from folk art to fine art: a transformation in the meaning of photographic work

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Journal of Contemporary

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DOI: 10.1177/089124167400300201

1974 3: 123Journal of Contemporary EthnographyRichard W. Christophersonof Photographic Work

From Folk Art To Fine Art: A Transformation in the Meaning

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[123]

FROM FOLK ART TO FINE ART:

A Transformation in the Meaning of

Photographic Work

RICHARD W. C H R I S T O P H E R S O N

RICHARD W. CHRISTOPHERSON is a Ph.D. student at the University ofCalifornia, Davis. His major research interest is the sociological analysis oflanguage, literature and art.

INDIVIDUAL ARTISTS REQUIRE a community of

sympathetic others-an art world-if they are to realize the

privileges of artistic status. From this sociological perspective,art is as much a social construction as an individual one, and thehuman imagination involved in the creation of art extends

beyond the sculptor’s chisel or the painter’s brush. Critics,historians, curators, art teachers, and art collectors, for exam-ple, all play parts in the collective definition of particularobjects as art. In fact, without the work done by these

supportive roles, individual creators cannot gain the title

&dquo;artist&dquo; for themselves or the label &dquo;art&dquo; for their work.

Photography presents an interesting case for investigating thedistinctly social dimensions of artistic work precisely becausemany of the supportive roles necessary for the collective

definition of photographs as art are missing or underdeveloped.Photography’s relationship to the established art world is

marginal and consequently its status as a legitimate art mediumis often tenuous. There is no shortage of photographers whoaspire to artistic status; however, there is a distinct shortage of

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critics, museums and galleries, art schools, and art consumers.’ 1

To a large extent artist-photographers lack the institutional

supports necessary for the social construction of art, and as aresult the meaning of the work they do is problematic. Is it fineart or is it simply another photograph?Much of the confusion over the meaning of work done by

artist-photographers stems from the traditional position of

photography in our culture. The photographers’ role is usuallyassigned a rather limited, and, in comparison with the social roleof the artist, humble status. Photographers are craftsmen;individuals who know how to use cameras and, perhaps, processfilm and make photographic prints; they possess certain

objective and teachable skills. The artist, on the other hand, isdefined in broader and more subjective terms; art is the result ofa highly personal gift which is not so much learned as innate.This kind of role definition grants the recognized artistconsiderable professional latitude and greater professional au-tonomy than ordinary individuals. There is an exclusiveness tothe artists’ role which makes it unattainable for most of the

population.The artist-photographer is a marginal figure precisely because

he partakes of both role stereotypes. And somehow it seems

unlikely that one person could embody the differing sets ofstatus characteristics implied in the title &dquo;artist-photographer.&dquo;Persons of this sort possess the skills which define the

photographer but at the same time display certain character-istics of the artist. They show us the result of a mechanical andchemical process-the photograph-and claim that it is actuallythe result of much more than mere technique or learned skills,that it is art. The problem for the public in general and for theart world in particular is whether to treat these persons as thephotographers they apparently are or as the artists they claim tobe. As Everett Hughes (1949: 89) has pointed out, this kind ofdilemma is an objective one-there is an apparent objectivecontradiction existing in the minds of outside observers-but itis also subjectively problematic to the individual (in this case,photographer) struggling to define himself.



[125]

This paper is an analysis of the strategies which fine art

photographers have used (and are still using) to temper thehandicap of professional marginality and to secure the defini-tion of &dquo;fine art&dquo; for their work. The process is essentially oneof disidentification with the limited, humble status of photog-rapher and identification with the role of artist. Fine art

photographers are interested in achieving recognition for theiruniquely photographic vision in the world of art, not in theworld of photography, and inasmuch as this is their goal, theyare analogous to the immigrant who struggles to eliminate allsigns of his country of origin so as to pass as a &dquo;real&dquo; American.

