he believes you can 'read' the attitude from the work, but my belief is that you can't."

Massingham countered, "My take on this is that the quiet photograph has everything to do with the photograph itself," and that "The quiet photograph has a lot to do with pace, not necessarily in recognising it as an example of that category, but in deciphering or appreciating its attributes."

NARROWS DEFINITIONS AND THE QUIET PHOTOGRAPH OUTSIDE OF ART
In a corollary conversation, we discussed Badger's decision to define the quiet photograph outside of art photography. I asked whether participants thought that was problematic for us as photographers who, generally, have fought to be taken seriously as artists, not craftspeople - as peers of painters more than anything.

I also asked readers if the definition Badger employs necessarily needs to be as narrow as he makes it. Could work that shows an interest in personal expression or concerns of art be made in such a way that could be calm, meditative, honest, modest? Or is all intent towards expression necessarily "operatic," "desperate," and "arty" as Badger writes? And all photography interested in the dialogues of the art world “making noise”?

Armstrong wrote that Badger's position creates a binary choice: a photograph is either art or photography, but can't be both, and that this position is extreme.

Photographer and educator Dawn Roe agreed, "Badger’s narrow definition absolutely undercuts the usefulness of the term in question. Rejecting en masse photographs that are large in scale or engage in conceptual modes of serial imagery, for instance, disallows considerations of the relationship between form and content in this type of work – relationships that may well fall precisely under the umbrella terms set up by Badger in terms of a modest subtlety."

I added, "Badger goes awry for me when he tries to argue this set of values is unique to a very specific type of image, and then insinuates across the essay that other types of photographs cannot have those qualities - that no photograph can be 'quiet' if it deals with art or shows an expressionistic tendency; it can't be subtle, modest, restrained, that it's desperate for attention."

Finally, educator and photographer Angela Kelly wrote, "Badger in his desire to extol the virtues of the quiet photograph loses sight of his own argument offered in other chapters, and hurtles down a defensive path which is entirely unreasoned and unnecessary."

Texas-based photographer Pugilist Press countered the thoughts by writing, "The quiet photograph is narrowly defined and that at least works in favor of the essay. Narrow definitions are useful definitions. Nebulous definitions give us nothing to push against, pull along, cleave, or dissect. And to be clear, nowhere does he state that the artists or their work are neutral, he speaks of maintaining the neutrality of the camera."

THE BUBBLE
The group also explored the perception that many major online forums for photography, including the Flak Photo Network and Flak Photo Books that this discussion is being held on, are slanted towards photographers making photographs, not art, at least for the terms of Badger's essay.

Pugilist Press wrote, "I think that in a space like Flak where we are all aficionados or practitioners, it is easy to forget that we exist as a bubble within the art world and though we are supposed to share space and engage in a common dialogue things have very different values inside and outside of this bubble. Names like Adams, Lyon, Gossage, Moriyama, Levitt, Parr, Evans, Shore, Winogrand are a lot more important inside than outside. Names like Demand, Wall, LaChapelle, Ruff, Sekula matter more in the wider art world. The bubble is porous and can be difficult to locate, but it is clearly there."

STATIC AND DYNAMIC PICTURES 
Armstrong introduced the idea of “static” and “dynamic” pictures with static correlated to, but not the same as, quiet photographs. He explained, "A number of people (including the teacher of a class I took a few years ago) make a distinction between static and dynamic pictures (or rather define a spectrum from totally static to highly dynamic.) It generally has to do with the sense of movement or unfolding drama in a picture, though it sometimes has a low-level cognitive aspect in how your eye floats around the picture. (In static picture it focuses on one thing or migrates from thing to thing, where as in dynamic pictures it will do a sweep along an axis).”

A CAMERA’S LOGIC
Puglist Press raised the issues of a "camera’s logic":

     The camera records all objects and subjects with complete neutrality. Point of view and
     allegiances are revealed by the photographer's formal decision at the moment of exposure. This
     is what I got from the essay at least, and I do think that there is something to be said for
     maintaining the way that the camera 'thinks.' You can violate that logic and still make great
     work but why accept the violations as status quo?

