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not 'getting' an image
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17-12-2009 12:49pm#1So I was in at the Jackie Nickerson exhibition yesterday in the Gallery of photography, and didn't quite know what to make of it. Which is exactly the way I felt after seeing Eoin O Connail's one there a few months ago (which worked much better for me second time round). There were a few images yesterday that I just didn't 'get' though and its been bugging me.
Its a small exhibition - maybe 20 images? This one in particular illustrates what I mean -
Now the website and the literature in there say: In large-scale colour landscapes and portraits, she builds a psychological portrait of her community. The landscapes challenge conventional notions of the picturesque, offering instead a more engaged view of the land. Through Nickerson’s lens, muddy, rutted lanes and straggly hedgerows are imbued with the quiet poetry of the everyday.
I just don't know though? Maybe I'm not looking at it properly. I can see what she's going for, but part of my brain is shouting "it's a picture of a fcuking lane. With mud." I don't want to be someone who NEEDS the spectacular in each image she sees, but then again I don't want to be swooning over an image or collection just because it's by a famous photographer.
I guess I'm asking what think ye? Not necessarily of this image.. Oh I don't know. I just felt the need to post
(my brain hurts)4
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It looks like something you'd see in a local newspaper report on flooding. I know art is subjective, but this is ridiculous. I see no 'quiet poetry of the everyday' and my 'conventional notions of the picturesque' aren't challenged. They're bored. Whoever wrote the blurb for this was a genius though. 10/10 for effort and imagination. 0
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Apollo Better Turbojet wrote: »Hey now, those council street cleaners do good work.
ye, I suppose your right there I have changed it. 0 -
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PopeBuckfastXVI wrote: »The same scene with some different processing/filters to bring out the sky, bump the colours a bit, just maybe there'd be something in it, but that would still be using technique to improve what is an essentially bland scene.
Maybe be improved with a spot of HDR, eh 0 -
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Oh, so you've seen those convent photos, have you
For reference:
http://www.steidlville.com/books/601-Faith.html0 -
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ok, first off i haven't seen the exhibition, so i'm only going to comment on the one quoted in the op.
it's funny how differently people can look at the same image. when i looked at it first i got a kind of base reaction as i grew up on a farm. i recognise lanes like that cause i grew up around them. the blurb says something about ''challenging conventional notions of the picturesque, offering instead a more engaged view of the land'' which is kinda exactly what i see.
a lot of people look at a landscape in terms of colour, prettyness, ''picturesque-ness'' if you like through their lens but there's another aspect to the landscape which is the actual earth itself. how it's farmed, how it serves different purposes through the seasons, how it's solid and liquid at different times of the year... a whole lot of other things that maybe people who work the land might be more engaged with than people who live in towns and cities and over generations have lost that connection with ''the land''. when i look at that image i wonder what kind of work the farmer is doing up that lane, how many people have driven their machinery up that lane over the centuries, are the 2 fields even owned by the same farmer? maybe it's not even a farmed field anymore, maybe there's a load of houses being built up there, maybe.... maybe...... lots of things.....
as ''arty blurb'' goes i don't think that exhibition statement is too bad, i don't think there's anything too impenetrable in there tbh. what is too bad is that instead of questioning our reaction to a piece of work some people feel the need to outright ridicule it and call it ''sh!te''
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ok, first off i haven't seen the exhibition, so i'm only going to comment on the one quoted in the op.
it's funny how differently people can look at the same image. when i looked at it first i got a kind of base reaction as i grew up on a farm. i recognise lanes like that cause i grew up around them. the blurb says something about ''challenging conventional notions of the picturesque, offering instead a more engaged view of the land'' which is kinda exactly what i see.
a lot of people look at a landscape in terms of colour, prettyness, ''picturesque-ness'' if you like through their lens but there's another aspect to the landscape which is the actual earth itself. how it's farmed, how it serves different purposes through the seasons, how it's solid and liquid at different times of the year... a whole lot of other things that maybe people who work the land might be more engaged with than people who live in towns and cities and over generations have lost that connection with ''the land''. when i look at that image i wonder what kind of work the farmer is doing up that lane, how many people have driven their machinery up that lane over the centuries, are the 2 fields even owned by the same farmer? maybe it's not even a farmed field anymore, maybe there's a load of houses being built up there, maybe.... maybe...... lots of things.....
as ''arty blurb'' goes i don't think that exhibition statement is too bad, i don't think there's anything too impenetrable in there tbh. what is too bad is that instead of questioning our reaction to a piece of work some people feel the need to outright ridicule it and call it ''sh!te''
The base of your thesis however, is that you have the memories of a farm life to draw on. I also grew up in a similar type environment and yes, childhood memories emerged when I saw the picture. However, for your supposition to be correct, the picture should be accessible to those who don't have those memories and emotions to draw on, which I think it fails on.0 -
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Deleted User wrote: »The base of your thesis however, is that you have the memories of a farm life to draw on. I also grew up in a similar type environment and yes, childhood memories emerged when I saw the picture. However, for your supposition to be correct, the picture should be accessible to those who don't have those memories and emotions to draw on, which I think it fails on.
the base of my thesis was not that at all. the basis of ''post'' was that every person who looks at an image will get something out of the act of looking. i shared what i ''saw'' when i looked at the image, it's a pity sometimes that people don't have the interest or tools or whatever of engagement to do just that - engage with something and tell me what it is about it that you do/don't like, rather than merely calling it ''sh!te". tell me what you see past the technical details of the photograph. i don't want to know what you see about the blown highlights or the crop fact or the amount of pixels. tell me about the image. what is says to you, if anything. if it doesn't say anything to you, why not just leave it at that, ''it says nothing to me''... not ''it's sh!te''.
