The Adams-Newhall Axis

I just finished a book. Group f.64: Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and the Community of Artists Who Revolutionized American Photography by Mary Street Alinder, biographer and assistant to Ansel Adams.

This is a heavily footnoted, which is almost but not quite the same as well-researched, book about the famous f.64 group in California, and tells the tale of their glorious battle with the Pictorialists, especially William Mortensen, their eventual victory, and their ascent to their rightful places in the pantheon of great photographers.

Kinda.

Actually, it's just another salvo (in 2014, for god's sake), in the increasingly discredited tradition of Beaumont and Nancy Newhall's hagiographic take on Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. In this version of history, Europe does not exist, and photography consists, mainly, of Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams, and Edward Weston, with Beaumont Newhall playing the role of James Boswell. Photography's history consists of discovery, an unfortunate side-trip in to Pictorialism, and ultimately glorious re-emergence into truth and beauty, led by the heros Adams and Weston, who rescue Stieglitz from flirtation with evil. Drinks all around.

I cannot for the life of my figure out what this thing is doing being published in 2014.

Anyways, that is the narrative Alinder is promoting, but she does actually provide a large number of facts, many of them probably correct, which allow us to sort out better what actually happened.

First of all, the central claim of the book, that f.64 swept away Pictorialism in a great wave of wisdom is absurd on the face of it. f.64 was not in the van, they barely made it to the rear-guard at the very tail end of Pictorialism in, more or less, the last place Pictorialism was still kind of a thing, in the American West. f.64 was formed in 1932. Hartmann wrote his plea for Straight Photography in 1904. "Camera Work" had dumped Pictorialism in favor of Paul Strand in 1917.

By 1932, straight photography was the dominant form of serious photography. There was still amateur interest in various processes associated with Pictorialism as commercially available silver papers had not quite obliterated the rest of the market, and there were a few practicing Pictorialists (in some sense) still rattling around, but serious photography was straight photography. Modernism has been dominating photography for a good decade or two at this point, along with its Precisionist subset. Weston and Adams are (in 1932) Precisionists and, to be blunt, they are rather late to the party.

As usual with these goobers, Alinder can't even sort of what Pictorialism is. She likes Adams "fuzzy wuzzy" description, but has to admit that Mortensen's pictures were sharp. But they were manipulated! So, bad! Alinder suggests that "Pictorialism" derives from the title of P.H. Emerson's book, which is wrong. Pictorialism is, as usual, just a sort of generic boogeyman that means "not Ansel Adams, and so, bad."

f.64 appeared at the wrong time to have swept Pictorialism away and was too small, too bush-league, and too short-lived to sweep anything away. The only reason we know anything about these guys is because it contained two photographers who would eventually be elevated to the pantheon, and a couple of very good ones besides, and people like Alinder won't stop trying to pitch the group as hugely influential. They had, Alinder makes clear, a small number of mostly very minor exhibitions, some meetings, a few notices in the photographic press, and that was about it. Alinder does appear to be tacitly aligned, a little, with the theory that the whole thing was an attempt to get Stieglitz' attention (and, after a fashion, it worked).

We do learn a lot of Edward Weston, who Alinder seems to greatly admire. Weston was, evidently, one of those useless shitheads who couldn't do anything for himself. He didn't drive, or cook. I think it follows that he also did not do laundry, or clean. Weston preferred to live an ascetic life of great simplicity accompanied by a pretty girl who would do everything for him and also have sex. I mean, that sounds kind of good to me too.

Weston's only two skills appear to have been photography and talking women in to bed, and honestly he doesn't take enough shit for this. Alinder seems to admire him for it.

Edward Weston was clearly a useless dickhead, albeit a very charming one.

At one point, pushing the narrative that Charis Wilson (the last woman Weston could talk into bed with him before he got too old, sick, and crotchety to do it again) was the true love of his life, Alinder shows us two nudes. One is the previous girlfriend, Sonya Noskowiak and the other is Charis Wilson. Alinder goes on about how "light loved Charis" and whatnot, whereas Sonya not so much. She's trying to justify Charis as the true muse, and Sonya as, well, someone legitimately ditched.

And she's right, Charis is all smoothly rounded and beautiful, Sonya a bit angular and stiff. What Alinder leaves unstated is that Charis is 19 years old, and Sonya is 34.

With all due respect, which is to say none: "Fuck you, Mary Street Alinder."

We learn, hilariously, that Adams tried this out as well. He hired himself a pretty young assistant, duly fell in love with her, and asked his wife Virginia for a divorce. Virginia said "no" and that was that. I don't know what's more tragicomic, that Adams wanted to try this libertine shit out, or that he was too much of a pussy to carry it out.

