Those two, Barthes, Hannah Arendt "Society and Culture", Moholy-Nagy "Vision in Motion", John Collier Jr. "Visual Anthropology", Robert Adams "Why People Photograph", Wright Morris "Time Pieces", Wilson Hicks "Words and Pictures", Marshall McLuhan "Understanding Media", Bill Owens "Documentary Photography", Michael Lesy "Time Frames"...on and on. I was self taught and my 300+ photo books, mostly all used from remainders, library book sales, yard sales, were 33.33% of my photo education. I had no mentors or family that led me to those books. All of it was either instinct, random, or references from other books. The other 66.66% involved shooting, lectures, museums, etcetera. But the ideas in these books gave me the confidence to know that I was on the right path. When I showed my portfolios in NYC to 12 photo agencies and mags in my seventh year as a news/documentary photog, I was ready. Signed an AP contract and was able to submit to Sygma Photo, then left for the Johannesburg Mail & Guardian and I was never coming back. The ideas in these books were my foundation. I'd guess that the majority of our species is visually illiterate. It's as important as verbal literacy and it can and should be taught. Without quality critique, discipline is unmoored and craft is unchecked. I'm not talking about some Academy concept. Sontag, especially in "On Regarding the Pain of Others" keeps the keel even as to why bother photographing anything. She defines the why which for her is the obverse of self-absorption and more than merely "writing with light". It's the relationship and responsibility of the photographer to the photographed and the reader--no matter the genre.
The perfect cure for insomnia. Two self-absorbed academics whose whole existence is based on criticizing and opining on the creativity of others. Boring! Much like Sontag's "On Photography", I could not sit through more than a third of this video. And I tried to get through her book 3 times before donating it to Goodwill. Most exhibiting photographers I know have said the same thing about "On Photography." Sorry, I may not be an acclaimed academic, and merely just another photographer, but that's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it.
The video I saw was about stories and storytelling. Both participants had engaged with those practices; so both should have been in a position to discuss those subjects in an informed manner. However, in reality, we have to endure Berger's persistent cringing, finger-pointing, finger-wagging, mansplaining, all so politely and often witheringly dismantled by Sontag.
I've had doubts about Berger ever since first viewing and reading Ways of Seeing over 50 years ago, in spite of the flood of its academic approval. I wonder if his appearance in this Voices programme was due to his celebrity status rather than his abilities? Sontag correctly points out that Berger's stories based on living in a tiny "peasant" village were entirely privileged as they were based on actual events and real people. As such they cannot be used to critique other forms of story based on, say, imagination. He seemed out of his depth thenceforth in the discussion.
Outside formal education you are not required to read 'On Photography' and/or 'Camera Lucida'. Chapeau, if you have read either book as they are essential elements in the canon. But please don't whinge if you couldn't understand the text, just "don't criticise what you can't understand."
'To tell a story' was broadcast in 1983; 'On Photography' was first published as a book in 1977; 'Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography' was first published in English in 1981. Much has moved on since then, and all three can help us understand how.
Two Powerhouse Critics? Recommending Berger as a doorway for understanding art is like starting your car in a mudhole. His conversation with Sontag on photography and stories is a telling example, two celebrated intellectuals (really minor TV personalities) discussing a medium - art - neither had any working knowledge of. Sontag built a career of philosophical suspicion toward photography without much curiosity about how photographs are actually made. Berger was worse: a minor painter turned critic whose writing sounds penetrating until a practitioner reads it, at which point it falls apart completely. His television work with Tilda Swinton confirms it, assertion substituting for evidence, mood substituting for meaning, nothing ever stated firmly enough to be wrong like nailing jello to a wall. Working artists and photographers have never taken any of them seriously. There's a reason he didn't make it into serious art history curricula. We have dozens of important critics, theorists, and historians today. Why dig up these minor characters who contributed next to nothing? These are not the main characters one reads in graduate school. Didn't they both write fiction? Can anyone name any of them? I wrote a rather long essay on Sontag yesterday. You might even try that.
Agree with other sentiments here. It’s two academics pondering preferences, not faculties. That to me is the resounding difference between genuinely thoughtful critique (like Kant’s three critiques on universalism), and this. I tried to read Ways Of Seeing, despite its wild formatting, and On Photography, but found both mostly insufferable. I can see what they’re trying to do but if I’m honest, it just feels like these folks needed a few other hobbies that involved going outside and touching grass.
