Oct. 1, 2009
As the decade of the 1960's opened in the United States a change was evident in the air at all levels of American society. As the decade progressed you found a new generation of people who were increasingly turning their backs on the past as far as it's capability of answering their questions about life and art and music and literature and environment and relationships and everything else under the sun. The promise of the future blotted out the past and indeed the past was increasingly looked at as one encompassing mistakes on a grand level and it seemed to be generally felt that a less workmanlike and more sensitive, thoughtful and intellectual approach to life would bring about the changes in attitude needed to address and even welcome the challenges to come. Indeed, the past was not only looked at as not holding any answers or relevance to contemporary issues but also represented a story, a history, that was increasingly disliked if not despised and thought of as shameful. Thinking outside the box became the order of the day, challenging all precepts the battle cry; an expanded consciousness was felt to be not only desirable but necessary. The so-called "Generation Gap" was born.
In the United States, music was a rallying point for the expression of a new generation who felt that the "red neck" society of the 1950's was simply too stolid, closed minded and unreasonalble to be borne any longer. Literature, film and the fine arts were also significant areas in which a new and "better" expression of what it meant to be human was felt.
As the decades have passed there has now emerged a cushion of time to evaluate the promise of the 1960's and it's impact for better or worse on American culture and society at the dawn of the 21st Century. Of particular interest to me is how the new intellectual expression impacted two areas I had myself had a more than healthy interest in: science fiction literature and fine art photography. I have chosen these to areas of expression not only because of my particular affection but also because they provide an appropriate contrast in how they have separated after having started along very similar paths.
One thing SF literature and fine art photography had in common during the decade of the 1960's is that both genres seemed utterly determined to turn their respective backs on their own history. The talents that had been the cornerstones of both areas of art were quickly dismissed as unimaginitive hacks who's work could no longer address the need for an expanded consciousness that was felt to be necessary as the old stereotypes, the old ways of doing business were put to the wayside. Old ideas about women and minorities and the environment were uppermost in the thoughts about larger social change that was coming to America through it's new generation. In common with the disdain of the larger story of America's past, SF literature and fine art photography set about to right wrongs, express the "truth" and celebrate individual expression while consigning all ideas of conformity to a pyre set alight by the irresistible momemtum of a new generation and way of thinking.
The beginning of the Vietnam War and it's end was considered a paradigm not only of how the nation's thinking had changed but also how new thought had triumphed. Doris Day and Frank Sinatra were out and Jimi Hendrix and mind expanding drugs were in. Capitalism had it's role to play as it inevitably cashed in on the changing trends but this change tried mightily to be more than just the same turnover in fads that had existed for decades;this new change wanted to be a wholesale turning away from and break with the past. SF literature and fine art photography were each to put this desire of a break with the past on prominent display in the 1960's. However, the path each would take would diverge from very similar beginnings, one surviving what proved to be only a temporary expression of a disdain for it's own history and surviving to grow to new heights of artistic expression, the other degenerating into a flood of unmeant reactionary stereotypes indistinguishable from if not worse than, the middle class "red neck" predecessors it sought so desperately to disentangle itself from; in rushing away headlong from the past, little thought was given to what was being lost and how much that past actually deserved the disdain it attracted. In turning away from the past, fine art photography has itself become that past but without the elan and style that characterized so much of the 1950's these photographers continue to despise and mindlessly react to.
Today, as I write this in late 2009, there has been a pulling back of the contempt that was once felt for the past, especially in the arts. Tony Bennet and Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly and Warner Brothers cartoons, Johnny Mercer and Jimmy Cagney are all given their due as artists among uncountable other individuals and genres once thought of as passe'. Indeed, the separation of expression between one generation and the next has become less of a turning away and more of the traditional pattern of one fad succeeding another. In the early 21st century in America, that sense of the "New Wave" has receded and there is less excitement in such areas as literature, popular film and music as their was in the 60's and 70's.