EARLYATTEMPTS TO DEFINEPHOTOGRAPHYASART

Photographers who aspire to artistic status have always beenplagued by their scientific-industrial beginnings. Photographywas originally conceived as a substitute for drawing, an easytool for those with none of the talent it takes to recreate natureon paper or canvas. Baudelaire expressed a typical l9th centurydistrust of photography: &dquo;This industry [photography] , byinvading the territories of art, has become art’s most mortal

enemy.&dquo; This notion, that the camera was inherently unsuitablefor true artistic expression, was so pervasive in the early days ofphotography that photographers themselves were reluctant

aspirants to artistic status. Peter Henry Emerson was an Englishphotographer who proclaimed in 1886 that photography couldachieve equality with the established arts. He developed a

philosophy of photo-aesthetics to support his assertion, and hisideas as well as his photographs had considerable impact amongworking photographers. However by 1891, Emerson himselfhad been swayed by the predominant scepticism which theestablished art world showed towards photography, and heissued a complete retraction of his earlier position in a pamphletentitled The Death of Naturalistic Photography:



[126]

... the limitation of photography is so great that, though the resultsmay and sometimes do give a certain aesthetic pleasure, the mediummust always rank the lowest of all the arts ... for the individualityof the artist is cramped, in short, it can scarcely show itself. Controlof the picture is possible to a slight degree, by varied focusing, byvarying the exposure (but this is working in the dark), bydevelopment, I doubt, and lastly by a certain choice in printingmethods.... In short, I throw my lot in with those who say that

photography is a very limited art. I deeply regret that I have come tothis conclusion [quoted in Newhall, 1964: 99] .

Emerson’s retraction amounts to a retreat back to photog-raphy’s original status designation, an abandonment of his

attempt to pass as an artist. His personal retraction, however,did not reflect a general abandonment of the ideas which wouldhave given photography a unique and legitimate place in the artworld. A few years after the supposed death of photography asan art medium, The Linked Ring, an English photographicsociety, produced a large show in London and published a

statement characterizing the work displayed as something morethan mere technique:

... chemistry, optics and mechanisms no longer predominate; theyhave become subservient and of secondary importance, very little

knowledge of them indeed is in any way necessary [quoted in

Newhall, 1964: 99] .

The sort of thing The Linked Ring was doing in England hadits parallels in France and Germany and the United States. Thefirst major American photographic show epitomized the me-dium’s marginal status; there were two separate types of

photographs exhibited, art photographs and non-art photo-graphs. The art photographs were described as &dquo;such picturesonly as possess special merit from an artistic point.... The classwill include work which may be termed ’impressionist’ if

produced intelligently with definite art aim.&dquo; These were judgedby artists. The non-art photographs, on the other hand, werejudged by photographers and were described as possessing merit&dquo;though not of sufficient artistic excellence to be admitted to



[127]

the [art] salon&dquo; (quoted in Newhall, 1964: 103-104). Stylistic-ally, the tendency of this early &dquo;art&dquo; photography was toimitate the work being done in painting-especially the work ofthe impressionists. Photo-historians have pointed out that somephotographs of this period were such faithful imitations of thesoft-focus, dappled impressionist paintings that viewers actuallymistook them for photographs of the paintings themselves. Theemphasis was blatantly on identification with the traditional artmedia, and disassociation with the existing stereotype of

photography as a mindless, mechanical process which substitut-ed for real talent.

DISA VOWA L OF THE PHOTOGRAPHERS’ ROL E.~THE FIRST PHASE IN STATUS PASSAGE

In the slightly over one hundred years since the first

permanent photograph was produced, photographic images havebecome pervasive. Making photographs, looking at photographs,and the photographic process has touched virtually every areaof our private and public lives, and, with the help of GeorgeEastman and his ubiquitous &dquo;Kodak,&dquo; photography has becomea great popular pastime. In terms of numbers of participants, itis possibly the greatest folk-art of all time. It would be difficultto find a person who has never made a photograph, andimpossible to find a civilized person who has never looked atone.

A fundamental problem for fine art photographers is to

distinguish themselves from this morass of photographic folk-lore, somehow to separate themselves from all of these commonmen who know how to make pictures with cameras, and toconvince us all that what they do is &dquo;special.&dquo; For they are wellaware of the widely accepted notion that photography is notonly common, but easy:

I think through the advertising, photography has this image thatalmost anyone can do it, even a child. If you want to be a musicianor a painter, your parents are likely to discourage you-these things



[128]

are too difficult; they are only for a few. But photography, throughadvertising I think, has become probably the true art of our nation.Through the business end, it has been made available to everybody,so maybe the public has the idea, why should I pay $100 for a

photograph when I can buy a camera and do it myself?

