BBC Photography Today

It may be an interesting read but personally some of the images left me feeling rather depressed... the photographic equiv of an unmade bed maybe and art only in the minds of others, not me :D Emperors new clothes and all.
 
Personally, can't stand any of the photos he's chosen, and the write-ups make me cringe... But then I don't like analysing this kind of stuff, so see 2 blue buckets as 2 blue buckets...
 
  • Like
Reactions: BBR
I agree with Alan, I didnt read it all properly but the shots didnt do anything for me, theyre just not my kinda thing I suppose!
 
The Sternfeld shot is famously dishonest. There was no real house fire, it was an exercise for the fire department.

So a little disappointed that the author tries to pass it off at face value.

That said, I'd much rather be presented with photography that asks me to think about the subject than pretty, technically competent but derivative landscapes/portraits that are ten a penny.

I don't find all of these terribly thought provoking, but at least there's an attempt to show photography as something beyond eye candy.
 
old bloke said:
some time ago a well known art critic when interviewed was asked how he defined art, his reply was that art was anything you could get away with, this rubbish confirms that quite nicely.
Click to expand...
Well certainly some of this stuff seems unremarkable in this context. For example, I can see why people would dismiss that blue bucket shot. However, it mentions this picture (and most of the others) is part of a series, and I suspect it would make more sense as an idea within its thematic context rather than as part of a bashed-together editorial on the BBC website.
 
There's some good stuff in there, although picking out a single image from a series never makes it.
Gillian Wearings series is great
 
I enjoyed the article. Having some context to the pictures helps as the pictures are presented in isolation. Not the kind of photographs I take, but I have no pretensions of being a fine artist. However it is stuff that makes you think more than 'nice picture' and move on to the next one, even if it is a case of thinking 'what the @&$* is all that about'.
 
ghoti said:
The Sternfeld shot is famously dishonest. There was no real house fire, it was an exercise for the fire department.
Click to expand...
That's the only photo that made me think, because I never hear Americans mention Cider. Apparently "after more than 100 years in decline, cider is making a massive comeback,"
 
Those photos are about as good as the exhibits at the Tate modern

Twaddle
 
I wonder if the difference between this kind of 'art' and the random snaps (and even accidental releases) 'ordinary people' take is intent. The question then becomes whether having intent makes someone's lousy image art or not? If it does, I have a lot of 'art' I can sell someone. ;)

Good point about being part of a series, so that shown alone, they are junk because they only has meaning in a context. But 2 blue buckets isn't even a good photograph: on camera flash with harsh shadows and f8 for reasonable depth of field: and it feels like you could look at the picture for ever without seeing the beautiful subtle shifts of tones in the buckets.
Is intent to produce art enough to give your work a value to anyone but you?
 
Last edited:
ancient_mariner said:
I wonder if the difference between this kind of 'art' and the random snaps (and even accidental releases) 'ordinary people' take is intent. The question then becomes whether having intent makes someone's lousy image art or not? If it does, I have a lot of 'art' I can sell someone. ;)

Good point about being part of a series, so that shown alone, they are junk because they only has meaning in a context. But 2 blue buckets isn't even a good photograph: on camera flash with harsh shadows and f8 for reasonable depth of field: and it feels like you could look at the picture for ever without seeing the beautiful subtle shifts of tones in the buckets.
Is intent to produce art enough to give your work a value to anyone but you?
Click to expand...
Intent to produce art may make the work "art" but it doesn't necessarily give it value.
The concept or idea you are trying to communicate may be trite, obvious, contrived or uninteresting.
For example, the first image in the series does nothing for me. I get the idea - don't show the famous work of art, just show the reactions to it. But I find that an obvious and somewhat trite idea. I'm pretty sure it's been done a hundred times before. In fact, on a trip to Rome a few years back I took a series of street-style pictures on this kind of theme - the faces of tourists looking at the famous historical buildings but leaving out the buildings themselves. Even while I was doing it I was thinking "this is kind of cheesy".