In contrast, in areas concerned with social change, the contempt felt for the past and the story of America has never been greater; in the history of the United States there has probably never been a greater percentage of the population who have held the past of this country in such contempt. In 2009 this contempt for the past has been embodied in the election of Barak Obama as President of the United States. Unfortunately, along with the genuine good that has transformed our society, there has emerged the phenomena of political correctness which has a momentum in terms of lack of thoughfulness that is every bit as stolid and unreasonable as ever was the 1950's.
In fine art photography this has manifested itself in a deluge of photographers whose main concern is to unwittingly express the fear of their own middle class provincialism than any true creativity and mindless stereotypes have come to dominate the genre. In the arena of science fiction literature, the "New Wave" proved to be a short-lived phenomena and the past that was once so little thought of has come to merge itself into the current entity that is science fiction literature. Although there is no lack of politicaly correct stories with cutesy titles, these are generally recognized for the nonsense they are although they have they place in the commercial marketplace. When it comes to fine art photography, "thinking outside the box" has, in reality, become synonymous with the exact opposite as as the most awful and unthinking photographs continue to be trundled out by the most unimaginative and prosaic people one can imagine; the intellectualization of photography has been an unmitigated disaster.
No such merging of the past with it's immediate successor's of the 1960's and 1970's has emerged to rescue fine art photography from the doldrums; the word "retro" has not entered the vocabulary or consciousness of fine art photography in the 21st century. Indeed, one could argue that fine art photography in the United States is at it's nadir and shows no signs of emerging from it's politically correct and essentially middle class and utterly unimaginative current state born from the unrealized promise of the 1960's. When politics overcomes craftsmanship in a given genre of the arts it may feel satisfying but the end product is mindless and repetitive trash such has overwhelmed fine art photography as well as hip-hop music for that matter; both have become nothing more than a con game, both wittingly and unwittingly. A given genre of the arts is not in and of itself politics and must be left to express such politics in it's own unique way; when politics supercedes art then what is left is simply the destruction of a genre. To be cool and hip and current is not enough to sustain art and a democratization of an artform by intellectualizing it as to include the greatest number of people in the name of a disdain for "mere" craftsmanship server only to degrade that genre to the lowest common denominator.
Some genres lend themselves to an intellectualization process more than others though that doesn't mean that all major forms of popular art have come under this type of assault; from a 15 minute slow zoom shot in a film to not playing a musical instrument the con artists wannabe's who want the fame without the work have had their shots at virtually every type of artistic expression there is. Ferreting out those who have a genuine desire to think outside the box and separating them from the merely untalented and lazy has been something the fine arts community in the United States has been utterly unable to do.
Fine art photography has proven to be particularly vulnerable to the concept of disdaining mere craftsmanship in favor of progressive thought. Part of the reason for this is the ubiquitousness of the camera in American society; everybody and their brother thinks they are photographers. No one ever thinks of jumping onto a stage during a piano concert and challenging a pianist. However, the very nature of photography itself in part and it's intellectualization has democratized and destroyed fine art photography in this country. The less hard work and craftsmanship that's involved the more people who can participate on a professional level; after all, when it comes to one's opinions who's to say who is better than the next. Yet it is this very democratization of fine art photography that has largely destroyed the genre and finer minds, frustrated by the infiltration. circumvention and subversion of the genre have simply moved to other arenas to express themselves, leaving fine art photography largely bereft of any talented artists whatsoever. People who are eccentric to the point of being mentally disturbed make work that is hailed as art simply because the curators and gallery owners in this country today are incapable of recognizing true talent and are suckered in by photographers whose work is so disingenuos as to be nothing more that a con. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants are given to photographers working in the fine arts who have not a clue as to what they are doing.
In the area of science fiction literature, the pressures of the commericial marketplace have largely intervened to assure this same thing has not occured. In literature one cannot largely talk one's way into any kind of financial success but must produce and thankfully there have been editors and publishers, though unfortunately fewer nowadays, who have helped to see that science fiction has not come to the sad state of affairs as has fine art photography. Also, the average person who buys science fiction is more numerous as well as perceptive in their general opinions than is the case in fine art photography where a relatively small group of people control careers.
