O doświadczaniu

A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it – by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir. Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs. The very activity of taking pictures is soothing, and assuages general feelings of disorientation that are likely to be exacerbated by travel. Most tourists feel compelled to put the camera between themselves and whatever is remarkable that they encounter. Unsure of other responses, they take a picture. This gives shape to experience: stop, take a photograph, and move on.

[…]

One full-page ad shows a small group of people standing pressed together, peering out of the photograph, all but one looking stunned, excited, upset. The one who wears a different expression holds a camera to his eye; he seems self-possessed, is almost smiling. While the others are passive, clearly alarmed spectators, having a camera has transformed one person into something active, a voyeur: only he has mastered the situation. What do these people see? We don’t know. And it doesn’t matter. It is an Event: something worth seeing – and therefore worth photographing. The ad copy, white letters across the dark lower third of the photograph like news coming over a teletype machine, consists of just six words: “… Prague … Woodstock … Vietnam … Sapporo … Londonderry … LEICA.” Crushed hopes, youth antics, colonial wars, and winter sports are alike – are equalized by the camera. Taking photographs has set up a chronic voyeuristic relation to the world which levels the meaning of all events.

Susan Sontag - "On Photography (In Plato's Cave)"
Zdjęcie: Berlin, Lipiec 2008

O dorównywaniu

W dzisiejszym FAZ w dodatku "Kunstmarkt" znalazłem listę 10 najdroższych dzieł sztuki sprzedanych na międzynarodowych aukcjach w 2007 roku. Temat co prawda nie bezpośrednio związany z fotografią, jednak na pewno pozwalający na "umiejscowienie" fotografii, we współczesnym świecie sztuki widzianej z "kapitalistycznej" persepektywy. Oto lista:

1. Mark Rothko - White Center (Yellow, Pink and Laveder on Rose), olej na płótnie, 1950, 205x141cm - $65M
2. Andy Warhol - Green Car Wash, olej na płótnie, 1963, 230x200cm - $64M
3. Guennol Lioness, rzeźba w wapieniu, 3000 p.n.e., 8cm - $51M
4. Francis Bacon - Study from Innocent X, olej na płótnie, 1962, 198x141cm - $47M
5. Francis Bacon - Second Version of Study for Bullfight No. 1, olej na płótnie, 1969, 200x148cm - $41M
6. Paul Gauguin - Te Poi Poi, olej na płótnie, 1892, 68x92cm - $35M
7. Raffael - Portret Lorenzo II de' Medici, olej na płótnie, 1518, 97x79cm - $33M
8. Claude Monet - Nympheas, olej na płótnie, 1904, 81x100cm - $32M
9. Claude Monet - Waterloo Bridge, temps couvert, olej na płótnie, 1904, 65x99cm - $31M
10. Mark Rothko - Untitled (Red, Blue, Orange), olej na płótnie, 1955, 169x125cm - $30M

W tym roku padła również rekordowa cena zapłacona za zdjęcie, która pobiła rekord z roku 2006:

• Andreas Gursky - 99 cent II (diptych), Ilfochrome/cibachrome, 2001, 206x341cm - $3,3M
• Edward Steichen - The Pond-Moonlight, wielowarstwowa guma, 1904, 41x48cm - $2,9M

Lessons learned: fotografia jako sztuka (przynajmniej finansowo) nie moze się jeszcze równać z malarstwem, chociaż dojrzała już na pewno pod względem wieku. Wiekszość z finansowej "top ten" jest młodsza niż poprzedni rekord fotograficzny. Kluczowa jest tutaj, oczywiście, powtarzalność procesu/liczba istniejących kopii. Prawdopodobnie jedyna mozliwością aby fotografia kiedykolwiek dorównała malarstwu jest sprzedaż odbitek wraz z negatywami lub palenie negatywów po sprzedaży zdjęcia. Tylko, czy na pewno takie "dorównywanie" jest miarodajne?

O ostrości doskonałej

Of all the works shown, George Davison's, secretary of the London Camera Club, stands in a class by itself. Here we are dealing with a genuine artist. Every one of his pictures is a delight to the eye, a gem in its way. His work is full of individuality, full of power and effect; and the camera, which is used either with or without lens, suiting the purpose, is but a tool in his hands, just as the painter uses his brush, palette, colors, etc. Artists as well as photographers must admire this work. There is only one class of man who criticize it: the "absolutely sharp" imbeciles, who strut about examining pictures with a magnifying glass stuck in their eye and holding up their hands in dismay when not satisfied with the sharpness of every little line. This class of man is fortunately disappearing very fast. It is the same class that prefers a chromo to a Millet or a Bastein Lepage. They call forth a sort of misplaced pity in us, we being, as a rule, more good natured than they.
Alfred Stieglitz - American Amateur Photographer 5 (May 1893)
Zdjęcie: Schloss Wackerbarth, Wrzesień 2007

O "Kodaku"

In 1890 when I returned to America I found that photography as I understood it hardly existed; that an instrument had been put on the market shortly before called the "Kodak" and that the slogan sent out to advertisers read, "You press the button and we do the rest." The idea sickened me.
There was the shooting away at random, taking the chance of getting something. To me it seemed rotten sportsmanship. I had been brought up with the idea of the tripod and awaiting one's moment to do what one willed to do.
I had walked day in and day out for months through the Tyrol and Switzerland and upper Italy with thirty pounds of camera and 18-by-24 centimeters plates on my back. Before I had ventured to expose a plate I had to feel sure that I'd get a result. There was nothing haphazard about it.
So the "Kodak" and all it represented did not tempt me. As a matter of fact, I was very unhappy in my own country. My yearning for Europe was constant.
Alfred Stieglitz - "Twice a Year I (Fall-Winter 1938)"
Zdjęcie: Berlin, Styczeń 2007