Stephen Shore on what interests him.

[SrMi]

Ok, an example from that gallery: https://www.303gallery.com/artists/stephen-shore/images/landscapes

Would you consider this to be an example of a very carefully composed image?

Yes. Though it may not be my favorite Shore's image, I enjoy it.

I'm willing to accept that he composed the shot this way for very considered reasons that I'm entirely missing, but I'll be frank and say that to my visual awareness, this is basically crap.

It is not that rare that people think some art is crap.

Happy to be corrected if I've entirely missed the point, but I can't imagine any circumstances in which I would consider this a good picture. Perhaps you can put me straight.

On the other hand, this early work is excellently seen and composed:

https://www.303gallery.com/artists/stephen-shore/images/early-work#4

That image does not move me as much and looks more snapshottish. It is a great image, though.

 

[SeeingSomeThingsMissingMany]

2008 when I got into photogrpahy never heard of Ansel, Arbus, Capa, Erwitt, Eugene, HC-B, Lange, McCullin, McCurry, Steichen, Weston.

Only David Bailey because of hilarious olympus ads.



Even now when you ladies gents mention photographers I have to search online. Photographers mentioned in this thread I had to look them up.

Only vaguely recalled from my teens a few photography books from the library : really taken by the experimental photography also glamour.

[ o ]

This not knowing was the best thing happened to me artistically in photography. As I found my own way within a year 2009.

Also I could wholeheartedly say I wasn't influenced by any photogrpaher renowned or other.

[ o ]

Ethereal and Obvious everyday things.

Chose 20 to share from 200 odd I kept 2009-2012 my heyday photography. Not my best as it were, those best I keep for who knows what lol. Then even 20 is too much yikes!


Braille; Pin; Curtain; Shrubs; Windows; Screw; Glass; Foliage, Paving; Cloth.


Metal; Wooden Gate; Shop; Ice; Pebbles; Snow; Traffic; Fence; Seat; Gravel.

[ o ]

From 2001-2011 launched : point n shoot, bridge, dslrs with m42 adapted lenses, mirrorlesses with various adapted lenses.

Collage maker app.

--
Photography after all is interplay of light alongside perspective.

 

[DavidMillier]

Ok, an example from that gallery: https://www.303gallery.com/artists/stephen-shore/images/landscapes

Would you consider this to be an example of a very carefully composed image?

Yes. Though it may not be my favorite Shore's image, I enjoy it.

I'm willing to accept that he composed the shot this way for very considered reasons that I'm entirely missing, but I'll be frank and say that to my visual awareness, this is basically crap.

It is not that rare that people think some art is crap.

Happy to be corrected if I've entirely missed the point, but I can't imagine any circumstances in which I would consider this a good picture. Perhaps you can put me straight.

On the other hand, this early work is excellently seen and composed:

https://www.303gallery.com/artists/stephen-shore/images/early-work#4

That image does not move me as much and looks more snapshottish. It is a great image, though.

I don't consider the shot to be interesting from the subject, lighting etc perspective but I reckon this one demonstrates some evidence of a photographic eye. Shot from behind from a slightly low viewpoint and making good use of geometry with the triangular arm position to form a strong, dynamic graphic composition. That makes it somewhat visually interesting. It looks like a shot by an experienced photographer. No idea what story it is telling or what it is showing us, but there is composition at work and that can be more than enough to make a picture for formalists like myself.

I'm not a fan of dissing other people's photographs, 99% of everything is crap, and it's all personal taste anyway, someone will hate a shot and someone else will love a shot, the artist has zero control over an audience's response because we are all different. But this genre of flat, uninteresting, boring type of nothing photography that somehow gets praised as high art baffles me and I've never heard anything from fans that makes any sort of sense of it. It doesn't draw attention to anything, it doesn't make any kind of commentary, it doesn't even document the everyday life we take for granted and largely overlook. It just looks like bad photography from people with no skill. That landscape shot looks like he accidentally pressed the button when removing the camera case. It has no subject, no lighting, and no composition. It is pointless and boring and tells us nothing at all about the subject, the purpose, the intent; and it has no dynamic, graphic formalist elements to compensate. It is a nothing shot, what was the point?

Unfortunately, I think the same about most of the images I've seen in this genre. To me, having a strong composition with subject elements very carefully arranged in a way that corresponds to the shapes, lines and curves that stimulates the vision system is very important. Maybe I just don't understand the genre; but to me most of it looks like it was shot by 3 year olds playing with a camera and randomly shooting. These images consistently cut off sections of the subject, point in slightly the wrong direction, have all sorts of accidentally included distractions around the edges, have flat uninteresting lighting etc etc. They seem to do everything wrong photographically.

I'm repeatedly told by fans of Eggleston and his like minded travellers that these people are geniuses of composition if only I could educate myself to see it, and these compositions are remarkably sophisticated and clever. I just can't see it myself, no matter how much I look at examples of the style. It just looks bad.

