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well... I get very twitchy when we ask "Is this great art or just minor art?" etc It depends on the criteria whose great? whose minor? * You are both right... Maybe some pomo is going in for a kind of realpolitik of the craft whereas some of us are still trying for the impossible * er time for a cup of tea My poetryetc tag is beginning to itch L On Fri, May 25, 2012 17:01, Douglas Barbour wrote: > Good points, Chris (& oh jeez, my typos!: aargh). > > > I think there are art photos, & that there it how the photo is framed, > how situated, that count, first, & then, yes, B&W, so light & shadow do > the job, & colour would actually get in the way of that intentional > seeing. > > A lot of pomo photo-art seems to me to be rather too 'cute,' arch, & > using colour in a kind of faux-fauvist manner. It can work, but Ive seen > some work in galleries that simply turned me off. The great B&W > photographers do achieve art, I think. Minor? Maybe... > > So, what I was getting at was not that a photographer cannot show > something of what she has 'seen' &, especially, shaped by eye, ie, framed > as necessary sight, but that, often, for me, with colour photography > (digital), the exact grade of light across the sky, for example, does not > come through as seen & remembered, a slightly different critique... > > Doug > On 2012-05-24, at 6:52 PM, Chris Jones wrote: > > >> On 25/05/12 00:59, Douglas Barbour wrote: >> >>> I think we actually see*with intent* in a way no machine can (yet >>> anyway). So there's some overtone of the seen that shifts& changes >>> minutely as we look that a shot doesnt get. Do the photo is often >>> really beautiful but still isnt quite what i 'saw'...? >> >> The above to me, rather well, describes photography failing as an art >> and simply being a static documentation. Most, if not all the photos I >> found simply illustrated. Sure, I could read the light, so to speak, >> but this did not convince me they were good art photos, in my >> expectations. >> >> An art photo, however, does shift and change. It needs to do this, so >> as to give a photo that something extra that makes it poetry and art. >> The dynamics and movement is not perceived or is an imperceptible >> becoming. An art photo constantly changes, despite the camera and film, >> or electronics being used. This becoming is also preserved; more >> essential poetics. But here I am putting demands on photography that I >> wouldn't expect most others to follow. For me, using a large format >> monorail camera with B&W film, or a cheap point and shoot digital and >> image manipulation on a cheap netbook and gimp should both be able to >> do this. So the machine or mechanism itself cannot make it or is >> independent of the medium, making an art photo a miracle. Hence the >> difficulty of using a camera to make art, which is still considered a >> minor art... but then writing poetry is just as demanding. >> >> anyway, just an extra comment on what is becoming more and more the >> link between poetry and art photography, again for me. (Always this >> dread off imposing my poetics...) >> > > Douglas Barbour > [log in to unmask] > > http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/ > http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/ > > > Latest books: > Continuations & Continuations 2 (with Sheila E Murphy) > http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=962 > Wednesdays' > http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10 > .html > > > > Why can’t words mean what they say? > > > Robert Kroetsch > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ----- Lawrence Upton Visiting Fellow, Music Dept, Goldsmiths, University of London New Cross, London SE14 6NW ----