Photography Critics, Theorists and Academic Writing: Does Photography Need Them? is the question asked and answered by Grant Scott on his ‘The United Nations of Photography‘ blog.
It’s an article which makes a great deal of sense, although I come at photography from a rather different angle. Most commercial photography just fails to interest me, and I take it as seriously as I do the text that goes with it on the magazine pages or billboards. I may sometimes, often, admire the craft, but I’m far more interested in reading a novel or a poem.
A good photograph strikes me as being something like a haiku and some can perhaps tell a short story, while a set of photographs can certainly be an essay and a good book at least a novella. Some photography (and even some commercial photography, though precious little) is more profound than other, and it isn’t elitist to say so.
I think also that in writing that art theory based criticism “exists within a niche created for a specific reason. Just as ‘commercial photography’ is created to meet a need and provide an income this academic approach to photography provides a career for those involved with it” Scott is confused. Commercial photography is created to meet a need and does thus provide some with an income, but its justification is that need, not that it provides a career for some photographers. And it can be no justification for the academic activity unless it too has some utility. Perhaps their shouldn’t be people getting paid for doing it.
Where I’m 100% behind him is when he then goes on to comment on “impenetrable academic text, agenda heavy theory and ill-informed criticism”. It’s only purpose is just that rather incestuous career-building which he has previously said he has no issue with.
I’m happy too in agreeing with him and Einstein, who apparently actually said “It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience” though “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler” is certainly pithier.
But I think the growth of theory-based criticism in the 1970s actually led to an impoverishment of our medium, and certainly to an impoverishment of many photographers, and to the growth of a new and largely unnecessary stratum of paid curators and other professionals who took funding away from the artists, along with a huge cohorts of photographers who could talk the talk but had little to say with their pictures.
I’m not actually against critics or curators. I’ve played a little on both sides over the years, and even achieved a little appreciation from fellow photographers on occasion. But good curation and criticism has to be built on an informed appreciation of the work and not on arcane theory.
And of course we don’t really need any of these guys. The Artybollocks generator can create it all for us, with its ‘instant artist statement generator coming up with such gems as:
My work explores the relationship between Critical theory and copycat violence.
With influences as diverse as Derrida and L Ron Hubbard, new tensions are distilled from both constructed and discovered dialogues.
Ever since I was a teenager I have been fascinated by the unrelenting divergence of the mind. What starts out as vision soon becomes manipulated into a cacophony of lust, leaving only a sense of unreality and the chance of a new synthesis.
As spatial phenomena become distorted through studious and repetitive practice, the viewer is left with an insight into the darkness of our condition.
Artybollocks also offers you a printable certificate to show you are an artist (“Please keep this certificate in a safe place. Nobody else will ever ask to see it but you may feel better if you behave as if it is important.”) as well as a generator for tweets. And so I leave you with 144 characters:
What starts out as triumph soon becomes finessed into a manifesto of lust, leaving only a sense of chaos and the possibility of a new beginning