The only way I can make any sense of what they do is by assuming they are trying to make some sort of post modernist ironic statement about photography that I'm missing and certainly wouldn't care about if I weren't missing it. To me this is what photography looks like if we remove everything that makes photography worth looking at. It's what you would see if you snuck into a chemist shop in the 1970s and stole all the failed snaps waiting to be collected by soon (yet again) to be disappointed tyro photographers destined to give up the art.

I guess that counts as an art movement of a sort, but it's not for me. I'm sticking to stuff that is designed to stimulate the natural parts of our visual systems, the photographic skill we call composition.

(Hmmm, I also accept that I sound like any number of old fuddy duddies bemoaning the state of art/society/everything because I don't understand it. But in my defence, I have taken the praise for this kind of stuff at face value and tried. But I just can't see it. Perhaps someone will explain)...

--
2024: Awarded Royal Photographic Society LRPS Distinction
Photo of the day: https://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/wp/photo-of-the-day-2025/
Website: https://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/wp/
DPReview gallery: https://www.dpreview.com/galleries/0286305481
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmillier/ (very old!)

 

[paulraphael]

For me the problem is not the ordinariness of the subject matter, I'm all for that, but the deliberately casual and snapshot style used to photograph those subjects. I understand that there is a craft to this style that is better than initially meets the eye, but I remain unconvinced.

Be careful about generalizing. While one of his goals with some early work was to make pictures that looked more like "seeing" than like picture making, he moved on from this.

The work in Uncommon Places is formally rigorous. It's superficially looser than work by people from a previous generation, but also spatially and formally more complex in many cases. If it looks like a snapshot esthetic, you're not looking closely.

And he's gone in quite a few different directions in 40 years since then.

 

[paulraphael]

In about a half-dozen Shore interviews, he quotes Walker Evans calling successful photographs "transcendent documents."

Which I understand to mean: they're about something significantly beyond what they describe.

I get the sense this is what Shore is talking about most of the time when he calls a photograph "interesting." It's more than depicting an interesting scene, or using an interesting picture-making technique. It's one of those "you know it when you see it" phenomena. And it's rather magical.

It describes why so few of the people who copy artists like Evans and Shore ever do anything as significant, even though they've learned all the superficial moves.

 

[SeeingSomeThingsMissingMany]

In about a half-dozen Shore interviews, he quotes Walker Evans calling successful photographs "transcendent documents."

We need to be able to see things as transcendent to be able try to photograph them this way. Even then Photography as an art form as well as any other form whether painting writing so forth can only approximately portray a slither of transcendce which by its very meaning is way beyond the confines of something as limited as a human made art form as photography : even though where the science engineering the art of photography Originates from is Transcendent.

I have around perhaps 500 or so photographs from 2008-2012 where they captured an approximate slither of transcendence in my minds eye, to others they are nothing just photographs. A handful are in the collages I shared earlier. To put in another way one person's transcendence is another person's tripe.

--
Photography after all is interplay of light alongside perspective.

 

[Rob de Loe]

In about a half-dozen Shore interviews, he quotes Walker Evans calling successful photographs "transcendent documents."

Which I understand to mean: they're about something significantly beyond what they describe.

I get the sense this is what Shore is talking about most of the time when he calls a photograph "interesting." It's more than depicting an interesting scene, or using an interesting picture-making technique. It's one of those "you know it when you see it" phenomena. And it's rather magical.

It describes why so few of the people who copy artists like Evans and Shore ever do anything as significant, even though they've learned all the superficial moves.

I do understand the argument, and I respect the fact that sometimes you need practice, education, a certain sensibility, to appreciate a piece of art.

My concern though is that there can be a straight line from this perspective to a kind of arty chicanery that I always find bothersome. Instead of, "you know it when you see it", we get, "Well, if you can't see it, then clearly you are not the kind of person who can appreciate it".

Sometimes that's actually true. Just because Joe Blow and Jane Doe can't appreciate a piece of art doesn't mean it isn't superb. But sometimes it's just a ploy to transmute mediocrity into transcendence, along the lines of "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullsh!t".

 

[paulraphael]

Sometimes that's actually true. Just because Joe Blow and Jane Doe can't appreciate a piece of art doesn't mean it isn't superb. But sometimes it's just a ploy to transmute mediocrity into transcendence, along the lines of "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullsh!t".

I think you'll see that in the hype of gallerists who sell to super-rich collectors ... people like young finance bros who are mostly trying to one-up each other. But this isn't most of the art world, and it doesn't hold up over time.

When there's hype about the most recent artist who taped a banana to the wall , be skeptical. But when curators and collectors and historians are still talking about someone 40 years later, the emperor is probably well dressed.

Edited to add: I recognize that my "you know it when you see it" comment isn't thoughtful or helpful. The real point is that this kind of thing is especially hard to teach. There's no formula.

