After more than 150 years of photography—of millions of photographs showing humans shredded, burned, drilled by bullets, eviscerated, or hacked to pieces, we must acknowledge that murder, genocide, slaughter and natural disaster continue undeterred by the witness of photographers and photojournalists.

Words may reveal the mind of the victim or the perpetrator and thereby teach us something, but never the photograph. It can only re-present that which was visible. You will not get blood on your fingers by dragging them across the photograph of a dead soldier or accident victim. You will not hear the victim’s dying screams or last words. You will not smell the stench of the body’s decay. Still photographs remain still—odorless artifacts.

Most of the photographs of war and suffering are made to sell—not just to teach, witness, document or chastise. The photojournalists who make these pictures expect to be paid for taking the risk. And the news agencies expect to be paid for the use of the images.

Such photography panders to the viewer/reader’s anxiety and need to feel safe. It is expected they will find comfort in knowing they have been spared the horror shown in the photograph. But is this real journalism? Does it truly educate and serve any noble or practical purpose? Or does it principally titillate, stir fear and fan prejudice?

Eddie Adams won the Pulitzer Prize for his photograph of General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing a handcuffed Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon. This picture helped turn American sentiment against the Vietnam War and hasten its end. However, it has done little to prevent America’s involvement in subsequent wars. Likewise, the highly publicized photographs of the My Lai massacre, of more than 347 unarmed men, women and children, by U.S. troops, on 16 March 1968, has done little to prevent subsequent mass murders and genocides from happening around the world.

Photojournalism’s demonstrated failure to prevent or end wars, genocides and disaster makes it cynical if not immoral for photojournalists, news agencies and publishers to continue profiting from the photography of people’s suffering, pain and tragedy—photographs that are sold and peddled as a commodity to be consumed like coffee at breakfast. Is this what it means to be civilized? Is this being informed or simply inflamed? Who really benefits?

© 2010 Michael Maurer Smith

Berger, for his purposes, proffers a modern and Eurocentric view of primitive art and writes from a Marxist perspective. He locates the definitions, explanations and analysis of art primarily in the contexts of class, culture and economics. His emphasis is upon art as something that may be possessed, valued and exchanged. He says little about the subjective nature and satisfactions of the art making process. It’s as if the quality called art only inheres in the object.

Reading this essay got me thinking about my own practice of Art. I hold both a Masters and Bachelors degree in Studio Art from Michigan State University. I am a painter, photographer and communications designer. So I work in the realms of fine art and applied—the sacred and profane.

It also happens that I grew up underprivileged. My great-grandmother raised me and until I was old enough to work, we had only her Social Security check and a welfare allotment with which to meet our needs. Her formal education ended at the ninth grade level. So I did not grow up in a home that exposed me to high Art. Nonetheless, I went on to obtain a university education by means of the G.I. Bill, a benefit of my service as a Marine during the Vietnam War.

As a boy I liked to draw and was good at it. I liked looking at pictures. I loved the varieties of color and texture and the joy I found in pleasing shapes and arrangements. I checked out art books from the local and school libraries and took art classes in junior high and high school. I gained a reputation as being artistic. Becoming an artist seemed natural and right for me.

So when I arrived at the university I too was presented with the model Berger describes—the modern and Eurocentric model of art—the Capitalistic and consumerist model. I then began to understand art in the context of culture and class—as a signifier of status. Likewise I became aware of the artist’ status within our contemporary class structure.

Like most artists, I was and am an observer. I prefer the periphery from which I can analyze, assess, compare and contrast what I see, hear and feel. I knowingly keep a distance to preserve my options. A Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory I once took revealed me as an Intuitive, Thinking, Judging type and I agree. Being an artist demands being an outsider—a step out of sync. It demands the freedom to ask what if? Why not? Says who? It demands the courage and willingness to defy that which is commonly accepted, known and “understood.”

I concur with Berger’s analysis as far as it goes. However, I believe it is limited to understanding Art as an object within the purview of economics and politics.

