Do You Have Your Louis Mendes? The Louis Mendes Test

When I was young and in photo school I had a surefire test for whether something was art. If I could jump over it, it wasn't art.

Okay, so it was a snarky way of making a crude critique of the cult of size. I had this idea that painting had been fleeing from photography since 1839, like an older brother trying to get away from an eager, talented younger sibling who was always hanging around in an uncool way being pesky. My theory of Picasso was that his function had been to recast the entire history of art in a way that downplayed the figurative and realistic elements and highlighted the abstract, non-literal, idiosyncratic aspects, and (with Miro and Calder and Matisse and the rest of the gang) showed a way forward for art where photography couldn't follow. (Older brother trying to ditch little sister.) I thought that was one reason why painting suddenly got big when it did—because photographs were limited in size. There was an old saying in studio fashion photography: "If you can't make it good, make it big. If you can't make it big, make it red." Attributed to Paul Rand.) Painters, I thought, made their work big as part of wanting to go where photography couldn't follow. It was the refuge of first resort.

William Eggleston got famous by being the first to really make it red. As I always say, if you haven't seen a dye transfer of "The Red Ceiling," then you haven't seen "The Red Ceiling." It's the reddest that red ever got.

And in the long corridor outside the Photography Department suite down in the basement of the Beaux Arts Corcoran Museum building in downtown Washington, the Third Year Fine Arts students had exhibitions of their work. The walls were lined with paintings and there was a line of freestanding sculptures down the middle of the wide hallway. And we usually came out of the photo studios and darkrooms pretty late at night and in high spirits (the Class of '85 was, and still is, a very high-spirited bunch. With a few notable absences, we are still in touch, virtually every day, in a freewheeling group text with no end). And I was usually pretty buzzed because I kept a beer cracked in the darkroom when I printed. And I had grown up with a trampoline—a high-quality, in-ground, Olympic-sized trampoline—in my family's backyard, so I had strong leg muscles and I was very good at, well, leaping.

And sorry to say I would apply my test for art by leaping over the Third-Year people's sculptures. The rule was, if I could clear it, it wasn't art, because, you know, art had to be big, and little piffling sculptures I could jump over were weak on bigness.

I'm sure I endangered many a fellow student's lovingly made art. I apologize in retrospect.

I had an uncanny cognizance of my leaping abilities, though, even when slightly drunk. I encountered one piece one night that was right at the razor's edge of my athletic abilities. I prepared myself, took a tremendous running jump, and barely cleared it, probably with a fraction of an inch to spare, and that was the very first time it ever occurred to my brain that I could misjudge and wreck some poor innocent art student's work. But I never hit a sculpture, much less came crashing down on one, ruining it. If I had hurt myself in the process that might not have lacked justice.

Anyway that's the background for the Louis Mendes Test.

Snarky but humorous; humorous but snarky
I was reading the article by Kōdō Shimon about synthography, and right at the top of his photographs page, there was none other than Louis Mendes! And it abruptly occurred to me that Louis is the test for street photography. There was never a sure way before to bestow the title. People who wander city streets camera-pointing think they are doing it, but some of them are as far away from it as Brooklyn is from Mars. If you have a picture of Louis Mendes somewhere in your hard drives or negatives, surely you're a street photographer. If you don't, you're not. Because who can be a street photographer without going to New York? And who can wander around New York without encountering Louis? And what street photographer worth his or her salt can encounter Louis without making their very own iconic portrait of him?! Impossible, as the French say, and us too.

I'm a street photographer then, happy to say. (Scroll down a bit to see my portrait of Louis. I should re-process that, now that Photoshop is better at HDR.)

So that's that done then. And unfortunately I can no longer jump any higher than Nikola Jokić, the best basketball player in the world, and he cannot jump over a piece of paper, so there is no longer a sure litmus test for what is art and what is not—more's the pity.

Mike

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Featured Comments from:

John Cecilian: "Since you wrote about Mendes, I figure I would share my photo of him. Hope you like it."