In many respects, the feeling that doing photography is

fundamentally easy, and that anyone can be reasonably good atit, is inherent in the medium. Eastman was at least partly rightwhen he encouraged everyone to push the shutter and let himtake care of the messy part. But even the messy part, developingthe film and making the prints, is not much more difficult thandying an Easter egg. Unlike other art forms, making photo-graphs is essentially an instant process and it is probably thismagic, instantaneous dimension which has captured the popularimagination. As one photographer noted:

It’s a lot like taking up the piano. Now before you are able to playBach, you have to have a minimum of muscular control, right? Well,by the time you get to creating a piece of music, like playing Bach,you have put in a tremendous amount of energy, and time. Now youmight play it badly, but the point is that you finally got there. Withphotography you get there immediately. You don’t have to put inany of that preliminary stuff. I mean you push the button, youdevelop the film and make the print and you’re there. It’ll probablybe a bad photograph in the same way that you probably play Bachbadly, but you get there much faster and with so much less energythat you’re never aware that a photograph can be made in any otherway. But when you’re a musician, you may be happy to be whereyou are, but you also recognize that what you’ve got is not very

good. In photography most of the people don’t know that. They geta camera, learn about exposure, developing and printing, and thinkthat they know it. They don’t see it as a medium that requires thesame amount of energy, time, insight, and so forth, that it wouldtake to learn a musical instrument, because it is so much quicker.You make that first step and it is like jumping off the cliff.

This idea that photographs are machine-made, in an easy,do-it-yourself way, contradicts the fine art photographer’s viewof himself and his profession; he is rather like the foreigner whotries to pass as a native but is constantly misunderstood because



[129]

of his accent. Photographers struggle with negative stereotypesat every turn. For example, in interviewing for a job as a collegelevel photography teacher, one man found himself in a typicalsituation:

Well, the thing I disliked about it [the interview] was that the

president, like everybody else, was an ’authority’ on photography,because he had this camera, and he had shot some Christmas picturesor something. So I found myself in this conversation with him that ismuch expected in photography, but it was a little strange.... Sure,why the hell should you hire a professional photographer whenyou’ve got a camera with a built-in meter and it takes just a few daysto send away and get the pictures back? That’s what you want, afterall, are those pictures.

The encounter with the hobbiest who considers himself

nearly equivalent with the professional is a common problem:’There are so many photographers ... one thing is that photographyis a field like no other because any man who buys a camera,

particularly if it is an expensive camera, he considers himself a

photographer. It is a field where the tool has become identified withthe medium. The tool rather than the result. Professional photog-raphy is funny-you go out to do some work and the guy who ispaying you has a camera that cost about three times what yours did,and he’s liable to look down on you because you’re using a raunchyold piece of equipment. How can you expect to do anything goodwith that? He’s got some super Hassalblad with sixteen lenses.

The question for fine art photographers is what to do in theface of such simplistic definitions of their role? Without anysort of a monopoly over the production, distribution and use ofphotographs, they are forced into competitive situations withall of the other varieties of camera users in this culture. A less

marginal occupation (by definition) maintains some degree ofcontrol over its basic service, but a hybrid, poorly institutional-ized group like fine art photographers has very little controlwhatsoever. From a position of such social impotence, howdoes an emergent profession manage to convince people thatwhat they do is neither easy, common, nor simply mechanical?14nw r1npç: nnp trAm<fmrm thp (’l11tl1TP’ç: arpntp<t fnl1c art intn finp



[130]

Art ls More Than Technique

Perhaps the most prominent element in the popular concep-tion of photography is that it is a technical process. This beliefpresents a critical challenge to the professional self-conceptionof fine art photographers. Raw technical skill is simply notsufficient for the creation of art in the modern world. Art may

display a sophisticated mastery of technique, but these tech-nical achievements are always claimed to be simply the

reflection of a more abstract body of theory. A given piece ofart is only an instance of a general set of ideas-theoretical ideasabout aesthetics, culture, the nature of man and the world, etc.Of course, art is not the only activity which claims that its

technique grows from abstract ideas-this is a definitive charac-teristic of all modern professions and is an essential distinctionbetween professional and craftsman.~ Insofar as fine art

photographers claim that their work is beyond technique, theyare identifying with the role of the professional artist and

denying the status of photographic craftsman.The particular body of abstract knowledge which a profes-

sion adopts as its own (or creates for itself if none is alreadyexistent) is passed on to each succeeding generation of recruitsin professional schools. Here the difference between &dquo;technical&dquo;and &dquo;professional&dquo; education arises. Fine art photographersclaim that their educational process involves more than thetransference of knowledge about cameras, light meters, andphoto-chemistry; that technique is simply instrumental in

dealing with something more abstract and more important:

