Dinosaur Bones?

I’m very much a fan of A D Coleman. Like him (and I hope he will not take offence at my simplistic reduction of views which he expresses so eloquently and in detail in the essay  ‘Dinosaur Bones: the End of Photo Criticism‘*) I subscribe to such antediluvian views that photography critics should know something about photography and actually take a good look at photographs if they want to say anything of value.

Dinosaur Bones is an essay well worth reading and thinking about and indeed discussing, and again I have nothing but admiration for the fact that Coleman decided, despite previous bad experiences, to take part in four on-line discussion groups which had expressed some wish to examine his ideas.

In the two most recent posts on his blog (Forumization and Its Malcontent (1) and Forumization and Its Malcontent (2) – a series to be continued) he addresses some of his dissatisfactions at that experience, which as he states, confirmed his earlier thoughts:

“However, I do want to note that, a decade-plus later, the lessons of 1999-2000 got confirmed: (a) forums inevitably descend to the level of the lowest common denominator of their participants, and (b) forums can suck up energies more fruitfully expended elsewhere, easily turning into rabbit holes down which you disappear.”

As someone who has taken part and still lurks in several such forums (only fora if you are an ancient Roman) these are truths I hold to be self-evident. That does not mean that these forums are of no use, but rather that you need to approach them with care and retain a certain emotional distance. It seldom takes long to decide which of the participants are worth listening to and on what, and that there are discussions best ignored or where having once firmly stated your point there is little to be gained from continuing an argument with the ignorant and obtuse.

Some of those lowest common denominator participants, even those who  have played leading roles in self-aggrandising flame wars, perhaps even the person who Coleman describes as “an equal opportunity bully” and a “loose canon” are those who actually get things done outside of the forum in the real world, often acting as a catalyst for others. Their bad behaviour on-line has sometimes been a misplaced application of a real passion for the subject, an enthusiasm to communicate this to others – and in some cases a pioneering mastery of some aspects of the subject of the forum.

Certainly there are some people who are just not good forum participants, and Coleman is probably one of them. A basic qualification is the ability at times to sit on your hands and not press the reply button. But in this particular experience it would not be fair to blame him in this respect, as he had been invited or persuaded to take part in discussions on his article.

Equally there are also people who take part willing to share, sometimes in great detail, their own practices, and to give information and advice when asked. These people are a great resource and it is not that difficult if you follow a forum for some time to sort them out from the know-all muppets (though it is a distinction many people fail to make over some equipment reviewers.)

Although I share many of Coleman’s thoughts about the act of criticism and particularly of photo criticism, I come to it from a different place. I have never thought I would be able to support myself as he has by criticism, although for a period of seven years it was a significant part of my writing about photography that did supply much of my income.

I started writing about the shows I went to as a personal diary in the 1970s, more or less as soon as I had the time to pursue a serious interest in photography. I felt then as I still do now that a study of the work of others, both historic and contemporary, was essential to my own intelligent progress as a photographer.

It always begins for me with an engagement with the image, whether standing in front of it on an exhibition wall, sitting at home with a book or looking at a computer screen. Of course it doesn’t stop there, but the actual images have to be at the centre of photographic criticism.

Surprisingly, very few people who have become well-known as photography critics or review photography shows in the mass media seem comfortable with thinking about images (Coleman is of course once of the exceptions.) It doesn’t surprise me to find that Susan Sontag, the writer of possibly the most widely read book which is on every college photo course reading list, ‘On Photography’ later said – as he quotes (at greater length) “I’m not a photography critic. I don’t know how to be one.”  I read the book when it came out, and my copy was soon covered in my scribbles on her failure to know or understand our medium. It was a good TV programme, full of nice effects and half-truths but little substance.

As Coleman later says, post-modernist critics have concentrated “on a small roster of photographers and artists using photography — Jeff Wall, the Bechers and their students, Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Andres Serrano, Alfredo Jaar, Laurie Simmons, Robert Mapplethorpe...” at the expense of “much wider range of significant work, past and present.” I think it is a shared lack of a real knowledge of the history of the medium that lies at the root of this. And I also think that some of those on the approved list have contributed little or nothing to photography, as I’ve at times made clear on this site.

‘Dinosaur Bones‘ deserves a much longer study and discussion than I’ve so far given it, and certainly deserves a careful reading by all those with an interest in photography.

In it Coleman points out he was an early adopter of digital technology, like me publishing his first web site in 1995. He has gone to such recent productions as Pepper-Spray Cop: The Lt. John Pike Saga, first in a series of Kritikomix, as well as in his satirical alter-ego The Derrière Garde‘s  Megyn Kelly’s MK-9 Pepper Spray for Kids! which frankly I wish he hadn’t. He promises a video and a podcast of Dinosaur Bones for later too which will probably be of more interest.

In 2011: That Was The Year That was, Coleman publishes an impressive review of the year, which he begins by saying that the ‘Photocritic International‘ in 2011

“had served at least 200,000 pageviews and perhaps as many as 2 million since its premiere in spring 2009. (This unclarity results from divergent reports from several different site analysis programs.) Even at the low end of that estimate, it remains the most widely read blog by any critic/historian of photography.)”

Not a bad record, but the annual figures for this >Re:PHOTO blog which I’ve just checked after reading this are significantly higher for 2011, with over 600,000 total visits and over 1.4 million page impressions.  My other main site, My London Diary, got around 800,000 page impressions and the total for all my sites (including a few small non-photographic ones) was over 3.2 million. But then I’m primarily a photographer rather than a critic, and perhaps all this shows is that photography is more popular than criticism. If so, it’s probably healthy.

At the moment I get no direct income from any of my work on my own web sites, including this, and though the occasional sale of a print or repro licence probably more than covers the actual costs it doesn’t begin to pay for my time. At the time I began writing this blog I was writing for money on a site where adverts sometimes seemed to me to dominate the pages and I deliberately set this up – as my previous web sites had been – as an advert-free space.

Lately I’ve been wondering about adding a donations button or more probably a link to a donations page to these pages, or perhaps a Flattr button or some other way to generate a little income. I’d be interested in any comments on that either here or by email. For the moment I’ll perhaps just start adding a little advert for my own work at the bottom of my posts, something like this:

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or licences to use images

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* the text of a lecture he first gave at the Hotshoe Gallery in London on November 8, 2011 which I unfortunately missed.