Popular Photography

Writing in L.A. Weekly last fall, Holly Myers created a minor tempest with the following:

"In thinking about Diane Arbus, as one does from time to time, I came to a distressing realization: that I couldn’t name a single photographer subsequent to Arbus (and Frank and Winogrand and Friedlander and Eggleston and the other greats of her generation) who ranked on anywhere near the same level, which is to say, who thrilled me near as broadly, deeply or consistently."

The tempest notwithstanding, I think Myers was right. There is something about much of contemporary photography that is not satisfying. But I'm not sure the cause to which she pointed is the operative one.

Myers attributed the decline to the elevation of concept over feeling. I think the problem is that contemporary photography too often lacks formal elegance or distinction. In its place, many photographers appear to believe that a clever, or topical, or referential subject will itself suffice. It seldom does.

Consider Brian Ulrich, for example. Ulrich is a good photographer, recently selected by PDN as one of 30 "new and emerging photographers to watch" for 2007. And his pictures are, I think, fairly representative of a style of photography that is widespread. Here's an example of his recent work:

Brian Ulrich, Kenosha, WI (2003). Copyright Brian Ulrich.

A nice picture. Modern commerce in a world of discordant pattern and flat, dispiriting light. With some spilled milk for those inclined to the allegorical.

Now here's another picture of things for sale, this one by Lee Friedlander:

Lee Friedlander, Cincinnati, Ohio (1973). Copyright Lee Friedlander.

It is, in my opinion, qualitatively different, not just a photograph of retail life, but one in which spatial ambiguity and formal complexity combine to transcend that subject matter.

Or take this photograph by Alec Soth:

Alec Soth, Melissa (2005). Copyright Alec Soth

Soth, who has made some excellent photographs, is in or close to the very top rank of photographers today. Not long ago, he identified this picture (in the Guardian) as among his favorites. One of the things he especially likes about it, he said, is that water stain in the lower left. "It was raining out, and it feels like the Falls are creeping in, tugging at her dress."

Now consider this photograph by Manuel Alvarez Bravo:

Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Woman Brushing Her Hair (1935) Copyright M. Alvarez Bravo

Although Alvarez Bravo is at least a generation removed from Arbus and her cohort, I chose this picture because the object in the lower right hand patch of light - Is it a scorpion? The fringe of a serape? - serves the same emotional function as the stain in Soth's portrait of Melissa.

Beyond that, though, the pictures have little in common. Soth shows us a surprisingly affectless woman, given the occasion, sitting alone in a place even less inflected than her expression. It's nicely done, no question, but it does not go beyond that description of its subject matter. Alvarez Bravo, on the other hand, offers something very different: vanity and mortality in gorgeous but chilling chiaroscuro.

Are these comparisons valid? I don't know. There's always something suspect about generalizations across generations of artists. Still, I think these pictures may illustrate at least part of what Myers was talking about. What's missing in them, though, is not emotion but something else, something formal, something in that intersection of light and shadow and shape and void that enables a photograph to transcend whatever it might be a picture of.

(Jeff Wall recently said something interesting in this context:

“Believing in the specialness of what you are photographing is a disaster. Then you think the photograph will be good because of what is in it. Cézanne taught me that that is not true.”

From the New York Times.)