How important is technique when you teach photography?We give them the rudimentary technology so that they can

consummate the image with a certain degree of satisfaction. But youdon’t want to give them so much technique that they get involved inhow to do it rather than what they are doing. That’s been a majorproblem in photography-it has been treated like a science and theconcern with ideas has been given short shrift. Hopefully thedemand will be in the direction of why they are making photo-graphs-the technical parts can be picked up relatively easily.



[131]

Is this emphasis on the idea unique to you?No, I think most of us who are concerned about photography ascreative expression would be much more involved with the idea.Obviously you don’t want to end up with a print that has lots ofspots and poor tonal range if you are trying to communicate a verysophisticated idea-these things detract-but after that, techniqueshould be secondary to what is being said.

Of course the degree to which photographic techniques aremastered or ignored, and the particular techniques which oneadopts as his own, vary from photographer to photographer. AsBucher and Strauss have pointed out relative to &dquo;professions inprocess&dquo; (1961: 328), disagreements over methodology andtechniques tend to reflect more fundamental disagreementsabout the reality with which a particular faction is concerned.Fine art photography is no exception to this principle. Thehistory of photography is in large part a history of factionsunited behind particular methodologies. There have been the&dquo;pictorialists&dquo; competing with the &dquo;straight&dquo; photographers,and, more recently, the disagreements between the large format,fine-print descendents of the straight photographers and thesmall format, 35 mm &dquo;snap-shot&dquo; school. The concerns overwhich &dquo;reality&dquo; should be dealt with often vary radicallybetween these various factions; the common feature has alwaysbeen, however, that concern over method-the belief in hardfocus over soft focus, or contact printing over enlarging-ismerely symbolic of the real disagreement about ideas. In theseintra-professional fights, the practical follows the theoretical.One photographer, whose work is technically refined but

essentially simple in execution, summarizes the general feelingthat in the creation of art, technique remains subordinate to theimmaterial:

The idea is to be so disciplined in what you do that you come out onthe other side into incredible kinds of freedom. So that how you are

doing it no longer interferes with what your goal is. I spent manyyears doing an awful lot of experimenting with techniques.... Butthat is not what my pictures are about, and most often what I amafter can he he;t achieved hv nhotngrqnhinp certain suhiect matter



[132]

under a certain kind of light with the kind of emotive feelings I have.You know, if I can bring all of these various things together I don’tneed filters, or other cameras or various films. I prefer doing it thesimple way.

Crucial to the fine art photographer’s subordination of

technique is his devaluation of the camera itself. An amateur islikely to buy an expensive camera because he wants to makebetter pictures; the artist-photographer is likely to deny that thekind of camera used has anything fundamental to do with thevalue of the photograph produced. The particular brand ofcamera is no more important than the particular brand ofviolin-and you certainly don’t take your first lesson on a

Stradivarius:

I say that if anyone spends more than $3.17 for a camera in

beginning photography, I flunk them.... To try and decipher $500worth of camera stuff in one semester is too much. I’ve had peoplecome up to me with Hassalblads and they want me to tell them howto run the damn things. It’s their camera, and this is a beginningclass!

A photographer who occasionaly writes reviews of photo-graphic shows expresses a similar opinion:

When I go to review a show ... the first thing I do is read what theman says he is trying to do. If he tells you what kind of camera he isusing you might as well go home-because if he thinks the camera isdoing the work he really and truly doesn’t know where it is at.

