Tuesday, October 13, 2009


Yes, I agree with Blake Gopnik that photography specially commercial photography has particular status and because of that is treated different than other segment of the fine art or high art.
As fine art rejected the norms of the academies and saloons it became more abstract and conceptual it level the field for other forms of art to be appreciated like primitive art. Bbecause we cannot judge from what we see on surface of the canvas, it was more the opinion of an art critic or a curator what was important to determinate what was fine art or not. For example the opinion of Clement Greenberg was the one that determinate what was fine art or not during the ’40 to the ‘60; As a result of the rejection of the formal convention of art, art becomes distant and strange to the viewer. Fine art is only for the people who can understand it.
On the other hand in photography it was John Szarkowski who removed the dividers that separated the photograph in high and low art and re-read them looking for a good shot a good picture, with beauty and information. Photography still captures the imagination of the viewer, because that is the ways that are been curated or selected today for exhibit.
For the questing if photography is art?
Yes, it is a form of art, as any form of art it is the influenced by other forms of art like paintings and art theory. The early photograph by Margaret Cameron, Rejlander and Robinson were inspired by paintings the soft focus is clear example of that, the composition, the classical themes also refers to painting and the tendencies that dominated the trends during the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. During the 1920 and ’30 photography enters a period of self-consciousness influenced by modernist and social ideas pictures become more powerful and artistic as photographs. As painting becomes more deconstructed with less information; at the same time photography becomes more sharp and realistic since is dealing with the real word but with a social conscience in the ’20 and ‘30 , it have information and that information handed as not strictly documentary makes the pictures develop their own language.
Regarding the famous photographer who can move among the powerful and rich, it is what is left of the high circulation magazines era and is changing with the new electronic media. As images and news are spread rapidly through the internet, those large circulation magazines are losing their monolithic power of building visual languages.
In the article what surprised me was no reference to Andy Warhol because he resolve the contradictions of high and low art, the commercial and noncommercial art, the popular and elite fine art. And his photography based art had an important role on that.
The picture I selected is from a fine art photographer Luis Delgado is art, is digital, has a narrative, a good scale of grays and the necessary amount of information.

1 comment:

  1. You make many good points. I agree about the key roles that both Greenberg and Szarkowski played.

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