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Goals, Passion and "Success in Photography as Art"

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
From Reflections in La Défense, my favourite playground... This thread is derived from a discussion of Cedric Massoulier's photograph, here. It follows the new version of the original picture of buildings in the Paris Area of La Défence. Comment on the pictures at the thread Cedric started. This thread is just on "Motivations, Passion and "Success" in Photography as Art"ADK


4e9db0b44b048c7e60302203c91f7ea.jpg


Cedric Massoulier: Reflections

Original


It can be said that Cedric's picture is more serious and somber, whereas Alain made it much light and more whimsical. It lost stature but it gained fun.
Cedric,

Je prefere cette version:

4e9db0b44b048c7e60302203c91f7ea-AB-2.jpg

J'ai egalement photographie La Defense en de nombreuses occasions. Jacques Tati's film Playtime is a great inspiration in this regard. It is now available on DVD in the Criterion collection. Tati is to cinema what Cartier Bresson is to photography!

Alain,

I have no "Sophie's Choice" here! These are two different works. One has social implications to me and the other, your corrected version, is more agreeable, showing balancing and interesting forms with light as jewels and shadows as ribbons in a pageant.

Asher
 
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Alain Briot

pro member
To each his own. One of the essential keys to success is thinking positively. I find that social criticism focuses too much on the negative for my taste. Beauty on the other hand focuses on the positive.

I leave the negativity, and social criticism, to others. Have it all. Rest assured that you will not get competition from me here!
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
To each his own. One of the essential keys to success is thinking positively. I find that social criticism focuses too much on the negative for my taste. Beauty on the other hand focuses on the positive.

I leave the negativity, and social criticism, to others. Have it all. Rest assured that you will not get competition from me here!

Alain,

You're so right for business purposes, at least. People buy art to get a dose of happiness. Working is not always fulfilling. One's spouse, partner or kids might not always be in the best mood. Art, however, is loyal and always there to give us a good experience and regenerate our faith in our state of affairs. In general, therefore, folk will not purchase the negative. So, unless the galleries, museums or collectors will compete to buy your foreboding works, (if that's all one offered), one could risk starvation!

I happen to have a lot of happiness. I do not need beauty to be the basic essence of a work of art. I won't tolerate cruelty or humiliation in artwork. However, commentaries on society work for me for a small but significantpart of my interest in art or even geometry and balance without beauty can be engaging.

But, given the choice, stranded on a desert Island, with a choice just two images, likely, as a sentimentalist, I'd go for beauty and the superficial as I'm weak and would want to be happy as possible!

Asher
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Asher,

Well, it's not so much business purpose as much as it is life purpose. I modeled my business to my life, not the other way around. I've never photographed negative subjects. I'm just not attracted to them. The fact that positivity sells best is what enables me to get where I am, in part, but I was doing this kind of images far before I realized that I could make a living selling them! The irony is that it took a lot of negative input while I was slaving away in a phd program in Michigan's UP to make me understand that..

I like the island metaphor. We could go further and ask, not just to you and I but to forum members, "if you were stranded on a deserted island, which artwork would you take with you, provided you can only take 1?"
 
Hi,

Very interesting discussion between two photo lovers.

I'd like to say that i don't aim to make explicit social criticism. Maybe it can be considered as a component of my pictures but social comment is not my basis purpose, even if it can be a consequence of my work. I first try to translate my vision and my feelings through images of my daily environment. When i work a picture, i don't try to give a "social" direction or a specific aesthetic style to it, i just treat it as i feel it should be. It's a pure creation process, i don't "think" when i make it.

Well, it's true that i choose specific patterns and situations, most of them are linked to urban universe and its consequences. But my purpose is not photojournalism nor documentation of society. I try to provoke a reaction using daily fragments or mundane scenes that nobody takes care at the moment. I use stuff from where i live. I think i am closer to surrealism or situationism theories than social document.

And, above all, i don't know what is "beauty" and "happiness" in art.

