The Family Portrait

When photographing with children, portraits what do I hope to achieve? Today everyone (almost) in Western society has access to a camera and can, in some form produce family portraits so where does that leave the professional photographer? What today does the portrait achieve? What is its purpose in modern Western society?

Why do people use a professional photographer? Do they believe that as a professional you can produce something different, better? The best pictures are often the most casual and those pictures are, for the most taken by close family members. This casual aesthetic, the family snapshot is often used in art to say something, what I’m not sure but as a body of work it is sometimes created, sometimes appropriated and sometimes re-contextualised as in the work of Dutch photographer Bertien van Manen who uses it to great effect but do these pictures have any value outside her own personal family archive?

As a photographer I strive to achieve technically perfect pictures, a hang-up from my modernist influences but the bad results, the over-exposure, the scratches and colour casts which family members achieve by accident are often added to the aesthetic of the family snapshot and are often used for effect.

                 Bertien van Manen “Easter and Oak Trees”

With the casual family portrait what I aim for is what van Manen achieves; joyful, incidental and relaxed images (a result which also translates to wedding photography). This approach has been recognized by Pantall as part of a Northern European sensibility “in which the body is not a battleground for projected adult sensibilities” but shows van Manen’s children as being “one with nature, uncorrupted by the adult world. (British Journal of Photography. April 2013. P 71) Yet van Manen’s pictures are not contemporary family snapshots they were made in the 1970s, a period in my own childhood that I remember as being more free than today.

Is such a sensibility experienced today? As Van Manen states her pictures were made in a different era when “there wasn’t the hysteria about nakedness”. (British Journal of Photography. April 2013. P 73) However, her children under the protection of the family were never alone having been photographed by van Manen herself in the confines of her parent’s garden but as recent events have proved a bit of hysteria is not such a bad thing as many children in the 1970s were corrupted by the adult world. 

                            Bertien van Manen “Easter and Oak Trees”

Flip Flop Photography 

Mark King Photography 

 

 

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living

The following piece was a response to Chris Grant-Peterkin's ongoing conversation regarding art which in the first sense began under that evil necessity, money. As Chris posits -

"it’s not just a question of who made the art throughout history but who got to commission it, influence it and ultimately consume it. I hope visual art trader will change this." 

In his lecture Reaching New Art Markets Online Chris writes

“Combine the time saving efficiency of the internet with an educated public confident in their artistic tastes, and change becomes not only essential but inevitable.  The art market’s reliance on galleries and the commission based system is strangling growth at the base of the art market. If visual art wants to lay a legitimate claim to reflecting culture then it needs to represent all of society, from the top to the bottom. Galleries helped artists break the grip of the Salons 140 odd years ago. Now the internet can help the public loosen the grip of the galleries, and create a new inclusive art market fit for the 21st century. In the 21st Century, the internet offers a limitless audience, limitless access to a limitless choice of art.”

My response - 

I believe you are right about the who got to commission, influence and consume art and the purpose of Western art has changed throughout history but ultimately money drove these changes whether it be the church, the State, the upper classes or during the industrial age, the middle-classes.

Today art is more of a democratic activity than any other time but ultimately I question it’s purpose and it’s a question I find confusing.

You use the term an “educated public”. I’m not sure the public is “educated”, simply confident in their aesthetic tastes. In my rather heated discussion with Caroline yesterday and today, she cited Damien Hirst’s shark piece and the argument came down to taste and it’s literal meaning because it was not made as a shark in formaldehyde whereas a painting of rhubarb was. Not knowing the ins and outs of Hirst’s piece undermined my argument but I will never know the meaning of every piece of art so what exactly is my argument?

I could be argued that Hirst is only as big as he is because of the backing of Saatchi which comes down to the start of your email money and commission. Much of Hirst’s work is bought because of who it is not what. I mean what are the spot paintings all about?

The purpose of art is such a fluid and organic thing that I am not sure I will ever be able to define it but it has to be more than the eye of the beholder surely, otherwise a child’s daubs of paint can be deemed art.

In contemporary life the internet is the new platform for art and its dissemination. Everyone is Spartacus shouting “This is art”, “No, this is art” but is it?

Is the purpose of art simply to please the eye of the beholder? Is it about, as you have written “reflecting culture”?

I think Caroline would agree with you when you write that art can be bought, created and enjoyed as “the joy of personal expression” but does this not again add credit to the child’s daubs of paint as art? I am all for hanging something on your wall simply because I enjoy it but is this enough, is it not empty formalism?

One of the main pluses of the internet is the bypass of the gallery, the commission structure and the “I believe that is good art and that is not” mentality which often comes down to taste but does the expert still not have a place guiding us through the good and bad minefield. BBC4 and other channels certainly air programmes that guide our education.

The internet expands our audience. I could have a picture sat in a gallery for a number of years and it takes someone to visit to see it. Apart from having dead money hanging on the wall I can now reach out to that person and they do not have to visit me. Then again you are bombarded with pictures because the internet is so accessible but simultaneously condenses everything to a certain visual size.

The internet has no gatekeeper filtering art but then why should there be. There is the argument “who should tell you what is or is not art, good or bad but then the opposite side of the coin is that someone more educated should help guide us.

Everything brings me back to the question “What is the purpose of art?” I have an idea of what it’s purpose used to be but what of today, is it simply, “the joy of personal expression”?

Personal expression is highly important but is it art?

I guess everyone is entitled to make art and simply put it out there for whomever to take as they want. Make it, put it out there and move on to the next piece. Everyone has an opinion, some more valid than others but who is to say the painting of the rhubarb is any less relevant than a shark in formaldehyde?

What exactly is the purpose of art?

 

                                            D Hirst “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”, 1991

 The full lecture Reaching New Art Markets Online by Chris can be at:

(PDF attached or download at: http://www.visualarttrader.co.uk/news.cfm?nid=1206)