Photo by John Cecilian

Bob Johnston (no relation): "Another fascinating essay Mike. You are a bit of a marvel. Then I got to the end. AI street photography?!!! That frightened the hell out of me. Will we ever know what is real and what is not now that AI is on the ascendant? Will AI spell the end of photography or will it make it stronger?" [Your questions inspired the post on "Synthography." —Mike]

Moose: "Well, Damn, I guess I'm a Street Photographer, too! 'Atlantic Antic' street fair, Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn, 9/30/2007. I did take a lot of street photos that day."

Photo by Moose

G Dan Mitchell: "Whew! I do have a photo of Louis. On the subway  :-)  ."

Photo by G Dan Mitchell

Malcolm Myers: "I have been to New York (from the UK). I have been to B&H. I saw a guy outside with a large format camera and hesitated. Then I plucked up the courage to ask him if I could take his picture. He said, 'just the one!' with a glint in his eye. So I took it. Only later did I find out he was Louis Mendes and how famous he was. Had I known, I'd have paid him to take my picture. Now that would be art! However, I am definitely not a street photographer (no cojones for that lark). Beginner's luck I guess  :-)  ."

hugh crawford: "I can’t remember if I have a photo of Louis Mendes, but somewhere I have a picture he took of me in front of B&H photo. I had been chatting with him for years, since I had been doing street photography with a Speed Graphic and Polaroid film myself in the mid '80s. Anyway, not terribly surprisingly, it was about a stop and a half overexposed. He’s a lovely guy; all artists should take a lesson from him closing a sale."

Dominick Mistretta: "Here is my photo of Louis taken about 13 years ago."

Photo by Dominick Mistretta

Comments

[Tim Walters]

I heard it as "If you can't make it good, make it big. If it still doesn't look good, frame it."

[John Krumm]

I'm been enjoying an interesting podcast channel called Imitative Photography. The videographer creates a mini-documentary (nicely done) on a classic photographer, then goes about trying to photograph "in the style of." Sometimes it's impressive, sometimes humbling. I found no video's on Mendes, but for flash photography, he tried Bruce Gilden, which he said he had been dreading (close, with flash). It's pretty funny.

https://youtu.be/HPnrOQxbs7w?si=-2D4CDCEbkdNZTib

[Tom Burke]

I think Stanley Green would have been a London equivalent of Louis Mendes. Not a photographer, true, but for some decades a very visible, very recognisable walking London landmark. There’s a Wikipedia page about him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Green

I saw him a number of times walking around the west end of London.

[Eric Rose]

I guess Rembrandt was way ahead of his time in hating photography since many of his painting were very large.

[Adam Isler]

I pass this test. Of course, sadly, the price of passing this test was allowing Louis Mendes to take your picture with his famous press camera and Polaroid back (for $20). I still have that around here somewhere, too.

[John Camp]

Art by well-known artists tends to be big because it's bought by people with fairly large amounts of money, which means they have big homes, which means they have big walls that they need to decorate. Most Impressionist paintings, in a mega-mansion, look like postage stamps on a business envelope. I'm always somewhat startled by the small size of most Impressionist paintings (and Cezannes and Van Gogh's.) But if you've ever been in one of these 19th-century preserved museums (or just very old houses) it seems like a lot of the rooms are about the size of a modern bathroom. If you wanted to put a Jackson Pollock in there, you'd have to fold it.

[Kevin Crosado]

My rough guide is that if people are always blathering about making their art, then they aren't.

[Herman Krieger]

Leaping lizards!

[Daniel]

"If you can't make it good, make it big. If you can't make it big, make it red."

...and if it still isn't very good put it in a red frame?

[Geoff Wittig]

The Louis Mendes test seems like....a testable hypothesis.

I kid. Back in my film days I took a bunch of photography workshops with landscape/natural history photographers whose work I admired. One frequent element of such workshops was the chance to show some of your own work to demonstrate what you were after. Invariably you'd see two or three participants showing exactly the same image of the glow of sunrise illuminating the underside of Mesa Arch, which they self-evidently had taken at a previous workshop. Or a photo of "The Wave" striated sandstone formation in Utah, setting up in the tripod-holes of the previous photographer.

[Terry Letton]

Well a search of my files confirms, no Louis Mendes. Therefore I’m not a street photographer. But I already knew that.

[hugh crawford]

Speaking of art you can jump over and drinking, I have been to a few Joel Shapiro openings, and there is always someone tripping over one of those little monopoly houses.