This discussion brings back memories of the time when I was so poor I had to use the community blender to make daiquiris for my fellow students at M.I.T.'s wedding photography program. In which I was a star pupil until I challenged our professor, Mayer Von Troppinhagen about his theory that all photographs have some sort of meaning to someone. Even the images accidentally snapped while placing a camera back into a leather case for transport to a more fertile photographic location.
But Troppinhagen had to admit that I was a stellar student. In fact, many of my classmates clamor to stay in touch with me hoping to glean insight into the basic nature of black and white photographs. Was it Winston Churchill or Disraeli who said that all color photography was Satan's work? One momentarily forgets.
Your French philosopher was on to something though. Something gallery owners around the world were longing to discover. I don't speak much French, although my uncle on the Amos Tuck side of the family translates it roughly as: "The faux philosophy of anchoring art to the market depends on rambling pronouncements in order to fleece the weak of mind." Now, mind you that this is just a "soft" translation. But essentially, after years of studying nonfiction sources of philosophical story telling I believe it to be: "We put labels on lame crap in order to have an easier time selling it to the rubes."
Photographers, he thought, were easy marks because each of them has, knowingly or unknowingly, embarked on a mission to attach some sort of whimsical and fallacious value to every damn image they drag out of their God forsaken cameras. Otherwise they'd understand the futility of their narcissistic self-expression, sit in a warm bath tub and slit their own wrists. But not before at least meeting the FedEx driver today (one last time?) to see what might have come in order to save their "careers" at the last moment…
So, what is the current practice amongst "art" photographers? First, one must spend time on the analyst's couch in order to ferret out whatever personality defect they would like to bring to the fore and have a hope to monetize. This self-directed epiphany is followed by months, and sometimes years of preparation. Many treatises are read concerning the transmutation of candle sticks into penises, Jello moulds into representations of indecision, skyscrapers into stolid defenses of traditional beauty. A woman's back into a viola. Or was it a cello?
Then comes a period of finding just the right tools to satisfy the indescribable demands of the physical undertaking of making the well-considered photo. The camera must be simple to use and yet provide an enhanced friction when in use; which the artist must overcome to do his/her work. Too many buttons and features imperil the thought process while an insufficiency of controls and parameters hobble even the most sincere pursuits. Equally, the lens selected must have certain qualities. It must have a "magical" glow which can never be explained by physics. It must, at the same time, be highly corrected against any optical imperfections. It must be handmade by a German or an aesthete from the mountains of Japan.
(There is some confusion about the impact of modernism in the form of aspherical elements and rare earth elements being used in the optical construction of the chosen lens. Too much reliance on science robs the out of focus areas of their authenticity while too little correction results in missing the rigid targets exemplified by the idea often postulated as: sharp, even wide open! And please, don't blame the exclamation point on your author as it is generally added to every description of lens performance in western culture).
The search for the tools which most convincingly match the pathos derived from the initial psychological inquiry and the satori of self-discovery can take months or years to divine and generally require much trial and error. Rending of clothing. Draining of financial resources and a profound loss of friendships and close relationships. But one reminds oneself about the nobility of the pursuit and the ingrained idea that making the successful image; one that just guts you like a deer in Texas hunting season, is worth hurdling any obstacle. Be it mental, social, physical or divine.
Once the perfect – holy? -- gear is acquired and vetted the artist begins the elastic process of making those tools bend to his/her preconceived, previsualized inspiration. Again, a process encumbered by all manner of doubts, sweat, tears and even potentially credit card fraud and an addiction to Diet Coke.
Finally, the artist fully pre-visualizes his perfect creation and sallies forth to joust with the demons of doubt, and the vagueness of the weather, to make his opus magnum. He has pre-visualized an image of a lawn sprinkler of a certain kind, spinning and bobbing in a vast desert with puffy and oh so dramatic clouds skating through jet black skies while the scene itself is rendered in actinic daylight. Cue harsh shadows and strong backlighting. Now the artist must search for the exact location and angle from which to approach creation. He is driven by his knowledge that the sharing of the resulting photograph will puncture the chaos in most peoples' minds and bring balance to the force which is fine art.
