[Leica] Re: What is fine art photography?

["Dave Fisher" <tekapo@golden.net>]

> From: "B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>
> Subject: RE: [Leica] What is fine art photography?

> Well, Martin, I, on the other hand, don't like her work because I feel it
is
> self-indulgent twadle; nothing but art school crap, really. But that's my
> educated, informed opinion!;-)
>
> B. D.

I don't mind Sherman and Mapplethorpe's work, or even Jeff Wall for that
matter. I just find it's value grossly over-inflated. Perhaps that's the way
the art world has been spinning ever since the invention of the camera.
Prior to photography, an artist had incredible value because of their skill
in rendering objects and story scenes *real*. Look at the work of Vermeer
and tell me that Cindy Sherman or any of the art world's critical darlings
has equal talent and stature, and I'm afraid you'll waste your time spewing
theory, because my eyes simply won't buy it. When the camera was invented,
there were a few artists, impressionists mostly, who valued the camera for
it's worth as a pictorial tool as well as liberating their painting. But
most of the art world -- artists, critics, galleries -- went neurotic. The
art world was turned onto its head and has been in a state of neuroses ever
since. I was a Fine Art major suffering through painful classes and crap
theories when a graduate gave me a copy of Tom Wolfe's "The Painted Word."
Lots of people hate that book, and for good reason. Suddenly, a lot of
things made sense to me and no longer was I intimidated by the world of art.
I recall an art professor railing against me for even having that book in my
possession before I read it, and I instinctively knew how dangerous Wolfe's
ideas about art were simply because of the prof's loud vitriol against it.

Much of what passes for quality "art" photography these days, stamped with
the approval of curators and critics who themselves frame their theories as
"works of art," is like the rest of the art world still trying to come to
grips with itself and remains in a state of neuroses. What's sad is that
when someone dares step forward and ask whether the emporer is wearing any
clothes, they are routinely looked down upon as Philistines because they
don't understand concepts like "Protean man" and "fuliginous flatness" or
even "bokeh" for that matter.