Does a photo need to say something?

[Ronnoco]

Wow, I go away for a few days and other people join in the debate!

Lots to talk about here. Okay, first of all, not to be picky or anything, but ronnoco, my name is not "Wildcard", it's WillCAD. That's Will with two L's, capital-C, Capital-A, and capital-D, all one word..

Boy, talk about a Freudian slip there! At least I did not put "Wild" in capital letters!

Ronnoco

[Ronnoco]

Gracias. Yo no habla la Frances. Could you provide a translation into English for us poor Americans (we speak English and Spanish in the US, instead of English and French as you do in Canada)..¨

Well, to be picky in one of the languages that you "poor Americans" speak, it is:

Yo no hablo francés.

And I will provide a translation as requested.

Ronnoco

[WillCAD]

Well, to be picky in one of the languages that you "poor Americans" speak, it is:

Yo no hablo francés.

And I will provide a translation as requested.

Ronnoco

Well, you have me there. Mi Espanol es mui terrible!

[Ronnoco]

Well, you have me there. Mi Espanol es mui terrible!

Try again! You might eventually get it correct.

Ronnoco

[WillCAD]

Your ancient history seems to be at the same level as your facility with Spanish, which is your second language and my fourth. You are obviously not familiar with the recognized art in the caves of Lascaux in France that date to about 30,000 B.C., Glozel, the location of the first alphabet from the same period, ancient Aztec, Mayan, Celtic or Chinese Art just to name a few. It still exists and has not at all been destroyed by changing tastes or subjectivity.

And do you think that the surviving examples of those ancient arts are the ONLY works produced by those cultures? Is it your contention that anything that has been destroyed simply wasn't art? How about the library at Alexandria? Or the thousands of books burned by the Nazis? How about the animation cells from early features like Cinderella and Snow White, which were wiped and re-used for other features? Or the works of early television pioneers, prior to the invention of video tape? Or the early radio works that pre-date the use of audio tape? None of that stuff survives; does that mean it simply wasn't art?

Actually, I am vaguely aware of the paintings at Lascaux (I love the Discovery channel), which, incidentally, have been carbon dated to somewhere between 13,000BC and 15,000BC, not 30,000BC.

If you're acknowledging the Lascaux paintings as art, then you've just blown your entire argument out of the water. The Lascaux cave paintings meet none of your criteria for what constitutes art:

1) The Lascaux paintings were not a "commercial" success, since there was no such thing as an economy when they were painted. You think Ug the caveman paid Urgh the caveman a haunch of venison and a couple of spears to paint horses or bison over his sleeping area?

2) The Lascaux paintings were not published, since there were no publications. But if you can find any issues of Popular Cavepaintings or Cavetechtural Digest from 15,000BC, I'd be very happy to read them.

3) The Lascaux paintings won no awards, since there was no Nobel Prize for Cave Painting or Cannes International Cave Painting Festival.

4) The Lascaux paintings have tremendous historical and anthropological significance, but they have not been acknowledged by the art community as significant works of art in the modern sense. They are indeed some of the most important pieces of art ever discovered, because they are some of the earliest examples of Human artistic endeavor, but by modern standards they are primitive and child-like. To me they resemble nothing so much as a child's refrigerator art - but I still find them beautiful, and I still consider them art, just as I consider a child's drawing to be art.

5) They didn't survive because they were great art that was intentionally preserved by an appreciative art community or an adoring society. They survived because the cave was sealed by nature, preserving the paintings from the elements. You really think that the Lascaux paintings are the only cave paintings created anywhere on Earth during that period? Plenty more must have existed (others have been discovered, but none as extensive or as well-preserved by an accident of nature as Lascaux), but most of them did not survive the ravages of time.

The Lascaux paintings fit none of your criteria for what is or is not art - and yet you clearly acknowledge them AS art. But they do fit my criteria, which is much more simple - "the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; also : works so produced."
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/a.../en/visite.htm

Artifacts found at the Glozel site have been carbon-dated, thermoluminescent-dated, and spectrographically dated, and the artifacts fall within several widely varied periods - 300BC-100AD, 5th century AD, 11th-13th century AD, and 15th century AD. The Phoenician alphabet, on the other hand, came into use about 1050BC - so your mention of the Glozel alphabet as "the first alphabet" is historically incorrect.

The wide variation in ages suggests that the treasure trove was originally a personal collection of some kind, probably amassed in the 13th or 15th century AD. Again, these examples of primitive art survived not due to their significance as high art, but due to circumstances - the chamber was buried for centuries, preserving its contents until a cow fell through the ground into the chamber in 1925.

