Tried to upload a picture here (of me looking shocked) but it won’t work. I’ll try later.
In This Week’s Magazine: Sepia No More by The New York Times.
Warning: its ignorance and snobbery might be too overwhelming. Hang on to your contact lenses - they might just blast out.
I wrote this response which should appear on the Comments of the article shortly. I even put my swear word ’shit’ with two stars so they’d better publish it.
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Wow, how much snobbery and ignorance can be packed into one article?
The stance Heffernan takes on photography couldn’t be clearer; true photography is, of course, made by ‘art-school photographers’ who ‘continue to shoot on film, embrace chiaroscuro and resist prettiness’. Anything that has been near a computer is ‘not quite right’.
Dare I say it, I am a “photographer”, because I create, using a digital camera (gasp!) and varying amounts of Photoshop (gasp!) - or what you might dub ‘digital tricks’, that is, if you were the most resolutely anti-modern snob who doesn’t realise that Photoshop is in fact a tool like any other “production mischief” used in the sacred darkroom, and just as challenging to utilise.
Like others I see emerging through Flickr, my photography career started with being, yes, “proficient” at “how to create images that would look good shrunk in “thumbnail” form” and how to “flirt with Flickr’s visitors in the comments area to keep them coming back”. (By the way, the way the writer has used the word “flirt” to describe Rebekka G’s process is not sexist at all, is it?)
It is amazing how the writer casts off the Internet as a medium in its entirety - apparently, it’s only a place for “failed” or “out of step” artists. That is a laughable suggestion when I consider how many artists would never have got into photography nor felt encouraged to keep creating more work had it not been for the encouragement they receive from a worldwide audience on the likes of sites like Flickr. Flickr does not make these artists. There is no such thing as a “Flickr photograph”. All kinds of people use Flickr, but I know that fine artists use Flickr as tool to gain feedback on their work and showcase it for wider external publicity, the quite unshameful and really quite fascinating equivalent of physically trolling one’s portfolio round galleries.
According to this article, Flickr viewers “pretend” to have “expertise” in photography, their comments are “naive”, “gushing”, and don’t recognise real photography when they see it, even when posted as a spoof. Does this mean - gasp! - that perhaps the majority are having a say about what actually is exciting imagery? Could this be a forum for everyone to express their opinion on art, in this case photography, whether they are educated at art school or not? Could this be a blurring of high and low art; could Flickr represent - shock horror - democracy?
What exactly is wrong, other than defying the nature of “real” photography from Arbus and Bresson, with artists who work at “abandoning realism”? With, what the writer dubs, “creamy fantasy pictures”? With anything that isn’t “rawer and grainier 35-millimeter photography”? Who has the right to say what “photography” is or isn’t? Why should photography be subject to such elitism? Why isn’t the writer welcoming to a medium that helps make these changes?
Heffernan should get over the fact that this is simply no longer an age where the artist needs “elaborate deference to institutions, hard-won group shows and expensive years spent in unnoticed toil” as “the only way to success.” And all the better for it! Sites like Flickr don’t make it any easy to get your work seen, if anything, they make it more competitive, all it means that the artist does not need to be a first rate, first-degree snob to get anywhere near an appointment with a gallery.
Without the Internet (Flickr) I would never have created the wealth of images I now have in both my online and physical portfolios; and without Photoshop, I would never have been so stimulated by photography to start with. I would not have had two exhibitions, including a current show in Madrid, been featured in the Tate Britain, had publicity with the likes of the BBC, El Pais, La Repubblica, and art magazines internationally and be selling work, nor would I be invited to speak at an important Microsoft photography event later this year.
I would find it hilarious (if it wasn’t so exasperating) that the writer does not see how precious the internet and Photoshop are as tools to the artist today, even when she is consciously discussing Rebekka G’s Toyota commission that resulted from building her impressive portfolio on Flickr. Of course, we have to shit all over pictures that have used anything but traditional processing means; so it’s wrong to be impressed by Rebekka’s really quite impressive early pictures (only a certain social group should be able to say what is worthy of praise and it’s all down to how it was made.) Not only are Rebekka’s 4 million views incidental, but the external recognition of her work by art galleries and by the Toyota commission itself just simply can’t mean anything. All because she used Photoshop. (And her “movie-star eyes” must be mentioned because they must make her self portraiture soooo much easier).
It is quite stunning how uneducated this article makes the writer look. Digital photography: “forced, intense, contrived, juvenile”? Might not be your cup of tea Ms Heffernan, but don’t slag off the many artists who choose to embrace technology as part of their artistic process that is as dignified as any other. Is true photography about ‘resisting prettiness’? If so, my work, and that of an array of talented emerging artists showcasing their images on Flickr, is rendered worthless. I certainly will never accept that value, and I think only a few thousand million people, including an increasing amount of gallery directors whom you thought had the same notions as you, wouldn’t either.
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