Steven Gilbert's article in LW#42

John,

well stated. one reading of Mr. Gilbert's letter was enough nausea for me, but perhaps I should plow through it once again. Brook's essay was slightly more palatable, but not by much. this trend of attempting to define what is photographically pure and correct, and what is not, has grown tiring and feels like riding a bicycle through wet sand. let photography flow ... in it's fluidity it may take us beyond the insipid images of Monterrey rocks and shoreline, walled graffitto, zone system angst, and palm fronds.

let it breathe some fresh air ... it's suffocating.

I read Steven Gilbert's article as well. What I admire in Mr. Gilbert is the fact that he knows what he likes, knows what he doesn't like, and most importantly for the article, knows why. I happen to mostly agree with Mr. Gilbert's viewpoint. If you disagree and understand why, more power to you! Better yet, if you can articulate why, put your opinion out there. Other peoples' opinions will only suffocate you if you let them.

'There are no innocent eyes, of course. To large extent, we see what we are predisposed to see." -Robert Hellenga. We see what we are prepared to see. We see what we are or bring to the seeing. We miss what we are not prepared to see. The context is less in the photo and more in us. Has nihilism seized photography? I don't see it.

A reply to Daniel Taylor:

Dear Mr. Taylor,

I would never intend or even try to lay down what is correct or incorrect photography, as is clear enough from my article: "I would not presume to specify just what or how [photography] should affirm -- those particulars are up to photographers and viewers -- just that it re-affirm." Authoritarian pronouncements on correctness would be as arrogant, laughable, and shoot-myself-in-the-foot as trying to tell people in a First Amendment society what they should express with language. But now suppose somebody makes a name and money for himself by proclaiming, "Unies blark green furiously with but for as huzzah!" I think it's legitimate and helpful to point out that this is not an intelligible message at all. Baltz's work fails on its own terms in that even if you assumed he intended some ecological (or otherwise "critical") statement, he provides neither passion or structure, without which any "transaction of meaning" between photographer and viewer is impossible or pointless, much as a hopelessly ungrammatical sentence just gums up a discussion of something that matters. Language has finite means, rules of grammar and word construction, to formulate and express an indefinite number of ideas. To point out that photography must follow some patterns of "grammar" in addressing viewers is not at all the same as trying to limit what photographers ("speakers") should say while observing those patterns. As long as any transactions of meaning between photographers and viewers remain possible, I'm for the indefinite, even the infinite. Steve Gilbert PS. Images of Monterey rocks and shoreline bore the hell out of me, especially since I lived and worked in that area for several years.