The problem with Sontag and Berger - as with so many who write about art - is that they are not practitioners, which means that for all their pontificating they have not a single creative artistic idea between them.
I would disagree since Sontag was a writer and Berger was an artist, among other things. Both possess creative minds, in my opinion. But I take your point—they may not have practiced photography as their primary art.
I don't disagree that they both have the intellectual capacity to think and write about the creative arts. Both were capable of creative thinking and critical observation. Indeed, I have referrenced both writers in academic studies and essays. Yes, they created some important texts but I don't think they are artists.
I think it is a miss to say they do not have artistic ideas - nor that one needs to practice to critique. Actually I think some of the best criticism has come from people who don't practice! Sometimes it takes that perspective to see how something functions in society that artists may have a harder time seeing.
Criticism is an art in its own right, too. You have to be a good writer to be an effective critic. It's very different, but both thinkers were creative and are known because of the way they could articulate their ideas. It's different with everyone, and I can appreciate not liking their work, but even when I disagree with them I find being able to understand why I disagree can only help me in my own art.
I would agree that art criticism does not need to come from artists. In fact it is rare that an artist critiques art, although it wasn't unusual for renaissance artists to write about painting. The occupation of the art historian since the early 1970s - and I have a Masters in History of Art and photography so I have read extensively about the subject - has moved away from connoiseurship and knowledge of the actual artwork and artists. We now have marxist theory, structuralism, post structuralism, semiotics, iconography, feminist theory, psychoanalysis and all manner of sexual and sociological study, much of which was formulated by people who had little knowledge of art or creating art itself. Foucault and Barthes, for example, and TJ Clarke, who started the whole marxist theory school of art history. All wonderfully creative thinkers, of course, but not a manjack of them could create art. All of this intellectual rigour is a requirement for the study of art history and criticism of course, but I don't know a single photographer who has read Sontag's magnum opus or a painter who cares a jot what TJ Clarke thinks.
Those two, Barthes, Hannah Arendt "Society and Culture", Moholy-Nagy "Vision in Motion", John Collier Jr. "Visual Anthropology", Robert Adams "Why People Photograph", Wright Morris "Time Pieces", Wilson Hicks "Words and Pictures", Marshall McLuhan "Understanding Media", Bill Owens "Documentary Photography", Michael Lesy "Time Frames"...on and on. I was self taught and my 300+ photo books, mostly all used from remainders, library book sales, yard sales, were 33.33% of my photo education. I had no mentors or family that led me to those books. All of it was either instinct, random, or references from other books. The other 66.66% involved shooting, lectures, museums, etcetera. But the ideas in these books gave me the confidence to know that I was on the right path. When I showed my portfolios in NYC to 12 photo agencies and mags in my seventh year as a news/documentary photog, I was ready. Signed an AP contract and was able to submit to Sygma Photo, then left for the Johannesburg Mail & Guardian and I was never coming back. The ideas in these books were my foundation. I'd guess that the majority of our species is visually illiterate. It's as important as verbal literacy and it can and should be taught. Without quality critique, discipline is unmoored and craft is unchecked. I'm not talking about some Academy concept. Sontag, especially in "On Regarding the Pain of Others" keeps the keel even as to why bother photographing anything. She defines the why which for her is the obverse of self-absorption and more than merely "writing with light". It's the relationship and responsibility of the photographer to the photographed and the reader--no matter the genre.
The perfect cure for insomnia. Two self-absorbed academics whose whole existence is based on criticizing and opining on the creativity of others. Boring! Much like Sontag's "On Photography", I could not sit through more than a third of this video. And I tried to get through her book 3 times before donating it to Goodwill. Most exhibiting photographers I know have said the same thing about "On Photography." Sorry, I may not be an acclaimed academic, and merely just another photographer, but that's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it.
All good, Patrick. Thanks for trying!
The video I saw was about stories and storytelling. Both participants had engaged with those practices; so both should have been in a position to discuss those subjects in an informed manner. However, in reality, we have to endure Berger's persistent cringing, finger-pointing, finger-wagging, mansplaining, all so politely and often witheringly dismantled by Sontag.