In this essay, Berger does not address the artist’ subjective experience of art making. He does not examine the reason(s) the individual artist may have for making art. Nor does he consider the artist’ own definition(s) of art.

It is the confused and collapsed definition of Art that is problematic. Art in common parlance is variously used to mean: an object, a quality, an action or a practice. It is like the word love, which in one context may describe the mechanics of the sex act (they made love) and in another, the Greek concept of agape—selfless love.

The ascription of Art, as a quality, to anything is always a political and cultural decision.

Can something made intentionally for purposes of trade and commerce ever be real Art? Can real Art be made by the naïve and untutored person? Can it be made by accident? Can a computer produce it? Or must real Art evidence the freedom of the artist’ hand and mind and the caprice of momentary inspiration?

What makes art Art? And who says? The answer locates the politics. Is it Art only if the artist says it is? Or is it Art only if culturally accepted institutions, like galleries, museums and universities judge it so? Is it enough to be Art because it is skillfully and beautifully made? Or must the work show evidence of deep thought, meaning and imagination by its maker? Must a work of art be unique? Or can it be one of many machine produced and identical multiples? Why or why not?

Berger correctly posits economics and politics as the arbiters of what is culturally and socially accepted as Art—at least in modern Western society. However, the need for artistic expression—the need to make marks and objects, whether utilitarian, symbolic or purely decorative, is innately human and preexists any political ideology or economic system. In fact it is a defining feature of humans that they can make symbolic marks—marks that stand for shared meanings and concepts. This is the basis for written language and thus for the codification and sharing of mathematics, science, history and religion.

To bring this discussion into focus I want to discuss my brother Tim. Tim is five years younger than me. We have the same mother but different fathers. We did not grow up together. Early in his life Tim began having trouble with the law. This led to his incarceration in prison for several years. During that time he began to draw. His drawings betrayed a lack of formal instruction. Size relationships owed more to emotional meanings than observed differences—like those of children’s drawing. Objects were drawn as outlines and filled with color. There was little understanding of renaissance perspective and chiascuro. These were the drawings of a naïve artist. Yet they were expressive works that made manifest his feelings and did so in ways that were visually compelling and provocative. They were art as act, and art as process. They were art as personal expression. But they were not high Art—not the kind of art a museum would seek to acquire. Tim remains undiscovered.

After his release from prison Tim stopped drawing and began making carvings and constructions out of wood and scrap. He fashions detailed sailing ships, stagecoaches and windmills using humble tools. He does this without regard for efficiency or profit. He places no value on his work hour. He has no business plan or portfolio and his continuing personal and emotional problems make a professional approach to his art making and craft practically impossible. Yet he continues to make his art, probably because it is the one meaningful thing in his life. It affirms his being and gives him a sense of purpose and accomplishment—something that is uniquely his.

Tim and his art © Michael Maurer Smith 2009

Tim’s artistic expression is genuine. At the same time it is derivative. He tries to copy things he’s seen but his mental demons, lack of formal training and proper tools conspire to deny him the skill and discipline necessary to make convincing replicas at a marketable and profitable rate. Instead his pieces are improvisations, born without the pretense of theory and historical justification. They are akin to a journal compulsively kept, markers of a passage. But are they Art? I think they are. He doesn’t.

© Michael Maurer Smith 2009

Sunset at White Sands, NM © Michael Maurer Smith

I find little need to resort to tricks to make a picture interesting or beautiful. The world has plenty to offer a discerning eye and mind and for me that is the challenge and joy of photography. I prefer to make “straight” photographs.

I do not add or remove objects from these photographs and I rarely use an image-editing program to alter them in ways that would change their essential reality. However, I do color correct, sharpen, adjust contrast, eliminate dust spots and crop judiciously. My goal is to render a final image that is as close to what I saw as possible, although that is always subjective—simply by shifting position to the left or right it is possible to leave out of the frame something as large as an aircraft carrier! Photography is all about choice, judgment, taste and intention.

The simple test of the straight photograph is this: could another person in the same position, at the exact same moment, using the same equipment and settings have recorded this same image—in the camera? Of course, final processing and printing are other matters entirely.