Of course, most serious photographers own very goodcameras, just as painters are likely to use expensive equipmentand musicians prefer to play on fine instruments. But the strongtendency to deny the importance of any particular camera is anobvious way to separate the type of photographic work theyfeel they are doing from the work of the camera-freak. There isa large class of amateur photographers, generally known as&dquo;camera clubbers,&dquo; who are very concerned with camera andparticular techniques. Many of the more abstract ideas about



[133]

photography as a fine art have developed in reaction to thecamera club movement both in Europe and in the UnitedStates. At one time camera club photography (or salon

photography, as it is sometime called) was a serious competitorfor space in museums and for general recognition by the artworld. The last real stronghold for this type of photographicwork in California, however, is the state fair photo-competition;at these annual affairs, photographic prints are awarded pointsin a highly conventional fashion for everything from &dquo;propermounting&dquo; to &dquo;proper composition.&dquo; As recently as 1948 theSan Francisco Museum of Art exhibited the work of camera

clubs, but since that date they have concentrated exclusively onthe kind of photography dealt with this in this study. The fineart photographers themselves tend to view camera club work asa form of artistic kitsch. For example, in the journal Aperture,camera club kitsch is described as:

... the tired rogues gallery of grizzled characters (buff stock,tapestry-surface paper, sepia-toned, the twinkle in the eye not frompleasure but from ferricyanide); the flocks of darling flower-facedkittens; and the butterfly boats at Lake Patzcuaro. The only progressthat we can point to in the last twenty years is that the adorablelittle scottie has been superseded by the adorable little poodle[Mann and Ehrlich, 1967: 13].

To the extent that fine art photographers have been grantedstatus in the art world, camera clubbers have been excluded.There are still some museums (the de Young, in San Francisco,for example) which occasionally hang shows by these people,but by and large the camera clubs are losing the struggle. In thiscase, the social definition of one variety of photographic workas art means the elimination of other groups which might makethe same claim. Undoubtedly a reason for the relative success offine art photographers in gaining at least a marginal position inthe art world over competing groups like the camera clubbers,has been their emphasis on the secondary importance of

technique. Add to this their control of certain professionalschools of photography where technique is treated as an



[134]

outgrowth of some abstract body of knowledge, and one hastwo necessary conditions for successful passage into the worldof art.

Art ls More Than Product .

Although professionals, including professional artists, receivepayment for their services, it is considered &dquo;unprofessional&dquo; toview service as &dquo;product&dquo; or payment as &dquo;profit.&dquo; Similarly,among occupations seeking to achieve or maintain professionalstatus, advertising is verboten. To the extent, then, that

occupational groups treat the results of their work as productand advertise it before the public with the intent of selling it forprofit, they are something less than &dquo;professional.&dquo;4 Amongphotographers the degree to which the photograph is treated asproduct varies tremendously.

There are, of course, photographers who are strictly commer-cial-practitioners who get paid for taking pictures, usually ofobjects which someone else decides to have photographed. Thecommercial photographer is essentially a businessman who usescameras and photographic techniques to make money. But thefine art photographer does not want to be a businessman; hewants to be a professional artist, and if he is seriously seekingthis status he is forced to separate his &dquo;art&dquo; from work which is

strictly commercial. His motto will be credat emptor ratherthan caveat emptor (Hughes, 1971: 376). A number of

implications for fine art photography grow out of this denial ofphotograph as commercial product. For one thing, the photog-rapher cannot properly market his own work-ideally he mustmaintain professional distance from his client by dealingthrough agents. He cannot advertise. And, since by definition,professionals are the only accurate judges of the work they do,he cannot relinquish control by assuming the position ofhired-hand. A very important element in the fine art photog-rapher’s passage from photographer to artist is his disassociationfrom these photo-businessmen. The work they do can not bethe same:



[135]

Do you have any friends or acquaintances who are commercial

photographers?No, frankly, I don’t. I think the reason I don’t know these people isbecause unless I could see something in their work-I could see somekind of depth of conception-then I wouldn’t be particularlycompelled to seek them out. And it just seems to follow that thosewho are in commercial work are not pursuing their own creativeinstincts as much. And therefore they have a different kind of imagewhich doesn’t appeal to me. The best Ford ads which go into bigmagazines take a tremendous amount of creativity, but it’s not thekind of thing that is particularly exciting to me. So I wouldn’t knowabout those people. They wouldn’t be exhibiting in the museums,they wouldn’t be publishing in certain kinds of publications....Do you ever see commercial work that you feel is exciting orsignificant?Yes, in Bazaar and other women’s fashion magazines, for example. Iadmire that kind of work for what it is; it’s just that it doesn’t

appeal to me particularly, for myself, or in terms of what I considerthe epitome of creative expression. It’s not giving us new experi-ence-that’s what I feel about that kind of work. It may be

sharpening up the apetite in some other way, but not a new

experience.

