(R6) Creative Vision
In which the writer becomes the photographic blogosphere's Public Enemy No.1.
Franz Rosenzweig defined “creative vision” as “the artist’s plan, the basis for the individual artist’s construction of his individual work.” Nowadays, this term is more generally used to refer to when a photographer has a vision of his unique style in his head. He sees what he wants to shoot before he shoots it, and through the medium of photography, his creative vision is realised in the final image. Voila! True art is born!
Unfortunately this inspirational little phrase has now become so overused in the photographic community that I get very annoyed every time I hear it. Which is often. Very, very often.
“Creative vision” is a modern catch-phrase, a must have accessory. You’re not a real photographer unless you have one. You can justify just about any photograph as “true art” because it reflects the “creative vision” of the photographer. It doesn’t matter if the image in question is messy, chaotic, badly shot or just plain awful, in this modern politically correct art world it isn’t polite or cool to be critical of an image. All images can be defined as “art” because art must be subjective nowadays, and so you have to be nice, you have to see meaning or depth in an image, you have to look for the photographer’s “creative vision.” So what if you secretly don’t understand it? So what if you don’t feel anything for the image? If you don’t like it then you, the viewer, are a bad critic because clearly you don’t understand the artist’s true vision.
Oh please. Why the hell can’t we call a bad photograph, “a bad photograph?” Why should I be the one at fault because I don’t understand you? Isn’t it just remotely possible that your art is just not very good? Why does me being less artistically educated than you, mean that I am missing something about your work?
The truth be told, bad photographers are prevalent in the art world. We all know it. Their work may be trite, amateurish, a load of rubbish, but because the photographer is good at marketing himself, because he’s skilled in the art of bullshit, then he can convince just about anyone that his work is good. The charlatan artist can schmooze you into believing that his creative vision is so subtle, so mysterious, so esoteric that because you don’t understand his work, this actually means that you, the viewer, are the one who is at fault. Clearly you don’t recognise his creative vision as the work of genius that it really is.
What a load of bollocks. But people are taken in by it all the time. I know I used to be. Producing bad art and promoting it as genius is very seductive, but it’s actually fake, a lie, a betrayal of what creative vision actually should be.
I do believe that there is such a concept as “creative vision,” but it is a nebulous concept, not easily translated into words, and even harder to translate into a photograph. And not every photographer has one.
Real creative vision is ordered, disciplined, harmonious, unique to the individual artist, and its beauty is such that it can be translated by the artist into something that can be easily understood by the viewer. Creative vision is constantly evolving, never static, an ongoing quest for knowledge, to paraphrase Cézanne, “a model of steadfast learning and growth, the artist’s value lies not so much in what he can MAKE, but in his capacity to seek and continue to find.”
My personal opinion is that it takes an entire lifetime to discover your real creative vision, because it is all about figuring out your own unique message you are meant to express to the world through your work. And maybe, just maybe, by the time you do discover it, in many years time, you’ll have enough experience, practice and insight to be able to produce the artistic vision of which you alone are truly capable, because you will finally understand yourself.
Introducing IvoryFlame.
Franz Rosenzweig defined “creative vision” as “the artist’s plan, the basis for the individual artist’s construction of his individual work.” Nowadays, this term is more generally used to refer to when a photographer has a vision of his unique style in his head. He sees what he wants to shoot before he shoots it, and through the medium of photography, his creative vision is realised in the final image. Voila! True art is born!
Unfortunately this inspirational little phrase has now become so overused in the photographic community that I get very annoyed every time I hear it. Which is often. Very, very often.
“Creative vision” is a modern catch-phrase, a must have accessory. You’re not a real photographer unless you have one. You can justify just about any photograph as “true art” because it reflects the “creative vision” of the photographer. It doesn’t matter if the image in question is messy, chaotic, badly shot or just plain awful, in this modern politically correct art world it isn’t polite or cool to be critical of an image. All images can be defined as “art” because art must be subjective nowadays, and so you have to be nice, you have to see meaning or depth in an image, you have to look for the photographer’s “creative vision.” So what if you secretly don’t understand it? So what if you don’t feel anything for the image? If you don’t like it then you, the viewer, are a bad critic because clearly you don’t understand the artist’s true vision.
Oh please. Why the hell can’t we call a bad photograph, “a bad photograph?” Why should I be the one at fault because I don’t understand you? Isn’t it just remotely possible that your art is just not very good? Why does me being less artistically educated than you, mean that I am missing something about your work?
The truth be told, bad photographers are prevalent in the art world. We all know it. Their work may be trite, amateurish, a load of rubbish, but because the photographer is good at marketing himself, because he’s skilled in the art of bullshit, then he can convince just about anyone that his work is good. The charlatan artist can schmooze you into believing that his creative vision is so subtle, so mysterious, so esoteric that because you don’t understand his work, this actually means that you, the viewer, are the one who is at fault. Clearly you don’t recognise his creative vision as the work of genius that it really is.
What a load of bollocks. But people are taken in by it all the time. I know I used to be. Producing bad art and promoting it as genius is very seductive, but it’s actually fake, a lie, a betrayal of what creative vision actually should be.
I do believe that there is such a concept as “creative vision,” but it is a nebulous concept, not easily translated into words, and even harder to translate into a photograph. And not every photographer has one.
Real creative vision is ordered, disciplined, harmonious, unique to the individual artist, and its beauty is such that it can be translated by the artist into something that can be easily understood by the viewer. Creative vision is constantly evolving, never static, an ongoing quest for knowledge, to paraphrase Cézanne, “a model of steadfast learning and growth, the artist’s value lies not so much in what he can MAKE, but in his capacity to seek and continue to find.”
