Exercise 1.2: Photography in the museum or the gallery.
Is photography an art form or is it merely a way of recording an image?
The first two examples of photographic image are the 1868 and 1875 pictures of Tufa Domes, Pyramid Lake (Nevada).
The first is dreamy representation with no distinct horizon and with what we would now call soft focus. This is accepted as art as it is showing only an interpretation of the scene and not its full detail. It is artistic.
The second is displaying as much detail as was then technically possible for publication in a text book. Out went the soft focus and dreamy feel and in came a hard horizon and a distant land shore. The is not attempt at artful interpretation.
Note.
With the aid of today’s technology O’Sullivan may have taken a very different picture and presented us with images far removed from what we see here.
Nineteenth century art was exhibited increasingly in exhibition spaces. Spaces given over entirely for the purpose of viewing and criticism. The confines of private walls and the space allowed by the museum wall allowed the paintings themselves to grow into their new space and represent that space. This allowed new styles of landscape painting where novel ways of representing perspective flourished.
Note.
Up to this time art had been the preserve of the private salon and was seen by only the privileged few. The opening of public galleries and museums brought in the concept of public art.
Anything displayed in this way was there because it was art.
Note.
Where does this leave the two O’Sullivan images? Regardless of the two versions of the scene did O’Sullivan, at the time of taking, intend the produce a technical image or a work of art?
As a broader question, can an image taken for a mundane or record keeper purpose be later regarded as art?
Once to photographic image has displayed as art it must be accepted as art in the same way as ceramics, sculpture or paint.
Note.
The Farm Security Association was responsible for having thousands of images taken of the American Depression and its effect on the rural poor. These were never intended to be art but the sheer power and majesty of pictures, like Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange, had them take there place in galleries and museums and so they became art.
Is photography merely a child of technical rather than aesthetic traditions?
Galassi had a view that the perspective traditions that had been attributed to photography was accepted and widely used by painters long before invention of the camera. Photography, therefor, was following practices that were already in use.
Note.
Painters are in a position to demonstrate true perspective by the use of grids and strict perspective lines, to ignore conventional perspective or use no perspective at all. These choices were not available to early photographers, although the change to digital manipulation has brought many new tools to the his aid.
Stereography, the viewing of to similar pictures to make one image, gives a feeling of depth that can never be experienced by viewing a print. The effect is of course illusory even though the viewer believes he is having to refocus as his eye wanders around the image. To increase the feeling of depth a piece of artifice was often employed, the placing of a vertical feature at the front and centre of the image, thus fooling the eye that there is a depth of field that in fact is not there. The fact that all outside visual stimuli are excluded adds to the illusion and forces the viewer’s attention in to the image. Watching a film in a darkened cinema has a similar affect. The stereoscope brought with it the need for a storage and retrieval system, a cabinet in which to keep the images. This was far removed from the open wall upon which pictures had hitherto been exhibited.
Note.
Slide film and negatives were stored in a similar way and were retrieved when required. Digital images are kept only as digital files to be viewed only when required. Do these images become art only when displayed?
Modern scholars seem to have made the jump to have nineteenth century landscape photography categorized as art; to place it on an equal footing with other visual arts. Views are now landscapes, photographers have careers and are capable of producing oeuvres. If they are artists then where is their equivalent to the painters apprenticeship and the learning of their craft. Many early practitioners had short careers but were still regarded as masters of their art. Can one build an oeuvre in such a short time without time for consistency or coherence? Can a collection of very different images covering a wide range of subjects also be an oeuvre?
Note
Later photographers tended to make their names in narrower fields even if they took a wide range of pictures.
Eugene Atget worked from 1895 to 1927 producing some 10,000 listed images. A selective viewing and collating of these images was started in 1925 and a number of his pictures were exhibited. His work became art and the need to when, where, and why pictures were taken became necessary. This task was made difficult by the varying numbering systems applied to the images in Atgets collection which followed the numbering systems applied by the buyers of his work. The discovery of his own card system simplified the task.
That Atget’s work was not of a consistently good quality was, according to John Szarkowski, due to two possible reasons; the first that he got better as he got older and gained experience; the second that the work he did for himself was better that his commission work. It is also possible that he was willing to accept an inferior photograph because the subject was more important. What is clear is that Atget often revisited the previous site to reinterpret the scene, to take it from a new angle or under different light conditions. It was thought necessary to order his work to determine whether the work was bigger than the man, the oeuvre was greater that its creator.
Note.
Modern work flow practice would now have one making a first selection, work on those and discard the rest as a waste of storage space. Thank heaven early photographers seem to have kept the bulk of their work.
The nineteenth century photographic archive is being reassessed and re grouped to suit modern into categories previously reserved for art.
Note.
Is photography art? It became art when it was first mounted on a gallery wall, viewed as, and critcised as art. Treat anything as and it becomes art, R MUTT being as good an example as any. It’s art because I say it’s art.