And again, the Glozel artifacts fit none of your criteria that qualify them as art:
1) Commercial success
2) Publication
3) Awards
4) Recognition by other artists

But they do fit my criteria as art:
"the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; also : works so produced."
http://glozel.quickseek.com/

Your ancient history seems to be at the same level as your facility with Spanish, which is your second language and my fourth.

Gee, you're smart. I'm humbled by your vastly superior intellect. Perhaps you'd care to humiliate me further by ridiculing my faculty with English, or cast some aspersions on my ancestry.

Personal insults, and protestations of some sort of intellectual or philosophical superiority, tend to be the last resorts of those for whom facts fail to prove a point.

[Ronnoco]

I believe that I indicated that art survives the test of time,...as in something that was valued as art when it was produced, or later, is still valued as art now. Destruction through history had nothing to do with it.

On that basis, a lot of supposed modern "art" that may have been put up in a few galleries by some curator in the 70's, 80's or 90's and not recognized as art by the majority of the general public has disappeared from the scene, as have the supposed "artists" who created them. That would prove to me that the general public was more correct than the individual curator and it was not art in the first place and the creators were NOT artists.

Ronnoco

[Ronnoco]

In dating which is open to question in archeology and anthropology in any case we are even.

You were closer to being correct on Lascaux. The date was 17,000 B.C. from French experts, not 30,000 B.C. So I missed that one. I may have been thinking of the caves in North Africa, but the name doesn't come to me at the moment. I will go back to some of my books when I get a chance.

However Glozel is 15,000 B.C., again according to French archeologists, so you missed that one. Older than you thought

In dating, I always remember the Central American pyramid of the Mayas dated at about 1000 A.D. by carbon dating. A Russian geologist living in the U.S., found volcanic lava which can be extremely accurately dated because of polarity on various sections of the pyramid. There was absolutely no question that the volcano that spread lava on the pyramid erupted in 8,000 B.C. Pretty difficult if the pyramid was not even built for another 9,000 years.

Ronnoco

[Ronnoco]

!
And the argument that work which "survives" is art, and anything that is lost is not art is also hooey. You know as well as I do that there have been great and powerful works of art created by every Human civilization from the day that a guy first smeared charcoal and blood on a cave wall, yet the vast majority of those works is destroyed by changing tastes, shifting cultural mores, and plain old time. Works of art which are today considered some of the greatest in history only date back 1000 years or less, while Humanity has been producing art in one form or another for at least 30,000 years.

Your ancient history seems to be at the same level as your facility with Spanish, which is your second language and my fourth. You are obviously not familiar with the recognized art in the caves of Lascaux in France that date to about 30,000 B.C., Glozel, the location of the first alphabet from the same period, ancient Aztec, Mayan, Celtic or Chinese Art just to name a few. It still exists and has not at all been destroyed by changing tastes or subjectivity.

Ronnoco

[Frog]

A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.
Ansel Adams

I have yet to find my'niche' in photography and maybe the search is what its all about.
If you have to explain a photo then it will never be to the viewer what it is to you even if they do say they get it.
For me photos and any art form are for when words fail.

glad i found this thread

[Ronnoco]

A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.
Ansel Adams

I have yet to find my'niche' in photography and maybe the search is what its all about.
If you have to explain a photo then it will never be to the viewer what it is to you even if they do say they get it.
For me photos and any art form are for when words fail.

glad i found this thread

A true photograph or an art form needs to communicate something to the viewer. No visual impact, no centre of interest, no "attraction to the eye", no symbolism, no "message", and it might as well be a piece of garbage on the sidewalk. Garbage does not need to be explained either, to corrupt your Ansel Adams quote. It may be "contained in words", but the language is probably inappropriate.

Ronnoco

[Frog]

Well, actually, I made my post before I realized there was more than one page to this thread.
I find the debate somewhat interesting. I also have had enough experience,(education?) on other forums and boards to know that it matters not how profound your reasoning is, nor how sound your facts; you won't change the opinion of anyone who has already formed their personal opinion and have an emotional desire to be correct and to make sure others will see the value of their wisdom and see the light and never admit that someone elses opinion is as good as your own.
Me, I'm just going to shoot the best photographs I can with my limited ability, experience, and equipment.
I will keep following this thread, though.

Peace all.

[Frog]

Boy I sure put a lot of ands in that one sentence didn't I....lol

[arne saknussen]

Its not a question of "need to say something". Every photo does say something. Its just a matter of saying something important.
A photo can say "Here is my cat."
or a photo can say "Here is an example of man's inhumanity to man."
Its sorta like asking, "Does a book have to say something?" If it doesn't say anything, its blank, And even then it says, "This author couldn't think of anything." Not important, but it does say something.