 

[DavidMillier]

In about a half-dozen Shore interviews, he quotes Walker Evans calling successful photographs "transcendent documents."

Which I understand to mean: they're about something significantly beyond what they describe.

I get the sense this is what Shore is talking about most of the time when he calls a photograph "interesting." It's more than depicting an interesting scene, or using an interesting picture-making technique. It's one of those "you know it when you see it" phenomena. And it's rather magical.

It describes why so few of the people who copy artists like Evans and Shore ever do anything as significant, even though they've learned all the superficial moves.

I do understand the argument, and I respect the fact that sometimes you need practice, education, a certain sensibility, to appreciate a piece of art.

My concern though is that there can be a straight line from this perspective to a kind of arty chicanery that I always find bothersome. Instead of, "you know it when you see it", we get, "Well, if you can't see it, then clearly you are not the kind of person who can appreciate it".

Sometimes that's actually true. Just because Joe Blow and Jane Doe can't appreciate a piece of art doesn't mean it isn't superb. But sometimes it's just a ploy to transmute mediocrity into transcendence, along the lines of "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullsh!t".

I'm the first to recognise that I'm not very culturally educated. I'm also not subtlely minded, I don't get or particularly appreciate references and nods to prior culture, nor jabs at existing pretension. In other words, I'm not the audience for certain kinds of artistic works. I have to admit that the majority of art, painting and photography alike leaves me cold.My interests are quite narrow, and my own work, weak as it is, is an attempt to follow the path of my own interests, but I do like to look at as much work as I can and attempt to broaden my tastes.

From a very early age in my introduction to photography, I found I was affected deeply by, and developed a love of very graphic, minimalist, design based imagery. Hence my liking for the shot with the lady with the triangular arm in Shore's portfolio. I like very precise compositions. I have never found any interest in casual photographs (deliberately casual or not). They look like careless, clueless snapshots to me. A lot of Shore's work I have looked up, like a number of the Eggleston style photographers, seems to me to fall into this category. There are plenty of fans who hint at some ungrasped-by-me-superior-quality to the work, but it does appear to have more than whiff of BS.

Nonetheless, despite my antipathy to this style, I'm still a little open to having its qualities properly explained to me, if such an explanation is possible. Not excused, or passed off as something only the elite can understand, but a proper, straight arrow, no BS prosaic explanation of exactly how imagery that appears to break every historically understood principle of composition is actually good photography. I may be narrow, limited and perhaps a little dense, but you never know, maybe I can change my opinion given the right help...

--
2024: Awarded Royal Photographic Society LRPS Distinction
Photo of the day: https://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/wp/photo-of-the-day-2025/
Website: https://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/wp/
DPReview gallery: https://www.dpreview.com/galleries/0286305481
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmillier/ (very old!)

 

[Rob de Loe]

Sometimes that's actually true. Just because Joe Blow and Jane Doe can't appreciate a piece of art doesn't mean it isn't superb. But sometimes it's just a ploy to transmute mediocrity into transcendence, along the lines of "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullsh!t".

I think you'll see that in the hype of gallerists who sell to super-rich collectors ... people like young finance bros who are mostly trying to one-up each other. But this isn't most of the art world, and it doesn't hold up over time.

When there's hype about the most recent artist who taped a banana to the wall , be skeptical. But when curators and collectors and historians are still talking about someone 40 years later, the emperor is probably well dressed.

I like this expansion on your argument.

Group think and a herd mentality can explain a durable consensus, but I think the effect fades over many decades. After a while, going against the group/herd has its own rewards and incentives.

Edited to add: I recognize that my "you know it when you see it" comment isn't thoughtful or helpful. The real point is that this kind of thing is especially hard to teach. There's no formula.

I knew what you meant, and I agree that it is hard to teach. In fact, I wonder if the relationship is inverse. In other words, the easier it is to teach, the more likely it is to be mechanistic and programmatic-- and thus the less likely it is to be ... transcendent or whatever that wonderful quality is we're reaching for here.

I should emphasize that I think it's good that people can't agree on this stuff. Can you imagine how boring art would be if we could all agree on what we liked? Art that doesn't speak to anyone is a failure, in my view, because art is about humans communicating with humans. But I don't think that the success of art is a function of how many people it reaches.

 

[Rob de Loe]

Sometimes that's actually true. Just because Joe Blow and Jane Doe can't appreciate a piece of art doesn't mean it isn't superb. But sometimes it's just a ploy to transmute mediocrity into transcendence, along the lines of "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullsh!t".

I think you'll see that in the hype of gallerists who sell to super-rich collectors ... people like young finance bros who are mostly trying to one-up each other. But this isn't most of the art world, and it doesn't hold up over time.