I'd also massively disagree with your comment about the blue bucket picture being "not a good photograph". It's not a technically great image, no, but that's completely irrelevant. Idea, subject and concept trumps technical proficiency every time. Technically great photographs of boring or clichéd subjects are truly worthless.
I don't really know if I rate the blue bucket photo, though. I'd need to see it in the context of its series.
 
I described the blue buckets as not a good photograph because it looks like it was shot artlessly (at least it's in focus & well exposed). A lousy photo with a good idea, subject and concept is still a well thought out lousy photo - to me at least - rather takes away from the point of photographing the thing when you could draw & paint it instead, probbly to better effect.
 
ancient_mariner said:
I described the blue buckets as not a good photograph because it looks like it was shot artlessly (at least it's in focus & well exposed). A lousy photo with a good idea, subject and concept is still a well thought out lousy photo - to me at least - rather takes away from the point of photographing the thing when you could draw & paint it instead, probbly to better effect.
Click to expand...
What *is* the point of photographing something?

And what makes a shot artless? The art is tied up in the concept.

To me, if you want to see truly artless photographs just look at the technically outstanding, eye-candy, landscapes that people are always oooo-ing and aaaa-ing at. You can find hundreds of them on this very forum. Not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with them - they are what they are - but they're not art. Or how about 95% of the "street photography" we see, which apes the masters superficially (make it black and white! Take pictures of old people!) but is missing a concept or a message or any sort of communication at all.

Or bloody water drops.
 
ancient_mariner said:
I described the blue buckets as not a good photograph because it looks like it was shot artlessly (at least it's in focus & well exposed). A lousy photo with a good idea, subject and concept is still a well thought out lousy photo - to me at least - rather takes away from the point of photographing the thing when you could draw & paint it instead, probbly to better effect.
Click to expand...

What if a photo is deliberately taken 'artlessly'? Surely that means mean its 'artlessness' has become its 'artfulness'? :D

Making a painting of the buckets wouldn't have the same effect as even a 'lousy' photograph because paintings lack the assumed objectivity of photographs. The photograph of the buckets implies that what is depicted existed as it is represented in the picture. A painting of the buckets could be an idealised fiction.
 
^^If you can crop out the date stamp, i'd say your onto a winner!

For me this thread seems like a bit of a whine from those who only really understand the technical side of photography and not the artistic side. I dont like all of the pictures in that thread but a lot are very good. I suspect if a phot of Ashness bridge appeared everybody on here would be getting all misty eyed over it.
 
Brazo said:
^^If you can crop out the date stamp, i'd say your onto a winner!

For me this thread seems like a bit of a whine from those who only really understand the technical side of photography and not the artistic side. I dont like all of the pictures in that thread but a lot are very good. I suspect if a phot of Ashness bridge appeared everybody on here would be getting all misty eyed over it.
Click to expand...
Yes. Amateur photography is oversaturated with dull-as-dishwater but technically competent eye candy. There's a drought of imagination. You've seen one golden hour landscape you've seen them all.
But people, by and large, aren't interested in being challenged. They want to see stuff that doesn't ask them to think too hard. And anything that asks them to step outside their comfort zone is dismissed contemptuously as "pretentious b******t" because it eases their worry that they might be a bit thick. "I don't understand that so either it's nonsense or I'm stupid. So it must be nonsense."

It's why TV is constant inane rubbish. It's why utter bilge like the novels of Dan Brown sell millions worldwide. That's what people want. Same with photography.
 
Last edited:
ghoti said:
Yes. Amateur photography is oversaturated with dull-as-dishwater but technically competent eye candy. There's a drought of imagination. You've seen one golden hour landscape you've seen them all.
But people, by and large, aren't interested in being challenged. They want to see stuff that doesn't ask them to think too hard. And anything that asks them to step outside their comfort zone is dismissed contemptuously as "pretentious b******t" because it eases their worry that they might be a bit thick. "I don't understand that so either it's nonsense or I'm stupid. So it must be nonsense."

