The Two Photography’s
Interesting essay by Paul Graham titled "the Unreasonable Apple" about a quote from Michael Fried’s recent book “Why Photography Matters as Art and Never Before”
Carefully constructing his pictures as provocative often open ended vignettes, instead of just snapping his surroundings”
Michael Fried
Graham’s essay “the Unreasonable Apple”, takes issue with Fried’s seemingly sophomoric malaise in referring to straight photography as that of merely “snapping pictures”. Graham sets out to establish that there is more happening in the work of “straight” photographers than merely “snapping pictures”. He posits the question what is that “something” that happens when photographers like Robert Adams, Stephen Shore, Diane Arbus took their photographs. The essay goes on to lament what Graham sees as the absence of “straight” photography from critical attention and ends with a mandate seeking photographers, writers, dealers, collectors, and curators, to write critically about what that “something” is. How ever noble the intent the essay inadvertently manages to establish a dialectic between what he sees as “straight” photographers and those photographers who make/synthesis their subject matter for the camera thus fracturing the photographic medium into two types of photography. One is a serious business with a practice and processes beyond Fried’s “snapping pictures” a point of Graham’s I strongly agree with. The other photography is made, synthesized, constructed, and easily explained to the buyers, collectors, dealers, and curators as simply stuff set up for the camera to be photographed.
It is Graham’s choice of language that complicates his call to action. His style of writing, and structure hints at the old modes of modernist photography. There are ways to write about photographic practice in constructive and culturally relevant ways without the need to inadvertently or otherwise tear down other practices of photography. Sadly, especially given the context for this essay, Graham’s "the Unreasonable Apple" is not one of them. For that question to be fairly addressed we can be thankful for SFMOMA and their upcoming symposium "Is Photography Over".
2 comments:
and why exactly so you assume this vital issue will be better addressed in a symosium that has not yet happened?
I was at the moma one, and Grahams talk was the only lucid one in a sea of semantic scholarly jargon - "indexical matrix" anyone?
you may nitpick on finer points, but I wish there had been more like him, as it saved the evening from being utterly disconnected from photographic practise.
"and why exactly so you assume this vital issue will be better addressed in a symosium that has not yet happened? "
Anonymous: If you follow the link I posted to "Is Photography Over" you will find several writers/photographers who've all ready written on the topic as a prelude to the symposium itself. If one were to take the time they would find the writing relevant and engaging on the topic of photographic practice and what exactly defines photography as a medium.
I agree that at times most of the theoretical writing on photography coming out of the ivory tower is disconnected from photographic practice. How ever to dismiss all of the writings as scholarly jargon is to miss important critical writings and engaging ideas.
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