In science fiction literature, some of the greatest novels ever written have come out just in the last few years yet in fine art photography the talent pool has been unrelentingly dismal since the mid-70's. In fine art photography, the same tired ideas if you can call them that, and stereotypes are trundled out unchallenged over and over again. An obssession among American photographer's working in the fine arts to show how cool and hep and with it and intellectual they truly are has set back the arts many years and it will be at least a generation before fine art photography has a chance to recover from it's own unquestioned trendiness, lack of content and mindless stereotypes; no eager viewer of the Wayang Kulit of Plato's Cave was ever more ensorceled than are many of the present generation of fine art photographers. Photos of close-ups of paintings or wainscoting over-powered with an 8x10 view camera, boring touristic landscapes brutally twisted and transformed to become fine art, branches and pebbles no better than that to be found on Flickr are arranged in triptychs and declared fine art, misty filters are put over lenses and the resultant photos promoted by and sold to those who are in fact "the great unwashed", all accompanied by empty literary declarations full of imagined insight and metaphysical gibberish. One could easily come to the conclusion that such photographers have nothing to say with a camera and may never really have had anything to say. The fact of the matter is that these people ran out of ideas a very long time ago and this is reflected in the ever increasing and arcane rhetoric that surrounds all things that are fine art photos.
Arcane methods of developing and printing are trundled out with all the solemnity of a sacrament and mesmerise curators, gallery owners and grant foundations alike and unrelentingly. This is one of my favorite explanations of how a photographer created his prints: "...created with Type 55 Polaroid film in a 4x5 view camera. The Polaroid negative is saved and washed, then drum scanned, and the final image is archival piezo printed on watercolor paper. The remaining prints are dual toned archival silver gelatin prints, created from 120mm negatives." Overly hyped artistic statements combined with byzantine print methods are necessary in an arena where the work is in desperate need of such co-stars since there is no question of the work standing on it's own merits. If as much work were put into the simple initial execution of a body of work there would be no need for such defensive/offensive weaponry. It's like the old Monty Python joke about a man crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a tricycle - the "tricycle, specially adapted for the crossing, was ninety feet long, with a protective steel hull, three funnels, seventeen first-class cabins and a radar scanner".
Their is a difference between breaking down barriers and being a con man either wittingly or unwittingly and there is a difference between knowing why you are breaking down barriers and doing it simply to show how middle class you are not. In science fiction literature there is a market place that has not been overwhelmed by the politcally correct and so you can read everything from trash to the great. There is no corresponding marketplace in fine art photography and what one finds today is largely trash. An emphasis on progressive thought and none on "mere" craftsmanship leaves one eternally in a hopeful and better future with little to look at and enjoy in the meantime. Where in the world does this steady diet of progressive thought so prevalent in fine art photography lead to anyway? It quickly became something that was done simply to do it and so the floodgates were opened to supremely untalented photographers.
A steady diet of the avant garde quickly becomes tiresome as what it is reacting to and comparing itself to doesn't even exist anymore if it ever did and the context is entirely lost. What we are left with is mere posturing and ego. I for one am not fascinated at how much so-and-so's art is emphatically not middle class and not typical. The problem with fine art photography is that everyone is thinking outside the box and so no one is thinking outside the box and the genre is arguably as full of those nasty 1950's style "rednecks" and their stereotyped ideas as ever the actual decade was.
