gregory t. davis

            Like a lot of young photographers, I began my career making work like the artists I admire.  For me, that was the Modernists like Adams and Weston, who were making the kind of landscapes I liked.  At first I thought and worked like they did, but after a while I became disenfranchised with some of their theoretical aspects.  Since then I have been working on developing my own theory, let’s call it Neo-Modernism for now, that rejects the hierarchal and dogmatic elements of Modernism, as well as creates a new perspective on the photographic print.

            Critic Beaumont Newhall believed a completely sharp print was not necessary for Modernist photography, stating that this is actually counterintuitive to natural seeing.[11]  He is not the first to take this stand toward naturalistic seeing: Peter Henry Emerson, cousin to Ralph Waldo Emerson, also took this stand in the late 1800’s.[12]  Emerson proposed that the human eye could not focus on an entire scene at once, so the photograph must be slightly out of focus to imitate our vision.  What he failed to realize was that the human eye is constantly scanning a scene, so our eye sees the entire scene in sharp focus in stages and the brain organizes them into a whole.   Newhall’s argument was different in that he felt it simply wasn’t any more or less “objective” than a fully sharp print.[13]  While this may be valid, it does not convince me that areas left out of focus are just as visually important as those that are sharp.

[1] Eisinger, Joel.  Trace and Transformation.  Albuquerque, NM.  University of New Mexico Press.  1995.  28.

[3] Eisinger, Joel. 28.

[4] Ibid  29.

[6] Ibid  9.

[7] Greenough, Sarah.  Paul Strand: An American Vision.  New York.  Aperture Foundation, Inc.  1990.  12.

[8] Stange, Maren, ed.  Paul Strand: Essays On His Life and Work.  New York:

Aperture.  N.D.  2.

Stange goes on to say, “Trust the message, not the messenger.”

[10] Smith, Michael A.  AOL Instant Messenger™ interview.  Oct. 31, 2004.

[11] Eisinger  69.

[12] Emerson, Peter Henry. Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art. 1889. Reprint, New York: Arno Press. 1973.  120.    

[14] Group f64.  “Group f64 Manifesto”  www.kcbx.net.   Donald Krehbiel.  June 9, 2006. http://www.kcbx.net/~mhd/1intro/f64.htm.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Eisinger  68.

[18] Eisinger  53.

[20] Eisinger  71.

[22] Smith, Michael A.  AOL Instant Messenger™ interview.  Oct. 31, 2004.

            Not all of the Modernist photographers were as dogmatic.  There is a spark of hope in the ideas of Edward Weston.  While he was a charter member of Group f64, Weston distanced himself after the manifesto was published, and several times made statements of a contradictory nature to its ideas.[17]  One such statement demonstrated his belief in the plasticity of his work when he stated “…I just think-today-that there is nothing so beautiful as a sharp, long scale, glossy photograph.  But tomorrow?”[18]  He demonstrated a concept I feel is very important in Neo-modernism: the willingness to accept change.  While I still use what is considered traditional materials and methods for the majority of my work, I do not limit myself, nor exclude, the possibility of using modern materials and techniques, when the photograph demands it.  At a time in photographic history when black and white materials were considered the only materials suitable for art, Weston agreed to explore color materials from Kodak, and even stated he would have changed permanently had Parkinson’s disease not ruined his ability to work.[19]  It is interesting to note that his second son Brett worked exclusively in black and white, while his third son, Cole, worked in color.

            Unfortunately, Weston’s open-mindedness was overshadowed by the loud voices of his contemporaries.  Ansel Adams had very public, and heated, arguments with William Mortensen, a very popular Pictorialist, in which he espoused the dogmatic and hierarchal beliefs of Modernism for everyone to hear.[20]  Beaumont Newhall felt all terminology from other mediums of art, including the word “print” should be excluded from photography because they were not unique to the medium, and published these beliefs in his critical writing as director of the photographic department of the Museum of Modern Art.[21]  Obviously this didn’t stick since photographs are most commonly referred to as prints, as opposed to images, pictures, or even photographs in the context of art, but this attitude did and does persist.

            Not everything in Modernism is disagreeable to me; otherwise I wouldn’t base my theory on elements of it.  I would be writing this as an opponent to the theory as a whole, rather than trying to examine the theory in parts and use what I see as promising and what aspects I feel should be reworked, which brings us to the final part of this discussion, the outline of my new theory.

            The concept of the photograph as the subject, as opposed to an image of a subject, is a very important concern to the definition I am creating.  Michael Smith states that Modernism is also concerned with this, and thus gives us something in common.  Smith talked about print integrity as the importance of the picture rather than the pictured when he said,

“From my understanding, Modernism began when Cezanne painted a still life and in the foreground the line of the edge of the table on one side of the cloth cutting that edge did not line up with the line of the edge of the table on the other side. By doing this, Cezanne was saying the picture itself was more important than the representation of what was pictured. This breakthrough quickly led to Cubism, Non-Objective art and the whole Modernist sensibility.”[22]

In other words, Neo-modernism doesn’t look at the subject matter as the art, but at the print on the wall as the art.  This is counter-intuitive for most people who are used to looking at photographs as a translation of an object or event rather than taking the photograph at face value.  I don’t believe this cheapens the work, but offers an entirely new perspective from which to view the print.

One other aspect I feel is paramount, but rarely written about is the idea of art as an impetus of emotion rather than as a conduit of emotion.  This is an important distinction, where the former indicates a desire to cause emotion in the viewer through the qualities and aesthetics of the photograph itself, as opposed to the latter, which hinges on the photograph to visually express an emotion felt by the artist through representation of the subject in a print.  This has been expressed in print many times when Ansel Adams, paraphrasing Alfred Steiglitz, said his photographs were to, “express what I saw and felt at the time of exposure.”[23]  I am much less interested in what the artist felt when making a piece than I am in how the piece itself makes me, as the viewer, feel.  This, I believe, is the most important distinction between Neo-modernist art and all other theories through which art is made.