In fine art photography, or in any professional activity whereearning a living is problematic, the temptation is present toabandon one’s internalized professional standards and &dquo;gocommercial.&dquo; Howard S. Becker’s Chicago jazzmen are a wellknown case in point (1951: 136-144). Fine art photographers,like jazz musicians, possess all the skills necessary to earning aliving. If they play the tunes the crowd wants or, in this case, ifthey photograph what they are told to photograph, the moneywill come in.

Among photographers who think of themselves primarily asartists, there is a definite ambivalence towards doing commer-cial work. (Certainly more than surrounds disavowal of tech-nique.) A photographer who claims to do no real commercialwork responded to the question, &dquo;Isn’t the money tempting?&dquo;by saying:



[136]

Sure, but we don’t make photographs for the money. [Art]photographers would be making photographs whether they got paidfor them or not. It has been that way traditionally, and it is going tostay that way.... Doing your own work you might make a fewhundred dollars a year, something like that. You write the expensesoff on your income tax.

On the other hand, there are fine art photographers who havedone considerable amounts of commercial photography. How-ever, in every case, these people were careful to distinguishbetween their work for pay and their personal or significantwork:

A few years ago I did a fairly large book for Sunset magazine. I didall of the photographs for the book. I get a royalty check everysix months, and that is very nice. But I don’t enunciate this to other

photographers-of course most of my friends know, but I wouldnever say on a bibliography or something that I had done thisbecause I wouldn’t do it any longer. It may be a kind of inbredsnobbishness, which is unfortunate maybe, but I wouldn’t do it if

they offered me the job today.

As Becker discovered with jazz musicians, the matter ofmaintaining a degree of autonomy-control over the worksituation-is a crucial question in making the decision to gocommercial. Deciding to take a job becomes a matter of relativecompromise, weighing the loss of professional status against themonetary gain.

Is there any kind of commercial work you would do?

I’m becoming more open to the idea that I might do certain things,certain kinds of commercial things, if they were convenient, if theyweren’t too difficult to do, if they didn’t take me too far away fromfrom my other work. To be quite candid, if the price was right, andit wasn’t too far away that I felt I was into something that was reallytaking me away from my personal work.

Most of the photographers indicated that they would make anexception to the no commercial work rule if they were asked todo something for a good friend. But here again, they expressed



[137]

the feeling that the important thing was to maintain control ofthe work situation:

I’ve done weddings for children of friends of mine. If you go.thereand just enjoy yourself, and sort of take in the whole atmosphere-this can be really fun. If you have to take it on as a real

chore-pictures of the cake and the sort of things you don’t reallywant to do-you can get pretty up-tight. If you are doing it just forlaughs, it can be fun.

Even though stringent attempts are made to control one’scommercial work, and clearly to separate it from one’s art, theambivalence over this crucial question can jeopardize the

photographer’s chances of gaining an artistic reputation. Thestain of too much commercial photography is difficult to wash

off, even if acquired out of economic necessity. When anindividual becomes better known for his commercial than for

his non-commercial work, this stain may darken to unmanage-able shades of professional disrespect. The following quotationfrom Aperture indicates the scorn which the more purelynon-commercial are likely to show towards aspiring artists whohave steady employment as hired-hand photographers:

A one man show in a gallery proves to the photographer, to hisfriends and colleagues, and to his clients that he has not altogethersold his soul for money. He is at heart an Artist. How wrong heoften is in this belief is well illustrated in the two ’For Love or

Money’ shows that have been sponsored recently by the Profession-al Photographers Association. The prints marked with green dollarsigns are those that the photographer has been forced to make togrub out a living. The prints marked with a red heart are those thathe has created on his own time at the urging of his innermost being.The ’Money’ prints are often imaginative, highly-designed, and

exciting, while the ’Love’ prints are usually mawkish, a re-hash ofwhat Richard Avedon was doing ten years ago, or made with avaselined lens. If ’For Love or Money’ proves anything, it proves thata good art director is worth his weight in silver halide [Mann andEhrlich, 1967: 14-15] .