Not all the "facts" are that great. Alinder repeats the absurd story that Weston's Pepper #30 was made with an exposure some hours long, which is evidently a meme that one of the Weston descendants is trotting around, but it is contradicted by Weston's Daybooks and also by common sense. Alinder states, with a footnote, that Brett Weston was the 5th most collected American Photographer at the time of his death, but the footnote refers to some unpublished bio. So, essentially, "I saw this on a piece of paper someplace." (Alinder wants to paint Brett Weston as important, which he was not.)

So, that's the general form of the book. A lot of facts, many of which I dare say are right, and a narrative which is seemingly unconnected to the facts. It reads fairly easily, and has an astronomical number of footnotes, some of which rise above "I saw this on a piece of paper someplace." It is hagiography disguised as scholarship.

It has no place in this era, its narrative is false and known to be false.

It is a frankly bizarre volume.

Philosophies of Photography

I've been, as my readers my have observed, been mulling over whatever it is that photographers use as a philosophical basis for what they do. Whatever justification or goal they aim for.

Weston seems to have wanted to show the true essence of the thing. Adams wanted to reveal his true emotional reaction to the thing. Doc McCullin (currently on display at the Tate, raising the hackles of the photographic intelligentsia all across England) seems to have had something about showing the true human dignity of subjects in dire straits. Emerson wanted to reveal his true Impression of the scene.

There's usually something about Truth rattling around in there, because after all that's what photographs do best. You could take some other tack, but I haven't run across any such thing.

This probably isn't quite what separates the good from the bad, but boy it might be the factor that correlates least badly.

It does seem to align nicely with this distinction, which I like to carp on: the difference between perfectly good, pleasing, well-made pictures; and pictures with real weight.

Over on Leicaphilia, the intrepid writer shared some ideas on Joel Meyerowitz who strikes me very much as a philosophy-free fellow who just rambles around taking perfectly nice pictures that don't mean anything. I bought his Tuscany book at Goodwill for $3. It's very nice. Some day I am going to cut it to bits and make something better out of it. Michael Reichmann was another such, loads of perfectly nice pictures signifying nothing much. In 50 years, nobody will remember either of these photographers.

Now, to be fair, I also have one of these philosophy things, and nobody is going to remember me in 50 years either. It's not guarantee of success, but longevity and weight seem to, maybe, require it or at any rate bias heavily toward those who have one. Or a couple.

It's not a big thing. It doesn't have to be a PhD thesis. It doesn't have to be very precise, you don't even need to follow it all the time. But some kind of general slogan that drives your work seems to be a really good idea. For one thing, it makes the pictures better.

What the general shape of thing ought to be is this: you ought to be able to ask of any picture you take "does it do that thing?" and it should not be terribly specific, and certainly not photographically/technically specific. This lets you, obviously, make work that is bound together, that is all alike in some fairly vague and non-technical sense, in some sense therefore that might be a little more important than "has good shadow detail" or "is very sharp indeed."

Mike over on ToP has posed the question recently Has Photography Gotten Too Easy which is basically just pointing us to a sloppy and pseudo-erudite essay by Maria Popova which is essentially the standard whinge about instagram dressed up with citations and a bizarre reference to Herschel proposing a coating of sodium thiosulfate to Talbot as a method of fixing silver prints (which is insane, he cannot possibly have suggested a "coating.")

ETA: Maria Popova's blog appears to be, essentially, "My, what a lot of books Maria has read" adorned occasionally with "but she reads a leeetle too much Wikipedia" and mercifully short on whatever might pass for original thoughts from her.

Technically, yes, photography has become very easy. Duh. And now it is very easy to churn out more or less endless Good Pictures signifying nothing. Popova refers to "message" but doesn't mean it, she just means subjects.

The degree of difficulty required to bring to satisfying conclusion any kind of philosophical basis for taking pictures remains about the same, and now we know that all the technical horsing around wasn't very important after all. Which, you know, even Precisionists like Adams knew, and said, all along. Nobody was listening.

Nobody's listening now, either.

Funnel

I'm reading a book which I'll probably talk about eventually, which includes a fair lot of chatter about Edward Weston. There's some chitchat about Pepper #30, and the book repeats that it was shot by first placing it in a large funnel.

I thought I'd make myself a funnel out of some galvanized sheet metal I have left over from a heating duct repair (long story short, my kid dropped her brand new toy down the vent in her bedroom, and was sad and desperately hopeful that dad could get it back, which dad could... by hacking open the heating duct, which he did.) I rolled it into an approximate funnel shape and started putting little things in it.

