[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by Norma J

How is an image 'fabricated'? are you referring to digital art?

I think different mediums inspire and provoke different things within different people. No particular style or way of making art is more important or of greater worth than any other. Photography can inspire and obtain ones attention just as well as a painting can.

first of al, I don't think art in general is meant to inspire anything. it is meant for contemplation. sometimes specific works of art are intended to inspire something specific.
for example, picasso's guernica, a massive mural, all grey and black and white, which was intended as a description of the horrors of war upon innocent people, specifically franco's bombing on guernica.
that painting is more important than any photograph. (in my eyes of course), so is any other iconic painting, because there is only ONE of them.

photographs are endelssly reproducible, without loss of quality. a reproduced painting however is never ever the same a a reproduced photograph.

I love photography but I feel it's main value to us (besides advertising imagery) is in it's journalistic/moment-captured quality.

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by Norma J

How is an image 'fabricated'? are you referring to digital art?

.

I am referrring to most "art" photography, and/or digital art.

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

I love photography but I feel it's main value to us (besides advertising imagery) is in it's journalistic/moment-captured quality.

...

[Rob Instigator]

I mean that as a culture.

not as to individuals.
if we are affectefd by every image we see, then photography, being roughly 98% of all the images humans encounter on a day to day, becomes nothing more than visual background noise.
I wish it was not so but it is.


I love photographic art. I go tio the shows and buy the beautiful books (brassai in paris for example, I have never seen more beautiful and mysterious images of that city) but the age of actual photography is over.

it does not exist anymore. Now we are in a new age, where images made photographically or digitally are manipulated to a degree which negates their ability to serve as documentary objects.

will write more later

[Toilet & Bowels]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

that painting is more important than any photograph. (in my eyes of course), so is any other iconic painting, because there is only ONE of them.

more valuable, but not more important, they serve completely different purposes surely? the reproduceable quality of a photo is usually plays a part in what makes an important photo important (at least in documentary photography, e.g. is that vamous vietnam photo of that running child less important than guernica?), i.e. it increases the potential impact of the image by having a larger audience.


anyway just thinking about this is getting too complicated to start writing about now, but it made me think of these things:

when was the last painting painted that could be classed as "important" probably in the 1960s, if not the 50s?

has the potency of the photographic image, and therefore it's importance been lost to the moving image? if so when?

i.e. what i'm saying is did the era of the iconic painiting end with the begining of the era of the iconic photograph, and did that in turn end with the begining of the era of the iconic moving image?

[Rob Instigator]

i think it is the immediacy of journalism and reportage that makes photos such as the vietnam girl burned by napalm important. the reproducibility is hjust an inherent quality of photographic images. (or most of them anyway)

those are goodquestions though toilet&bowling

painting has been around as long as humans have had pigment, which is on the order of a hundred thousand years, at least, by the earliest cave arts.

photography, the capturing of photons on light sensitive material, is nearly dead. it is just a matter of time. photography as I knew it as a kid ended the moment digital images became easy and cheap for everyone to use. polaroids, and snapshots, and film cameras will soon be as obsolete and archaic as daguerrotypes and tintypes.

this may be good for the art sense of photography though, as there are many people still using these "outdated" media to create art images.

the moving image is actually an odd topic, since there are no moving images, just a rapid succession of still images, which trick our eye into thinking we are watching actual motion.
if digital filmmaking becomes the norm, as it seems to be, then the old photographic journalistic quality of actual film will be gone too.
when it is as "easy" to create an image from the filmed elements as it is shown on 300 and on waking life, and other such, digitally produced movies, the question of what is real becomes important.

it is one thing to re-stage an event, such as the raising of the flag on iwo jima to capture an image that became iconic, and yet another thing when the actual individuyal pixels of any image have to be called into question, which is where digital imagery leaves us. (at least in the journalistic sense)

ramble ramble

[phoenix]

oh rob you are tearing me up with these posts.

I dont know. I am completely bored with standard contrived studio shots and the like, so I suppose in part I agree.

But the photogram, the pinhole camera, the cyanotype, photo guavre(I cannot spell), the light painter! They are far from dead. For me. They are entering a stage of freedom from the masses.. being hoarded by creative minds to experiement with and create wonderful expressions and say such interesting things so far removed from journalistic photography..

check it;

 

 

 

I'm sure you know all this anyway. That is a shitty cyanotype I couldnt find the nice one I wanted with lovely massive silk hanging from warehouse.. a sea of blue and imagery!