     This is what is happening outside of the editorial/documentary world. The violation is becoming
     the status quo, the camera's logic is bypassed more and more and for someone for a deep love
     for that type of photography this ain't exactly a golden age.

ARBITERS OF TASTE
The issue of arbiters of taste was raised again, as it was with the John Gossage essay.

Massingham states, "A lot of how we perceive and what influences photographic practice and comment, is down to the critics - those aficionados of taste who, through a combination of persuasive argument and financial clout promote specific styles or approaches of work that they feel is relevant or that has mileage at any given point in cultural history." He continued by asking us, "Who are the arbiters of taste, and how do they gain prominence?"

Puglist Press responded with an interesting idea: "I don't think that the distinction [between American and European work] is Badger's. I might be completely wrong about this but I think that the distinction is actually a cultural accident. Europe never had a Szarkowski with the full weight of something like the MOMA behind him / her. That is a very singular instance and it has colored fifty years of dialogue, much of it aggressively since the 80s. I do believe that there are some definite American elements to the MOMA program but without certain key people in key places the whole thing could have evolved quite differently. Quiet photographers abound in Europe, but they were never the big names. No Szarkowski to exalt them."

CONSERVATIVE CRITICISM
Finally, we ended the week with a critique from Armstrong of Badger and his writing. He wrote:

     I believe the approach is bad for photography.

     It's a extremely conservative, even reactionary approach that seeks to return to a photographic
     age that's past, and probably for the better: a purist, parochial, exclusivist age dominated by
     formalism and detachment from / indifference to the practical realities of the world. It was the
     age of the masters, but it was also the age of the superannuated camera club, obsessing as ever
     over the issues of legitimacy and self-definition as it squirmed in its awkward middle place
     between art (i.e. painting) and popular photography. It was an age whose ideal was a form of
     photography so pure that no one except the photographers trying to make it and a few
     connoisseurs could appreciate it (or be bothered to try).

     It's not possible to return to this age because it's over. People – photographers – can try to
     recreate it, but, even if they succeed, what will they have accomplished?

Book Discussion Group Recap: John Gossage

© John Gossage, untitled, from the series "The Pond" 1985

I am joining Flak Photo and creator Andy Adams to host an online community conversation on the Flak Photo Books Facebook page focused on essays from Gerry Badger’s recently published book of essays, "The Pleasures of Good Photographs."

This public discussion provides a structured setting for expanding our understanding of the essays by reading collectively. All are welcome to join in! The conversation will continue the week of June 4th with the essay "Without Author or Art: The 'Quiet' Photograph." (page 210) A full reading schedule can be found here.

I am following up on these community conversations with posts here on fototazo that will recap a selection of the ideas we discuss.  These follow-up posts will necessarily be an abbreviated selection given the length and quality of the conversation in the community discussion threads. In many cases, what arose from the conversation were questions and ideas to continue to explore, and not necessarily conclusions or consensus. My goal with these follow-up posts is to pull out threads from the weekly discussion that can be applied beyond the individual essays to inform our general understanding of the medium itself.

We began with the essay, "Literate, Authoritative, Transcendent: Walker Evans's American Photographs" and the follow-up post can be found here. We followed with the essay "A Certain Sensibility: John Gossage, the Photographer as Auteur," the subject of today's post.

____________________________________

STYLE, SENSIBILITY, AND CONSISTENCY
The deepest conversation of the week focused around the leading topic of the essay: style, sensibility, and consistency. In his essay, Bager talks about the idea of working in “the style for the job” instead of working on photographic problems in a preordained stylistic manner. By doing so, he questions a requirement for stylistic consistency in an artist’s body of work. He chooses to use the word and explore the idea of “sensibility,” suggesting that an artist’s sensibility can link bodies of work and photographic responses that do not display the same style.