Dear John, You write, ?It is never clear to me [in the article in LensWork] if Mr. Gilbert is railing against Baltz or the fact that some portion of the art establishment, who crown those who will get recognition and money, embrace Baltz and therefore legitimize his images as high art. While at the library, I pulled dozens of folio photography books off the shelf and found many contemporary photographers whose images are merely blurs of colors, yet somehow merit glossy publication. Puzzling to me, but that is art and it comes in forms that are varied beyond my appreciation. Whether this is crap or art, I can only say that it meant nothing to me. If meaning nothing to me equals crap is less clear, because a lot of art means little to me, but enjoys popularity or recognition.? Exactly! With ?the art establishment ... embrace B.? you clear up any ambiguity whether I targeted B. or the establishment; both, it as embracing him, he as representing it. You even extend the generalization (and my argument) into fresh territory, that settled by the many ?contemporary photographers whose images are merely blurs of colors, yet somehow merit glossy publication.? Shelves of contemporary photographers support my argument even better than B does, making it all the truer and widely applicable. B?s work turns out to be the opposite of a straw man; even more fairly than I argued in the article, it represents contemporary photography generally. How sad and bad. Coming from your own angle, you also confirm my argument why B?s work is impossibly shallow. The art establishment has anointed B?s pictures as high art, but should it? Although you do characterize them as ?somewhat ho-hum,? you shy away from yourself deciding its merit as art. You have no idea why he and other blobmasters have made it into glossy. In fact, you seem to put such whys beyond even your potential comprehension when you say these ?...images somehow merit glossy publication. Puzzling to me, but that is art and it comes in forms ...beyond my appreciation.? (My italics.) By saying, ?the art establishment ... legitimizes his images as high art,? you leave such decisions to the art establishment. Trouble is, the art establishment, in deciding whether to accept B as an artist, itself looks mostly at whether B is accepted by the art establishment! Such circularity has so long been such conventional unwisdom in the art world that it even has a name: the institutional theory of art, summed up in the definition of art as ?...an artifact of a kind created to be presented to an artworld public? (art theorist George Dickie as cited by Torres and Kamhi, What Art Is, 96, who provide plenty of other examples and references, 95-101). This circularity is vicious not just because of the logical absurdity but also because it makes the process of legitimizing art and artists illegitimate. After all, if others? acceptance of some photographic work as art counts as the prime reason to accept it, then the art scene has to act and decide as a herd. Herds are committees without rules even for voting, so that the loudest bleaters prevail. That?s why they stampede easily. That?s why they cannot hope even to become democratic. Because the artworld asks not ?How good is the art?? but ?Who says it is good?? the institutional theory of art is also necessarily authoritarian. This is the system that Baltz represents perfectly. He hopped on a bandwagon in the 1970s with his Park City series and has been riding on it too comfortably ever since with no new prints. All this authoritarian circularity depends in the end on you and me ? the caring, viewing public ? not making up our own minds whether a given work should qualify as high art. You pulled back from making up your own mind with ?Whether this is crap or art, I can only say that it meant nothing to me.? But you can say more, and unless you can calmly accept the artworld?s authoritarian circularity, its ass-holiness, you ? and I and others; we ? have to say more and better. Your intuition tells you it means nothing. I side with your intuition against your fear (however understandable) of being in over your head or being called arrogant. If those blurs are to avoid being crap as art to you, they must mean something to you. To you ? more than to just you? Ah, here?s the rub and the nub; as you put it: ?If meaning nothing to me equals crap....? Yes, it does ? if properly understood. I do not claim that your or anyone?s opinion on photographic art *commands* assent by dint of authority, much less that there is correct and incorrect photography (as Daniel Taylor misunderstands perfectly in his contribution to this forum). In evaluating photographic work, we should (!) think and act as if each of us alone decided to what degree it should (!) qualify as high art. In a war against blah and blah-blah, we are our own last trench. If we then articulate reasons and present them to each other in forums like this one, we can let chips fall where they merrily may. As long as authoritarianism is avoided in any such forum, the exchanges among minds presumed equal will allow authoritative opinions to form. In my article, I strove to exemplify this principle. Reasoning, not appealing to authority, I was consciously subverting a false authority (?it?s beyond me?) and inviting you to deny that ?that is art? simply because some artworld gurus have given Baltz their imprimatur. By presenting you with arguments rather than dicta, I asked you to judge for yourself, make up your own mind what deserves to be in those books, dump the somehow in ?images somehow merit glossy publication,? and consider all photographs within the reach of your appreciation. Let?s dethrone the artworld and democratize thinking and reacting to photographs. In any case, we could not do anything worse than give up and say in effect art is ?beyond our appreciation? in principle, beyond our powers of thought or assessment. Then the herd would have won forever, the stampedes never stop, the Baltzes? rule never end. In that extreme case, art would be lost, and so would our pleasure and meaning in viewing and making photographs. ?Puzzling to me, but that is art.? No, it is not! The emperor is still naked. Bs work fails for reasons parallel to the reasons that the artworld embracing it fails: it does not dare to articulate any intelligible code of values. That is the first (not last) test I propose for a body of photography: its ability to communicate with viewers (not by what it communicates to them, as as Daniel Taylor misunderstands perfectly). Even starting from a premise that B?s ?images ... serve the point of illustrating [a] sad fate,? they do not work. Without passion or structure, they make any ?transaction of meaning? with viewers impossible or pointless. Thus your ho-hum and my assault on Bs stuff. *Why* such vacuity, though? Brooks Jensen tried a technical explanation, photography?s supposed easiness, but I think we photographers decide mostly for our cultural reasons. I trace it back to the counterculture (?cc?) or rather what has become of it. You seem to think that lack of personal experience explains my ignorance of it. This explanation does not work, for like you, I was a ?civilian,? ?on the ground? in the Movement for quite a few years. Someone once defined adherents of the counterculture as anyone in the New Left who attended college any time between 1967 and 1971; I was an undergraduate then and only then. Like you, I think the cc did some good for the country and even the world. Examples are improvements in this society?s conceptions and treatment of women, the environment, races, and music. (But where is photography?). When I see gay men holding hands, I am very glad (although straight myself) to be an adult now rather than during the 1950s because love has become a little more possible. To see and affirm the good in the cc does not necessitate overlooking the bad, just as seeing the bad in it is not to condemn it across the board. In the piece, I do not. In constructing my argument, I worked especially hard to sort goods and bads out precisely to make the strings of ideas a) truer and b) more credible (persuasive) especially to those who, like you and me, put stock in the cc. That?s why I mentioned, after searching hard for the perfect example, the superb photograph by Susan Meisalas, which expresses the politics of the counterculture while avoiding the breakdowns as communication, therefore also as art, evidenced by Bs work. The necessary botching of communication arises, I argue, from unsolved problems in the cc?s marrow. Vital elements of the counterculture were misconceived from its conception. ?Peace and power, baby!? Well, if you pursue both, you corrupt both. Deeper still lies a layer of anti-rationality and even irrationality that came out back then as amusing antics but has long since congealed into cold, vague, oily, and now quite old treacle often packaged under the New Age label. With the cc?s pop mysticism (e.g., searching in nature for not so much recycling as new gods) and authoritarianism (?progressive social change? being almost always statist), it has contributed, alas, to the corrosion of any possible art by muddying codes of meaning to live by, partly by tearing down before having anything to put up, partly by just following crowds, as can be glimpsed in the pix by Lewis Baltz that we viewers have so often so foolishly been bamboozled into accepting as if high art. The vision B posits (if he posits at all), negatives without positives, is a magnet without a south pole, anti-art in that it would, if we let it, make us less human. Until we think for ourselves, positing our own shoulds for art as we do for any other kind of act of comparable significance, rooting our ideas in always debatable whys, we condemn ourselves to at best such expensive and prestigious ho-hums but more likely frauds, indignities, and depressions. Such stuff as Bs whatevers would, if we let them, dishearten us into drifting down, always down, not coax us to climb up toward whatever joy, clarity, and meaning we humans strive for just because we?re human. Steve Gilbert PS. http://smgilbertportfolios.tripod.com/ PPS. Yep, Picture Window!