In the end he/she finds a rotary sprinkler with a weak spray wobbling in the yard of a neighbor. There is no vast swath of brightly described sand; only dead brown grass interspersed with cracked dry soil and a few scattered cigarette butts... and some dog poop. But didn't one of the artist's heroes, Irving Penn, conceive of a universe in the minutia of just a few cigarette butts writ large and immortalized in platinum?
The artist, driven by the desire to create something with extreme cultural stickiness circles the scene as would a wary predator. Lunging and retreating. Lunging and retreating. Frame after frame. Until, finally spent, and with the last whispers of light abandoning him like a virus leaving a battered host, the artist decides that he has succeeded --- for now --- and he begins his perilous journey of self-discovery through what is now called post production but which we will call final realization. Actuendum.
Potentially, this process can go on for a long, long time. Current photographic philosophy holds that only the physical print has agency. Only the print has the gravitas to encompass the TRUTH that the final image demands. All other permutations are way stations like the descending circles of purgatory.
In this process there is much handwringing. New papers are auditioned. New printers mulled over. Perhaps a return to the traditional "wet" darkroom --- which requires its own period of inquiry and doubts faced.
Finally, the absolute perfect print is made and prepared to be unleashed upon the world and, on any given Tuesday, Saturday or random Monday the artist hangs the print and waits for the accolades and recognition to pummel him like a tropical down pouring of rain. And the print hangs on the wall in his study. And his last two remaining friends come by and one of them stops in front of the print for several seconds and says, "That sprinkler shot would look a hell of a lot better in color. You know that, right?"
Confidence unshaken, the artist decides that his work needs and deserves a much wider audience and since his uncle, a professor at a prestigious university, helped to invent the internet before going bankrupt, the artist decides that a universal audience awaits his ultimate presentation. On the internet.
Removing the double weight, selenium toned, archivally washed fiber print from its imposing titanium frame and its luxurious twelve layer over matte he/she carefully places it on a copy stand. After months of research he returns with the perfect copy camera and makes a series of images using the latest multiple shot techniques and proudly creates a 10 Terabyte image of the wobbling lawn sprinkler surrounded by dead grass and dried earth. Which he then struggles to "map" to the web. Only to find that .... it must be....resized. Eventually he/she is able to put the image on Instagram and that program reduces it even more. But the power of the image, the artist is convinced, truly remains as potent as ever. A slam into the guts of the audience from the top rope of the ring. Just like wrestling on TV.
At the end of the year a handful of people have glanced, in passing, at the image online but in the mind of the artist hope springs eternal because, in the ensuing year he has created a manifesto carefully outlining the actual meaning behind the mundanity of the image. Its a whimsical and searing "jackpot" of allegory.
He is invited to lecture about his photograph on a Zoom call with a group of like-minded artists who spend most of their time measuring how many Ansels can dance on the aperture ring of an enlarging lens. They fawn over the artist's ability to encapsulate all the pain and terror of modern romance in one dramatic image. But one member dissents (!) and insists that the image needs more contrast to fulfill its role as a stand in for individual, human isolation.
Another argues that less contrast would make the image more accessible and accent the underlying hope that gravity in all of its earthly forms will continue. A third member of the group, still in flannel pajamas insists that it's Edward Steichen all over again, and then hesitates and looks at the collage of faces on his computer screen to make sure they all get his historical reference. A fight about the nature of contrast versus meaning ensues and the Zoom conference fades away.
Five hundred years later the print made by the artist is resurrected by a group of enlightened psychiatrists who decide that this image and all of its baggage are the perfect representation of sociopathic narcissism which ran rampant in wealthy countries in the 21st century. They place the image next to several by William Eggleston and close out the Wiki page on aberrant thoughts about art from five centuries earlier. This leads one of the psychiatrists to muse: "People of that period sure loved a bogus rationale for self-indulgently wasting their time... didn't they?"