I've had doubts about Berger ever since first viewing and reading Ways of Seeing over 50 years ago, in spite of the flood of its academic approval. I wonder if his appearance in this Voices programme was due to his celebrity status rather than his abilities? Sontag correctly points out that Berger's stories based on living in a tiny "peasant" village were entirely privileged as they were based on actual events and real people. As such they cannot be used to critique other forms of story based on, say, imagination. He seemed out of his depth thenceforth in the discussion.
Outside formal education you are not required to read 'On Photography' and/or 'Camera Lucida'. Chapeau, if you have read either book as they are essential elements in the canon. But please don't whinge if you couldn't understand the text, just "don't criticise what you can't understand."
'To tell a story' was broadcast in 1983; 'On Photography' was first published as a book in 1977; 'Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography' was first published in English in 1981. Much has moved on since then, and all three can help us understand how.
I enjoyed this. Stimulated me to think about my thoughts and feelings re story telling.
in general. I think their ideas about the range of ways of telling a story and types of story rather limited. All a bit 80's and 'intelletual'.
I am not a writer but a photographer with a strong leaning towards photo documentary.
All food for thought.
Two Powerhouse Critics? Recommending Berger as a doorway for understanding art is like starting your car in a mudhole. His conversation with Sontag on photography and stories is a telling example, two celebrated intellectuals (really minor TV personalities) discussing a medium - art - neither had any working knowledge of. Sontag built a career of philosophical suspicion toward photography without much curiosity about how photographs are actually made. Berger was worse: a minor painter turned critic whose writing sounds penetrating until a practitioner reads it, at which point it falls apart completely. His television work with Tilda Swinton confirms it, assertion substituting for evidence, mood substituting for meaning, nothing ever stated firmly enough to be wrong like nailing jello to a wall. Working artists and photographers have never taken any of them seriously. There's a reason he didn't make it into serious art history curricula. We have dozens of important critics, theorists, and historians today. Why dig up these minor characters who contributed next to nothing? These are not the main characters one reads in graduate school. Didn't they both write fiction? Can anyone name any of them? I wrote a rather long essay on Sontag yesterday. You might even try that.
Agree with other sentiments here. It’s two academics pondering preferences, not faculties. That to me is the resounding difference between genuinely thoughtful critique (like Kant’s three critiques on universalism), and this. I tried to read Ways Of Seeing, despite its wild formatting, and On Photography, but found both mostly insufferable. I can see what they’re trying to do but if I’m honest, it just feels like these folks needed a few other hobbies that involved going outside and touching grass.
The problem with Sontag and Berger - as with so many who write about art - is that they are not practitioners, which means that for all their pontificating they have not a single creative artistic idea between them.
I would disagree since Sontag was a writer and Berger was an artist, among other things. Both possess creative minds, in my opinion. But I take your point—they may not have practiced photography as their primary art.
I don't disagree that they both have the intellectual capacity to think and write about the creative arts. Both were capable of creative thinking and critical observation. Indeed, I have referrenced both writers in academic studies and essays. Yes, they created some important texts but I don't think they are artists.
Hi Malcolm,
I think it is a miss to say they do not have artistic ideas - nor that one needs to practice to critique. Actually I think some of the best criticism has come from people who don't practice! Sometimes it takes that perspective to see how something functions in society that artists may have a harder time seeing.
Criticism is an art in its own right, too. You have to be a good writer to be an effective critic. It's very different, but both thinkers were creative and are known because of the way they could articulate their ideas. It's different with everyone, and I can appreciate not liking their work, but even when I disagree with them I find being able to understand why I disagree can only help me in my own art.
Well said, Peter. Thanks for chiming in here!
I would agree that art criticism does not need to come from artists. In fact it is rare that an artist critiques art, although it wasn't unusual for renaissance artists to write about painting. The occupation of the art historian since the early 1970s - and I have a Masters in History of Art and photography so I have read extensively about the subject - has moved away from connoiseurship and knowledge of the actual artwork and artists. We now have marxist theory, structuralism, post structuralism, semiotics, iconography, feminist theory, psychoanalysis and all manner of sexual and sociological study, much of which was formulated by people who had little knowledge of art or creating art itself. Foucault and Barthes, for example, and TJ Clarke, who started the whole marxist theory school of art history. All wonderfully creative thinkers, of course, but not a manjack of them could create art. All of this intellectual rigour is a requirement for the study of art history and criticism of course, but I don't know a single photographer who has read Sontag's magnum opus or a painter who cares a jot what TJ Clarke thinks.