Points noted:
- "Photography" means light writing literally;
- Interesting quote from La Gazette de France about the daguerreotype: that it (the daguerreotype) "will revolutionise the are of drawing". It is a common refrain on something new resulting from a misunderstanding on the importance of an innovation (the opposite in a way to the view that the some innovations, e.g. the computer, will not catch on, for example). It does not allow that the innovation may "increase the market" and there is room for both art and photography;
- Talbot produced the calotype - the first genuine photographic negative process;
- Distinction between photography as art (witness the fact that we talk about 'portrait' and 'landscape') and as a mass produced object - holiday snaps;
- Clarke believes there are six elements to the structure of a photograph, its efficacy and effect:
- Size;
- Shape;
- That a photograoh is a minituarisation of reality;
- It is 2 flat- 2 dimensional;
- As a an art form, photographs traditionally eschew colour (one wonders wether this is no more than artistic snobbery, a deliberate attempt to escape the horrible thought that a photogrpah is indeed nothing but a pictorial representation of reality);
- Time - the fact that we know exactly when a photograph is taken
I have enjoyed reading The Photograph. It helps to set what we do in the wider context of art in general.
Photography IS art - as Clarke points out, the mere use of words such as "portrait" and "landscape" betray the ambition of the pursuit as being more than the mere mass production of holiday snaps.
Therein lies the distinct dilemma for photographyy: it is almost TOO accessible; anyone can take an image and plausibly present it as Art. Even poor pictures can be presented as "Well, I can see something in it, I defy you to as well."
But Art generally does not work well as a mass pursuit; we need heroes, those we look up to, the leaders. And Clarke plays to this audience by his presentation of work by Arbus and Friedlander. At a most basic level, perhaps the denotative of Barthes, one could argue the Arbus "got lucky" with Identical Twins; they rather conveniently had different expressions. But we (Clarke) read much into this (Barthes' connotative):
"The more we continue to look, the more the merest detail resonates as part of a larger enigmatic presence and tension as to what, exactly, we are being asked to look at." Thus Clarke enunciates a common artistic refrain, which in simple terms says that I should be able to see something in this image because it was taken by a really well-renowned photographer. He continues: "Far from identical twins these are individuals in their own right. They are, as it were, very different twins".
It is worth pausing for a moment to consider the profundity of this statement. A possible retort is to say of course they are different; that's biology for you. But let us not be unfair; what Clarke implies is that Arbus has encapsulated that thought in her photograph. The thought is presented to us.
I am much less taken with the images of Friedlander. This takes the artistic extreme of presenting images that are lacking in some of the photographic basics of composition and balance as being objects of artistic expression and demanding of us, the captive audience, that we see meaning that I doubt is actually there.
For me, Albuquerque is a poor picture. It says nothing. Clarke eulogises: "Friedlander makes the familiar unfamiliar, and the obvious strange". So Friedlander deliberately moved so that the dog is cut in half by the post? I am not so sure. If this is an image to show contemporary (1972) tendency to increase street furniture then at a denotative level, it works. Beyond that, I think not.
