Guest Post: John Camp

The Ort of Photography

By John Camp

When I think about Art with a Capital A, I usually think of it as Ort, with a Capital O, because a guy in Texas with a Texas accent once said to me, in Fort Worth, "I'll show you some good Ort," and then he did, but without a lot of bullshit attached.

In the last few weeks, I've spent some time thinking about Photographic Ort, a circumstance which led to a couple of sharp exchanges with Mike, the TOP Proprietor, in the Comments section of an earlier post.

Albrecht Dürer, The Great Piece of Turf, 1503

I suggested that perhaps photographic Ort doesn't really exist on the same level as, say, painted Ort. That is, I asked, is there a single photo, made anytime, anywhere, that climbs the heights of, say, the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel, the better works of Manet, Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, Utamaro, Hokusai, and on and on—the products of hundreds of great painters, including painters of our own time?

My answer is…no. At least, not in the way we currently define our terms. But if we re-define our terms, the answer might very well be "yes." Unfortunately, the re-definition might leave a lot of noses out of joint….

In painting, which I will use as a counter-example because I know a lot about it, there is a distinct line between fine art and commercial art. For example, a large number of famous American painters began their careers as commercial artists—they include Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, Wayne Thiebaud, most of the group that was known as The Eight, or the Ashcan School, and so on. Their commercial work is quite distinct from their fine art, in the eyes of the public, the critics, and the artists themselves.

Things are a little more confused in photography, partly because photography has a much wider range than painting. Photography attempts everything done by painting, but also encompasses the critical (and enormous) area of documentation, where painting falters.

If you tear down the various areas where painting and photography make similar efforts, you might come up with a list like this:

• Landscape (including urban landscapes)
• Still life
• Portraiture
• Genre scenes
• History painting (including religious art)
• Abstraction
• Outsider art (which in photography would include snapshots)

In none of these areas do I think the best of photography can match the best of painting in terms of power, or emotional effectiveness, or aesthetic quality.

This is not just my off-the-cuff opinion, but the opinion of money. While some people deride the position of money as an art-critical medium, it is simply a fact that those artworks that are most widely accepted as masterpieces sell for the most money. And I think that mass opinion, in the end, tends to be fairly accurate, even accounting for well-known occasions of errors in judgment. Fairly obscure impressionist paintings routinely sell for what would be a record price for even the rarest prints by the most famous of dead photographers.

•     •    •

But what about:

• Documentation.

Painters do make some strong documents—Goya's "Disasters of War," for example, or even Durer's "Great Piece of Turf." But documentation is the forte of the camera.

"Disasters of War" is an amazing series of prints by one of the greatest artists in history, and yet, what do they summon up in the minds of most well-educated, art-aware people? Well, maybe some vague images…some impressions…if that.

But what about:

1. The killing of the Spanish Republican infantryman by Robert Capa;
2. Capa’s D-Day beach photos;
3. The U.S. Marine flag-raising on Iwo Jima’s Mt. Suribachi;
4. The atomic bomb exploding over Hiroshima;
5. The sailor kissing the woman in Times Square;
6. The assassination of John Kennedy;
7. The shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald;
8. The young Vietnamese girl running from the napalm attack;
9. The gunshot execution of the Viet Cong;
10. Robert Kennedy dying on the floor in the California hotel kitchen.
11. The explosion of the Challenger
12. The fall of the World Trade Center towers

I would suggest that any of these are as powerful as "Disasters of War," and will last just as long, because they have aesthetic qualities that make them extremely powerful images, completely aside from their physical, social and political content.

That quality derives from the fact that these are actual moments involving real people, while still fulfilling "artistic" expectations of structure, tone, etc.

Inferno by James Nachtwey

The most sustained demonstration of this power by a single person that I know of is Inferno by James Nachtwey, who has been criticized for shooting brutal, awful scenes but with an aesthetic "eye" that some think is untoward, given the subject matter. Inferno will, I think, a hundred years from now, be considered one of the great documents of the 20th Century, easily comparable to the best of the paintings from our time.

But here is the nose-joint crux of the thing, if you consider yourself a photographic artist: It's possible to make fine photographic landscapes, portraits and all the others, but I doubt that they will ever rise to the level of skillful paintings. The problem, from an artistic point of view, is that photography starts with an external point—a subject—and a mechanical capture, from which it can't escape.

Painting starts with an internal, artistic response, from which it can't escape, but which is considered the nexus of all real art.

With documentation, however, the point of the thing is external. The whole raison d'etre, so to speak, is the externality, the event: the murder, the explosion, the kiss. When these things are expressed in an artistic way, they have the potential to rise to great art—art as great as any painting, but totally different than any painting.