The matter of &dquo;going commercial&dquo; is a sensitive area in all

professionalizing occupations. Among professional artists, how-



[138]

ever, where the ideological framework presents a model of theautonomous creative genius exposing his soul without regard toconsequence, the contrast to &dquo;strictly business&dquo; and &dquo;the

customer is always right,&dquo; is often too much to take. The

matter of distinguishing themselves from commercial users oftheir medium is another necessary step in the fine art

photographers’ passage from the world of photography to theworld of art.

Art Is More Than Snap-Shot

Snap-shot photography is a form of the medium familiar to

and practiced by virtually everyone, including fine art photog-raphers. Although snap-shot is usually quite a different thingfrom art photography, it serves a function which is irresistible

even to the artistic purist-snap-shots document our personalday to day existence, and it is as personal documents thatsnap-shots are meaningful. In recent years, the home slide show,where one subjects friends to snap-shots of summer vacations orwhatever has become a great American pastime. It is significantthat these evenings are very often boring to all but the

individuals directly involved-the photographer and his subjects.The snap-shot is a very particular document with a meaning thatrarely goes beyond the level of this-is-a-shot-of my-Uncle-Harry-in-Des-Moines-last-summer. If there is a more general kind ofmeaning, if the shot of Uncle Harry somehow representssomething more universal, if it is but an instance of some

generic category, that meaning escapes us. We wouldn’t havebothered to press the shutter if it wasn’t Uncle Harry standingin front of the lens.

One photographer outlined the distinction between &dquo;snap-shot&dquo; and &dquo;art&dquo; succinctly:

Do you find that you and your colleagues are making familypictures. Snap-shots of your kids and what not?I do, and I think that they do-in fact, I know that they do, butthese are not photographs they would wish to show in a publicsense.



[139]

Why not?

Because they are not about ideas, they are about personalities, and Ithink that most photographers working today are into some kind ofideas. It could be a visual one, in terms of shape and forms, or itcould be an intellectual one, conceptual in the generally acceptedsense. Snap-shots don’t fall into this category.They don’t ever fall into this category?Historically, if you look back at something someone did back in1890 say-then it becomes a whole different order of involvement,because you are looking back at something more than justpersonality, you are looking at era. You are looking at lots of thingsthat aren’t reflected in the moment or in the time that they aremade.

The essential point of difference seems to be that photo-graphs which are nothing more than document are detachedfrom that body of abstract knowledge which not only supportstrue professional activity, but supports the meaning of artitself. 5 In a sense, the absence of personal involvement by adoctor or lawyer when dealing with any particular case is an

analogous situation. Although the medical doctor attempts toavoid involvement in specific cases as a matter of professionalpolicy, it is equally a matter of professional policy for him to bedeeply involved in all the cases of a general kind (Hughes, 1971:378). The professional fine art photographer, then, is onlyreally involved with the photograph of a child, for example,because it represents some sort of idea about children (perhaps),and not because it is a photograph of a particular child.

Snap-shots and other kinds of strictly documentary photog-raphy are meaningful because of their identifiable subjectmatter; to understand them, one asks, &dquo;Who is that?&dquo; or

&dquo;Where is that?&dquo; etc. Art photographs, like art in all media,have a meaning which goes beyond the real identity or the reallocation of the subject matter.

The fact that most people read photographs only as

document creates problems for the photographer who feels he isdealing with some more universal order of meaning. Thequestions &dquo;Who is that?&dquo; or &dquo;Where is that?&dquo; are &dquo;inappro-



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priate&dquo; questions to ask about most art photographs, yet theseare the questions which most frequently occur. Part of thecultural stereotype which challenges the photo-artist’s selfdefinition is that photographs are always realistic documents.The fine art photographer is saying that his work is not so muchrealistic as abstract. (How can a static, black and white, twodimensional image be called &dquo;realistic?&dquo;) And also that his workis not so much document as statement. Breaking through thenotion of photography as document is a primary considerationin the professional education of fine art photographers:

... this is what occurs in the schools, because a snap-shot ideology isprevalent in all of the students who come into the class. And in thatclass you hope to massage them with the idea that somewhere in thegreat out yonder there is something else besides. Not to say that thevalue is greater for snap-shot or for not snap-shot kind of imagery,but just that there is something beyond snap-shot.... I tell them

this, and show them examples of the two things that epitomize thiskind of idea-this is the reason for using a lot of visual data in theclassroom. The visual experience, in many cases, goes beyond what Icould say to them. If you show them slides they can see with theirown eyes what is happening.