therefore, i don't hold with the belief that the picture should be accesible to those who do not have the same childhood memories of growing up on a farm, not at all. i think you may have misunderstood my post,sorry.:o0 -
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the base of my thesis was not that at all. the basis of ''post'' was that every person who looks at an image will get something out of the act of looking. i shared what i ''saw'' when i looked at the image, it's a pity sometimes that people don't have the interest or tools or whatever of engagement to do just that - engage with something and tell me what it is about it that you do/don't like, rather than merely calling it ''sh!te". tell me what you see past the technical details of the photograph. i don't want to know what you see about the blown highlights or the crop fact or the amount of pixels. tell me about the image. what is says to you, if anything. if it doesn't say anything to you, why not just leave it at that, ''it says nothing to me''... not ''it's sh!te''.
therefore, i don't hold with the belief that the picture should be accesible to those who do not have the same childhood memories of growing up on a farm, not at all. i think you may have misunderstood my post,sorry.:o
I completely agree with you on the last point - just because I don't like, doesn't mean its not good.
Had that picture been entitled, memories of a farm or something similar, it would have struck something with me directly. But as it stands - its just a picture of a country lane... to me at least.0 -
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I think a lot of the hostility stems from the 'sure any eejit with a P+S could have done that' mindset.
Which raises several questions. Is it art because someone says it is? Is someone an artist because they say they are? Is it just that someone has the neck/artistic vision* (delete as applicable) to attach an artist's statement to a body of work that raises it above a snapshot of a muddy track? For that matter, does anything raise it above a snapshot of a muddy track?
To a large extent, I agree with artyeva in that, when I saw it, it brought to mind lots of associations for me (I spend a proportion of my working days and nights negotiating such tracks). It probably made me think a lot more than most of the picture postcard landscapes I see.
One isolated image is just that, isolated. Context is everything.
Is it art? Dunno.
Do I 'get' it? Dunno what the artist intended for me to 'get' really.
Has it made me think? Yup.
Is this a good thing? Yup
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Ah but no doubt you'd like to capitalise out of it
Nah, I'm setting up a commune, where we'll produce AAAAArtistic photos of muddy lanes, eat organic lentils, grow our own hummus and patchouli, and share the proceeds of the prints (on recycled paper, obviously) for the greater good of society. Wanna join?:D;):eek:0 -
I think a lot of the hostility stems from the 'sure any eejit with a P+S could have done that' mindset.
Which raises several questions. Is it art because someone says it is? Is someone an artist because they say they are? Is it just that someone has the neck/artistic vision* (delete as applicable) to attach an artist's statement to a body of work that raises it above a snapshot of a muddy track? For that matter, does anything raise it above a snapshot of a muddy track?
To a large extent, I agree with artyeva in that, when I saw it, it brought to mind lots of associations for me (I spend a proportion of my working days and nights negotiating such tracks). It probably made me think a lot more than most of the picture postcard landscapes I see.
One isolated image is just that, isolated. Context is everything.
Is it art? Dunno.
Do I 'get' it? Dunno what the artist intended for me to 'get' really.
Has it made me think? Yup.
Is this a good thing? Yup
my antipathy towards it is because I feel that someone is trying to hoodwink me into thinking it is a good image. If I feel (and say) that it's not a good image, them I am laughed at, a philistine.
In reality, I am the boy in the crowd laughing because I know the emperor has no clothes on 0 -
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Nah, I'm setting up a commune, where we'll produce AAAAArtistic photos of muddy lanes, eat organic lentils, grow our own hummus and patchouli, and share the proceeds of the prints (on recycled paper, obviously) for the greater good of society. Wanna join?:D;):eek:
I'll be the hummus "grower" .. 0 -
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cambo_gueno wrote: »my antipathy towards it is because I feel that someone is trying to hoodwink me into thinking it is a good image. If I feel (and say) that it's not a good image, them I am laughed at, a philistine.
In reality, I am the boy in the crowd laughing because I know the emperor has no clothes on
You may well be right. Just wondering though do you think a "poor" image can be something other than that in the context of "a body of work" presenting some kind of concept etc. Assuming it works in that context of course?0 -
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cambo_gueno wrote: »my antipathy towards it is because I feel that someone is trying to hoodwink me into thinking it is a good image. If I feel (and say) that it's not a good image, them I am laughed at, a philistine.
In reality, I am the boy in the crowd laughing because I know the emperor has no clothes on
I don't disagree with you.
I don't think it's a particularly good image either, just that the picture (or, on reflection, the discussion) made me think a bit more than the standard chocolate box landscape. I don't think it's particularly well composed or exposed, and I think that a well composed and exposed image could have done the job of making me think without leaving me feeling a bit cheated by the fact that the photgrapher was lazy.
Any opinion is valid, whether you like or dislike something is fine (if an opinion is backed up by some thought process, so much the better).
Anyway, I cheated myself by posing lots of question and wriggling out of answering them directly 0 -
cambo_gueno wrote: »my antipathy towards it is because I feel that someone is trying to hoodwink me into thinking it is a good image. If I feel (and say) that it's not a good image, them I am laughed at, a philistine.
On the contrary, I think there's a bit of a populist bent on this forum, whenever this subject comes up people are lining up to say how crap the pictures are and to point out technical faults and other trivialities. Coupled with a tendency toward groupthink that tends to shift threads toward an overwhelmingly majority consensus with only a few dissenters and it doesn't make you the boy in the crowd, it makes you just another member of the crowd 0 -
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