My personal opinion is that it takes an entire lifetime to discover your real creative vision, because it is all about figuring out your own unique message you are meant to express to the world through your work. And maybe, just maybe, by the time you do discover it, in many years time, you’ll have enough experience, practice and insight to be able to produce the artistic vision of which you alone are truly capable, because you will finally understand yourself.
Introducing IvoryFlame.
Labels: IvoryFlame, Philosophy, rant
posted by Lin at 8:36 AM
5 Comments:
Ahh....And where would we be without artistic variety? I hope each of us has our own "creative vision"...lets just hope that it's NOT the same vision as the next guy.
I prefer to not call a "bad photograph" a "bad photograph"..as I am judging based upon the axiom of subjectivness. I feel it's OK to say "I don't care for that photograph"...as this is based completely upon the only thing that we can truely claim expertise on..and that is OUR own individual taste. But to make a claim about a photograph being bad??....,with such arrogance to make such claims, we better be able to walk on water photographically.
I guess the individual Viewer ultimately determines the artistic aesthetics of any piece of Art. This is the way it should be.
I am fine with that.
bt
I was wandering around some photography sites today and came across this. I think it might fit a little bit in the thought of your post. It's from an interview with photographer Barbara Bordnick.
CDLC: How can a person know when he or she has found something that’s truly right for him or her to photograph?
BB: You have to find your own truth. How do you know that you’ve found it? The greatest library you have is your own experience. It’s the only thing you have that’s yours alone. I believe that all organisms have the basic, primal need to communicate. We all choose the method by which we’ll communicate, painting, writing, and so forth. What in your life experience gives you a vocabulary to say something and the reason to say it so well that no one will ever say it better? It’s the difference between doing something for style and doing it for yourself. I believe there’s no such thing as The Truth; there’s only your truth
"Oh please. Why the hell can’t we call a bad photograph, “a bad photograph?”..."
My first thought is it's like the old saying.
There are no ugly women, some are just better looking than the others.
Which reminds me of the old joke about drinking. I never went to bed with an ugly woman. But I did wake up with a few.
Some of the problem is that we do get seduced by the old meanie the "Mass Media". They tell us this or that is what we should accept as the "in" way of doing or looking at something. We are so bombarded by images we seem to lose our own perspective. We accept the going "Vision" as ours.
I was looking a Black Book magazine tonight and they are showing a new collection of clothes. This is a multi-page spread with some photos running across both pages.The pictures are out of focus, they look like the film was fogged or has extreme grain as it has a haze over the entire image. Some of the clothes can hardly be seen. In one shot only a few inches of a strap of the dress is seen by the models neck (this is the photographers pose, not the obscurity)and in another I finally figured out by reading the credits that the black blobs shown in reverse in the haze were, the bra and panties they were trying to sell, being reflected in a mirror. I bet the designer paid a hefty price and approved the ad agency and photographers creative vision. Convinced by, conscious or unconscious, peer pressure that the ad was cool, hip and just the thing to showcase the "Art" trying to be sold.
"The truth be told, bad photographers are prevalent in the art world."
With photography in general I have touched on it in other comments..it's this thing we are using now...the internet. The ease of posting opens the door to everyone. Genius and idiot alike. (Personally I establish the Median Line here) In the past there was the cost of publishing your work and the gatekeepers called publishers and editors that kept most of the crap out of the art world.
"I do believe that there is such a concept as “creative vision,” but it is a nebulous concept,...."
"What every man needs, regardless of his job or the kind of work he is doing, is a vision of what his place is and may be. He needs an objective and a purpose. He needs a feeling and a belief that he has some worthwhile thing to do. What this is no one can tell him. It must be his own creation. Its success will be measured by the nature of his vision, what he has done to equip himself, and how well he has performed along the line of its development."
Author:Joseph M. Dodge
In my humble opinion. Very few “Artist” know or have thought about how they fit, or where what they are doing now will take them, in their chosen field of art. They have little or no real objective or purpose other to be an “Artist”. Very few have the feeling or as I see it the passion for their art to really make it worthwhile. I think many Artists are not really giving us “their” vision or creation, they are just giving us what they think their audience wants and calling it their “Vision or Creation”.
Of course, I probably shouldn't be spouting off, the last picture I took with an objective and purpose was documenting a crack in my garage floor.
Oh I do know that IvoryFlame is a vision of beauty.
D.L. Wood
"They have little or no real objective or purpose other to be an “Artist”. Very few have the feeling or as I see it the passion for their art to really make it worthwhile. I think many Artists are not really giving us “their” vision or creation, they are just giving us what they think their audience wants and calling it their “Vision or Creation”."
Thank you Mr Wood. This was exactly what I was trying to say. Only you said it much more eloquently, and much more politely too :-)
You're right... you just do NOT get it.
CREATIVE VISION: I think the term simply defines what the photographer sees in his head. The idea for the photograph or body of work. Nothing more.
BAD PHOTOGRAPHY/PHOTOGRAPHERS: The word "bad" needs to be replaced with something more specific. This is all really subjective stuff when you get down to it.
GOOD ART, GETTING IT: You're right. There's so much bullshit talk out there about what is art, who's doing great work, and how you are NOT getting it if you don't like it enough. That's marketing, and it's a big machine.
ART: Is a word.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Mine comes in many varieties, which sometimes intermix: commercial, portraiture, and self-expression. I don't care who calls it the "A" word. I just want you to find some of it interesting, thought-provoking, or just plain "cool."
Photography is something I just do.
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