"Let us question the critics"
by Pedro Meyer
For me, one of the interesting developments over these past few
years has been the chasm between what the practitioners of digital
photography experience and what their critics write about. I place
myself on the side of the practitioners.
The critics many times look at the work and say that digital photography
looks the same as what has been done up to now, or they will equate
all of it with "cut and paste" of earlier periods in art. On both
counts they are wrong.
Let me elaborate: First, about the sameness to previous work.
If I understand correctly, their argument is that it "looks the
same".... but then what are we talking about? looking the same
to what? How can one say it looks the same, when one did not have
a previous image to compare it with. So then one would have to
imagine that the sameness is related to a generic understanding of what a photograph "looks like". The expectation
being, if there is such a big change in the medium it should be
reflected in "different looking " work. Not an unreasonable assumption,
I guess. Yet one that doesn't reflect what is truly going on.
How would a critic understand that I made an image that before
could not exist. For instance, compressing time which would only
live in a linear way within traditional photography. I can take
time, and play with it at will representing within one image,
events and situations that only came together in my imagination
and from there moved to the digital format. This enormous change
would not necessarily be related to a different aesthetic - as
is expected- but in the understanding and the representation of
time. No big deal? I think it is.
We are entering into a period in our life, when the understanding
of time, and it's non linearity is as fundamental to the way we
live as any major concept that might have come our way within
the world of art. We are finally in a position to go beyond that
which was first suggested by cubism.
People are no longer so sure if what I photographed actually existed,
or if I brought together two or more diverse moments in time.
Maybe the image looks *straight* to use a very questionable adjective,
but generally understood. So what does that picture then tell
us about TIME ? Maybe the critics have not given much thought
to this issue because they are looking in the wrong place. Conceptually
the photographic image has already entered into a new world, while
our critics are still looking at the old model of construction.
Then we have the usually very simplistic understanding that we
are looking at a *cut and paste* process, albeit more sophisticated.
Again here the problem resides in the lack of experience that
the critics actually have in understanding the scope of what these
tools can accomplish. Describing them as more sophisticated is
like describing a car as a more sophisticated horse. Yes you can
go in both from here to there. But then a car can do so many other
things that a horse can't, otherwise how to explain that the car
displaced the horse as a means of transportation.
The digital tools allow us to have control over what and how we
can alter an image, that was unimaginable in the era of analog
photography. One quick example that comes to mind: the layering
of images and the corresponding controls of each layer. To try
to replicate something like that with cut and paste, is simply
naive. One could go down a long list of other examples, but that
would be entering into a technical arena that would go beyond
these few paragraphs. In the end it's not what the tools do that
is actually so important, it's what is produced with them that
counts.
In that respect, I would venture to say that the critics are not
necessarily wrong when they state that there is no great abundance
of interesting digital work in 1997. There isn't, but not for
the reasons they suggest, that it isn't different enough to what
has already been done before. Also, no great abundance, does not
imply there isn't very good work out there already. After less
than a decade in which digital image making has come into it's
own, it would be astounding if there were other results than the
ones we - the artistic community- have today.
How long did it take for the critics to understand photography
in the first place, so now how long will it take for them to understand
digital photography? We have to remember that critics have a pulpit
from which they can make themselves heard, even though they might
be quite wrong about their assumptions. Critics are usually not
very modest in recognizing that even they have to undergo an intense
period of retraining about that which they are writing about.
Let's face it, these are very trying times and nothing can be
left unquestioned, neither the pictures nor the critics.
Images from the essay -The Oil Worker in México Pedro Meyer 1987/97.
pedro@zonezero.com |