When there's hype about the most recent artist who taped a banana to the wall , be skeptical. But when curators and collectors and historians are still talking about someone 40 years later, the emperor is probably well dressed.

I like this expansion on your argument.

Group think and a herd mentality can explain a durable consensus, but I think the effect fades over many decades. After a while, going against the group/herd has its own rewards and incentives.

Edited to add: I recognize that my "you know it when you see it" comment isn't thoughtful or helpful. The real point is that this kind of thing is especially hard to teach. There's no formula.

I knew what you meant, and I agree that it is hard to teach. In fact, I wonder if the relationship is inverse. In other words, the easier it is to teach, the more likely it is to be mechanistic and programmatic-- and thus the less likely it is to be ... transcendent or whatever that wonderful quality is we're reaching for here.

I should emphasize that I think it's good that people can't agree on this stuff. Can you imagine how boring art would be if we could all agree on what we liked? Art that doesn't speak to anyone is a failure, in my view, because art is about humans communicating with humans. But I don't think that the success of art is a function of how many people it reaches.

 

[Rob de Loe]

In about a half-dozen Shore interviews, he quotes Walker Evans calling successful photographs "transcendent documents."

Which I understand to mean: they're about something significantly beyond what they describe.

I get the sense this is what Shore is talking about most of the time when he calls a photograph "interesting." It's more than depicting an interesting scene, or using an interesting picture-making technique. It's one of those "you know it when you see it" phenomena. And it's rather magical.

It describes why so few of the people who copy artists like Evans and Shore ever do anything as significant, even though they've learned all the superficial moves.

I do understand the argument, and I respect the fact that sometimes you need practice, education, a certain sensibility, to appreciate a piece of art.

My concern though is that there can be a straight line from this perspective to a kind of arty chicanery that I always find bothersome. Instead of, "you know it when you see it", we get, "Well, if you can't see it, then clearly you are not the kind of person who can appreciate it".

Sometimes that's actually true. Just because Joe Blow and Jane Doe can't appreciate a piece of art doesn't mean it isn't superb. But sometimes it's just a ploy to transmute mediocrity into transcendence, along the lines of "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullsh!t".

I'm the first to recognise that I'm not very culturally educated. I'm also not subtlely minded, I don't get or particularly appreciate references and nods to prior culture, nor jabs at existing pretension. In other words, I'm not the audience for certain kinds of artistic works. I have to admit that the majority of art, painting and photography alike leaves me cold.My interests are quite narrow, and my own work, weak as it is, is an attempt to follow the path of my own interests, but I do like to look at as much work as I can and attempt to broaden my tastes.

From a very early age in my introduction to photography, I found I was affected deeply by, and developed a love of very graphic, minimalist, design based imagery. Hence my liking for the shot with the lady with the triangular arm in Shore's portfolio. I like very precise compositions. I have never found any interest in casual photographs (deliberately casual or not). They look like careless, clueless snapshots to me. A lot of Shore's work I have looked up, like a number of the Eggleston style photographers, seems to me to fall into this category. There are plenty of fans who hint at some ungrasped-by-me-superior-quality to the work, but it does appear to have more than whiff of BS.

Nonetheless, despite my antipathy to this style, I'm still a little open to having its qualities properly explained to me, if such an explanation is possible. Not excused, or passed off as something only the elite can understand, but a proper, straight arrow, no BS prosaic explanation of exactly how imagery that appears to break every historically understood principle of composition is actually good photography. I may be narrow, limited and perhaps a little dense, but you never know, maybe I can change my opinion given the right help...

I'm actually very sympathetic to your position David. I'm hypersensitive to people telling me I should appreciate something for reasons that only they understand. I don't need art to be literal or easily understood, and I don't mind working for appreciation, but I need to be able to get there without someone hectoring me or explaining it endlessly. It reaches me, or it doesn't, and no amount of verbiage will change that.

 

[D Saul]

But sometimes it's just a ploy to transmute mediocrity into transcendence, along the lines of "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullsh!t".

I'm still a little open to having its qualities properly explained to me, if such an explanation is possible. Not excused, or passed off as something only the elite can understand, but a proper, straight arrow, no BS prosaic explanation of exactly how imagery that appears to break every historically understood principle of composition is actually good photography.

The more art I look at and read about, the more I agree with Rob's assessment, though it's not always true (in some rare instances, it takes the public a while to catch up with an artist's talent).

And an authentic answer to David's "request" would be golden to hear // read! However, it's probably one of the toughest questions to honestly deal with from any perspective, and it helps keep the "art game" alive and profitable.

 

[paulraphael]

I should emphasize that I think it's good that people can't agree on this stuff. Can you imagine how boring art would be if we could all agree on what we liked? Art that doesn't speak to anyone is a failure, in my view, because art is about humans communicating with humans. But I don't think that the success of art is a function of how many people it reaches.

Agree 100%.

