An A. D. Coleman Reader Published Writings 1968-2017 Prepared For
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An A. D. Coleman Reader Published Writings 1968-2017 Prepared for the Forum on Contemporary Photography Department of Photography, Museum of Modern Art September 19, 2018 All essays herein © Copyright 1968-2017 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved. By permission of the author and Image/World Syndication Services, [email protected]. Table of Contents Autobiographical Passages: • Photography (1968) • Toward Some Future History of Photography, Part 1 (1999) • On the Spiritual in Teaching (1999) Definitions of Terms: • The Directorial Mode: Notes Toward a Definition (1976) • On Redaction (1998) • Counting the Teeth (2010) Photography Education: • No Future for You (1978) • Trope: The Well-Made Photograph, 3 & 4 (2012) Photography in Culture: • Lentil Soup: A Meditation on Lens Culture (1985) • Pepper-Spray Cop: Lt. John Pike Goes Viral (3) (2011) • Alternate History: The Robert Capa D-Day Project (2017) Photography and the Art Market: • Where's the Money? (1976) • What Makes One Photo Worth $2.9 Million? (2007) • Twenty Ways of Looking at an AIPAD (2016) Institutional Critiques: • "Harlem On My Mind" (1969) • On the Subject of John Szarkowski (1978) • Mapplethorpe/Corcoran Controversy (1989) Individual Critiques: • Conspicuous By His Absence: William Mortensen (1982/1998) • Why I'm Saying No To This New Arbus Book (1995) • Cindy Sherman at MoMA (1997) The Condition of Photo Criticism: • Because It Feels So Good When I Stop (1974) • The Destruction Business (1998) • Dinosaur Bones (2011) An A. D. Coleman Reader Published Writings 1968-2017 2 Autobiographical Passages An A. D. Coleman Reader Published Writings 1968-2017 3 Photography "Photography as a fad is well-nigh on its last legs, thanks principally to the bicycle craze," wrote Alfred Stieglitz in an 1897 manifesto. Time has proven his sardonic optimism wrong; however -- and this at least would have pleased Stieglitz -- the ranks of serious, dedicated photographers have also swelled slowly but surely (though hardly proportionately). Much of that is attributable to the impetus given this new medium by Stieglitz and his apostles; certainly the acceptance of photography as a legitimate art form is directly traceable to his lifelong battle on its behalf. Yet equally responsible, though often disclaimed, are the popular uses of photography -- journalism, advertising, even family album snapshots. Aesthetically "impure" as these may be, they served to educate an entire society to the value and uniqueness of photography as a medium for recording events, communicating ideas, and transmitting information; thus, paradoxically, the same "photography as a fad" despised by Stieglitz bred a generation for whom the camera is a natural and instinctive creative tool. In its current manifestation, popular interest in photography is at best a mixed blessing. The very familiarity which results brings with it not only acceptance but, perhaps inevitably, a curious form of contempt. The importance of photography in our lives is so frequently acknowledged that we have become numb from repetition, while the increasing technical sophistication of modern cameras (coupled with our escape from formal visual inhibitions) has made it easier to take good (though not great) pictures. Despite or because of all this, the significance of an original photograph -- as a statement, a work of art, a Ding an sich -- is usually overlooked, along with the intellectual and emotional factors involved in the process of making one. Still prevalent among the public is the attitude that if you've seen a photograph once -- in any form: reduced or enlarged, as a newspaper halftone or a gravure plate or an actual print from the negative -- you've seen it all. An otherwise discerning audience, which would never dream of judging Ad Reinhardt's paintings by their reproductions in Life magazine, will unhesitatingly An A. D. Coleman Reader Published Writings 1968-2017 4 presume reproductions of Marie Cosindas's subtle color portraits (in the samepublication, May 1968) to be identical to the originals. Photography may be recognized as a valid art, and part of the public may be sensitive to the superficial differences between good and bad pictures, but, with the exception of a small band of devotees, the general level of interest -- to say nothing of self-education -- goes no further. Questions of technique and aesthetics are discussed only in the pages of photography magazines. Such perversely unhelpful shows as the Museum of Modern Art's recent "Photography as Printmaking" merely perpetuate the mystique that photographic methods involve arcane necromancy beyond the comprehension of the uninitiated. Collectors with modest budgets pay no attention to original photographs, though they are surely the best buy in our over-inflated art market. Photography exhibits (by which I do not mean the annual Coliseum extravaganzas) are notoriously ill- attended. The mortality rate for galleries specializing in photographs is staggering. Books of photographs -- even the greatest, such as Weston's My Camera on Point Lobos -- are too often remaindered. Somehow, photography always seems to get the short end of the stick. This column will be a continuing attempt, on a small scale, to change that situation by giving to photography the serious critical consideration it merits. It will be (I hope) a means for turning a sizeable potential audience on to photography as a creative medium, affirming the importance of original photographs as significant objects, and providing a dialogue between photographers and their public. MLA citation: Coleman, A. D.. "Photography." Village Voice 13:36. 