In other words, in my developing opinion (which is certainly not yet set in stone), if you want to go looking for a true, lasting art in photography, you should look at things that can only be captured in an instant: an action, an event, a happening.

If you attempt to find, or produce, great art in the domains of painting—that big list at the beginning of this post—that no matter how good you become, you are doomed to the status of a minor artist.

Jan Breughel the Elder, Bouquet, 1603

If you look at a flower painting by Jan (Velvet) Breughel, you are astonished by the level of observation and creation. You see something that says a lot about all flowers, and also about life, and even…bugs. You are not similarly astonished by a Mapplethorpe flower, because the observation is mechanical, and all you see is one flower arrangement at one instant, about which you can easily say, "So what?"

Robert Mapplethorpe, Tulips, 1988

I would suggest that in time, people like Steiglitz, Minor White, Harry Callahan, Robert Mapplethorpe and others will be lost in time, while some painters, who we now think of as perhaps lesser artists than those photographers, will persist.

On the other hand, I think photos will be regarded as the most important documents of our time, and that it’s in documentation that the true Ort of Photography lies.

John

John Camp, a occasional contributor to TOP who has an enthusiastic love of art, especially painting, is an accomplished book author who writes under the nom de plume John Sandford.

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Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Bill Pierce: "At last, somebody with the intelligence to see the truth about photography in the world of art (and the fortitude to put up with the shrieks of outrage his comments will produce). This is one of the best, most important pieces of writing on photography to come down the pike in a long time. Congratulations to John Camp."

Featured Comment by Nicholas Condon: "Hmmm.

"First of all, I don't think that the documentary nature of photography needs be centered on a 'defining moment' in order to be valuable. Robert Adam's The New West documents a very specific place and a time, but certainly not an instant.

"Second, I find the omission of Ansel Adams from the discussion interesting. His subjects could hardly be more 'painterly,' and I somehow doubt he will have faded into obscurity in a century.

"Third, I agree with some of the people who've already commented that ignoring the scarcity issue when it comes to pricing is specious.

"Fourth, and more importantly, I think using something as utterly deranged as the art market as a metric of quality is highly problematic. I don't believe for one minute that the big-money art collectors are solely (or even primarily) motivated by their own aesthetic appreciation for the works in question. I don't know exactly what fraction of Picassos sold are to people who deeply love Picasso's work and don't care a whit for how much having one will impress their social circle, but I'm confident that it's much less than unity.

"Finally, I do not buy the 'fixed viewpoint' argument, but I cannot figure out quite how to express why.

"So, as an argument, I don't buy it. As an article, though, I'd have to call it a ringing success; even though I disagree with it, it's got me thinking very hard about the subject."

Featured Comment by Steven Halpern: "An interesting notion, one that can start us thinking of something more edifying than the morning news. Of course, I disagree. Many years ago, without knowing who he was, I walked into a show of Alvarez Bravo's photographs and was greatly moved. A few years ago, a visit to the north of Italy left time for a quick drive to Firenze and two days there. I said, 'the Ufizzi,' the girlfriend said, 'the convent of San Marco.' Like the day I discovered Alvarez Bravo, I walked into San Marco not knowing what it holds (I trusted her judgment), and found myself looking at Angelico's frescos. I wouldn't say encountering Angelico was the same as encountering Alvarez Bravo, but I would say that both artists moved me equally.

"Farther afield, I'm a long-time student (and licensed instructor) of chanoyu ('Japanese tea ceremony'). Even among tea people there's no agreement on what chanoyu is: a polite accomplishment? A kind of meditation? A performance art? But for those who respond to it, cramming oneself into a tiny room with a few other like-minded people, drinking tea the consistency of applesauce, and discussing works of art that make no sense in Western terms is as soul-restoring as Angelico or Alvarez Bravo, even though it all vanishes when the tea gathering ends. So who's to say what is really art? Better to appreciate as much as possible, I say, than to limit oneself by setting up categories of better and worse (although the exercise can be thought-provoking, as it is in this case)."

Comments

[CN]

Mike, the point of the article may not be about comparing photography to painting, but you can't avoid the fact that it does.

As I pointed out earlier, it's only photographers that care about how their medium stacks up against other art forms.

[Mike Johnston]

"Or perhaps Cotman's Greta Bridge?"

Hmm, I have no memory of ever having seen that before.

Mike

[aslanix]

I disagree with the post, and I think that 01af has said it all. Also, I'd be curious to see how perception of painting will change in 5-10 years once the craft of painting will get more and more digital; just think where cintiq or ipad will be in a few years down from today.