I have no idea what to make of these pictures, but I do have an idea for making that not be my problem, about which more anon, I hope. In the meantime:

Some Quotations

P.H. Emerson

... the photographer must so use his technique as to render a true impression of the scene.

Say as much as you can, with as little material as you can.

The impression must be true throughout, and if all the preceding components are true the impression will be true.

H.P. Robinson

The aim and end of the artist is not truth exactly, much less fact, it is effect. I know this sounds shocking to the purist's ear, but it is quite true. There is no doubt he gets his best effect by way of the truth, but he uses it as he would a servant, not as a master.

Ansel Adams

I employ numerous photographic controls to create an image that represents "the equivalent of what I saw and felt" [paraphrasing Steiglitz]

Edward Weston

I have on occasion used the expression, 'to make a pepper more than a pepper' ... I did not mean 'different' from a pepper, but a pepper plus -- an intensification of its own important form and texture, -- a revelation. Photography as a creative expression ... must be seeing plus

Now, all this has something of the character of vague bullshit, and someone a hair cleverer than I would probably be able to parse these statements into Expressionist versus Impressionist ideas, or something like that. Each of these sets of ideas, though, represents some sort of useful target that the speaker could aim at. Each of these men assembled a little collection of acolytes, who did their best to interpret these and other collections of words, and produced, generally, second rate copies of their teacher's photographs.

If you say to yourself "I want to take sharp pictures of birds in flight" and if you apply yourself, and are normally competent, you will by god begin to produce more or less endless sharp photographs of birds flying from one place to another.

If you say to yourself nothing at all beyond "I want to take pictures" then you will take pictures of, god knows what, probably everything. If you desire that they be in focus, and if you apply yourself, you will probably hit your target. To what end, nobody will be able to explain.

These fellows above were saying something else, and it shows in their pictures.

Critics can say the same sorts of things, criticism being merely the observe face of creativity. Did Weston distill the essence of the nautilus shell, seeing it plus? For that matter, did Robinson distill anything, and see plus? Did Emerson give us the aspirational equivalents of Adams and Steiglitz, or did he manage to produce true impressions of the Norfolk Broads?

I don't really care what drives an artist, and I don't really care if the map they choose actually describes a real territory or only a fantasy. All I can be sure of is that without a map one tends to wander more or less aimlessly, and to no purpose.

Evidence points, in fact, to a certain wisdom in not following someone else's star, unless the secret map you're actually following is intended to lead to second-rate copies.

The critic's job, as I see it, is to try to discern what map the artist is using, and to judge based at least in part on how well the artist has hewed to the course laid out on it. There is more, there is room for my map, as well as simply my personal reactions, and little things like whether I like it or not. But, really, one ought to start by trying to get a handle on the artist's map.

All too often, it is clear that the artist has no map at all, and is simply wandering about trying to project an air of not being lost.

By What Criteria?

I have ranted about this in myriad forms over the years, and again, indirectly perhaps, quite recently.

There is, today, an almost complete lack of even the idea of meaningful criteria by which one might judge a photograph. What is fascinating about this is that, despite the lack of criteria, there is still plenty of judgement going on. Everyone, it seems, from the rankest newbie to the stodgy critic, seems willing to rule on whether a picture or a collection of them is good or bad. For, it turns out, no reasons whatsoever.

Newbies point to a failure to apply a rule of thirds. The slightly more sophisticated will natter about something "pulling their eye" or "my eye jumps all over the place" as if these were somehow criteria by which one might measure goodness. Who cares if your eye is all twitchy, idiot? Paradoxically, these sort of technical/prescriptive criteria are usually denigrated in the same breath, because even a tyro knows that they're not really very good criteria.

As you rise through the ranks, as it were, even these reasons fall away. Work becomes good because it is good, without explanation, and likewise bad because it is bad.

An unholy convergence of the camera-lover's desire for technical measures of excellence and postmodernism has conspired to eliminate anything meaningful from the evaluation of a photograph.

This is not to suggest that there ought to be a single universal standard of artistic excellence that we should standardize on. That would be absurd.

The history of photography, from the moment that someone realized that there might be something of Art in this process, until a few decades ago, is a history of well-known photographers thundering at one another in the pages of this publication or that. While they certain ranted on about technique and materials, also throughout the roiling argument was always threaded the needling question of what a photograph ought to do.