[Henrietta]

Its not a question of "need to say something". Every photo does say something. Its just a matter of saying something important.
A photo can say "Here is my cat."
or a photo can say "Here is an example of man's inhumanity to man."
Its sorta like asking, "Does a book have to say something?" If it doesn't say anything, its blank, And even then it says, "This author couldn't think of anything." Not important, but it does say something.

I agree with arne saknussen. Every photo does say something. But not all of them say something important. Many people take pictures trying to say something really important. What for do we have photo exhibitions? What for do we go there? Do we go just to stare at beautiful images? No, we go to have a look and understand what the photographer wanted to tell us. There are many interesting projects where people try to tell us something, to show their attitude to life and what they want to change. Recently I found one of them. It's dedicated to “The 100 days of Active Resistance” . Just have a look and it will make you think about our life, our word life...

[georgimz]

I don't think that that the photo needs to say something. It only have to be nice for the eye.

[mushaisa]

Art is subjective anyway

[mdvaden]

I'm not much of a photographer, but I know what a photo's purpose is. And it varies.

For me, it's usually just to display.

Like my mushroom album. If that one was fully captioned, it would basically document. But I just like showing what's in the woods, so "display" would be the purpose, and the photos don't need to say anything.

For other people, I'm sure it's different. One photo that comes to mind, is the famous image of the Afganistan girl that was on the National Geographic years ago. That's in the league of photos that may say something or cause the looker to pose a question.

[Ronnoco]

I'm not much of a photographer, but I know what a photo's purpose is. And it varies.

For me, it's usually just to display..

It is never quite that simple. You cannot even display a photo for any purpose, unless that photo attracts the eye and communicates something to the viewer. Put another way, some excellent photos of mushrooms with great colour and forests in the background will certainly get people thinking about this item, whereas photos with lousy technique and sloppy care will only communicate to the viewer that you are a lousy communicator.

For the court, I once had to take a photo of a pile of snow, which some would say was only for the purpose of documentation. However, looking at it differently, my goal was to take a photo of a snow pile in such a way that it would visually explain how it became a death scene for one young student. The shot did need to say something to the viewer, despite even a lack of "artistic" purpose.

Ronnoco

[Irakly Shanidze]

gee, i have not posted here for ages...
the poric seems quite important to me. my personal believe is that photographs (or any other art work) must communicate. the logic is that while normal people communicate by means of talking to each other, or sometimes gesturing, punching, kicking and stuff, artists need more than that. it is their art that is a preferred means of getting their message across. certainly, the first intended recipent of art is an object (or subject) of inspiration, but then everybody else gets to benefit. this is a simplification, just to make my point less vague
irakly

[greghalliday]

Wow. Interesting post. Except it gives me a headache to read it.

[Selene]

IMHO, a photo should enable someone to see its subject in a way they may not have taken notice of or been able to before...a visual experience outside normal vision.

[AgingEyes]

IMHO, a photo should enable someone to see its subject in a way they may not have taken notice of or been able to before...a visual experience outside normal vision.

That's easy. All I need to do is to use color filters, use color filters in Photoshop, paint my photos here and there with colors, tilt my camera, etc., etc. :-)

Actually, some do it quite often. I don't know why. Apparently some people like it.

[Amatuer No.9]

IMHO, a photo should enable someone to see its subject in a way they may not have taken notice of or been able to before...a visual experience outside normal vision.

I agree. :thumbsup: A photo needs to say [U]BOLDLY[/U " LOOK AT ME"
the rest of the experience is up to you.

p.s. I'm new here ...so Hello Everyone !

[Samanthakk7]

Hi,

You are absolutely right Manacsa. And infact Photography is an art that needs practice, skill and an eye for the unexpected.

[shootme]

I get asked a lot and other people are often asked, "What are you trying to say with this photo?"
But personally I don't always shoot with a message in mind. If someone says "Gee, that picture is really _____," and no one else has that opinion, then I smile inwardly, feeling like I did something right. I like the idea of giving people an opportunity to interpret an image in any way they see fit. I know we all interpret images differently, but there are images we make with an easy-to-recognize, obvious message. There are also images we make that take some thought to analyze the meaning, if there is one at all. Which do you prefer? Anyone have a take on this?

This is a great thread, been going nearly 4 years. Personally I try (emphasize try) and take shots that say something to me each time I shoot, unless it's a technical photo, memory photo (family gathering, etc. shots). I append here a couple of photos which I tried to take for its artistic appreciation, "A Painter at his Labor".. The colors say something, the approach to painting tells me something, the direction of the painting, the artists fee, hand and brush, yet I don't include the entire body of the artist or his painting. For others, well it might not mean anything because it doesn't include the artist or his entire painting. The good thing about photo's is that they can mean something slightly different for each viewer, the ones that talk to you with some level of emotion good or bad are in my opinion great achievements. But I'm really only a novice learning his way.