What is not the art photograph

In January of 1982, Alan Bowness then director of the Tate organisation (1980-1988), was interviewed in Creative Camera magazine. He was questioned with regards to the then single gallery’s position on the exhibition of photography there. To answer to the perceived lack of support of the medium he answered, “…you have to be an artist and not only a photographer to have your work in the Tate”. This is a generalizing statement indicative of a certain mentality that gives partiality to all forms of art before photography. The question I wish to ask in this essay is what is this photograph, that isn’t art? What is this condition that creating this exclusivity?

Barbara Hepworth

Looking at the evidence Bowness’ dedication to established forms of art is not debatable in any way. He was the force behind the creation of Tate Liverpool and Tate St. Ives through the acquisition of the Barbara Hepworth Collection.

Bill Brandt - Hampstead, London (1956)

In his article published in 1982 as response to Bowness’ statement Keith Arnatt draws attention to a further quote - “Someone like Bill Brandt for example we would not collect because he is exclusively a photographer.” As well as his support Hepworth’s work, Bowness founded the Henry Moore Institute after having retired from his directorship of the Tate. What is noteworthy about this comment is that he couldn’t have picked a photographer more analogous to the work of Hepworth and Moore. All three are highly regarded in the realms of interpreting and abstracting the human form. But Brandt, as a ‘pure’ practitioner was considered unsuitable.

Richard Long - A Line In Ireland (1974)

Conversely, he referred to the work of artist Richard Long, who was exhibited at the Tate. In his work he created pieces within a landscape, debatably sculptures (as did Arnatt), and photographed them. One example of this is his piece “A Line In Ireland”. He had laid out 544 pieces of found rock in a line at 544 feet above sea level. He uses photography to certificate this intervention. Make concrete his act of art. It is a document, but a document of a contrived action. By this distinction his work was suitable for hanging – “enshrined within a sea of off white mounting card, captioned in hand written inscriptions, bounded by darkly stained oak frames of an institutional complexion”.

Arnett finalised his dissatisfaction with this pecking order by asking, “Does acceptance by the Tate mean, for example, that you must have not worked or work exclusively in the medium of photography; that you must gain your laurels in some other medium before your photographic work is considered worthy?”

Keith Arnatt - Self Burial (1969)

Arnatt was positioned perfectly in making his criticism. He himself would by this rule fit into the “artist” rather than the “photographer” column. He had an entirely orthodox induction into the arts, initially in drawing and painting at the Royal Academy during the 1950s. In the 1960s he shifted away from more established practise to written, mixed media and performance pieces. Due to the temporary nature of several of these works, or one could even say ‘acts’, from around 1967 he started employing an accomplice to photograph him at work.

Keith Arnatt - Walking the Dog (1976-1979)

Later, in the early 1970s, Arnatt was exposed for he first time to photographers such as August Sander and Walker Evans, two photographers not viewed with unanimity as being artists within the photography world. Inspired by Sander’s photograph of a schoolteacher with a disinterested Alsatian, Arnatt set out to photograph members of the public nearby where he lived walking their dogs. The concept further to Sander’s was to have both the dog and owner engaging the camera. The people in the pictures are largely working class, and the period, 1976-1979, has none of the historical Significance of Weimar Germany. There is something essentially mundane about the act itself, and although photography questions and enhances its subject matter, one still asks, why bother photographing them? Arnatt stated plainly to answer this query about his work, “I like to photograph things that everyone else thinks are not worth photographing.” His interest in them was generated by his being piqued by the established concepts of what photography was.

Keith Arnatt - Pictures From a Rubbish Tip (1988-1989)

He was setting out to choose subject matter that had not yet been sufficiently explored enough to be called valid. Then using his vast knowledge of art history he brought in motifs from 19^th century landscape painting. Through this he made a paradox of the established view by denying the essential values of how we choose subject matter whilst making every effort to present the objects in as worthy a way as possible.

August Sander - Village Schoolteacher, Westerwald (1914)

Although exhibited in the Tate, Sander's inclusion into the artist-photography canon is weak. He began as a miner rather than a painter or sculptor; photographing landscape surveys for his employers. To further emphasise his lack of credentials, he worked mostly as a commercial photographer taking pictures for identification cards. His portraits of groups were born from cost reduction – he could simply get more faces into the frame in one sitting. But the fact he was employed as a photographer does not debase his being an enormously important social record. It is the quality of his craft and the narrative of the people’s lives that the pictures portray that elevate them from the mere anthropology it could be perceived as. And the manner in which he attempted with great success the face of Germany at a time of great social and economic uncertainty. Indeed, part of the art of it is the scale of undertaking. He had intended to expand out of his home city of Cologne and make a record of the entire county. Sadly the Nazi rise to power cut short his effort.

Walker Evans - Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941)

His work runs at a great parallel with Evans’ in terms of it having been held back from a perception of being great art. By its initial presentation and conception. His most famous pictures of Alabama sharecroppers was published in the book “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” in 1936. His pictures were accompanied with a prose account of the families’ experience written by James Agee. He would later work with Agee on Fortune Magazine between 1945 and 1965. It was this, that Evans felt limited people’s perception of him as an artist, rather than the journalist he was employed as. He could have been perceived as antagonistic about the differentiation when later quoted as saying, “The material of the assignment is here, but no one says, ‘This picture is art, it belongs in a museum. This picture is journalism, it belongs in a wastebasket.’ The viewer can decide.”

Walker Evans - Michigan Avenue Façade (1947)

He worked for some time in Chicago on street photography projects, working covertly photographing people in the boulevard of the City as well as photographing architectural features. The work is of impeccable technical quality fits a distinct purpose within the context of purely giving an account of an event. One could use them as a photo essay or as simply as a lead picture to merely accompany a piece of reportage. But again, this is to miss out on the quality of the work – the picture does not only illustrate a reality. Evans’ approach in taking it forms a bridge between the objective experiences of simply looking at it to identify the features and a more multi-functional purpose. It extends to a description of a larger reality of the pure experience of city- it builds a correlation between that and the people in it, through their appearances and actions. So for all its quality, why would he later say that he wished to “rewrite the past,”?

He felt, after several years of working at fortune, that his work, being published as journalism had been a waste of effort. Many years after he had completed his work in Alabama, it was hung at the University of Texas. He finally felt that his work was getting the correct showing. Had he himself had fallen victim to the same ivory tower mentality of exclusivity?