To what artistic goal should the artist aspire? Do we reveal the truth about the thing in front of the camera, or the ever-so vitally different truth about our emotional response to the thing in front of the camera? Ought the camera to moralize, or stand back from moralizing? Ought the camera reveal character, or conceal flaws and exalt the subject?

This sort of thing is simply gone from the debate, at all levels. From the lowliest forum, to the Review sections of the major newspapers, nobody seems to be interested in these details any more. We judge photographs, now, either on their apparent sharpness, or on the degree to which the artist agrees with out politics, and that seems to be about it.

This is not only depressing, but it leaves the aspiring artist somewhat in the lurch.

We are left to find our own way, without even the hint (unless we read a lot of history) that there might even be a territory for which the map has been lost. Obviously, success at the highest levels seems to require a pretty specific political position, but that is obviously not enough.

Of course, many aspiring photographers, upon hearing about this particular territory, reject it out of hand. They prefer the other territory, the one of technical excellence, and would like to learn a little more about color management, and perhaps to acquire another Sigma ART Lens or something. All this business about emotional impact, and how a photograph might interact with a viewer is a little alarming and probably just a bunch of bullshit anyways. Just go try to start a conversation about artistic merit, and the ways one might assess is in an internet forum on photography. Go ahead. I dare you. I double-dog dare you.

Out in the real world, despite the more or less nihilistic approach to criticism currently in vogue, it is clear that actual criteria are still being applied, albeit silently, and not reliably. There is quite a lot of emotionally powerful work being pushed out there at the "highest levels," whatever that might mean. There is rather more emotionally powerful work in play than I would expect if the system were truly just nepotism and politics.

In contrast to all the other critics, I (of course) do much better. I do judge. I will tell you if it is good or bad but by god I will do my damndest to tell you why I think it's good or it's bad. I will attempt to lay out my criteria for judgement.

I make no particular claim to being consistent. I suppose I use these criteria here, and quite a different set of them over there. So, perhaps I am merely rationalizing what is after all a purely irrational like/dislike. That does not matter, it turns out, at least not much.

The point is that by explaining myself, on my better days I reveal the very idea that there might be criteria by which one might judge these things. I don't, in the end, care if you agree with my judgement, or my criteria. That's a fine and beautiful thing, because now, in this moment, you believe for a moment in criteria of your own -- namely, the opposite of mine, or anyways ideas that oppose mine. You have, in this moment, some notion of a judgement that is based on something rather than simply pulled out of the ether.

If we have no way to tell what course we are on, and no notion of what our destination might be, it is rather hard to get there. I hope that, from time to time, I can help someone to settle their compass, to give someone a vague shape of a destination.

Personal Books

Every now and then I am able to badger someone in to sending me something.

The fact that someone has gone to to the trouble of assembling not one photograph but a collection of them, possibly with some supporting material, has printed them out in some form, and assembled them in to some sort of volume, says something. The fact that they are subsequently willing then to send a copy of this thing on to me also says something. It speaks to commitment, it says I think there is something here that is worthwhile. If you are willing to go as far as to actually physically send me something, this affects me, I have to confess, deeply.

When someone commits that hard, I will look at their objects with generous eyes. I will strive, with all my heart, to see what they see in it, to see what they're trying to say. Work that is wildly opposed on one axis or another to things I believe, I will look at, struggle with, and try to find in it that which they find good. And, generally, I think I will. They and I are not that much different, after all.

The personal book, the saddle-stapled book in an edition of 10, the blurb book, the hand-bound thing is completely different from the commercially published book. If you got a deal with MACK or Dewi Lewis, well, more power to you. You probably ponied up a shitload of money, but you probably did it because dreams of exposure, of a career launched, were dancing in your head (you asked for references, right? No? Oh...) When you saddle staple up 10 copies of something, no such dreams dance in your head. You know that this is not the step that launches you into the seat currently held by Alec Soth. God knows why you're doing it, but dreams of Sothness cannot reasonably figure. Probably, love, faith, belief in the material do figure.

Henry Beckmeyer recently sent me three things. Two saddle-stapled, one appears to be a print-on-demand product. I love them.

I in no way intend to damn these things, or Beckmeyer, with faint praise, although I will speak honestly about them. Let this stand: I love these things, they delight me. I would save them in a fire, after the family and the dog, naturally, but before much else.

I am surprised by my delight in these books, because in many ways they represent the opposite of what I aspire to. Every picture in these objects is a good picture -- not good in the sense that it reaches my soul and makes me a better man, though. They are graphically strong, appealing, slices of humanity, that most interesting of subjects. I do not particularly grow or expand as a human being, reading these books. I smile, and flip from page to page with pleasure, with delight.