It's true that i often read on OPF and other forums that people want happiness, positive views, that they don't like Mr X or Mr Y pictures because they show sad things or negative side of life... I remember that i have been shocked last year reading here strong comments against Eggleston or Saul Leiter's work, because of these reasons.

Well, i think all these considerations lead to the question of Art vs Entertainment (*).

What is the role of a photograph ? To communicate feelings to our mind, whatever they are "sad" or "happy", or to be a beautiful object which main function is to divert and to decorate our sitting room ? Second choice is the choice of most of the galeries now and professional artists who need to live from their work. A lot of people like my pictures... but "art" galleries don't want them. I know it and in a way i understand it. I don't care because i don't need to sell my work to live (I prefer to be a Naïf).

(*) "Entertainment" means essentially all that things which divert and help to forget daily life. Am I happy because my mind is diverted by the entertainment ? Or am i happy because i know and accept life in all its components, even the sadest ones ? Jean-Paul, where are you ? :eek:D
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Cedric,

"Am I happy because my mind is diverted by the entertainment ? Or am i happy because i know and accept life in all its components, even the sadest ones ? Jean-Paul, where are you ?"

I am happy because I do what I love! I wasn't happy when I was forced to do what I didn't like. I couldn't accept that situation.

I'm don't know if that's Existentialism or not and if Jean-Paul Sartre would approve of it or not. Maybe its Briotism! All I know is it works for me and for those that I recommended it to and who have tried it.
Why slave away trying to put up with an unpleasant life when you can change things and make your life what you want it to be? It's just not any easier to do what you love than it is to do what you do not love. Both situations can be competitive because there's always someone who wants to have what you don't like to do.

In the end you find yourself forced to compete to keep something you don't care to have except for the financial compensation that it brings. Eventually, it is way easier to let that thing go and go do something you really care for, even if the financial compensation is smaller. If that compensation gets higher, which in all likeness it will because now you are passionate about making this work, so much the better!
 
Cedric,

"Am I happy because my mind is diverted by the entertainment ? Or am i happy because i know and accept life in all its components, even the sadest ones ? Jean-Paul, where are you ?"

I am happy because I do what I love! I wasn't happy when I was forced to do what I didn't like. I couldn't accept that situation.

I'm don't know if that's Existentialism or not and if Jean-Paul Sartre would approve of it or not. Maybe its Briotism! All I know is it works for me and for those that I recommended it to and who have tried it.
Why slave away trying to put up with an unpleasant life when you can change things and make your life what you want it to be? It's just not any easier to do what you love than it is to do what you do not love. Both situations can be competitive because there's always someone who wants to have what you don't like to do.

In the end you find yourself forced to compete to keep something you don't care to have except for the financial compensation that it brings. Eventually, it is way easier to let that thing go and go do something you really care for, even if the financial compensation is smaller. If that compensation gets higher, which in all likeness it will because now you are passionate about making this work, so much the better!

Alain,

Well, i think i agree with you ! I was just reacting about your vision of "social criticism" and negativity... Personnally, i love to realize my pictures and that's the reason why i make them. I'm a full Briotist too !

My purpose was that i don't see the link between making photographs which can be sometimes sad, ugly, or which can show "negative" things and the personal happiness.

I just shoot urban scenes and details around me, i don't judge them and i don't try to expose negativity or sadness. Some people who watch my pictures see social comments, criticism, etc... That means that this photographs contains their own richness that is able to make people feel their own experience. What is definition of art for me. I am satisfied with this.

Your original comment show that you have "préjugés" and "présupposés" about some kind of photography. I am not an angry antisocial militant :eek:D I just do what i love to do, as you do... but in a different context and a different way.
 

Alain Briot

pro member
I don't have prejuges, etc. I just express what I like and don't like. I have opinions, that's all. Most people do. Those who don't have no backbone. That's another opinion by the way. Not a fact. A metaphorical opinion to be precise . The backbone metaphorically represents the courage to express and defend one's opinion. They certainly do have a backbone from a medical standpoint!