Just to me... photography isn't exclusively scientific documentation. It has been in that category far too long. Moving out for so many years but why does it still linger? Just as painting isn't exclusively pigments and binders on canvas. And there is so much in photography that moves me still. Such much unexplored.

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

if digital filmmaking becomes the norm, as it seems to be, then the old photographic journalistic quality of actual film will be gone too.
when it is as "easy" to create an image from the filmed elements as it is shown on 300 and on waking life, and other such, digitally produced movies, the question of what is real becomes important.

I agree!! it is so easy to create boring monotnous digital photography.. In the same breath though surely it can be used as a tool to completely recreate worlds which in the past you might have only dramed of? Probably the biggest wrong doing in digital imagery is that it is over polished. Life is not like that.. I think it is hard to suspend disbelief and be pulled into a world when it appears too perfect and sharp. That is not the medium's fault though, but the artist.

The execution and display of photography is what kills it for the most part I think. Benig a scientific or documentation medium.. there are so many unwritten rules about the way you should view them. Photographs are NOT paintings you are so right.. so why restrict them the same way? (not you... a large portion of the industry in general)

I'm too passionate about it. But the feeling I get from a dark and eerie room, with a little ambient light in corners, and with 10 foot tall torn up Bill Henson imagery. It floors me emotionally.

[Toilet & Bowels]

also there are other things you can do with digi photography if you take it in the other direction away from hi-tech that i've never really seen any artists investigate properly (that's not to say it isn't being done). and i'm not talking about taking photos on your phone and blowing it up really big to see the pixelation.
also, i guess because things like photoshop and and illustrator got picked up on way more quickly by designers artists seem to have been pretty slow (snobby perhaps) about utilising and making the most of that software

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by Toilet & Bowels

blowing it up really big to see the pixelation.

one of my teachers from art school had a little exhibition with photos that had been blown up and shrunk over and over. It was interesting.

[Norma J]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

first of al, I don't think art in general is meant to inspire anything. it is meant for contemplation. sometimes specific works of art are intended to inspire something specific.
for example, picasso's guernica, a massive mural, all grey and black and white, which was intended as a description of the horrors of war upon innocent people, specifically franco's bombing on guernica.
that painting is more important than any photograph. (in my eyes of course), so is any other iconic painting, because there is only ONE of them.

photographs are endelssly reproducible, without loss of quality. a reproduced painting however is never ever the same a a reproduced photograph.

I love photography but I feel it's main value to us (besides advertising imagery) is in it's journalistic/moment-captured quality.

art inspires thinking whether approving or not. I don't mean "yeah! I can do anything!" inspiring, but it does provoke some emotion within the viewer, even if it's just boredom. anyway, I think you put too much enthuses onto the word 'inspire' in my post. I could have used 'create' instead.

also, I don't think it's about the reproductivity of the artwork, but it's the initial pleasure (or displeasure) of the piece of art and the pleasure thereafter. and therefore this is endless. one can still get the same from a painting as they can from a photograph whether one medium is easily reproduced or not. I don't think people look at a photograph that they absolutely adore and think 'but... it CAN be printed again, s it loses its value to me'.

I do see what you're saying and I do think that all the great artists of the past are to be congratulated and respected for their talents, but that doesn't take anything away from the artists throughout time who work(ed) with a digital medium, be it photography or graphic design, or whatever...

There's a Brett Whitely exhibition on at my local gallery right now and it's amazing. He created some of the finest paintings and sculptures within the last 50 years, in my opinion.

[This Is Not Here]

Originally Posted by Norma J

also, I don't think it's about the reproductivity of the artwork, but it's the initial pleasure (or displeasure) of the piece of art and the pleasure thereafter. and therefore this is endless. one can still get the same from a painting as they can from a photograph whether one medium is easily reproduced or not. I don't think people look at a photograph that they absolutely adore and think 'but... it CAN be printed again, s it loses its value to me'.

Yeah I agree with this. It's always fustrated me how all the photographs I've taken have never been subect to the intense scrutiny and consideration my paintings have, though the consideration that goes into them is often equal to anything i may have painted...

Originally Posted by Toilet & Bowels

also, i guess because things like photoshop and and illustrator got picked up on way more quickly by designers artists seem to have been pretty slow (snobby perhaps) about utilising and making the most of that software

Photoshop is widely used in graphic art and fashion with some great results. I wouldn't say the artists have been pretty slow, it's just that the assimilation of the work done in those fields is not considered as important by whoever has the upper-hand when it comes to deciding what's valuable art or not, which in turn influences the art market and the general consensus.