Just Saying (7/1/2010)
Is “photography” no longer enough? SLRgraphy? iphonography? droidography? gadgetography? gizmography? They’re all cameras. Just make images. Sorry, but I will not sit by as the value of my art and life’s work is reduced to “there’s an app for that”.
Category: Just Saying
Wow, I totally agree. But, the thing about those apps and iphones, they can’t produce good prints large enough for anything (not yet anyway)but the web, i think. I’m sure you know more about that than I do. It almost makes me wonder if i should trade my Canon Mark II 5D in for an iphone! The results from an iphone are artistic, but they have no true value as art. I mean, what can you do with it?? Am I right or wrong? I need to know fast while I can still sell my camera! /
In the art world’s eye, it depends on the genre. Straight photography is fine if you’re shooting those ubiquitous and anonymous, tightly cropped, front-facing headshots with the bleached eyes which tell the viewer nothing other than what the person looks like.
However, landscape photography, to be taken seriously by the art world, needs to be quirky, stylized, grained, and lomo’d. The less true to the scene, the less “real” it appears, the better. Those stylizations are easily accomplished and, on the surface, look “cool”. Easy and cool. Hence our current predicament.
Actually that trend stated with Lomography which I always thought was bogus too.
Shareworthy said.
Thanks guys!
Melissia, nothing generated by automated computer algorithms can be legitimately called art. The images may still be artistic, though, if they represent the photographer (through the same tools of composition, form, visual relationships and tension, etc. that applied to ALL art since the first cave painting).
I suspect most people who print from the iPhone are not too concerned with detail in very large prints. The special effects grab viewers attention and work well enough at large sizes. Still, once the gimmick factor wears off, the image has to stand on its own as an original, expressive work. That’s where most images (from any camera) fall apart.
Chuck, I agree with your assessment of the current state of the art (world). I do think it’s time for change, though, and I’m convinced I am not alone in this. There is too much hype and commercialism dictating “value” in art today and, other than a small elite, I believe most have had enough. Just like the renaissance followed the dark ages, it is time for those who still believe in beauty and meaning to cast off the shackles and arbitrary abstractions of “modern” art and reclaim what art was always about.
Guy