I have been re-reading John Berger's essays lately, with the same gusto as before... as every time, I might add.
(Note to the improbable reader: for those not familiar with Berger, do read his work and a little about him... especially if intelligence and intellectual independence are traits you value and appreciate. Starting at Wikipedia perhaps.) { Note: I am fascinated by theoretical/intellectual debate, when honest and passionate. There is too little and too much of it going on, at the same time, all the time... You can read some on political and cultural blogs, art sites, online "salons"... with much of what is being discussed so oddly/poorly/incorrectly framed to have no significance... with many of those involved denying that they are even engaging in intellectual debate. Ss if reducing high discourse to common banter could do any ideas justice. }
More topically, one of the questions that have long interested me... that I have debated, principally with myself... is what a photograph really is, its relationships with other visual arts, its independence from painting or graphic design for example, what is admissible and what is not, the very meaning of "norm"...
In that context, a short essay by Berger is... as always... controversial, sane, and highly enlightening: "Understanding a Photograph", originally published in The Look of Things (1972), starts with the following passage: "For over a century, photographers and their apologists have argued that photography deserves to be considered a fine art."
It then quickly posits: "It now seems clear that photography deserves to be considered as though it were not a fine art." Not a hesitation, not a doubt. His truth as a jab, right there before you, as a clear, unambiguous assertion. It would seem the statement might close the case. But there, under the surface, a pressing question remains. One question that I find more interesting than the answer... more on that soon.
He then continues with a statement I cannot agree with, but that provides one of the central contentions about photography today: "We must rid ourselves of a confusion brought about by continually comparing photography with the fine arts. Every handbook on photography talks about composition. The good photograph is the well-composed one. Yet this is only true in so far as we think of photographic images imitating painted ones. Painting is an art of arrangement: therefore it is reasonable to demand that there is some kind of of order in what is arranged." Here it is, black on white, the cracks of our craft, it's center, continually debated, courted and brushed off, disassembled and marked as a lie.
(to be continued...)