My opinion is that nothing is achieved through negativity except more negativity. It would be interesting to look at the work of artists who became successful and see whose work was negative. My guess is that eventually, we will find that a small amount of work was focusing on the negative. Most successful work was actually focusing on the positive. This doesn't mean one cannot make a social commentary through his/her work. Van Gogh did, especially in his early work, such as the Potato Eaters and other scenes. However, I don't see negativity there. I see simply the depiction of a social reality.

In regards to galleries it is clear that today most large-city-based galleries (read NY, Paris, LA, Chicago, etc.) want social reality type of work. Beautiful landscapes, such as my work, are not what they are looking for. This is probably why you have not been accepted in Parisian galleries. Your work is simply not what they are looking for. You face a simple choice: make work similar to what they are looking for, or continue with your work and forget about what they want. I chose option 2. Being myself is what matters to me.

This is part of doing what I love because I love being myself (part of Briotism too). I believe that we all do. It's just that some of us feel they have to fit a particular mold instead of being themselves. I use to think that. I no longer do. Incidentally, I have been way more successful (way, way more) since I made the change.

Being yourself is the key to being successful in my philosophical view. Trying to fit into a mold is no different from kissing the ass du jour. Either way, the goal is to please others, not please yourself. Your efforts and energy are directed outwards, towards the well being of someone else. You need to turn your efforts inwards, towards yourself and with the goal of increasing your personal well being. Only then can you use all your energy to further yourself.

This (Briotism if you will) is different from egoism and other self-centered philosophies. Egoism is thinking only of yourself. What I recommend is being yourself. This does not exclude thinking of others. In fact, one of the best ways of being yourself is to help others be themselves as well, something that I am doing now for example by writing this post. I certainly gain something by doing so (I express my beliefs) but since there are significant rewards to doing what I propose --- you will be happier, no doubt about it because who wants to fit into a mold and who wants to do things they dislike ?- (notice this is a rhetorical question), this is not just about me, it is also about anyone reading this post.
 
Alain, this resonates with my own thinking as of late and you said it well.

I know this process of "being yourself" did not happen overnight for you and is assuredly an ongoing process for you as well. I do appreciate the difference between the ideas of focusing on "me" and "being me", a worthy distinction.

Not sure how this fits in, but I am currently reading George Orwell's 1984. The novel is like a psychological mirror. I am continually prompted to think about issues of how the individual relates to their community and what it means to be conscious and the role of language in that process. The novel has even touched briefly (so far) on how image plays a role in this. The poster of Big Brother everywhere and how images influence inner thought tendencies.

I feel I have something in common with both Cedric and Alain. I am intuitively drawn to creating certain images and am not so much interested in building in the "commentary" up front. I do enjoy the process of "commentary" after the image is created because I think images can also be psychological mirrors that we can gather around and learn. I just find trying to build that commentary in up front awkward most of the time.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Cedric,

Most of our processing of ideas is not available to us. However, when writers write, artists paint and photographers choose what to include and exclude in the pictures, the vast libraries of that creative mind are tapped. Sometimes I'd look under the table, as it seemed the words appearing on my computers screen rose from some mysterious place beneath the screen. I had never knowingly planned or thought out what was actually appearing in my poem or story, but it flowed out!

Good photographers might think they "just take pictures of what catches their eye". But really, in the best of cases, it's all being worked out below the radar of your consciousness. It's not subconscious. It's where in the brain, the most energy and activity is spent sorting things out for you today, this moment, right now. But, it's hidden from you. So you know nothing of it. So, dear Cedric, although you have no conscious active, cognitive intention, (that you are aware of), to raise social issues, it's already decided in a meeting room in the Cathedral of your mind, by many men called Cedric, who argue for you those values we must consider.

That's what I believe. You are too consistent to your motifs and themes to be accident-prone to invite our thoughts on social issues. Rather, I contend, this is likely to be the essence of questions your mind holds important.

