Hi,
Lasse Karlsson wrote:
[...]
> I don't really know what to make of this, other than it got me thinking
> about how we mostly discuss our photography from technical standpoints,
> where we often routinely tend to define a "good
> photo" as at least as sharp as possible, true colours etc.
> These pictures were good by the lack of typical photographic qualities...
> Maybe they weren't photographs at all, even. Were they?
> Hm.
[...]
a lot of different activities hide behind the word 'photography', and
the word itself, like all words, leads people to expect a single thing
with clearly defined boundaries separating from other things.
We can make distinctions between several different aspects of photography.
Of course these distinctions all blur into each other and are all probably
present to some extent in everybody who's given more than a passing thought
to photography.
One obvious distinction is between taking photographs and making prints.
This came up in another thread just recently.
Another distinction is between people who present themselves as
photographers and set out to make 'art', usually with a capital 'A',
and those whose purpose is to make the most accurate record of something
that they can; if some people classify the results as art then that is
entirely coincidental and usually irrelevant. The fact that both people
share a set of techniques, both technical and aesthetic, leads to a great
deal of confusion about the 2 activities, leading people to discuss
photojournalism (eg WeeGee :o)) in the same terms as fine-art photography
(eg Ansel Adams or Cindy Sherman).
Another difference is between people who use photography in imitation
of classical painting, and those who exploit the medium's own
particular qualities without feeling a debt to any other medium.
Yet another kind is people who present themselves primarily as artists
rather than photographers but who happen to use photographs in the
things they make, just as some artists use bronze, some use elephant-dung,
some use bits of wood etc. David Hockney springs to mind. He's also used faxes.
So photography is just another medium.
It's quite possible that your fellow traveller was also an artist, using
photography and photocopying as just another medium.
On the other hand, maybe she was just visually illiterate and couldn't
tell the difference. That happens, too.
--
Cheers,
Bob
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