In 1967 a seminal collection of contemporary short science fiction stories was published with Harlan Ellison as the editor. "Dangerous Visions" was to be the ultimate expression of the changing of the guard in science fiction. However this book did not turn it's back on it's own progenitors; venerable authors such as Robert Bloch, Isaac Asimov and Murray Leinster were right along side such image breakers as Phillip K. Dick, Phillip Jose Farmer and Roger Zelazny. Indeed, Isaac Asimov wrote 2 short forewords to the collections. Happily, there was no sense of the older writers trying to change styles simply for the sake of keeping up with the times like putting Tony Bennet to a hip hop beat which would have been ineffably sad. Instead, the veteran writers more than hold their own in the "Dangerous Visions" anthology
There was never any equivalent to "Dangerous Visions" in the arena of fine art photography. Despite it's iconoclastic attitude, "Dangerous Visions" was what Asimov refers to as simply as a"second revolution", the 1940's so-called "Golden Age" of SF being the first revolution and so defining "Dangerous Visions" as more of a changing of the guard rather than a wholesale turning of one's back on ones predecessors though there were in fact such authors in science fiction, authors who seemed ashamed of their own genre; such authors simply never were able to dominate SF and the balance between the old and the new slowly asserted itself. Not so in fine art photography: in Forward 1 in "Dangerous Visions", Asimov writes, "...all Golden Ages carry within themselves the seeds of their own destruction and after it is over you can look back and unerringly locate those seeds."
Unfortunately this state of affairs never happened in fine art photography and the "destruction" or perhaps more appropriately, the deconstruction, of 50's fine art photography is what did occur; all that photography in the arts was left with was destruction and from the ashes rose nothing to take it's place but bland stereotypes that succumb to the very banality they attempt to enliven, a large back rubbing of bathos wherein the only thing one can count on is disappointment and a large dose of the tattoo mentality. Fine art photography's boastful attitude on the part of it's creators to having cornered the market on perception in the long run isn't even as perceptive as a comic panel in a Sgt. Rock comic book from 1967 drawn by Joe Kubert. It is fine art photography's own arrogance that is the single predominant theme that I can find in the genre.
While Steven Shore, William Eggleston and Joel Meyerowitz served as a kind of bridge to what had taken place in fine art photography in the preceding generation what followed was a type of cutesy, and utterly provincial style of photography by middle class artists whose main aim seems to be to show how much they are in fact emphatically not middle class nor provincial. That is not to say that Shore or Sebastao Salgado or others are not carrying on but their work has been relegated to the sidelines in the area of fine art photography as being overly literal and what wins out nowadays is the misty filter over a lens and a large format shot of branches in the sky and a once great tradition interdicted and subverted into nonsensical metaphysical expressions by small minded people with great egos who know all the buzzwords to stroke a grant out of a foundation and soothe the middle class beast within.
As for science fiction, there are probably as many books published each year as ever and while no one is calling the last 2 decades a golden age there have been some remarkable achiements. Peter Hamilton's "Night's Dawn" trilogy, (1996-99) is arguably as good a work as SF has ever seen and Jack McDevitt's "Infinity Beach" ,(2000) is as amazing an SF novel as I have read.
Meanwhile fine art photography is at it's nadir and if you look at a list of great photographers working in the fine arts the names are definitely baby boomers. There are parallels: name one great drummer in rock and roll after 1970 and look at the fact that there were more great musical hits written between 1964 and 1970 than have been written in the last 20 years. These things have their natural ebb and flow but there is something insidious about the disaster that has overtaken fine art photography and that insidiousness is political correctness. The following is part of an artist's statement that is all too typical in fine art photography today: "The creation of peace and healing on both global and personal dimensions have been central concerns in my work..." One gets the feeling that there is some giant machine somewhere disgorging such people from molds. Artist's on the periphery of fine art photography like Laurie Anderson have had the same haircut for 40 years yet their work loudly proclaims how they are the exact opposite of a jarhead platoon marine sergeant yet if you look at what Anderson actually delivers rather than what she proclaims to express you can plainly see the sergeant's stripes. Even Doris Day didn't have the same haircut for 40 years. The staid and unchanging uniform that the 1960's so loudly cried out against is alive and well in the area of fine art photography and some of the worst exhibitions in the genre's history have gained great currency in today's climate.
