ARTIST STATEMENTS in GENERAL

Somewhere, someone said that the word "Art" should be taken out of the English Language. The reason being: No two people can agree on it's definition. That's point one.  Point two is that an artists' work should be statement enough. 

This confusion probably started when scratching on walls graduated from pastime to commodity and worked it's way into universities and taught right along with math and business administration.  So far so good, but then it was treated as if it were a subject, like Math and Business Administration - that one could attend the course of study and become an artist. Doesn't happen. Those that do, already were (artists).  And the follow-on to all of this, and the thing that causes the most confusion, is when the academic world - because it attempts to teach something that it doesn't know what is - assigns itself the role of clearing house for all things artistic. 

Still, teaching art has to be the noblest of efforts.     

Still,  no one knows what it is.

And still, we need to tell people what they are looking at.    

That's where Artist Statements come in:  to clear everything up.       

STATEMENT

Some things are best described by what they are not.  In my work, there are no “strange” looking images created by technical gimmicks. There are no underlying politics, just simple observations. There is no negative put-down with regard to my subject matter. There is an acceptance for things as they are, with no effort to change or romanticize. My subjects do what they want to do, not what I want them to do. Since most of the images are printed “straight,” there is little or no manipulative print controls used. There are no footprints, no bottles and no wires. This work is enjoyable but not easy; simple but not easy and quick but not easy. And the resulting images are found but not lost.  This work may or may not be art and I have only the vaguest idea of what art is.

Bruce Wehman, 2005

BLACK AND WHITE

With all the technology that was available to him, Steven Spielberg chose to film Schindler’s List in black and white. He also chose to limit cinematic “tricks of the trade” to fixed camera positions and simple slow zooms.  There were few boom or dolly shots; a lot of long shots; no fast cutting and, of course, no color (with the exception of the red coat).  In short, a treatment that validates the maxim “less is more.”  Since, among our senses, the eyes dominate, it is therefore difficult to get past fireworks to appreciate a layered experience. He realized that to allow the message to reach the audience it first had to transcend visual excitement and be allowed to speak for itself.

When Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger sat in the back of the taxi in “On the Waterfront” and Terry tells Charley: “I could have been a contender,”  it hit you like a punch in the face.  As a viewer, you could feel every bit of the torment in both of these characters, because the black and white rendition allowed access to the undercurrents, or the world of the imagination.  

As film transitioned from black and white to color, viewing became a different experience. It was an easier experience.  We learned not to question what we saw, because all the answers were there. The play was on the visual level – on the surface – and, as a result,  film became more entertaining and less thought provoking. 

I would like to think that these are the only reasons that I use black and white in much of my work.  But to be honest, there is another reason: I’m too fussy to be completely satisfied with a color photograph. There is so much going on in a color image and the degree of control over the rendition is so limited that making one that satisfies me would be far too time consuming.  Black and white, on the other hand, is easily controlled, and quickly executed - letting me spend more time doing what I like best: searching for new images.

 Just stumbled on the website of Misha Gordin bsimple.com.  Blew me away!……no better argument for the power of the black and white image!

Large Format and Me

In the early days of photography, Large Format was all there was. As hand-held cameras were developed and photography worked it's way into our everyday lives,  the perverse appeal of viewing the world upside down through a ground glass and struggling for the perfect image gradually gave way to expediency.  As the act of making a photograph became as commonplace as lunch, the finely crafted image became an object of wonder.  

These days, especially, Large Format stands apart.

It's difficult;  It's frustrating;  It's time consuming but also abundantly rewarding.

Not wanting all that effort to go to waste, the large format photographer is forced to plan, think and visualize to the point where if everything goes well, he is rewarded with an image having a precision and clarity that does justice not only to his own vision, but to the most important element of the whole process - the subject. 

But even when practiced at the craft level there is still a built-in force to this work. In a sense: "The medium is the message."  Anything you photograph and photograph well must have value because, after all, this is the real thing we're dealing with here, not just something we're making up.........Frame the shot; focus and shoot; and content will take care of itself.  

This is the way that I worked early in my career. The ability to feel an image as well as see it was just not there at the beginning.  Some fortunate photographers are born with that;  I wasn't. 

Large Format forced me into it. The logistics of the Large Format Photograph provides one very important element - time.  Time to appreciate the image from many different levels and time to gain a genuine respect for each and every exposure.

Originality, Refinement, and Experience

If you plan even a cursory tour of the contemporary art scene, you had better take notes, because what you see today will be gone tomorrow.

For work to break through the clutter today, it has to shock. Even if it's just a bunch of nihilist drivel: If it shocks, it rocks.  And, if someone has already perpetrated a similar shock, then it's no longer so shocking, and thus, "derivative."

Schools of art used to flourish for centuries largely because the cultures that supported them stayed unchanged for as long. It was often difficult to distinguish between different artists.  Since the Industrial Revolution, however, things changed rapidly: politics; culture; science, and art as well,  to the point where, today, being called "derivative" is the worst put-down an artist can endure.

The concept of refinement is conspicuously lost to the contemporary art scene. I read somewhere that Eastern Art is more about refinement than the art of the West.  I'm no expert, but from what I've seen I would have to agree.  With it's emphasis on "progress", contemporary  Western Art has, in my opinion, for no good reason,  taken the "Fine" out of "Fine Art" to the point where today, monkeys and elephants compete on equal terms with artists.

It would be nice if you could respond with something more than, "I like it" or, "I don't like it." And could actually say, "Yea, I see what you are saying."

The worship of originality is seen in no better place than in contemporary photography.  A few years ago, I read about one of the up-and-coming talents of the New York art scene who took some otherwise mundane photographs of  urban scenes and jumped right out of the box with them. He drew wavy lines in the blank areas of the photographs! Give me a break! 

The King has no clothes!

It's not enough to  be different. Mental institutions are full of people who can think out of the box but don't have a clue why. To hold up a mirror to humanity AND to provide some positive direction at the same time - that is the role of the artist.  And to do that, and to do that well, IMHO, you need a degree of refinement that commands respect. Or to put it differently: to use the language clearly, with precision, and with meaningful content.

Which brings us to the issue at hand: How is a large format, black and white Photographer supposed to be original?  Keeping in mind that there is very little that you can do within the tenets of this school that someone isn't going to call derivative.  There is very little that we of the "Plate and Bellows" school can point our cameras at that hasn't been graced with that honor before and, certainly, little coming out of this school that is generally perceived as new.  Why? .........because of the huge volume involved and forgetting that.......

Photography is about experience.  

The act of photographing, the circumstances, the intent,and the vision as well as the result, all combine to validate the photograph.  If it weren’t for that, then we might as well make up photographs in a computer and forget about the mosquitoes and sore feet, or in some cases bullets and bombs.  

Think how creative (read, "non derivative") you could be: You could search a database and discover that no one has photographed kitchen appliances floating in mountain lakes.  Hey,  a body of work and the right connections?  A career is born! 

Is that really all it takes? 

I would hate to think so. Because as far as photography is concerned, the experience of capturing an image is and always will be original, as is the performance of that experience:  the photograph.  Or, to put it a little differently: simply following our instincts and trusting that our unique qualities will define our work as it does our personalities. 

Or at least this is how I think it should be, knowing full well that a truck-load of old kitchen appliances would get more recognition.

It should be no secret by now that my tastes in art are fairly conservative.  Although my favorite school is Impressionism, I also like just about anything that came out of the Bauhaus and have even started listening to 20th century composers like Cage, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky while I print........So there is hope.