I feel like there’s a resurgence for “street” photography and a new acceptance and challenge to bring something to it that feels current. (As opposed to the perceived market for”staged’) images.) That can be pretty subtle, but mostly it has to do with the sort of poetic/lterary intelligence that’s always been at play – nothing new there. Just as in fiction or poetry writing. Still, I think to equate straight photography to a fiction author is tricky. Portions might be descriptive in the same sense, and there may be a similar sensibility. I see fiction as more related to cinematography. Still photography is its own animal with many styles that I’m glad to see further exploration and evidence of, all with their own particular challenge.

Propaganda may be a pretty harsh word… many people pinned that on Robert Frank’s book, perhaps the greatest example of a book photographers’ straight approach to the world and a poetic display that was very real for it’s time. As a side, he also took approach d. (described above) and worked as a fictional cinematographer as well. No lines there, except maybe the ones on his hands…

1) I wholeheartedly agree that this crazy world of ours comes up with much more wonderful things than my imagination does.

2) A photograph is a one-to-one mapping of the world as it existed for at least an instant as seen from one vantage point. It is an objective record of that instant in almost infinite detail with virtually no explanation. As such, it can be an irresistable invitation to a viewer to scrutinise the image and try to deduce its context and story from those details. If I perceive the photograph to be staged, I no longer am tempted to try and figure out what is going on here because I know what’s going on – it’s a photo shoot. I’m no longer getting first hand information, I’m getting someone’s propaganda.

3) A straight photograph carries the message that “the world is a wonderful and strange place and that if you pay attention you will find things like this.” Where the staged photograph may give a man a fish, the staight photograph teaches him to fish.

4) Having said all that, I must admit that artists like Zeke Berman (http://zekeb.com/), Chema Madoz (www.chemamadoz.com), Teun Hocks (www.chemamadoz.com) and Les Krims (www.leskrims.com) are fascinating.

5) Staged photography is like other media, in that you start with something that has no literal content until you shape it to bring that content to it. With straight photography, however, you start with pure, dense, solid content, to which you must bring form. (A chimpanzee with a camera gives you realism, while the same chimp with a paintbrush or typewriter gives you abstraction.)

6) As you are thinking about the relationship between photography and writing, I think that straight photography is very closely related to writing in the style of someone like Raymond Carver, whose work is about finding and showing you just the right detail that will tell you more than you ever expected to know.

the collectors of course buy what the galleries tell them, and the kids in college want a piece of the cake so copy the peers. i suppose in today’s egoistic society people with real courage to follow their heart are fewer and fewer, bus as stated in a previous thread time will sort out the wheat from the chaff, but what a LOT of chaff…

I love some synthetic photography, I hate a lot of it, and I guess that my heart is with photography in the ‘documentary mode’, for one good reason. One of the most facinating things about photography is the way it interacts with history, and if you over-photoshop an image, you are eliminating its credibility as a ‘document’, and therefore eliminating much, if not all of the medium’s relationship with history, and denying arguably its greatest strength, and for me much of its emotion. To look at Gardner’s 1860s picture of the Conspirator Payne, for instance – a modern looking youth, not long before he was hanged – is amazing. It’s a terrifying, moving, awesome experience. If the manacles around his wrists had been photoshopped in, it wouldn’t move one half as much. But then again, maybe they were.

A lot of photographers are creating fake worlds, but to my mind the ‘real’ world is a lot more interesting. And in many cases, all those art-historical references in photographs, all that art that is about art rather than the world – this is not ‘content’, in the words of the great Walker Evans, much of it is just flimpflam. But as always, the best of it – ie the Gurskys and the Walls – is as valid as anything thing else.

In the long run, it ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it. But retruning to John Szarkowski. The man loved photography, not pseudo-painting.

Again, I well appreciate all sizes, just think things have gotten a tad bloated in the gallery scene when it comes to size. I’m also thinking of the sheer expense it takes to mount a “current” photo exhibit- from the cost of making mural sized prints, to the cost of buying large format equipment… I love my photo books, but I enjoy seeing the original prints- whatever the size.

Maybe you can organize a Gossage vs. Fill In Name Here WTF Smackdown .

I happened to glance thru my copy of The Pond last week and was reminded of much I appreciate Mr. Gossage. Best living artist IMHO.

Him and Bob Adams. We’re lucky to have them.