[charlie]

"That's not really what this piece is about. He's just using the comparison to painting to better understand the nature of photography--what makes it last, what makes it valuable, what makes it different."

I get that Mike, I'm just horribly vague in my writing.

[richard]

Greta Bridge - granted, it's not well known unless you know about British watercolours. I just picked it because I think it has obvious photographic parallels - the use of light and shade to define form, as opposed to just line, for example. But hey, c'mon - Constable, Caspar David Friedrich, Cezanne, almost any of the Impressionists - all used landscape subjects - Constable exclusively. Yuu musta seen sone of these? Even your own Winslow Homer, as mentioned by JC.

[Tom Turnbull]

A thought provoking essay, as have been many of the fascinating and insightful comments prompted by it.

My own thinking has brought me to the work of Paul Caponigro, which, I believe, will surely stand the test of time, and to one of his own comments about it. He was asked in an interview which of his photographs he liked best. As I remember it, his answer was, "the ones which I felt I had been led to make at that particular place and time."
No matter how one might understand what he describes here, I take him as a credible witness. He points to far more going on in his work than a merely "mechanical" response to a totally "external" stimulus. In fact, it sounds to me quite a lot like "an internal, artistic response, from which [his creativity] can’t escape, but which is considered the nexus of all real art."

For further witness ~ take that startling photograph he made of The Apple....

[Fer]

I see where the author is coming from and agree to some extent, though I've not read the comments yet and in them I'm certain to find, as usual in TOP, more food for thought.

However, the comparison between the flowers painting by Brueghel and photo by Mapplethorpe made me think of the astonishingly exquisite flower photographs by Spanish photographer Pilar Pequeño:

http://www.pilarpequeno.com/

I saw quite a few of her large prints at a recent show in Madrid, and I'm pretty sure "her" flowers are more (or at least as) moving to me than most of the flower paintings I've seen in museums, a long list that includes Monet's water lillies and others... Maybe it's because of the "painterly" quality of Pequeño's images? I don't know.

[Ken White]

I don't generally comment on a TOP post twice but this one sticks with me for some reason.

Photography must stand or fall on the merits of the work created in the medium. Every form of expression has a unique range of qualities that provide a unique set of possibilities.

Second, After some careful thought I've discovered that the best and most moving 'In the moment' image for me is not a photograph. It is a simple sketch of Marie Antoinette on her way to the guillotine done by David. That surprised me.

[raist3d@gmail.com]

I am sorry but I don't have much respect at all for the thoughts in this article.

Just to cover a few major failed points I see here:

- photography highest form is documentation - eh? What exactly is Ansel Adams Yosemite landscape shots documenting? How the forest looked like back then? What about abstract photographs? What exactly are they documenting?

- the logical fallacy used of "appeal to popularity" (opinion of money). Give me a break! I don't think I have to explain that one.

- photography starting with an external view? The good photographer does pre-visualization. A lot of these depending on the photograph may very well build something out of nothing doing their own setup of lights, subjects, objects and so on - or come back to a particular scene "when the light is right" because it doesn't match what they are after. These are no more external than the described painting work.

To reduce photography in its highest form to merely documentation as an art form is one of the most shortsighted thoughts I have ever read in the last five years. What happened to photographs that are set up or "found", or abstract that rely more than anything of aspects of light and how it plays on composition. Where exactly is the "documentary" aspect of it? What exactly is so "documentary" about Ansel Adam's landscapes of Yosemite? Are those actions, events, happening? No! Yet there are many photographs considered masterpieces that do not have an event happening or action or whatever.

I honestly don't understand this essay. Quite frankly this reads to me like someone who loves a particular camera brand but in this case, a particular form of art. "The art I like is better than yours." I honestly don't get it. And I thought this kind of arguments between painting and photography were already long gone down in history. Both are art in their own right and great.

[raist3d@gmail.com]

". Yet, the paintings are vastly different, reflecting the mentality of the two men. If they’d both been shooting photos with the same gear, their photos would have been identical…they wouldn’t have been “Cezanne” or “Pissarro."

If that was the case, the gear is the only one taking the photographs. This very line of mentality is the one that goes with the thought of "I will buy a better camera so I can increase my skills as a photographer and be a better photographer" which of course is completely false.

There are several cases of different photos taken of the same subject- even the same moment by two different photographers- the kiss of the marine with the woman (V-J day) for example that are quite different, yet it was the same subject- you could have equalized everything by giving both the same exact camera and yet it would still be different.