Asher
 
I just wanted to intervene in a philosophical chat, in which I have no competence to fight (if fight there is...) but as a response to "Briotism", I now think that - for me- it has always been a sort of easiness (pure translation!) to depict "dark things" instead of happy things. Few years ago, If you provided me with a camera and release my wild in the streets of a city, I would only be able to frame the dark side. In the very beginning of my photography, I used -as many- to prefer black and white because there's always a red car passing by that spoilt the view, RED, Colour, what a shame...Now I play with the red car. Now I'm happy with colour, I'm happy with happiness. I threw away the Ian Curtis/Anton Corbjin type of thinking. If I feel dark myself (as very often I am) I try to gather all the good things in a view, while in the old days I used to dive and sometimes drown in the obvious shitness of everyones' lives. Because it was easy, obvious, it required no self control, and also it pleased my generation of fellow photographers.


But I like to watch what others do even if it's the dark side that's depicted, hence I don't see particular unhappy things in Cedric's picture. City and streets and modern life is not all the time dull, they can also spread their simple beauty around us.
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Ed,

I agree with what you say. However, I think the goal is not to wonder if someone is watching us or not because there is always someone watching. The goal is to be happy in the situation we are in. To me, happiness comes from doing something we love and from making a living doing this thing. Tying income to conducting an enjoyable activity, instead of separating the two, is at the center of my philosophy. For this to happen, and for success to happen in general, one has to be positive. Negativity makes the realisation of this goal impossible.

Here's a shortlist of tenets fundamental to my approach:

- Do what you love because doing what you don't love isn't any easier
- Be positive because being negative does not bring success
- Do not make excuses because success requires no excuses
- Do not make concessions at the start because you can always make them later if need be
- Believe you can do it because believing makes you able to do it
- Believe you can have it all because you can
- Start now because there will never be a better time
- Make time, not money, your most valuable asset because you can make more money but no one can make more time (if you can extend time beyond 24hrs/day contact me, I am very interested)
- Ask "why not?" when someone challenges these tenets because there is no valid reason why this can't be done
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Something I forgot to mention about what "big city galleries" want is that I got tired of Postmodernism. Since Postmodern work is what they want, not doing postmodern work means your existence does not register on their radar. You are being "stealth" without trying!

Postmodernism is fun. I read all that was written about it, both in French and in English. I met most of the main authors. I understand Lyotard. My PhD was centered on postmodern visual theory. I have an extensive library of postmodern texts.

However, I tired of it. I started wondering when postmodernism would be replaced by something a little more relevant to today's life and world. After all, it is really a post-modern theory. Meaning it came as a reaction to modernism, and modernism came after WW2. Postmodernism often strikes me as being struck in the 60s, unable to move forward. It is as if Postmodernism wanted to be the end of philosophy, as if to say that after it no intellectual theory of value can be found. A self-professing theory that becomes reality because no one throws a stone into the glass window.

If you do not make postmodern work no large city gallery with name recognition will take your work. To get in there as a non postmodern artist, you have to be dead. If you are still alive and not doing postmodern work you are, to these galleries, irrelevant. The world of "high visual art" is postmodern at its core. Do postmodernism and they will look at your work. Do not do postmodernism and they will pay no attention to you.
 
It is as if Postmodernism wanted to be the end of philosophy, as if to say that after it no intellectual theory of value can be found. A self-professing theory that becomes reality because no one throws a stone into the glass window

Like any other theory, until...
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Alain,

Well explained, your philosophy. It is good to call it Briotism, centered, as it is on just your needs to make you happy and also earn a living. It works, it does not lie or deceive and puts adequate bread on the table and feeds the Porche.

Still, it's not necessarily a path for Sandrine or others.

We, being a little older, know of the ravages of war in Europe and returning to a smaller, reliable world with ones own currency of happiness, is workable for the talented and focused and entrepreneurial person you are. However, it really can be considered a narcissistic shell. You live where it's beautiful, take pictures of what makes us happy and sell it to folk that want beauty! It all works in an honest chain of consequence of your commitment to your way of life. To me, it might be rather narrow and isolated a path to follow.

