The artist may not necessarily understand his own art
The other day, I remembered that I had started Luis Camnitzer's One Number Is Worth One Word a while ago. It's a very good book, especially if you're interested in the relationships between art, teaching, and the larger world. Even as the book focuses on art (or conceptual art) it would be a mistake to think that it doesn't have relevance for photography (which, as we all know, has the potential to be art). One piece in the book is called Sol LeWitt Revised, which is an "update" (the book's description) of a 1969 piece by the American artist entitled Sentences on Contemporary Art.
Here are a few gems that photographers might want to consider (just replace "art" with "photography", "artist" with "photographer," etc.):
"If the artist changes his or her mind midway through the execution of the piece he or she compromises the result and repeats past results. Better to finish consistently and then throw it away."
Based on my experience as a teacher, I'm thinking that 99.9% of photographers will balk at this advice, and for all the wrong reasons. Throwing results away is only a failure if you work under the assumption that the success of anything you do is solely tied to the outcome. Seeing something through is a lot more important than changing one's mind because a work might be too challenging to what one clings to.
"The conventions of art should be altered by subsequent works of art."
This might be immediately clear from a large number of recent articles on CPhMag.com. It's possibly my biggest problem with the world of photography right now: an endless recycling of old ideas.
"Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions."
My emphasis.
"The artist may not necessarily understand his own art. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others."
I've heard this expressed by a number of fellow teacher, often along the lines of "the work knows more than its maker". It's the hardest pill to swallow for photographers (so most of them just spit it out). This is where one sees whether photography is indeed art -- or remains at the level of photography.
It's also one of my main misgivings with how a lot of photography is discussed, especially when the meaning of some work is contested: people ask the photographer and then use their words as the gauge for how to discuss the work. But why would a photographer know more about their pictures than all the other people? You can make a photographer a Groucho Marx -- "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" -- but that doesn't guarantee insight or arrival at a larger truth.
One more:
"When an artist learns his craft too well he becomes its servant, makes slick art, and annuls it."
This is why when you know very well what you're doing, you have to prepare yourself to change it. This can be iffy because your gallerist or book publisher is not going to be happy if you change up what so far has sold very well.
A few days ago, someone sent me an email, asking whether I could answer three questions that center on editing one's work. The answers would be presented to their students. I decided to answer the questions in the form of a short text (mostly because of the overlap and connectedness of the various aspects. This is what I wrote:
It is a common mistake to assume that editing one's photographs -- selecting the ones that are working and discarding the ones that are not -- is a separate activity from taking photographs. I've found that editing is frequently seen as that annoying afterthought one has to deal with. But photographing without looking properly at what one got is a bad idea. Making constant edits while photographing helps condense ideas and themes, and it helps in the process of discovery of what one's own work has to offer. Photographing and editing should be two close partners in one's practice.
Seen that way, editing easily becomes more and more straightforward because it is through continued practice that mastery can be achieved. Furthermore, with the exception of the final edit, no edit needs to be forever: previously discarded photographs can come back, and old favourites can disappear once they are revealed as too simple or too easy or whatever else.
Once photographing and editing are seen as two essential tasks to perform, the role of the single photograph changes as well: instead of being seen as this stand-alone entity, it will be seen in the context of the work that is being made around it. Editing should always involve thinking about the context: how is a photograph informed by all the other photographs from any given project? Such considerations can simply start by looking at pairings. From there, they can extend to groups of three, four, or more photographs. I always advise to build up larger groupings from smaller ones, because it is easiest.
Another common mistake is to assume that editing is an activity that has a well defined beginning and an end. It should have an end for sure. But during the process, one must not be afraid to constantly re-define what one has. Changing an edit should never be seen as a step back. Going back to earlier work should never be seen as a setback. Instead, one needs to understand that progress while editing should only be measured by one's increased clarity over what one has produced.
In other words, the goal of editing is to arrive at perfect clarity of one's work. This starts always out from meagre beginnings -- the first few pictures, continues to the first edits that appear to hint at some ideas, continues to the edits that seemingly are frustrating because it turns out that initial ideas of where things were going have turned out to be too simplistic, and finally arrives at the edit that makes sense and that feels complete. Completion here means: one
could always take more photographs, but nothing of fundamental value would be added. Don't overpolish a stone as if you were a river that keeps rushing around the same pebble.
After I briefly discussed the photograph taken by Adam Ferguson in my last email, Gio, a reader, sent me a couple of links to Ferguson's own description of the work: part 1, part 2. Thank you, Gio!
Originally, I had a couple of other pieces to discuss here. But I think I'll save them for next time. That's the thing about good writing: it doesn't age.
As always, thank you for reading!
-- Jörg