As I alluded to earlier, science fiction literature in the 1960's came dangerously close to flirting with the same dull fate that has overtaken fine art photography. SF authors put out stories that were so obviously embarrassed by the genre that one could hardly recognize the stories as SF. One was left to wonder why these authors were working in SF in the first place. Some authors like Ursula K. LeGuin have written obviously recognizable SF but one has that same feeling that they are on some level ashamed of the very genre in which they participate. Fortunately the fate that has overtaken fine art photography has not come to dog SF despite authors like LeGuin who is admired more for her politics than her abilities as a writer, the exact problem that has enveloped fine art photography. No doubt that it is easy to find bad SF in the genre but it is far from being overwhelmed by mediocrity as is fine art photography. The difference is that in SF good work is rewarded by those in the know and fine art photography rewards mediocrity created by people who know nothing about photography and those rewards come from a crop of curators, teachers and gallery owners who in their turn know nothing about photography. I might feel differently if these so-called artists delivered on their promise of great thinking but they consistently deliver the exact opposite and the trivial nonsense passed off as art in photography is an utter disgrace to it's history and with political correctness at it's height the nadir in which fine art photography finds itself shows no signs of improving anytime soon. Intellectually politicized photography has been an unmitigated disaster.
When such practices are done for their own sake the result is unmitigated failure. Such things must be levened with talent and insight and yes, craftsmanship. Fine art photography by failing to deliver on it's intellectual preachiness and by failing to adapt itself to it's own rut has come to a sad end. When Robert Heinlein in "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress", (1966) and Phillip Jose Farmer in "Riders Of the Purple Wage", (1967) sought to create work with startling different prose they knew enough to make sure that the story was entertaining and not done just for the sake of doing it and also in a spirit of creativity and not just to show how smart and edgy they were. Heinlein and Farmer also realized that a steady diet of such "creativity" would leave one in a box and not thinking outside it and in the end with no place to go. Such is the state of fine art photography; rather than thinking outside the box it has boxed itself in for 3 decades and it has nowhere to go.
Those in a position to make a difference in fine art photography, namely curators, gallery owners and teachers have not learned this lesson in their zeal to show how much they dislike the past while at the same time trying to show how cool they are for want of a better word. When everybody is special and everybody is thinking outside the box then it is like a movie with only movie stars in every single role, 20 James Dean's in one movie and in the end it is the extra who is the stand out. When everyone thinks they are the star and everyone else a cardboard cutout then what you're left with is a bunch of cardboard cutouts who are communicating nothing with no one with the exception of their own bloated egos and their emphatic confidence in their own creativity. I can think of no worse fate for an artform and fine art photography is, in my mind, the most boring and unrewarding major genre in all the arts in the United States today. I can think of no other art form where mediocrity is not only rewared but encouraged. Only hip hop music can compete in it's embarrassing lack of talent being totally encouraged by it's coolness factor to the exclusion of all else.
Science fiction literature in contrast is alive and well and as good as ever aspiring to ever greater heights in terms of accomplishment; though it skirted the edge it never succumbed to the same politically correct expansion of social consciousness that has pervaded and overtaken fine art photography to the exclusion of all else. To say that comtemporary fine art photography is entertaining in any sense in to give a new definition to the word entertaining. Rather, fine art photography is a failed art that hides behind nonsensical and overly dramatic prose to explain what the work itself cannot because there is nothing to explain in the first place; never in the history of the fine arts in America has a genre found itself so utterly taken over by untalented amateurs. Fine art photography's insistence on flogging itself as a type of metaphysical philosophical intellectualism superior to all else has been it's downfall and it's persistence in still reacting to the 1950's it feels so superior to has left it in the dust and relevant only in the sense that buzzwords with no meaning are relevant which is the essence of political correctness. One could say that fine art photography is elitest but this would give one the idea that one is dealing with the upper 1% when the truth would be closer to the bottom 1%.