Joerg Colberg - Photography after Photography (A provocation)

I thought you all would like to read this

Too busy taking pictures and learning to care what some critic thinks. That said, it certainly seems to have stirred up a hornet's nest. Here's a good counterpoint by Kirsten Rian, on Daylight Magazine.

http://www.daylightmagazine.org/blog/2012/6/20/1421

Antonio Correia said:

I thought you all would like to read this

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I like the following

"In fact, I think that it’s actually in the analog area where artists are producing the most interesting work right now, where artists are attempting to move if not forward then at least sidewards. Whether it’s Marco Breuer’s Condition, evoking Gerhard Richter[/COLOR] style abstractions, whether it’s Matthew Brandt’s Lakes and Reservoirs, these kinds of artists are trying to escape the narrow photographic confines we’ve built around ourselves.

The digital equivalent of Breuer’s or Brandt’s work is whatever is being created on “smart” phones, using “apps” - fake analog images. But the digital world falls crucially short here, for more reasons than one. First, there really is nothing at stake. There is no artistry here other than the application of some software filter that in a very deterministic way makes your new digital photograph look old. So there is no chance. Art without a trace of chance, a trace of an accident isn’t art. No artistic risk, not art (just ask William Wegman’s dog). What is more, it’s deeply reactionary, but in an uncommitted way. You could, for example, buy a real old camera and stuff film into it, to create your genuine old-timey photographs, but that effort isn’t even made. It’s a pointless nostalgia, where you’re yearning for just that one aspect of the past without all the rest. In contrast, Breuer and Brandt really break down their images. It’s real, there is no going back."

and especially the challenging claim,

"So there is no chance. Art without a trace of chance, a trace of an accident isn’t art. No artistic risk, not art (just ask William Wegman’s dog)."

This is challenging for photography as an art form, but not for photography itself as a memory adjunct for every aspect of our lives. I think that billboards have pushed the edges of what we thought of as photography and is itself a worthy art form.

I must say, in my own personal art photography work, I've largely escaped the conservative path he describes. However, I haven't shared these, as of yet.

Asher



Asher

Antonio Correia said:

I thought you all would like to read this

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lmfao - really !

the guy should come on one of my workshops ! i would show him.......

Asher Kelman said:

I must say, in my own personal art photography work, I've largely escaped the conservative path he describes. However, I haven't shared these, as of yet.

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I can't get this sentence pass unnoticed. Asher, the time is now. Please.

Jerome Marot said:

I can't get this sentence pass unnoticed. Asher, the time is now. Please.

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Jerome,

That's my error, but I guess I have to release some and I'll do that.

The point I'm making is that the essayist is not giving enough credit to those who do work on new methodologies. Numbers need not be large. After all, these must be the work of individuals. Still, even new ways are rooted in the languages of the past. So what we think might be brilliantly new in 2012 might be found done from analog film 80 years ago, but by hand.

Also, I do not accept t Joerg Colberg nihilistic views on themes, motifs and styles that are naturally recycled. That's the way we are! In some way at least, photography must depend on larger movements of modernism of our society and not a lot has changed in 100 years. We still mostly buy food at a store, go to hospital when we are ill, educate our kids in schools, pray in churches, mosques and synagogues, follow sellf-inflated leaders, etc, albeit with more gadgets. But our ways of life are essentially hardly changed.

So I don't have such a pressing demand for photography to grow faster then the rest of our cultures. It's the least of our worries. I'd rather photography, as a lantern and a mirror, help us reflect on our world, so we still might have one for our offspring!

Asher