I just wish people weren't so quick to assume you're lying or brainwashed just because you like something they don't get.

It's gotten exhausting to say I love Friedlander's work, only to be told no, I don't.

 

[Rob de Loe]

I should emphasize that I think it's good that people can't agree on this stuff. Can you imagine how boring art would be if we could all agree on what we liked? Art that doesn't speak to anyone is a failure, in my view, because art is about humans communicating with humans. But I don't think that the success of art is a function of how many people it reaches.

Agree 100%.

I just wish people weren't so quick to assume you're lying or brainwashed just because you like something they don't get.

It's gotten exhausting to say I love Friedlander's work, only to be told no, I don't.

I try hard to not be that guy. I know what isn't reaching me, and I don't mind being honest about it. But I want to be someone who can accept that other people can be reached by things that fall flat with me.

Ned Pratt and Toshio Shibata get to me for reasons other people dislike them. It's all good.

 

[SeeingSomeThingsMissingMany]

1. DavidMillier wrote:

I have never found any interest in casual photographs (deliberately casual or not). They look like careless, clueless snapshots to me. ...

Nonetheless, despite my antipathy to this style, I'm still a little open to having its qualities properly explained to me, if such an explanation is possible. Not excused, or passed off as something only the elite can understand, but a proper, straight arrow, no BS prosaic explanation of exactly how imagery that appears to break every historically understood principle of composition is actually good photography.

The other day in the park with my milc some manual adapted lenses five early teens girls and boys approached me they wanted to see what I was doing. On my milc screen I showed them how altering aperture altering focus point altering focus itself altering angles altering compositions could give different looks to the foliage they were wowed. Then one of the teens showed more interest so I handed my camera over to her so she could do see for herself she was quite taken by how she could alter an image. If I had spare funds I would have gifted my camera and lenses to her.

To me I should be able to easily show explain briefly to others they should be able to get easily at least what some of my photography is about.

[ o ]

I must admit I only looked at 1 photo by Stephen Shore : linked on this thread. Never heard of him before same as nobody heard of me before lol.

--
Photography after all is interplay of light alongside perspective.

 

[DavidMillier]

I've been doing some quick online research on the orginal New Topographics movement and follow-ons and wannabes.

It's interesting just how many commenters and reviewers there are on this genre. It's also interesting just how hand-wavy and lacking in straight forward explanation the commenters are.

Lots and lots of arty-farty, intellectualised comments about "reactions to overly romantised Ansel era work" and "documenting the collapse of the American dream into urban sprawl" and "showing the incursion of suburban landscape into the natural landscape" and "reaction against the tradition of monumental American West landscape photography" and so on and so on.

I find this kind of review frustrating to the say the least. It hints as some kind of elite "special understanding" you have to have about the history of photography and the place of certain movements within that history in order to grasp the bravery of these photographers' incisive vision and their courage in breaking the bounds of the status quo and breaking new ground. What it doesn't do is explain what these photographers have done in terms of their actual images and the technical/artistic tricks they have introduced or taken advantage of.

My interest in imagery is largely visual. I don't really think about allegory/metaphor/social commentary/intellectual conceptions at all. To me, photography succeeds or fails purely on what it looks like. To this end, timing, framing, composition, lighting is what matters. Image elements have physical relationships to one another, balance, dynamics, lines, curves, tones, patterns, colours, organisation of elements within the frame and special attention given to the relationships between the subjects and the frame edges are very important. Can't stress how important I consider the frame edges and particularly how the subject fits within the frame and how its arrangement guides your eye around the frame. Ideally, it keeps your eye bounded within the frame.

To me, snap shot photography is boring and fails, not because the subject is uninteresting (many people care only about the subject, but intrinsically boring subjects can be made interesting by skillful photographers), but because the basic photographic skills are poor. Inexperienced/unskilled amateur photographers often make rudimentary compositional errors that drown the viewer in tedious mediocrity. Hopefully with experience and effort, they improve and learn to refine and polish their compositions and avoid rookie mistakes.

Some of the New Topographics photographers (and their later followers) appear to try and make a virtue of deliberately shooting bad compositions. Or at least it looks that way to me. I'm assured these guys know what they are doing and that when they "accidentally" cut of heads, chop cars in half, leave bit of twigs poking in at the edges and or all the other superficial evidence of photographic incompetence, it is deliberate, precise and intended to make a point. However, I don't get that point - it just looks like incompetent, lazy, careless composition. And that is what frustrates me about the aesthetic. I'm all for the neutral documentary approach, I'm all for photographing the ordinary and the mundane and even the down at the heel seedy or cheap and superficial. But I want people to execute that photography in a skilled and exciting visionary way, not embrace carelessness and sloppiness (even if it is fake carelessness and sloppiness).