[Jonathan]

Sorry to come late to this fascinating discussion, but the article's really got me thinking about distinctions in the actual act of creation in various art forms (art used here in its very broadest sense, including painting, photography, film, music, literature etc.)

While I consider myself a better photographer than practitioner of most other art forms, I can safely say that I have never experienced what might be called direct emotional involvement in the act of creation of a photograph. This is in contrast to the feelings of creative energy I might get while writing, drawing or composing.

I suppose what I'm trying to say, in a very basic sense, is that I feel emotional involvement/creative energy when drawing, writing etc, whereas I always feel distinctly detatched when photographing (and I cannot imagine the experience ever being different).

This doesn't necessarily have any bearing on how I respond to art (as a viewer, reader or listener) but I think it relates in some way to JC's comment that "Painting starts with an internal, artistic response, from which it can't escape[...]"

[Clay Olmstead]

Not to get all George Carlin on you, but photography is hunting and painting is farming. In photography, you load your camera, go on a shoot, wait for your subject and press the shutter. (Maybe you even get a head shot.) If you do your job well, you have something to take home and hang on your wall.

In painting, you lay on a ground, apply a few washes, build it up over a period of time and if it's good you sell it. (You don't keep it, because then you don't eat.)

[Threeark]

Very interesting conversation. I particularly think it's important for photographers to engage themselves with the concept of "starting with an external point".

If we are shooting with the intent of making an external point a work of art why are we then utilizing our hands and cameras as our "brush-strokes"? That philosophy will ultimately limit us to composition and depth. Important for sure, but the be all/end all? I think we can do more.

Some current photographers have been toying with this very idea and using the process of documentation as the "brush-strokes" vs purely focusing on camera techniques. For example, Peter Funch (http://www.peterfunch.com/)is his photography art or documentation? All the parts of the photograph are documents of course but together can they make art? There clearly isn't a distinct boundary but rather a continuum.

Excellent post by the way.

[Robert S.]

Fascinating article. I don't know that I agree with it 100%, but it's certainly thought provoking.

I'm puzzled, however, but the commenters who actually seem angry or offended by the piece. Many appear to be arguing that the author has no business saying what is or isn't art, and that he's elitist. But aren't those commenters in effect suggesting that the author should not express opinions that conflict with conventional wisdom? In particular, the notion that these issues were settled decades ago and cannot be reopened is bizarre IMO. "How dare he force me to think about these issues!" It's ironic.

[John Garrity]

Apples versus Oranges & Ort

Thank you John Camp for an article that has made some interesting and valuable points, and generated so many comments. However, I believe it a mistake to believe that continuously sustainable comparisons are possible or desirable between photography, the product of a human and a machine, and the hand based picture making processes of drawing, painting and the traditional print methods.

Yes of course, they are all comprised of fixed marks of tones or colours, on or from a flat surface – be it paper, canvas, or a computer screen. And yes, they are deeply rooted in the desire to make recognisable pictures that has existed among human beings for at least 30,000 years as evidenced by the cave paintings at Lascaux and other sites, a deeply human impulse that feeds into the making of both photography and the traditional autographic arts.

None the less, they are fundamentally different. The camera requires a subject in front of it that is reflecting or transmitting light, or a combination of both. A painting or drawing can depict in a realistic or at least recognisable fashion, something that doesn’t or hasn’t existed or occurred, such as Uccelllo’s St George and the Dragon. (http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/paolo-uccello-saint-george-and-the-dragon)

As John Szarkowski and others have pointed out, a camera made image always has clearly defined edges, usually framed as a rectangle within the circular field of the lens, within which the totality of the picture is recorded right out to the edges during the period of exposure (This is clearly demonstrated by Emmit Gowin’s circular photographs made on a large format camera using a lens with insufficient coverage for the film area, or any B & W negative printed to show the clear film around the image as a black line).

This intrinsic frame of a camera ‘cuts its image from the actuality of the world by excluding the greater whole, whereas, in complete contrast, a hand made image is built up over time as a series of marks, with no intrinsic edges. Sure, you will eventually run out of surface area, even in a scroll painting, but extra paper or canvas can be bolted on.

The camera is a near instantaneous picture trap devoid of emotions, social conditioning and intent, even though its operator possesses them. This contrasts with a hand made image that visually evokes some element or elements of reality is always time consuming, even when made by the most skilful individual using the most minimal of means (Henri Gaudier-Brzeska http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=4987&searchid=10131&tabview=image), which is mediated by the brain and is always subject to social conditioning.

In contrast, a photograph is a slice out of time made with and by an impartial machine that records light entering it simultaneously across the frame for the duration of the exposure. (Harold Edgerton, Henri Cartier Bresson, Michael Kenna).

