And Then Chris Steele Perkins Said,
Written by duckrabbit“When photographers get together they talk about equipment..when artists get together, they talk about ideas”
Author — duckrabbit
duckrabbit is a production company formed by radio producer/journalist Benjamin Chesterton and photographer David White. We specialize in digital storytelling.
Discussion (4 Comments)
No disrespect to CSP, but it doesn’t sound like he’s spent much time around artists.
What artists really talk about?
If it was Richard Prince talking to Chris Collins the topic would likely be – do you think it’s possible to get away with misusing other people’s work to pretend that something original has been created?
http://www.nonsensesociety.com/2010/10/how-to-steal-any-photo-online/
Indeed.
Artists also talk about hopeless agents, greedy gallery owners, clueless curators, and sex.
But they talk about materials, too. Incessantly. And for a very good reason — the materials that they use affect their ability to realize their visions.
Musicians — I was one for a very long time — are constantly jabbering about horns, reeds, fiddles, strings, and bows. As a French horn player, I knew that the mouthpiece, horn, leadpipe, and bell that I used either aided or hindered me in the elusive quest to achieve the sound that I wanted.
CSP to the contrary, something very similar applies to photographers.
Every good photographer knows that you can mimic the look of a 4×5 with a Canon 5D, a PC lens, and Photoshop. But the end result will be a pale imitation because every good photographer also knows that a photo made with a 4×5 is also about the process — the heavy, burdensome equipment, the tripod, ground glass, and dark cloth, the black slide and the single shot.
In the same way, cropping a D3 image to a square will in no way produce the same sort of image as shooting with a TLR — in part because of the difference in materials and in part because the process of making the image is so different.
CSP has got it wrong. It makes perfect sense and is probably necessary for photographers, like sculptors, lithographers, painters, and French horn players, to spend so much time talking about equipment. You can’t separate the art from the equipment used to make it.
artists don’t really talk much about ideas, not in the UK, anyway, unless they’re in workshops or similar… photographers however talk about equipment ALL the time… it’s insane, i always want to shout, hey, it’s WHAT you do with it, for goodness sake!