Beckmeyer has selected these photos, I think, from his archive. This, again, is something that is simply beyond me. I cannot abide sifting my archive. Unlike, I think, most photographers I simply don't care about pictures I took last year, unless they're part of some project I am (probably desperately, after a year) trying to wrap up. Beckmeyer has sequenced them appealingly, creating spread after spread of wittily related photographs.

What really gets me here is that, had I been asked, I would surely have counseled against doing these books. "Lightweight, fluffy, anyone can do that" I might have said. And I might have been right. But still, the world would be worse off for not having these things, I am glad that nobody asked me, that nobody listened to me, and that now I possess these wonderful things.

What is it that makes these books great? It's not that they're particularly unique or special in this great big world of ours. They're much nicer than a lot of things, but certainly many photographers could make similar things, and I am sure that some of them do.

What makes them special, to me, is that a fellow who I (now) know slightly made them. Henry Beckmeyer is not some rando making a nice book of appealing pictures, he's this guy that sent them to me. He shot these pictures, he sifted through his files and made selections, made matches, built spreads, did a simple but elegant design, and made some books. And then he sent them to me. If I had no personal connection to Henry, if he didn't read my blog, never sent me email, and had sent these books to someone else, they would mean nothing to me. I would not be delighted by them.

I'm not sure what this means.

Sally Mann reaches across that vast, that infinite, divide, that separates two people who do not know one another even slightly, to touch me. That is one thing. Henry reaches across the much smaller divide that separates two people who know one another slightly, and touches me. That is another thing.

Beyond that is one thing and that is another thing I cannot expand further. But I'm going to think about it.

Maddening

Jörg is at it again over here, in his most recent, Merit and Exclusion.

He wrings his hands about meritocracy comma lack of, and wishes out loud that artistic merit should be more front and center in critical reviews.

Yes, yes it should be, Jörg.

He asks but how do you evaluate whether someone is a good photographer? To which I respond: this is literally your job, Jörg, and the fact that you, with 100% consistency, are unable to provide even a glimmer of insight into your methods is, well, it's interesting, isn't it?

You, Jörg, simply write week after week what amounts to a blurb for some terrible book or another, without a hint of why we, you, or anyone else might evaluate it. You simply declare things good or, occasionally, bad. The only criterion you will admit to, Jörg, is the membership of the author in some marginalized group or another. Which would, for reference, not be "meritocracy."

He then goes on to declare, in classic unsupported fashion, that three photographers he names are good, and that one is bad.

I don't have a magical solution either, but I feel like it could not hurt for guys like Jörg to actually start doing their job.

Define some sort of yardstick by which you evaluate work beyond I get lost in the book and then apply it.

I'm not gonna say that it's easy to whip up a yardstick. There are many yardsticks, in fact. The history of photography is a history of photographers thundering at one another about what is the proper set of criteria by which to judge a photograph. The history is full of this, the present day is not. The present is full of Colbergs who refuse to back their judgements up, and artists who refuse to talk about their photographs or their methods in any meaningful way.

The very idea of a yardstick, or of many yardsticks, by which we might judge a photograph or a book of them appears to be dead. Now it is, if we are honest with ourselves, entirely about whether the artist is "in" or "out", the same names keep popping up, showing us work that is usually uninteresting, and often indistinguishable from lots of other work we see. Work that is distinguishable from the rest is, as often as not, distinguishable only because the artist has become a parody of themselves.

An artist being "in" appears to be some sort of emergent property. It's not that Herr So-And-So anoints Mme. Whotsit, who them takes her place in the pantheon. It is that Mme. Whotsit hangs about a while, helps some people out and becomes well liked, talks a good political game, and raises enough money to publish a book or two on a definitely-not a vanity press. She curates shows, calibrating her sycophancy well, and at some point she is simply declared "good" and a maker of "necessary" art.

Usually, the consequence for Mme. Whotist isn't much more than further opportunities to fundraise to pay for books or shows, so accusations of sour grapes on my part might be misplaced. I might aspire to be Alex Soth, but I do not want to be Laia Abril. My desire to starve gracefully while busting my ass is fairly low.

I cannot understand how people like Colberg, or the monkeys writing at ASX, or 1000 words, or any of these other places get along. How on earth are they justifying the offering of judgement without any philosophical basis? When you say something is "good" but are unable (or unwilling) to explain what that might even mean, does the word "good" even mean anything?

Are they even aware of how thoroughly they have been co-opted by the social aspects of their community?