Photographer and educator Dawn Roe responded by writing, “I’m in agreement with Badger in that I do like thinking about stylistic tendencies as the result of a ‘response to a problem.’” She moved on to mention other elements relevant in the construction of style beyond sensibility: “Badger’s fixation on the particular sensibility seems to me to be the key element here in terms of influencing any sort of style that may be evidenced in certain images. More important still, I think, are the particular sets of circumstances surrounding the creation of each image (and subsequent editing / printing, etc.) – here, we’re talking about time / experience / memory / perception / disposition – all that good stuff.”

She questioned Badger’s suggestion that stylistic consistency necessarily means a conscious decision to gain notice as well as to brand and market oneself: “When an artist is fully committed to a particular way of seeing / thinking about the world through their overall artistic project, indeed it might be that stylistic consistency may emerge. I think especially when there is a poetic / philosophical backbone to the work – this almost insists upon a more subtle and refined approach that may appear to be and / or frankly NEED to be reductive [in their stylistic choices].”

London-based photographer Pete Massingham – like Dawn above - noted that style is defined by many other contexts than sensibility: “Stylistic appearance is affected by an array of conditions and circumstances including the artists personality, cultural background, dominant trends in art, market forces, the subject being observed - in fact just about anything you choose to think of. I do not like the word style. Style is a slippery term that tells us little beyond indicating there is a consistency of vision - whether it be strong or weak.”

He also rasied questions about Badger’s critique of the motives behind a photographer’s stylistic consistency: “As we get older and become more informed as to what form of visual vocabulary works for us, we tend to filter out those areas of earlier experimentation that do not appear useful to our individual take on the world. In the same way, we filter out the subject-matter that is no longer important to us, ‘..to progressively distill one's vision, reducing the range of subject matter and its treatment...’ as Badger states. Our engagement becomes less a concern for fragmentation, and more a concern for the whole. Whether or not these parameters are self-imposed or just the consequence of an unconscious (and perhaps inevitable) set of characteristics formed by personal histories and events, is open to debate.”

PHOTOBOOKS
Photobooks became the second major conversational topic of the week.

In the introduction to “The Pleasures of Good Photographs,” Badger writes, “It is in the photobook, in my opinion, where photography sings its loudest, most complex, and satisfying song” and in doing so suggests that distinctive sensibility of an individual photographer finds its fullest expression in photobooks.” (page 8) Massingham wrote that part of their strength is that they give a more “tactile” relationship with photography. His whole passage is worth quoting:

     It is the apparent perception available through touch that is important. The computer or digital
     screen is unable to fulfill this need in terms of viewing work, reducing images to a sterile albeit
     accurate facsimile. While both the analogue and digital print are able to express a rich sense of
     individual style and technical excellence, it is the photographic book that still seems to hold an
     almost fetishistic ambience that is difficult to surpass. It can embody qualities of editorial
     authorship, craft, intimacy, fact, and fiction, and seems a profoundly cogent means for reproducing  
     photographic works. It is I believe, the most convincing format for expressing the depth or
     gravitas of the photographer's passion for the medium and subject, aside from the original works.
     Within this format, there exists an unfolding, an exquisite revealment of the photographers intent
     which does not communicate on a screen. It is important to recognise the value, the richness of
     being able to turn a page and to be complicit in the flow of the work. The book makes you an
     active participant in a way that the screen cannot and should not attempt to emulate.

Another contributor added to this, “The photobook or essay are another way for a photographer to explore his subject from multiple viewpoints and over an extended period. They allow themes to be developed and explored and the fact of producing the book, with all the design and other choices that involves, extends the photographer's control over their output...And the great additional benefit is that they are relatively so accessible.”

CURRENT GOLDEN AGE IN PHOTOBOOKS
We also started to take a look at the reasons behind the current Golden Era of photobooks: Is this to do with the book’s inherent qualities and because it allows photography to sing its “loudest, most complex, and satisfying song”? Or is it market conditions? The connection between the explosion in the number of photographers and the hunt for economical distribution methods of their work?

San Francisco-based photographer Stefan Jora responded by writing, “I think it is a combination of advances in economy (the increasingly affordable cost of producing photobooks) and society (the fact that we're becoming a more visually literate society).”

This is a subject I hope we’ll explore more when we discuss Badger’s chapter on photobooks.