It's why TV is constant inane rubbish. It's why utter bilge like the novels of Dan Brown sell millions worldwide. That's what people want. Same with photography.
Click to expand...
Either that or people who can see something interesting in those pictures are all posers.
 
ghoti said:
But people, by and large, aren't interested in being challenged. They want to see stuff that doesn't ask them to think too hard. And anything that asks them to step outside their comfort zone is dismissed contemptuously as "pretentious b******t" because it eases their worry that they might be a bit thick. "I don't understand that so either it's nonsense or I'm stupid. So it must be nonsense."
Click to expand...

I suspect if we wanted to be challenged about life then we'd go take a moral philosophy class or go to a radical church or dozen other things. Most of us want images that make us think WOW - How Incredibly Beautiful/dramatic/astounding etc, and the mundane represented by a majority of these just make us wonder why we looked at them. It's not even necessarily a case of stupidity, but rather very few have any interest in philosophy through imagery with the majority of people simply not being wired that way. The kind of interpretation skills required to 'appreciate' art can be trained into people, but the likelihood is that they simply aren't very interested.

Sometimes it genuinely feels like art is a deliberate pursuit of mediocrity in the things that matter to most people in order to attempt to provoke a reaction, while at the same time failing to do so because those ordinary people will also miss that point. Different interests, different contact points: those who don't get the art represented in these images simply don't find a point of cotact in them.
 
ancient_mariner said:
I suspect if we wanted to be challenged about life then we'd go take a moral philosophy class or go to a radical church or dozen other things. Most of us want images that make us think WOW - How Incredibly Beautiful/dramatic/astounding etc, and the mundane represented by a majority of these just make us wonder why we looked at them. It's not even necessarily a case of stupidity, but rather very few have any interest in philosophy through imagery with the majority of people simply not being wired that way. The kind of interpretation skills required to 'appreciate' art can be trained into people, but the likelihood is that they simply aren't very interested.

Sometimes it genuinely feels like art is a deliberate pursuit of mediocrity in the things that matter to most people in order to attempt to provoke a reaction, while at the same time failing to do so because those ordinary people will also miss that point. Different interests, different contact points: those who don't get the art represented in these images simply don't find a point of cotact in them.
Click to expand...
Only being interested in pretty pictures is fair enough. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with pretty pictures for the sake of pretty pictures. I like pretty pictures but I think it's dull and lazy to limit oneself only to what is superficially pretty. That's just my opinion; I'm not going to tell anyone else what they can and can't like.

But if the people commenting in this thread are simply not interested why the fatuous sneering? Why pass comment on the BBC piece at all?
 
ghoti said:
Only being interested in pretty pictures is fair enough. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with pretty pictures for the sake of pretty pictures. I like pretty pictures but I think it's dull and lazy to limit oneself only to what is superficially pretty. That's just my opinion; I'm not going to tell anyone else what they can and can't like.

But if the people commenting in this thread are simply not interested why the fatuous sneering? Why pass comment on the BBC piece at all?
Click to expand...

;)

I'd say that the fatuous sneering is at pictures than many would bin if they found them in their cameras, and would be embarassed to display in a public place. If you're someone who has worked at their craft, invested large sums of money, hundreds of hours, sucked up critique of your images, it's really hard to see people giving high profile credit to images that - in your eyes - look like rejects. Just like you might reject the dull-as-ditchwater landscape shots that some love and are proud of.

It's a curious thing, but I have already started to see shots that once I'd have been pleased with as cliched too, mostly through being exposed to this place.
 
Last edited:
Gillian Wearings image is from 'Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say' a series of around 600 photographs taken in 1992-93. The series that usual is exhibited is around 50 images. Passers-by held up messages composed on sheets of A3 paper provided by Wearing.
A policeman presents a sign that says “Help”; someone with a tattoo on his face reveals: “I have been certified as mildly insane!” In the most famous image of the lot, a man in a suit and tie has written: “I’m desperate”.

Simple images, some might say boring snapshots in the street, but actually highly engaging and thoughtful
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top