Additionally, the camera shutter ordinarily operates far faster than the perceptual processes of the human eye and brain, so that a photographer recording a scene with moving elements with even a fairly pedestrian shutter speed, such as a sixtieth or one twenty fifth of a second, cannot see, but only can only try to anticipate what the camera will record. Human vision, like a drawing or painting, is incremental as the very limited area of the eye’s sharp focus is constantly and largely unconsciously shifting across the visual field all the while feeding neural data to the brain where the brain integrates it into the constantly ongoing process of vision. In contrast, the camera’s picture is a narrow slice across time.

Consequently, Garry Winogrand could make the perfectly logical comment that he photographed “To see what the world looks like photographed.” This explicit recognition of the role of the camera is a comment impossible for any painter to logically make about their tools, methods and outcomes.

Magnum’s David Hurn has pointed out that the two fundamental controls of photography are where you stand in the world and when you press the shutter. As Bill Pierce, who posted the first responses to John Camp’s article, can confirm from personal experience, if you want to photograph the civil war in Lebanon, you need to be in thick of the lethal mayhem in a specific area of Beirut when it is taking place. In contrast a painting of ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ is an imaginative depiction made at a distance and after the event.

The visual logic of arranging marks on a flat surface of a rectangle can and do overlap between photography and painting, etc. However, in this respect, where one medium has borrowed from the other, photography’s unavoidable relationship with reality emerges as the winner. Chuck Close and Degas, for example, have both usefully used photography as a research tool that positively feeds or fed into their paintings. However, the converse is not the case. Despite the ludicrously high prices paid for Jeff Wall’s Photoshop collage based on a Hokusai picture ‘A Sudden Gust of Wind,1993, or the multimillion dollar Gursky, they are banal, formulistic and visually dull. The few photographers who have successfully borrowed from painting, and include the already mentioned Les Krims and David La Chappelle, have done so by photographing tableaux they have created that acknowledge and emphasise the gap between actuality and the idealisation of the paintings or cartoons they have referenced.

(As Mike has pointed out, the prices that the ignorant super rich pay for such dross is an example of conspicuous consumption by competing individuals or institutions. The whole phenomena, including their ludicrous size and stupid sums of money spent on them would be a certain target for Thorstein Veblen’s satirical teeth, if he was still with us. They exist in a highly manipulated market that creates artificial rarity, since it would be perfectly feasible to produce enough identical and signed versions of ‘Rhein II’ for every single reader of T.O.P., the only limitation being Gursky’s susceptibility to repetitive strain injury. Also, these fatuous creations are not photographs, no matter if so described by curators and other so-called experts, they are dull collages made from photographically generated sources.)

Another defining characteristic of photography is that it intrinsically produces many, many pictures. Even someone like Richard Avedon using a slow to operate and expensive 10” X 8” camera, made close on two hundred negatives of his famous bald beekeeper, which he then edited down to two images, then to the one that is generally reproduced. Photographers who know what they are doing make a lot of pictures then edit ruthlessly. Making a single photograph is a reductive procedure, in contrast to a painting or drawing, which is an additive and synthesising process.

Consequently, and almost without exception, the making of a successful body of photographs emerges from the effort of making a lot of pictures in the form of sustained projects around topics of importance to the photographer. Editing then eliminates the great majority of these many slices through time and space because they don’t work as pictures. Hence Elliot Erwitt’s dryly sardonic comment that few photographic projects take longer than two and a half seconds.

I personally think both good photographs and good paintings are wonderful, but each should be left to get on with what it does best. Apples and oranges, both of which are ill served when we treat them as interchangeable. This common category error is in my opinion, further compounded i by the use of the word art, which has been so hollowed out since Marcel Duchamp onwards that its use serves only to confuse rather than illuminate. I much prefer the suggestion of Milton Glazer, who has suggested that we talk about - work; good work; and excellent work.

[Bobby Salmon]

It's a difference in process. Great paintings rarely spring fully formed out of nowhere. Usually there is a photograph involved, or a series of sketches or preparatory study paintings before the final version. Perhaps not as mechanical a process as photography since there is less often a metal machine involved, but certainly just as calculated and technical.

[Bobby Salmon]

@ Steven Halpern
Since you're an English speaker writing in English, it's okay to use the name "Florence" for the Italian city. "Firenze" is the native Italian name but it sounds both silly and pretentious coming from the mouth of an English speaker. Or do you also refer to Italy as "Italia", Germany as "Deutschland", and Japan as "Nippon"?