STYLE IN PHOTOBOOKS
Leeds, UK-based photographer and educator Philip Welding asked an interesting question in regards to style and the photobook: “Gossage's voice or style isn't just to be looked for in his photographs, concepts etc. but is surely visible in his books? Perhaps the design of a photo book is easier to pin down than the more elusive photographic voice? Or the combination of the two?”

Is a photographer’s style, voice, or “sensibility” something more equally or more apparent in the photobook than in a photographer’s images? An interesting question...

THE COLLECTIVE STATEMENT
Gossage, writes Badger, sees photography in terms of the collective statement contained in the photobook, and not as individual statements contained by the picture frame.

Massingham responded to this by confirming, “Gossage chooses to experience and involve himself in the complete process and production of his photography - a function which is not readily available to all photographers or artists.” Dawn Roe followed by writing that Pete’s point, for her, is key and that: “We must often give up some or all control in terms of how our work is exhibited, seen on-line or even in book form depending on the context and whether it is an artist’s book, or exhibition catalog/monograph, etc. And so I’d agree that the photobook is (one area) where ‘the photograph is at its most complex’ – and so, yes, in many cases the ‘collective statement’ is more successful than the single image.”

Texas-based photographer Pugilist Press added, “I am a big believer in the collective statement...it just opens up the possibilities for the phenomenological photographer without having to go into Painter territory... A book has certain implications but it is first and foremost a container, a world unto itself, and as such it is a space where an auteur can create context through selection, sequencing, scale, and materiality.”

PACKAGING AND BRANDING
Badger writes in his essay that, “ Style equals branding, and branding means sales, so we get the fairy common phenomenon of the photographer who hits upon one extraordinary image and then repeats it, with minor variations, for the rest of his or her career.” (page 89)

I wrote that I believe that the museum-gallery world does like to package and brand artists and that either directly or implicitly pushes artists towards less experimentation and more repetition of their ideas, I don't think by any means that all artist's who investigate a narrow range of ideas over a career and stay within a specific formal (or stylistic) range are the lesser for it and necessarily doing so to appease the market and museums. This is further explained in MULTIPLICATION AND DIVISION below.

Contributor Pedro Safadi adds, “Of course some artists rely on style to individualize their work, to stand out from the crowd and to be eventually identified with that style. Is it for the purpose of branding only? I think for some it goes beyond that. I think it might serve a different need, something psychological perhaps. But style might also be an organic ‘thing’ that mutates in the artist's hands into an ever clearer means of communicating his / her artistic sensibility. When the artist finally achieves the style that he has been nurturing along perhaps he decides that he has arrived at the place he wanted to be and needs to go no further.”

FORM
Form was briefly raised within the conversation this week. Pugilist Press wrote, “Without form there is no pleasure and in most cases no access” and made perhaps the most quotable statement of the week: “We don't disagree that content is what keeps the people at the party but without form there's no music to dance to. Lack of formal interest means that the doors to content are closed.”

ARBITERS OF TASTE
Massingham raised an interesting point during the week, writing: “I believe the real debate lies in the question of who are the arbiters of taste? It is these people who determine the perceived parameters of style and subject matter.” George McClintock asked a similar question at a different point in the conversation: “Would Gossage's photography have significance without the elaborate textual support erected by Badger and others?” He later reinforced Massingham’s point, wrapping in to an assessment of Gossage and his work: “Without all the academic reinforcement of its metaphorical significance, 'The Pond' would have precious little to offer.”

Unfortunately I am also a realist (cynic?) about the fact that connections (and the implied textual support and access to collections and exhibitions) define who is in the photography canon almost as much as the quality of work does, and the number of gatekeepers has always been very few. John Szarkowski made kings and queens for 30 years - and I believe that model of kingmakers is largely still in effect.

MULTIPLICATION AND DIVISION
I mentioned in the conversation an idea that offers perhaps an alternative way of looking at artists who make photographs that work within a narrow range in terms of subject matter and formal stylistics over an extended period of time. (Unfortunately I do not remember the source of the conversation or reading of this idea, but it is not originally mine.)