If you shoot something in a boring, snapshot way, to me the result is boring and snapshotty, no matter how "knowing" the intent. And I don't understand the acclaim these guys get. Nowhere can I find deep, technically precise detailed deconstruction of individual photographs explaining exactly why we should accept what looks like a snapshot as good. I'm thinking here of something in the tradition of the absolutely clear, unambiguous and precise explanation you get from Rob when he explains, say, the use of camera movements and how you can use them to enhance the communication of your images. Instead, we get art waffle and constant assurances we should just accept it all as good. Smells of group-think to me.

p.s.

I mentioned I know little of the history of photographic movements and that also means little about photographers in general, so you'll forgive me for mentioning a photographer that is new to me, but probably famous to most: Robert Adams. He appears to be one of the founders of this genre and a superficial spin through some of his work indicates to me that he is a competent composer. I guess that lesson I should maybe learn from this personal discovery is that not all photographers in a genre are the same and I need to take the time to separate them out and look at their work individually.

--
2024: Awarded Royal Photographic Society LRPS Distinction
Photo of the day: https://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/wp/photo-of-the-day-2025/
Website: https://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/wp/
DPReview gallery: https://www.dpreview.com/galleries/0286305481
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmillier/ (very old!)

 

[UsherFellig]

Tedious? Wannabes? Nothing more "tedious" than the quote-unquote "galleries" full of pricey Ansel Adams-wannabe nature-calendar photos that seem to infest every US beach town that's even halfway well-heeled.

See how that works? Anyone can have at it and take a shot or make their case about any subgenre. We get it. We really, really get it, you think the Egglestons, the Friedlanders, the Ruschas, the Shores, the Nan Goldins, are a bad case of Emperor's New Clothes. They don't float your boat, and that is absolutely legit. Somehow, though, I think their place in the art-history books will survive.

So does this mean you won't be lining up at the next Dash Snow retrospective?

 

[paulraphael]

I've been doing some quick online research on the orginal New Topographics movement and follow-ons and wannabes.

It's interesting just how many commenters and reviewers there are on this genre. It's also interesting just how hand-wavy and lacking in straight forward explanation the commenters are.

Lots and lots of arty-farty, intellectualised comments about "reactions to overly romantised Ansel era work" and "documenting the collapse of the American dream into urban sprawl" and "showing the incursion of suburban landscape into the natural landscape" and "reaction against the tradition of monumental American West landscape photography" and so on and so on.

I find this kind of review frustrating to the say the least. It hints as some kind of elite "special understanding" you have to have about the history of photography and the place of certain movements within that history in order to grasp the bravery of these photographers' incisive vision and their courage in breaking the bounds of the status quo and breaking new ground. What it doesn't do is explain what these photographers have done in terms of their actual images and the technical/artistic tricks they have introduced or taken advantage of.

My interest in imagery is largely visual. I don't really think about allegory/metaphor/social commentary/intellectual conceptions at all. To me, photography succeeds or fails purely on what it looks like. To this end, timing, framing, composition, lighting is what matters. Image elements have physical relationships to one another, balance, dynamics, lines, curves, tones, patterns, colours, organisation of elements within the frame and special attention given to the relationships between the subjects and the frame edges are very important. Can't stress how important I consider the frame edges and particularly how the subject fits within the frame and how its arrangement guides your eye around the frame. Ideally, it keeps your eye bounded within the frame.

To me, snap shot photography is boring and fails, not because the subject is uninteresting (many people care only about the subject, but intrinsically boring subjects can be made interesting by skillful photographers), but because the basic photographic skills are poor. Inexperienced/unskilled amateur photographers often make rudimentary compositional errors that drown the viewer in tedious mediocrity. Hopefully with experience and effort, they improve and learn to refine and polish their compositions and avoid rookie mistakes.

Some of the New Topographics photographers (and their later followers) appear to try and make a virtue of deliberately shooting bad compositions. Or at least it looks that way to me. I'm assured these guys know what they are doing and that when they "accidentally" cut of heads, chop cars in half, leave bit of twigs poking in at the edges and or all the other superficial evidence of photographic incompetence, it is deliberate, precise and intended to make a point. However, I don't get that point - it just looks like incompetent, lazy, careless composition. And that is what frustrates me about the aesthetic. I'm all for the neutral documentary approach, I'm all for photographing the ordinary and the mundane and even the down at the heel seedy or cheap and superficial. But I want people to execute that photography in a skilled and exciting visionary way, not embrace carelessness and sloppiness (even if it is fake carelessness and sloppiness).

If you shoot something in a boring, snapshot way, to me the result is boring and snapshotty, no matter how "knowing" the intent. And I don't understand the acclaim these guys get. Nowhere can I find deep, technically precise detailed deconstruction of individual photographs explaining exactly why we should accept what looks like a snapshot as good. I'm thinking here of something in the tradition of the absolutely clear, unambiguous and precise explanation you get from Rob when he explains, say, the use of camera movements and how you can use them to enhance the communication of your images. Instead, we get art waffle and constant assurances we should just accept it all as good. Smells of group-think to me.

p.s.