For others, there's a more wild and bumpy road in life with artistic goals far less-established and paths uncharted to get there!

Cedric, for example, has a different job in life; he's not a full time photographer. It's his beloved hobby! Therefore, his priorities when he walks around with his camera, are only subject to what he sees as his interests of the moment.

Actually, what controls his pictures, IMHO, are not as happenstance and casual as he believes. There's an inner guiding set of references, of which, I, (perhaps brashly, but sincerely), consider he has little or no realization of. Nevertheless his motivations are as strong as your own clear conscious goal-orientated way of choosing subjects of beauty to photograph.

Asher
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Alain,

Well explained, your philosophy. It is good to call it Briotism, centered, as it is on just your needs to make you happy and also earn a living. It works, it does not lie or deceive and puts adequate bread on the table and feeds the Porche.

Asher

And feeds the Lotus too!

Alain's-Lotus.jpg
 
This is a link to something I read today that reminded me of you, Alain, and the discussion here.

I think of this discussion as a "How to succeed" thread, and you've expressed your success with being Briot.

The article talks about scoping your efforts towards what the market will pay attention to. I think Alain has done this by following his passion. Sometimes we have a hard time knowing what to be passionate about. I know I can be passionate about lots of things, none of which am I confident will bring success.

This short anecdote helped me think about how I could bring focus in my thinking around what to be passionate about:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/the_dip/2007/05/but_are_you_rea.html
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Hi Ed,

For me being myself is the goal, first and foremost. I could do a number of other "things" besides what I do, so if I do this (photography, writing, etc.) it is because I like it and it is "me" right now. That success followed is icing on the cake. It was not my original goal. My original goal was to get away from being an underpaid, overworked and abused PhD student. That's the short version. The long version (the whole story) is in my first book in the chapters titled "Being an artist" and "Being an artist in business."
 

Alain Briot

pro member
Another thing, and that is when I started I wasn't confident whether it will bring me success or not. I hope it would, but I didn't know if it could.... What I was confident of however, was that this was what I wanted to do! This and nothing else. And because of that I gave it everything I had. I never turned back.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Another thing, and that is when I started I wasn't confident whether it will bring me success or not. I hope it would, but I didn't know if it could.... What I was confident of however, was that this was what I wanted to do! This and nothing else. And because of that I gave it everything I had. I never turned back.

Alain,

When you started, you had either entered or completed study at one of the finest art school in France! So t's hardly a great risk you took. You had taken training sufficient to be competent in a number of artistic paths. You did not know for sure that you could make more money. But you knew you had the training and the heart for this.

It's not like a food server suddenly waking up and deciding to become a bran surgeon or a fighter pilot! You were already on a man path for which the decision was just a reasonable option.

Others here, might have to catch up on not only the craft of photography but also the esthetics of the world in which they might compete. That's a lot for someone with no preparation!

So jumping n with all one's might and resources at that point, might be less than sane and hopefully there are no babies to feed or rent to pay!

Asher
 
Others here, might have to catch up on not only the craft of photography but also the esthetics of the world in which they might compete. That's a lot for someone with no preparation!

So jumping n with all one's might and resources at that point, might be less than sane and hopefully there are no babies to feed or rent to pay!






oh yeah!

And usually you get your first paid work because people know you from your student work, and nobody will trust your work if you're a waiter... Once you get the money from your first paid work, you buy some gear,and when you are a student you got facilities that makes your work more professional (for photography school, can be the studio, the lights, the "blad" that cost 1000's). All those things, that are unreachable for others. You also got a certain amount of "thinking" time, that standard people cannot afford, or at least that other people find hard to afford.
 
oh yeah!

And usually you get your first paid work because people know you from your student work, and nobody will trust your work if you're a waiter... Once you get the money from your first paid work, you buy some gear,and when you are a student you got facilities that makes your work more professional (for photography school, can be the studio, the lights, the "blad" that cost 1000's). All those things, that are unreachable for others. You also got a certain amount of "thinking" time, that standard people cannot afford, or at least that other people find hard to afford.