When we are young most are interested in a multiplicity of experiences – we date different people, travel many places, move around, and hold different jobs; likewise in art, when we are just getting going we explore different themes, formal ideas, try on different hats, jump between ways of working.

When we get older, most of us become interested in the division of a single experience rather than to continue with multiplication, that is to say we choose to experience one thing deeply, rather than many things more superficially. We tend to find a home, a long-term partner and settle into a career. The same would hold true for how we make artwork – we divide a more limited subject matter, exploring it thoroughly, instead of taking major jumps between each project.

Book Discussion Group Recap: Walker Evans

© Walker Evans, Houses and Billboards in Atlanta, 1936

I am joining Flak Photo and creator Andy Adams to host an online community conversation on the Flak Photo Books Facebook page focused on essays from Gerry Badger’s recently published book of essays, "The Pleasures of Good Photographs."

This public discussion provides a structured setting for expanding our understanding of the essays by reading collectively. All are welcome to join in! We began with the essay, "Literate, Authoritative, Transcendent: Walker Evans's American Photographs" and the conversation continues this week of Monday, May 21st with the essay "A Certain Sensibility: John Gossage, the Photographer as Auteur." (page 87) A full reading schedule can be found here.

I am following up on these community conversations with posts here on fototazo that will recap a selection of the ideas we discuss.  These follow-up posts will necessarily be an abbreviated selection given the length and quality of the conversation in the community discussion threads. In many cases, what arose from the conversation were questions and ideas to continue to explore, and not necessarily conclusions or consensus. My goal with these follow-up posts is to pull out threads from the weekly discussion that can be applied beyond the individual essays to inform our general understanding of the medium itself.

____________________________________

TERMS
We found quickly that a core issue for a group conversation is the importance of defining terms. As the conversation evolved, the differentiation between the words "truth," "reality," and "accurate" became crucial for understanding one another.

We generally came to an understanding of "reality" meaning the world in which we live physically, "accurate" to mean the fidelity of a representation to something in reality, and "truth" to mean...well, I don't think we ever came close to an agreement. See below.



TRUTH
The healthiest argument of the week focused around the perennial issue of truth in photography.

The issue of how to use the term was an issue from the start. Was truth a measure of how "accurate" an image is? Was truth a problematic term leading us all into the winter woods at dusk with no matches? Is there a single truth? Many truths?

Defining "truth" started to pull us into larger conversations of philosophy and semantics. It was suggested that we define the term. It was suggested we stop talking about the term.

Contributor Pedro Safadi addressed the passage by Badger that sparked the debate. In this passage, Badger wrote that Evans believed, "The photographer must impose nothing upon direct and undiluted experience. He must discover, divine, and reveal his truth rather than construct it." (page 31)

Safadi replied, "I think it is very telling that the words 'his truth' rather that 'a truth' or 'the truth' are used in that sentence. Walker Evans may have preached for the capturing of reality free of manipulation as a tenet of documentary photography, but he has been accused of rearranging objects in some of the photographs he made. Are those manipulated photographs factually truthful? They are not if the threshold is transcribing a place and time as it existed in that precise temporal chunk that the camera has sliced away. Are they pieces of the photographer’s subjective personal truth that he / she wanted to reveal to us, where that truth transcends the actual and factual physical reality? I believe they are."

These comments represented one side of the conversation that argued for a separation of "accurate" (as defined above) from "truth" and a vision not just of a single truth, but different kinds of truth. One could be "accurate." Another could be a sense of "emotional truth" or a sense of rightness about an image.

A second camp pushed for a stronger single bond between "true" and "accurate," in part because this helps to emphasize photography's unique ability to present a relatively unmediated view of reality, a bond which lead Badger to write, "For me, the documentary, or the 'documentary mode,' remains not only the core of the medium, but the source of its greatest potency." (7)

The fundamental and eternal debate on truth in photography was not fully resolved this week by our discussion group.



CONSTRUCTION
Connected with the conversation on truth arose the related, but separate issue of construction in photography. It started from the same passage in the essay cited above, in which Badger writes that Evans believed a photographer must discover, divine, and reveal his truth rather than construct it.