I mentioned I know little of the history of photographic movements and that also means little about photographers in general, so you'll forgive me for mentioning a photographer that is new to me, but probably famous to most: Robert Adams. He appears to be one of the founders of this genre and a superficial spin through some of his work indicates to me that he is a competent composer. I guess that lesson I should maybe learn from this personal discovery is that not all photographers in a genre are the same and I need to take the time to separate them out and look at their work individually.

You're making impassioned arguments based on very superficial looks at a whole lot of artists. And I don't know what these essays are that you're citing; they sound more like paraphrases of forum discussions than something William Jenkins or Szarkowski or Robert Adams himself would have written. Those are smart people who have something real to say.

It becomes a straw-man argument the minute you label every post-Romantic landscape as "New Topographic." That term doesn't name a genre or a club with a secret handshake. It was the name of a single exhibition curated by Jenkins at the Eastman House in 1975. The included artists (Adams, Shore, Nicholas Nixon, the Bechers, Frank Gholke, Lewis Baltz) did not go on in life identifying themselves with this label. If others choose to do so, they're being casual, or lazy. These artists have done bodies of work that are very different from one another. None of them fits the stereotypes that get tossed their way.

You're under no obligation to like the work of any of them. But if you feel strongly enough to comment on it publicly, I'd suggest looking at it seriously enough to understand what you're commenting on. These are all serious artists whose work doesn't submit gracefully to superficial criticism (or superficial praise).

One of the best ways in is through Robert Adams' own writing. His best-known book is called (tellingly): Beauty in Photography: Essays in Defense of Traditional Values.

 

[DavidMillier]

I've been doing some quick online research on the orginal New Topographics movement and follow-ons and wannabes.

It's interesting just how many commenters and reviewers there are on this genre. It's also interesting just how hand-wavy and lacking in straight forward explanation the commenters are.

Lots and lots of arty-farty, intellectualised comments about "reactions to overly romantised Ansel era work" and "documenting the collapse of the American dream into urban sprawl" and "showing the incursion of suburban landscape into the natural landscape" and "reaction against the tradition of monumental American West landscape photography" and so on and so on.

I find this kind of review frustrating to the say the least. It hints as some kind of elite "special understanding" you have to have about the history of photography and the place of certain movements within that history in order to grasp the bravery of these photographers' incisive vision and their courage in breaking the bounds of the status quo and breaking new ground. What it doesn't do is explain what these photographers have done in terms of their actual images and the technical/artistic tricks they have introduced or taken advantage of.

My interest in imagery is largely visual. I don't really think about allegory/metaphor/social commentary/intellectual conceptions at all. To me, photography succeeds or fails purely on what it looks like. To this end, timing, framing, composition, lighting is what matters. Image elements have physical relationships to one another, balance, dynamics, lines, curves, tones, patterns, colours, organisation of elements within the frame and special attention given to the relationships between the subjects and the frame edges are very important. Can't stress how important I consider the frame edges and particularly how the subject fits within the frame and how its arrangement guides your eye around the frame. Ideally, it keeps your eye bounded within the frame.

To me, snap shot photography is boring and fails, not because the subject is uninteresting (many people care only about the subject, but intrinsically boring subjects can be made interesting by skillful photographers), but because the basic photographic skills are poor. Inexperienced/unskilled amateur photographers often make rudimentary compositional errors that drown the viewer in tedious mediocrity. Hopefully with experience and effort, they improve and learn to refine and polish their compositions and avoid rookie mistakes.

Some of the New Topographics photographers (and their later followers) appear to try and make a virtue of deliberately shooting bad compositions. Or at least it looks that way to me. I'm assured these guys know what they are doing and that when they "accidentally" cut of heads, chop cars in half, leave bit of twigs poking in at the edges and or all the other superficial evidence of photographic incompetence, it is deliberate, precise and intended to make a point. However, I don't get that point - it just looks like incompetent, lazy, careless composition. And that is what frustrates me about the aesthetic. I'm all for the neutral documentary approach, I'm all for photographing the ordinary and the mundane and even the down at the heel seedy or cheap and superficial. But I want people to execute that photography in a skilled and exciting visionary way, not embrace carelessness and sloppiness (even if it is fake carelessness and sloppiness).

If you shoot something in a boring, snapshot way, to me the result is boring and snapshotty, no matter how "knowing" the intent. And I don't understand the acclaim these guys get. Nowhere can I find deep, technically precise detailed deconstruction of individual photographs explaining exactly why we should accept what looks like a snapshot as good. I'm thinking here of something in the tradition of the absolutely clear, unambiguous and precise explanation you get from Rob when he explains, say, the use of camera movements and how you can use them to enhance the communication of your images. Instead, we get art waffle and constant assurances we should just accept it all as good. Smells of group-think to me.

p.s.