???

as a musician, I simply listen to the music. as a photographer, I simply capture light. as a viewer, I simply view. some images I cannot let go of, others I glance at and move on. in life, I have learned that my sensibilites are my own. I have learned that we all respond differently, and that music and photography that moves me to tears, may be casually dismissed by others. it is the way we humans are, and I embrace this diversity.

it is what makes this existence an adventure ...

Well, of course, Mr. Taylor. Are you suggesting there is some contradiction between what you say here and what I have said? Where? How?

But now what? That is, what conclusions do you draw from the welcome fact of our diversity in taste and response? Do you mean that nobody can distinguish any differences in esthetic force between Michelangelo's "David" and fake vomit (as at a show at the Whitney)? Or that we *should* not distinguish? Imagine yourself a museum director deciding what gets shown. Does anything go? If so, wouldn't injustice necessarily be done, a photographer who is unobservant and sloppy (in your judgment) getting recognition equal to that given to a photographer strikingly observant and skilled? Yes, we must each make up our own minds, as I have argued passionately, but we also need some standards beyond personal likes and dislikes because we must make public decisions. Hooray for diversity and hooray for deciding! Steve Gilbert

as a member of the counterculture, a musician, a photographer, and one who doesn't understand the need to grade art nor appreciate anyone telling me what to look at or listen to .. I say 'let it be'.

peace

Dear Steve, I read your responses with interest. What intrigues me and separates my concerns from yours is that what the nominal art world thinks is of little concern to me and to most of even the educated people in or watching the Western world. You obviously come from and may still be in an academic sphere. Me too. After three years of service in my univ's Faculty Senate, I realize that the concerns of most of those in the academy are unimportant motes in the real world.

You know the old saw that the politics of academe are so vicious because the stakes are so low. After 20 years there, it is clearer than ever to me this is true. Most of what goes on in the humanities and many of the social sciences is trivial. This may be in concert with your arguement about institutional art, for it is really 'institutional academe' that self-fertilizes itself and contines its own gyres. But the world of my plumber, doctor, tire sales person is hardly impacted by this nonsense, unless their offspring have the misfortune to go to graduate school in the hum. or soc. sciences and be subjected to these nabobs.

Like most middle-brows, I read The New Yorker and watch (while popping my chewing gum ;-)) what the oddballs in NY art scene are doing. What they say about art is as important to me as what some sub-cardinal in the Vatican might be saying about the proper dimensions of Virgin Mary's nose. They have no impact on my sense of art or God. They live in a world that is self-perpetuating by eating their own. Somehow your arguements are very concerned about these folks. I am not. If they like Baltz, it is interesting to me in the same way that I am interested in which bird seeds my squirrels seem to select. Hmmm, but no impact.

RE: the counterculture. It was a time when confusion reigned, and as you say too, good things emerged as did problems, but this is true of any fluxation. It is neither good or bad, it just was. I don't look back on it much, but am concerned about some of the problems I see in the present that appear to have emerged there.

It is like therapy, one can spend time working on insights into the past or one can use cognitive behavioural techniques and work on the present. I believe more in the latter, but the former have place after the behaviour is made more reasonable. The Dalai Lama in response to where did the world originate, asks something like,if you were mortally wounded by the arrow of an archer, would you ask what was the name of the archer's father, or would you work to remove the arrow. The cc is past.

I don't care about the art establishment opinions. I care about my own. I don't really even care where those opinions are in conflict. I want to make better photos and see better photos (perhaps to see better photos I have to care about what the art world 'lets' through their sieve, I'll give you that. But not all the art world is crazed and self-referential.). We may agree on better photos sometimes and not others. I don't care. Lately I am really interested in Todd Hido's night pictures of suburbia. What you haven't done is explain why I or Daniel or others should care about what the art establishment, in academe or in the gallery scene, thinks. I am interested in why we should care and following CBT, what you recommend we do about it, in concrete ways, to turn back the tide of meaningless. Good holidays to you. John Smith