Hi,

I agree with Asher and Sandrine : when you consider major photographers who are currently sold in fine art galleries or exposed in books or magazines, almost all of them are "professionnal artists", which means that they are issued from art schools and belong to official art circle. The few ones who are not in this case are generally older people who began their carreer from the 50's to the 70's, at a moment when diploma was not a sesame to professionnal world. There are only very few exceptions, some younger people who succeeded to get a pro status without following a fine art cursus.

As Sandrine explained, it is often the student work which allows people to be known and to get facilities.

Cedric.
 
When I was in a school of arts, the end of year exhibition was the place where you can find small galleries owners or representatives, chatting with the professors that used to show them who was that guy that made that piece, and introduce. It was all about the casual connections you made during the year that made the professional connections you had once the year was finished. It's something you learn quite quickly :)
 

Ken Tanaka

pro member
Alain's apparent financial success offers testimony that the market for the beautiful picture remains strong. By "beautiful" I mean beautiful images of beautiful things. Images that pretend no narrative, that harbor no sublimated value. They're just beautiful to view, relaxing visual escapes. That type of image, in any medium, will always reamain the prom queen of general public popularity. It's what someone has in mind when, standing in front of a more challenging image, they spout something like, "I don' know nuthin' 'bout art. I jus' know what I like."

BTW, I mean absolutely no slight towards Alain's imagery. Quite the contrary, His stuff is drop-deap gorgeous.

Truth be told, however, thousands of people shoot this stuff every day. Walk though any juried urban art fair (as I did last weekend at Chicago's Gold Coast Art Fair) and you'll see at least half dozen booths offering drop-dead-gorgeous landscape and travel prints. So why is the Lotus parked in Alain's driveway and not the art fair exhibitors' driveways. (I'm making a well-informed supposition here.)

Hints: It's not principally about cameras, lenses, or photo skills. Yes, they're contributors but none are at all unique.

Answer: Sincere total commitment. Alain's photography is not a hobby. He's not a weekend snapper. While he may have reached a point where he can relax a bit now, it's clear that he has spent many years as a goggles-on maniac creating and marketing his brand of photograhy. And canny marketing is also a very important aspect of "success" in art photography.

Yes, as Sandrine remarked, school-anchored connections are important to get representation in the art photo world. Even in that world, however, I see many (maybe most) "rising stars" flame-out fast due mainly to their lack of commitment (and, yes, lack of persistent talent).

So if your goal is to use a camera to put a Lotus in you driveway (btw, not a healthy goal in my opinion, but...) ask yourself to what degree you're willing and able to make a commitment to your photography? What are you willing to risk? Quit your day job? That's virtually a prerequisite. What else?
 

Ken Tanaka

pro member
As an addendum to my comments, above, here's another fellow who exemplifies "total commitment".

Peter Lik has used hyper-marketing to keenly leverage very pedestrian landscape photography into wealth and limited fame. This is what's sometimes called the "saturation slider" strategy. He's a smart cookie. He probably has no desire for art world "representation", and the often outrageous revenue sharing that would result. He knows the market that he's chasing will never be found in a "fine art" gallery. You find these folks in tourist havens, such as casinos and other popular tourist spots. So he has opened his own "art" galleries in Aspen, Maui, Waikiki, Las Vegas, etc..

He prints his often dreadfully garish "landscapes" big for the sofa-sized art crowd. (He even organizes his online galleries according to orientation.) He also makes them as shiny as possible, often printing on Plexi.

Finally, he makes sure he creates plenty of his own buzz. He dubs himself a "master photographer", gets a public relations firm to get him placed on television, etc.

You might think that I'm sneering a bit at this fellow. I'm really not. Yes, I say that he has a rather amateur eye with a camera; his photos are to "fine art" photography as a fire engine's siren is to music.

But I admire his utterly unselfconscious devotion to commercial self-promotion and his laser-line on his market. He knows what sells and he will do whatever is profitable to sell it.
 
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