I mentioned I know little of the history of photographic movements and that also means little about photographers in general, so you'll forgive me for mentioning a photographer that is new to me, but probably famous to most: Robert Adams. He appears to be one of the founders of this genre and a superficial spin through some of his work indicates to me that he is a competent composer. I guess that lesson I should maybe learn from this personal discovery is that not all photographers in a genre are the same and I need to take the time to separate them out and look at their work individually.

You're making impassioned arguments based on very superficial looks at a whole lot of artists. And I don't know what these essays are that you're citing; they sound more like paraphrases of forum discussions than something William Jenkins or Szarkowski or Robert Adams himself would have written. Those are smart people who have something real to say.

They are what people say if you do a google search, start at the top and work your way down the top dozen or so sites. None of them appear to be forums to me, rather critics, historians, gallery sites and art magazines.

It becomes a straw-man argument the minute you label every post-Romantic landscape as "New Topographic." That term doesn't name a genre or a club with a secret handshake. It was the name of a single exhibition curated by Jenkins at the Eastman House in 1975. The included artists (Adams, Shore, Nicholas Nixon, the Bechers, Frank Gholke, Lewis Baltz) did not go on in life identifying themselves with this label.

I do at least know this.

If others choose to do so, they're being casual, or lazy. These artists have done bodies of work that are very different from one another. None of them fits the stereotypes that get tossed their way.

I have grasped that I need to look into the work of the individuals rather than lump them together.

You're under no obligation to like the work of any of them. But if you feel strongly enough to comment on it publicly, I'd suggest looking at it seriously enough to understand what you're commenting on. These are all serious artists whose work doesn't submit gracefully to superficial criticism (or superficial praise).

My key dislike is the artists that appear to revel in bad, lazy composition.

Let's illustrate both the uninsightful commentary and the composition issue by example. This website https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy...pioneer-black-abstraction-experimenting-today

I know nothing about this site or its author but this article is fairly typical. It combines a certain style of text that doesn't actually address individual images in detail, rather it waffles on about the history, development and iconoclastic nature of Shore's work. If this work is so tremendous, I don't need waffley assurances I am just supposed to accept at face value from an "expert", I want to see a detailed examination of the composition of individual images. You don't get that.

The article is illustrated with some sample photos. Looking at these, I have no issue with the subject matter or the documentary style. Images of this kind become more important with the passage of time as they tell us something about the everyday life and culture of times past. Absolutely fine with that.

Composition, however, is another matter. The image with the word "Sunset" I find quite likeable. Composition is clean and uncluttered, the light is nice. I don't love that it is distorted, with modern software it would be easy to straighten the geometry, but overall it is fine. As part of a renowned body of work, I would have no problem with this image. On the negative side, the shots called "Home of Rakhil" and "Wikieup" are examples of the typical disaster composition often part and parcel of this genre. What was he thinking? Does he have no appreciation of where the edges of his frame fall in relation to the shapes and lines of his subject? Even if he doesn't, or he does it on purpose, why has the critic's eye gone missing? These guy's should be tearing these images apart for their crap composition, not celebrating them!

Once again, I don't have any objection to the subject matter or the documentary style, but I do object to lazy composition being lauded. This is simply poor artistry being passed off as ground breaking. In my mind, the only possible get out for this level of sloppy work would be a consistently expressed rationale that connects the subject matter to the style in a way that enhances communication. But I'm not seeing that. No one appears to try and explain why randomly chopping off the subject such that little bits of subject remain around the edges, shouldn't be considered pollution of the image by poor composition. Why is doing this evidence of mastery and greatness rather than simple incompetence? Why can't these errors be cropped out, surely that would improve the images? These compositional choices don't ever seem to be addressed or explained by critics.

Perhaps fans here could pick up the baton and provide the analysis and explanation that is lacking? I know my criticism is harsh but I'm still open to being convinced by a satisfying debate that rises above the usual "you're just ignorant about art, these guys are really smart"...

One of the best ways in is through Robert Adams' own writing. His best-known book is called (tellingly): Beauty in Photography: Essays in Defense of Traditional Values.

I could take a look at this, although past experience with photography essays doesn't give me much grounds for optimism. These kinds of expositions typically contain an awful lot of incomprehensible waffle. I've kind of formed an impression over decades that if you ask an artist for an explanation for anything you rarely get anything worth the time spent reading it. But I'll take a look as a show of good faith as I am the one opening the can of worms.

EDIT: Book ordered. Almost certainly a complete waste of £13 quid but I'll give it a go.

--
2024: Awarded Royal Photographic Society LRPS Distinction
Photo of the day: https://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/wp/photo-of-the-day-2025/
Website: https://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/wp/
DPReview gallery: https://www.dpreview.com/galleries/0286305481
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmillier/ (very old!)