[Leica] Musings on the role of photography (long but intelligent response to the original post)

["Khoffberg" <khoffberg@email.msn.com>]

I must say this post has taken quite a turn from where it started which was
a question I posted about what and why you shoot when you take your camera
out and take pictures for yourself.

I sent the same post to an artist friend of mine who had this to say.  It's
worth the time it takes to read:

Ah you have carved away at this to where I think it's back where we began
all of this discussion a year or so ago.  You will remember I asked you of
your intent.  If you had a style, a POV, what your photos were about.  Isn't
this question of intent the same issue?   I have thought long and hard about
this one and knowing full well that there is no larger than life great truth
to be cognized here I have no qualms about dancing merrily out on the
skinniest of limbs with my own humble opinion.   I think that regardless of
the artist's intent he/she will always be misunderstood and misinterpreted
and ultimately reanalyzed out of context. ( But it doesn't matter)  You
mentioned the WPA stuff the other day, I love it, but remember that that
style is called Socialist Realism and those guys were Socialists and
Communists and Anarchists whose avowed goal was to change the world and in
many cases overthrow the government.  That's what all business of the heroic
worker was all about.  Remember Andy Warhol and those multiple portraits
from the 60s, stars and politicians all wanted to have one of themselves
done, it was a big deal to be famous enough to have an Andy Warhol of
yourself done.  But what those things are about is how fame destroys who you
are and you become an image of yourself a ubiquitous reproduced face backed
up with nothing.  They were very cynical not at all flattering pictures.
But that isn't how we see them.  In Athens there is a wonderful display of
Classical Greek sculptures.  One can trace the evolution of styles and
fashions but the thing nobody is ever cognizant of is that they were
gravestones.  If you think about it what kind of picture would one draw of
this culture by analyzing the cemeteries?  Picasso's Guernica was a
magnificent protest against war when the Nazis bombed the village in Spain.
But it's not it's context that makes it a great painting.   You would still
be able to tell it was a great painting even if you knew nothing about
Spanish Fascism.
Art is a form of communication.  If an idea can be better expressed in
writing is should be poetry or prose.  If it can be best expressed through
sound it should be music.  The visual arts express something other or more
than what can be expressed in words, the gestalt thing again.  We see stuff
in painting and photos that you absolutely cannot express any other way.  We
use a whole lot of metaphors trying to do so but there always remains a
little more that makes it work.  I don't really believe that the intent of
the artist matters much.  It matters even less the more wrapped up he may be
in his particular agendas.  If the work is good it will be appreciated
because it's good, period.  So why does and artist make art anyway.  The
best answer I ever heard was my friend Rick in Cincinnati who said he had
to.  Next best was my friend Bob who said he made art because he needed the
therapy.  I make art because I like to, it's fun.   I enjoy it, it amuses
me.   On a grander scale I think I'm really going for the beauty thing but I
mean beauty as a form of knowledge in the sense of the great  Renaissance
ideas.
The point.  Find what  speaks to you don't try to hard to analyze it because
it will quit speaking to you and you will have to find another muse or seek
another vision.  It's using the other side of the brain.  Good art comes
from the gut and you can't quite explain why or how it works.  Don't worry
about it.  I have often thought that if I were going to do it over again I
would go to school and get a BS in anthropology or philosophy and then when
I was all done and had learned how to think then I would go and get a an
MFA.  Despite the fact that the technical aspects of what you are doing seem
a little undaunting, the technique really doesn't matter at all.  I have
seen lovely images made with a shoebox pinhole camera and I have seen stuff
made with some really high priced gear that put me to sleep.  What makes it
art and what makes it work is between your ears.  Think whatever you think
and take pics of what ever inspires, amuses or looks funny or right and
trust your gut instinct.  If you are fortunate and it speaks to somebody
else as well, it will say something different to them anyway.

Kevin Hoffberg