Commentary on the Commentary

[johnastovall]

Mike Johnston continues his exploration on the duality of the artist and the critic in the photographer.

"As to gimmickry, whether it's infrared film or overcooked vegetables: I respectfully suggest that smart photographers ought to watch out. The online world is becoming a sort of massive, monstrous camera club, an "academy" bound down by strictures and rules and mass taste. Conformity to this world is the antithesis of creativity, and it suppresses individuality. Because of the greatly accelerated degree of discourse and the de facto emphasis on competition (for attention, for audience, for approving comments), we're moving towards a point where not only will we have sorted all pictures into genera and categories of cliché, but we'll have a standard method for Photoshopping each generic category! I felt a sort of horror watching a video the other day in which the instructor recommended an extreme style of image manipulation that he repeatedly referred to as "edgy." First of all, I suspect that any time someone calls something edgy, it automatically isn't; but what really struck me is that as the end of this process of turning a half-decent photograph into some sort of post-pictorialist Frankenstein creation, he recommended making all the steps into an automated action, which could then be applied to other pictures literally with a mouse click. Is this the future of style? It leaves me wide-eyed, gulping...."

Read more of the "Commentary on the Commentary", it's good for you....

[Bill]

Lighten up Mike. The artists who will be remembered in time cannot be prohibited from using the trendy, the faddish, and the fashionable in finding their own true innovative vision. But I would be surprised if we are talking about more than one in a few million practitioners.

And the others? There will be the pros who deliver on demand. Edgy, retro, traditional, PJ,you name it. They did not invent the looks but they can replicate them and that is OK. Ironically, they may think their work is unique when it isn't. With the perspective of time, those studio differences may fade away.

Then there are the many who actually want the trendy, faddish, and fashionable. This is OK, too. Their customers, be they family, friends, or clients, want what everyone else is getting because it is the norm. If someone wants the look provided by the Cokin tobacco filter, so be it. I don't care for it but so what? I doubt that those who ask for PJ-like wedding pix have become students of photographic history. No, their friends are getting the PJ shots so they want them, too. And that look may be different from the pix of their parent's wedding. Even better. Cutting the apron strings and bonding with a peer group simultaneously? The best.

Those who are bothered by the mass conformity of it all can try to think of it as "community building through a consensus regarding artistic standards." Ha, ha.

I don't begrudge Mike Johnston his scribblings, either. He may bring some new ideas to someone's life or remind another of issues already examined.

I recall reading a while back of a reaction in some New York advertising circles against Photoshopped effects. A natural look was wanted because that was the new, the unusual, the edgy. And that is what a lot of advertising uses to grab your attention. The commonplace loses its ability to be noticed. And the new will become the old.

[d2creative]

I'm a non-conformist.

Like all my non-conformist friends.