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Street Photography
No tarmac No cars but still street
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Jan 15, 2016 01:33:13   #
Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)
 
Apaflo wrote:
And of course so was the work of Dorothea Lange, Walker Evens, William Klien, Lee Friedlander and others, decades past and not always done only on urban street settings.

Regardless, Fine Art is not something distinct from Street Photography. It isn't a matter of being equal, it is a fact that Street Photography is always Fine Art (but of course not all Fine Art is Street Photography). It's one bit of turf within a very large fenced off area.

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"It is a fact that Street Photography is always Fine Art..."
Please, absent some sort of substantiation of that statement of putative "fact" would it not be more intellectually honest ...not to mention ethical ....to clearly indicate that it is simply an opinion? No more, no less?
I urge you to realize that merely claiming something to be a fact does not, a priori confirm it as a "fact" and to state that it is,is, in the opinion of most, patently dishonest to do so.

My suggestion is that "Street", as a subset of "Documentary Photography", and although of distinctly different import, is no more defineable, a priori as fine art than are photographs documenting the gross or microscopic appearance of a patient's tumor, a mug shot of an arrested suspect, or a forensic photographer's image documenting post-mortem lividity of a corpse.

So, when the statement is made that: "It is a fact that Street Photography is always Fine Art..." my immediate reaction, as a New Yorker born and bred, is, predictably: " Oh yeah? SEZ WHO?"

I humbly await a substantive response. (that means substantiating the putative truth of the statement discussed above)

Dave

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Jan 15, 2016 01:52:35   #
Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska
 
Uuglypher wrote:
So, when the statement is made that: "It is a fact that Street Photography is always Fine Art..." my immediate reaction, as a New Yorker born and bred, is, predictably: " Oh yeah? SEZ WHO?"

I humbly await a substantive response. (that means substantiating the putative truth of the statement discussed above)

Dave

Look up the definition of "Fine Art". That is inclusive of all Street Photography, by definition.

Are we again treated to one of the Dave's Own Definition examples? Where the first word, whether Street or Fine, is interpreted literally rather than as part of a Term of Art sequence. Street Photography means photographs of streets, and Fine Art no doubt means art of fine quality.

Except that isn't true.

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Jan 15, 2016 02:36:15   #
Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)
 
Apaflo wrote:
Look up the definition of "Fine Art". That is inclusive of all Street Photography, by definition.

Are we again treated to one of the Dave's Own Definition examples? Where the first word, whether Street or Fine, is interpreted literally rather than as part of a Term of Art sequence. Street Photography means photographs of streets, and Fine Art no doubt means art of fine quality.

Except that isn't true.


It is, I hope, obvious that your only recourse is to make up ridiculous drfinitions, attribute them to me, and then discredit them.
That is arguing a paper tiger of your own manufacture.
Is that really the best you can do?

What is your source of the definition of "Fine Art" that you like to use.
Let's start there.

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Jan 15, 2016 03:11:40   #
Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska
 
Uuglypher wrote:
It is, I hope, obvious that your only recourse is to make up ridiculous drfinitions, attribute them to me, and then discredit them.
That is arguing a paper tiger of your own manufacture.
Is that really the best you can do?

What is your source of the definition of "Fine Art" that you like to use.
Let's start there.

The dictionary definitions are just fine!

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Jan 15, 2016 06:44:37   #
Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)
 
Apaflo wrote:
The dictionary definitions are just fine!


Ah ha!
you can't or won't state a specific choice?
Just give us a hint...do you like Mirriam-Webster's First, Second, or Third, or The Oxford unabridged? I really like dictionaries and always like to establish the basis of conversation. Just seems eminently rational!

And while you are deciding, why not recommend that our readers simply use Google to peruse the collected images of:
Atget,
Louis Hein,
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Brassai
Lee Friedlander
Dorothea Lange,
Walker Evans,
Garry Winogrand,
William Klien,
Helen Levitt, and
Robert Frank

They will find, among the collected images of these recognized eminences of "Street" none...that's zero, zilch...among them producing images similar in any way to those of people quietly enjoying pastoral, bucolic, woodland, seashore, or riparine scenes such as those you, for some unknown reason, like to include under the otherwise well-characterized examples of "Street" photography.
Even the images of Dorothea Lange, recently included in a show at MoMA on great women photographers of the 20th Century, although focused on the plight of the poor, migrant rural populations during the Depression's Dust Bowl years, pictured them not in pleasant rural environs, but always against the backdrop of habitations and working conditions of privation, identical, essentially, to the sense of the other street photographers who pictured identical scenes within the milieu of the urban poor.