20 June 1968. p. 14. (First "Latent Image" column.) An A. D. Coleman Reader Published Writings 1968-2017 5 Toward Some Future History of Photography, 1965-2000: Part I When I try to explain to others the transformation that the photography scene has undergone during the past thirty-odd years, the aspect that strikes me immediately but proves hardest to convey to newcomers is the exponential shift in scale. To pick up any listing of photography exhibits nowadays in any major urban art center here or abroad -- such as the bi-monthly gallery guide Photography in New York, which presently indicates roughly a hundred photo shows ongoing at any given time in this metropolitan area -- or to attend the not infrequently jam- packed, celebrity-dotted openings, auctions and other photo-related events, one would think that it was ever thus. That it wasn't, and not all that long ago, seems almost inconceivable to those who come anew to the medium (especially the young), while the current state of affairs was simply unimaginable to anyone active in photography, or merely observing it, in the mid- to late 1960s, and -- at least periodically -- absolutely boggles the mind of those who have watched it unfold. The thorough history of this period in photography has yet to be written, understandably; we're only now achieving sufficient critical distance to move beyond the basic chronicling of it and the inevitable nostalgia. Yet we've had our 1 first academic conference on the subject. A considerable amount of oral history about the period has already been gathered, if not coordinated and synthesized. Several written histories surveying the period as a whole, or aspects of it, have 2 been published so far. Much of the primary research material still exists, some of 1 "American Photography, Culture and Society in the '60s: the Transformations of a Medium," held at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House November 14-18, 1990. Organized by Carl Chiarenza. For a first-hand account, see my "Letter from: Rochester, No. 20," Photo Metro 9:86 (February 1991), pp. 18-19. 2 For example, Jonathan Green's American Photography: A Critical History (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1984); American Images: Photography 1945-1980, edited by Peter Turner (New York/London: Viking/Barbican Art Gallery, 1985); and Naomi Rosenblum's A World History of An A. D. Coleman Reader Published Writings 1968-2017 6 3 it already conserved and archived. And photography's critical tradition -- "a 4 continuum of understanding, early commenced" -- unquestionably starts here, so there's a wide paper trail to follow and an extensive if not absolutely comprehensive written chronicle to refer to, far more substantial than the medium has ever previously enjoyed. What follows constitutes an addendum to all that, a personal and professional reminiscence about the events leading up to the present situation, intended for the bemusement of those who were there, the edification of those who weren't, and the use of those who will eventually produce the received version of this recent past we will come to call its history. * I started looking seriously at and writing about photographs in 1967; my 5 first essay on the subject was published on June 20th, 1968, almost exactly three decades from the moment at which I write this. In retrospect, I see that -- fortuitously and not by plan (at least not my own) or foresight, mostly by sheer coincidence -- I stepped into the field of photography at the very end of the calm before the storm. My point of entry was New York City, where I'd grown up and -- after a brief west coast interlude -- was once again based. Because I came to the situation young (I was twenty-four in '67) and from outside the medium (a writer, not a photographer), I'd missed some of what now seem obvious harbingers in New York of what was soon to come. Helen Gee's Limelight had already been there and gone; this coffee house, between 1954 and 1961, functioned not only as the Photography (New York: Abbeville Press, 1984), all deal with this period, the first two at considerable length. 3 At the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY, and the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, AZ, for example. 4 This wonderfully succinct locution is Hugh Kenner's: "There is no substitute for critical tradition: a continuum of understanding, early commenced.