Re[2]: [Leica] Cool Leica Pictures-uncool exchanges

[Peterson_Art@hq.navsea.navy.mil]

     Eric wrote that he finds many art photographers to be among "the most 
     pretentious people" he's ever met, and that "their work often just 
     plain stinks."  And several people commented, like GH, that "often I 
     get the impression that I...am being conned" by art photographers.
     
     One could hardly argue that conning does not fall easily within the 
     scope of human behavioral possibilities, but there may be other (and 
     perhaps more likely) possibilities here too.  As Eric himself pointed 
     out, "there are pictures on my web site that mean a lot more to me 
     than they do to others."  And sometimes this can happen because, as 
     Ted observed, we may be "our own worst editors, even though we think 
     we know our work better than anyone else on earth."  Even if we only 
     THINK we know our work better than anyone else, we certainly DO know 
     our feelings and intentions better than anyone, and therein can lie a 
     problem.  Our own immersion in our feelings and intentions can lead us 
     to project them onto whatever works of art we create, causing us to 
     see more---sometimes far, far more---in those works than is actually 
     there.  Our works may appear to have, as Michael C. Johnston wrote, 
     "whole worlds of meaning to...[us, their creators], but to others 
     they're just photographs."  Thus a "pretentious" artist may not be so 
     much conning his audience as he is simply suffering from insufficient 
     objectivity about his own work.  (And this can be true, of course, in 
     contemporary painting, sculpture, writing, music, or any of the arts.)
     
     Art Peterson