Any attempt to interpret Bystander's book and attitudes as the arbiter of what is and isn't "Street" in a way that would, for example, include the "Witness" and "No Tarmac no cars but still street" images posted in this Section as reasonable examples of street photography flies in the face of the images of the acknowledged greats of the genre!

it is unarguable that the works of the greats listed above define "Street" far more accurately and explicitly than any poor effort on the part of anyone hoping to re-define the genre for personal purposes could ever do.

Dave

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Jan 15, 2016 09:37:11   #
jim hill Loc: Springfield, IL
 
Uuglypher wrote:
Jim,
Somehow you've seriously misinterpreted my words. I've stated a definite and seriously considered opinion. I've posted no "query" of any sort to which I require or request any sort of response or opinions from your or anyone's else's chosen "leading authorities in the field" of photography.

Obviously, you ought present your own queries to whatever leading authorities you may chose.

There is, thus, is no need to wait further in expectation of a statement of "(my) pleasure".

Best regards,
Dave
Jim, br Somehow you've seriously misinterpreted my... (show quote)


I consider, in that case, this conversation closed as to further participation on my part.

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Jan 15, 2016 12:13:04   #
Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska
 
jim hill wrote:
I consider, in that case, this conversation closed as to further participation on my part.

Might as well! Just look at the post before yours.

Not one lick of logic. Nothing stated is rational. There is no continuity between reality and the arguments presented. The purpose doesn't seem to include helping anyone understand Street, to help anyone improve their photography, or do anything useful. It's only intended to make this thread, and this section, an uncomfortable place to exchange ideas.

Claiming Louis Hein is a Street Photographer, suggesting that Dorothea Lange did not take pictures in rural settings, and claiming that the book Bystander does not represent an authoritative source are all strange ways to be useful here.

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Jan 15, 2016 14:10:43   #
Voss
 
Graham Smith wrote:
I can't argue with your street classification because rivers and canals were at one time the main highways of England, the roads and streets.
Perhaps there will be those that say you should have framed it so that the boat was entering the frame rather than leaving it but I often use shots that are framed that way, i sort of like it.

Graham


My thought on the framing is that the boat is heading into an unknown future rather than going on a predictable and foreordained path.

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Jan 15, 2016 15:40:28   #
Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)
 
Apaflo wrote:
Might as well! Just look at the post before yours.

Not one lick of logic. Nothing stated is rational. There is no continuity between reality and the arguments presented. The purpose doesn't seem to include helping anyone understand Street, to help anyone improve their photography, or do anything useful. It's only intended to make this thread, and this section, an uncomfortable place to exchange ideas.

Claiming Louis Hein is a Street Photographer, suggesting that Dorothea Lange did not take pictures in rural settings, and claiming that the book Bystander does not represent an authoritative source are all strange ways to be useful here.
Might as well! Just look at the post before yours... (show quote)


Floyd,
please, in the interest of clarifying a number of points of importance in this discussion, read my post more carefully.
1. I explicitly recognized and stared that Dorothea Lange DID take pictures in rural settings.

2. How can you examine the works of Lewis Hein and not recognize his productivity in what is now recognized as "Street" is incomprehensible. Also, He is recognized as such in "Bystander".

3. the only reason that discussion of what is street photography has become uncomfortable here is the insistence that it be re-defined by other than the works of those well recognized as established and accomplished street photographers.

4. the claim that "all street photography is fine art" establishes that every posted image explicitly acknowledged by the moderator as an example of "Street Photography" is a priori therefore "fine art" Is the inanity of this lost on everyone here? if so, the following are examples of fine art because they are, unquestionably, "fine art"

no Tarmac, no cars but still street
http://static.uglyhedgehog.com/upload/2016/1/13/1452682958723-another_day_on_the_river_for_web.jpg

Waiting
http://static.uglyhedgehog.com/upload/2016/1/14/1452769036622-d71_9857_bw.jpg

Is this considered street photography
"the gate,Nancy
http://static.uglyhedgehog.com/upload/2016/1/10/1452477753578-place_stanislas2.jpg

rusted truck on Isle of Barra
http://static.uglyhedgehog.com/upload/2016/1/15/1452870057950-dsc_7571_b.jpg

In the interest of better understanding of our differing opinions,
Dave

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