The reason I prefer ‘straight’ photography is simple. It is the ability—the magic really—of photography that it can apprehend the actual reflection of light from the subject, as it happened and preserve that particular moment of time for future viewing and review.

There are many times I intentionally deviate from making straight photographs but when I do I am making a photo-illustrative or artistic interpretation. There is a significant difference between making a photograph as a faithful record of that seen or using the camera to acquire resources from which a photographic image is later constructed, either in the darkroom or on the desktop.

Since I work professionally as a graphic designer I often use photography as a tool of persuasion and communication. As an artist I often use the camera to make images I plan to alter for expressive purposes. However, I make a point to identify my altered images as such. I owe this to the viewer and my conscience.

In my opinion, as a photographer, painter and designer, the overt manipulation of a photographic image removes it from the realm of photography and places it into the realm of illustration and creative self-expression. And this is fine. However, the photographer needs to know what he or she is really doing and be honest about it.

© Michael Maurer Smith 2009

A second story wall in Florence (Oltrarno), Italy

Carmina and Tony Discuss Captions

To caption, or not to caption: that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler to suffer the outrageous comments of ignorant viewers,
Or to arm them against a sea of error and prejudice,

And by gently explaining lead them to greater knowledge and joy?

“Oh what to do—what to do?” Tony exclaimed.

“For starters stick with photography,” Carmina replied.

“Seriously Carmina, it’s a real problem. You know my work. It looks straightforward—like what it is. But there’s always more going on in those pictures—symbolism, cultural references and irony—stuff like that. So I think maybe I should provide folks with cues—clues, some kind of caption or label, something to explain my intentions in making the picture. But then I think, no, it’s visual art, it shouldn’t need words,” said Tony.

He continued, “Say I do a photo of a guy standing alone under a street light at a bus stop; what is this photo really about? Is it an existential statement? Maybe. Is it a commentary on this particular man? Perhaps. Is it just a study of light and shadow? It could be any or all of these things, none or more. So what am I obligated to make known about the photograph? Whatever I write in a caption or label will influence how the viewer interprets the picture. Yet if I say too little, or nothing, the viewer may be grossly mislead. So where’s the balance? What ought I tell? What must I tell?”  

“Yeah Tony, it’s a conundrum and one I wrestle with too. I need to name my paintings to make them final—give them an individual identity. Naming them actually helps me understand what they mean, might mean or could. Yet I know once I name a painting it opens up certain ways of thinking about it and closes others. Even harder than names, is the whole ‘artist’s statement’ thing. That’s really fraught with issues,” Carmina replied.

“I hear you Carmina. But with photographs the problem is verisimilitude. Photographs always look real. They are the record of something that existed, even if it was no more than a momentary shadow. However, a painting is the result of countless decisions and physical movements made by the artist in response to his or her inner experience. It is a cumulative thing built minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour and sometimes with interruptions of days, weeks or even years, but photos are made instantly and they appear like flattened slices of reality. So the photographer often must supply facts not readily apparent in the image. For example, a picture might appear to show a police officer’s hand about to slap a protestor’s face when he is really sweeping away a wasp.”

“So you are saying that photographs are more dependent upon words than are paintings. Am I right?” asked Carmina.

“Yes. And I am also saying that the viewer often needs more information than shows in the photograph in order to understand and appreciate it. Photographs depend upon shared concepts and cultural references. If the viewer doesn’t know what they are looking at they won’t see it—they will only see shapes and forms but they won’t know if those shapes are the Eiffel tower or a beehive. And photographs cannot show thought—only the results of thought. So if it is essential to know what the photographer or subject was thinking, a label, caption or even an entire book may be necessary,” Tony replied.

“Well next week I want to talk about writing an artist’ statement. I’ll bet you have lots of thoughts about that. So then, same time here at the Bean next week?” Carmina asked.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” said Tony.

Homage to Siskind © Michael Maurer Smith 2009

I made this image within ten miles of my home. It is reminiscent of the work of the late Aaron Siskind, a photographer whose work I respect and admire.