As part of this conversation, contributor John Armstrong wrote, "Constructedness is the original sin of photography" and Bonita Springs, Florida-based photographer Dennis Church that "I believe all images are constructed, some more consciously than others."  Others felt accepting "construction" as a part of all images without establishing some guidelines would risk equating documentary work and photographers like Gregory Crewsdon.

Like in the conversation on truth, we discussed the idea of construction being on a spectrum that avoids the duality of an image being "constructed"or "not constructed." Instead, images would be seen through degrees of construction with complete construction of a scene on one side of the spectrum and construction by unavoidable decisions on lens choice, perspective, and cropping on the other side.



TRUTH AND TIME
The point was made that the question of "truth" in photography may rely on time; that the truth-value of an image may actually shift according to public perceptions of photography over time. This suggests any photographic truth is not an absolute, but something that may be redefined in relation to changes in the history and understanding of the medium.

As an example, the work of Alexander Gardner, accepted as "photojournalism" in the 1860s and therefore likely seen in its day as mostly truthful in terms of depicting an event that actually happened, today would be labeled as less "truthful" (in these terms) because the contemporary code of photojournalism does not provide for moving objects and bodies in an image. The image itself would therefore be less "true" today than in the past due to shifting perceptions of what is acceptable in photojournalism.



BELIEF IN PHOTOGRAPHY
One of the bigger points of disagreement during the week was over the state of belief we have in photography in contemporary life. This seems an issue that truly divides current thinking on photography.

LA-based photographer Justin Fiset wrote a strong defense of the "we believe" position:

     Where you get it wrong is claiming that photography has no franchise on reality, it does.
     Here’s why. Even though we’re all real smart people who are hip to post-modernism and
     photoshop we still believe photographs. During the course of a day we take photographic
     veracity for granted at least a hundred times. Even a heavily photoshoped image on your
      Facebook feed that made you do a double-take, you subconsciously afforded the photo your
     trust before you realized you had been tricked (I’m trying to think of an example to use here
     but I’ve got nothing, sorry). That trust wouldn’t have been given to an illustration...

London-based photographer Pete Massingham took the opposing view:

     In response to Justins' excellent comments I feel obliged to respond and to some extent beg
     to differ. I am not altogether convinced that people (artists/practitioners) today do actually
     believe in a photographic veracity. One of the exquisite but illusional qualities of the photographic
     process has been its ability to seduce us into a false sense of relationship to reality, when in fact
     what we are perceiving is as much a representation of reality as the painted or drawn image. The
     fact we believe in it does not make it any more real as a document of reality. I am reminded of
     a well known dialogue that occurred between Picasso and a newspaper or art critic. The
     interviewer was trying to pin Picasso down on the issue of realism in his distorted figurative
     paintings, and offered I believe an image of his wife from his wallet as evidence of an image
     which was more realistic. Picasso's response was something along the lines of 'So your wife is
     only three inches tall and two wide is she?'

Badger weighs in with Massingham. He writes in the introduction: "Photography's value as art has never been so high, yet in these mediawise and Photoshopping times its value as documentary has never been so questioned." (8)



WHERE MEANING IS CREATED
Educator and photographer Angela Kelly made the point towards the end of the week that, "A readerly approach while taking into account the artist's intention suggests the larger meaning of a work of art lies somewhere between the artists intention and the audience or even critic who encounters it within a different context."

Massingham followed by writing "What happens once the work is thrown open to public scrutiny (either in book form or as an exhibition) is both fascinating and complex. Arguments are developed, and theories espoused, all of which inform our understanding of the works of art in question. However, there are ocasions when this process of examination is presented as the primary concern of the work - the original context and intent relegated to some dark redundent corner of history. To accept that contemporary theory and observation can be interwoven at will with historical works - without contradiction or complication, is troublesome to say the least."

This conversation about where meaning is created in art, and the potential dangers of disregarding original intent, is one I hope we continue to investigate during the coming weeks in our essay discussions.



AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHERS
Badger writes that Evans is the "most American of artists." (28) This raised the question of who we would say defines "American photography."

Texas-based photographer Pugilist Press included Robert Adams, William Christenberry, William Eggleston. Wright Morris, Ed Ruscha, and - in the way they approach the American Image in a similar way - Cindy Sherman and Philip-Lorca DiCorcia on his list.

Safadi added, "Those who, for me, define American photography during the period that spans the beginning of the 20th century all the way through to the start of the 2nd World War include the greats such as Ansel Adams and Edward Weston as well as [Alfred] Stieglitz, [Lewis] Hine, [Paul] Strand."

The question of which photographers define "American photography" remains another question to continue pursuing during the coming weeks.



THE OBJECT IN AMERICAN ART
Badger's argument for Evans being the most American of artists rests largely on a passage in the essay in which he addresses the object in the history of American art.

One contributor summarized it well: "'The integrity of the object' – I think the crux of Badger’s argument lies within that statement. If, for Badger, the fundamental essence of American art (and what actually defines it) is indeed the integrity of the object being depicted then certainly the medium of photography provides that integrity as part and parcel of its true nature. And that is why, in his point of view, the American sensibility lends itself to the photographic medium as the mode of expression that allows for the transparent means of capturing/depicting the object in its entirety (faults and all)."

And Pugilist Press added: "I will say that Americans have a special relationship with the object that while not that singular in experience seems to be singular in cultural expression. It has something to do with the potential for splendor in the vernacular and a penchant for sensuality. It's Elvis' Blue Suede Shoes, American Graffiti's cars, those baubles from The Man in The High Castle, Ignatz' brick."

Both make good points. While also keeping in mind that America in popular thought is connected with object creation, consumption, and possession, however, a hanging question from this conversation is whether the object has a particular place in American High Art, and not just in popular cultural expression.

Badger seems to say so, couching his argument for Evans as a quintessential American artist by drawing Evans' connection to the history of the object in US painting. But what about Dutch still lives? And Cézanne? And Morandi? The incredibly detailed objects in a Thai Ramayana mural? Is the connection between the object in High Art and America really unique? Could we equally argue that landscapes are uniquely "American" with US ties to the Western frontier, the New World, and Manifest Destiny?



NARRATIVE
We also considered the narrative potential of photography this week. To what degree can photography tell stories? What are the limits of narrative in photography?

We talked - in the shadow of a previous conversation on truth and construction in a single image - about the subjective control of the message of a photobook through sequencing images to create narrative. Leeds, UK-based photographer and educator Philip Welding raised an interesting point: "Badger compares [American Photographs] to an epic poem, film or novel; all very much fictional constructs. It seems more comfortable to recognize this artifice within book form than when discussing the photography itself."

It's a good question - are we more comfortable with accepting the artifice of sequencing, editing, constructed narrative, and presentation decisions than we are with the idea that a photograph itself is a constructed fiction?

To push a step more: does questioning the "truth" of an image itself threaten our understanding of reality and ourselves in a way that causes many of us to want to defend it, while we understand and accept the fiction of a narrative sequence, edit, and presentation more comfortably?



READING TEXTS
One last point. A text can be read in two ways - first, to understand the author's intent, to push to understand what the writer says, and to engage the author on their terms.

The second, equally important and perhaps more important for photography practitioners and non-academics, is reading a text to find what we need for our own practice and thought processes, regardless of a more literal analysis of what the author intended.

Bill Evans, the jazz pianist, once said that he was a Buddhist, but didn't want to learn anything more about Buddhism. What he understood Buddhism to be, he said, was exactly what he needed it to be. He was afraid that if he learned more about it, he might discover that it wasn’t actually what he understood and wanted it to be.

This spirit is important to maintain in our reading, especially of more academically-oriented texts. Rather than pinpointing an understanding of the author’s argument on a particular part of a photographer’s career, frequently letting a sentence or idea resonate so that it leads us to an understanding we can apply to our own work gives us more from our reading, even if it’s not exactly accurate....true...real...wait...uh oh...the original intent of the text itself.