In a certain percentage of the cases the student does discoverthat photography can be &dquo;more&dquo; than snap-shot or document:

What did your experience in graduate school contribute to yourpersonal outlook on photography?Well, it changed it dramatically. I think that at that time in

particular the only experience, if you were interested in photog-raphy, was through the popular magazines, news media and so forth.Unless you got into academic circles or are particularly with it

intellectually, you don’t find those areas by yourself that might leadyou into further involvement. That was the beginning of a heavykind of commitment for me, and a change of direction. Before

graduate school I thought that photo-journalism was the thing to bein, but I changed my mind ... I had thought I’d like to do these

things I was interested in, traveling, making photographs in the

enthnographic sense, that sort of thing.



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In spite of the methodical separation of snap-shot and art,sometimes the two things will occur in the same print:6

In your own personal work, do you ever find overlap between thecreative things and the snap-shots you might be making around thehouse?

Occasionally I can make a photograph that I can justify as beingcreative and that has some communication factor in it ... it

transcends personality. It’s a snap-shot of my own personalexperience, but also communicates some idea to someone whodoesn’t know me. But that doesn’t happen very often. But there is

this possibility that it might end up being an image that I wouldshow somewhere.

An instance such as this, where what was essentially personaland specific becomes public and general, points up anotheranalogy with established professions like medicine. The ethicsof the medical profession prevent doctors from being the

official physicians for their own families-this would involve aconflict of professional and personal interests. The idea onceagain is to distinguish the specific from the abstract. The artisticprofessions, though not bound by such a strictly codified set ofethical standards as medicine, exhibit some of the same

tendencies towards the separation of the personal from the

professional. In a case like this, where a personal snap-shot is

re-evaluated as art, the overlap of these two realms becomesobvious. It is like the physician who unofficially doctors a

member of his family and finds himself developing an abstract,impersonal interest in his diagnosis.

ID EN TI FICA T10N WITS 77~’/~77.y7y /~/.~.-THE SECOND PHASE IN STA TUS PASSAGE

If fine art photographers find it necessary to distinguishthemselves from the more philistine aspects of their medium-the technical, the commercial, and the snap-shot document-itis equally important that they successfully attach themselves to



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the particular group to which they are aspiring. Hughes has saidthat:

A new profession, one on the make, often takes as the common’other’ toward which its members direct their conduct some other

profession of longer history and firmer place. For social work, theoutside looked-up-to ’other’ has been the psychiatric profession; fornurses, their troublesome superiors, the physicians; for psychol-ogists, both physicians and biological scientists [Hughes, 1971:

352].

To Hughes’ list we might add that for photographers, this

common &dquo;other&dquo; has been the artistic professions, especiallypainting and the graphic arts, but also fields as seemingly farremoved from photography as music. Photography has oftenbeen accused of copying the other media, especially painting,and in many cases these accusations have been correct.’ In the19th century, photographers wishing to be artists, and havingno tradition in their own medium to build on, quite naturallysaw a model in the world of painting. However, the institutionalisolation of photography has meant that painting has alwaysbeen a rather distant reference group, and that in actual fact,photography has usually developed quite separate from the restof the art world. The identification has been there, but it hasoften been like the relationship between a bastard child and aroyal father.

What the photographers hoped to gain by their strongidentification with the established media was that body ofabstract theory which could lift them out of the realm ofcraftsmen. In the early stages of photography’s development,photographers lacked any kind of theoretical knowledge abouttheir work-it was nothing but a new technique-identifyingwith the traditional media was a way of adopting someone else’sknowledge and meaning for their own. They copied the paintersand hoped that their work would &dquo;mean&dquo; the same thing, andthat it would be talked about in the same terms as painting hadalways been talked about.* 8

Generally speaking, this was not an effective strategy, and itwasn’t until photographers began to develop a certain amount



[143]

of their own independent tradition, began to work in more

uniquely photographic terms, that they made any real progresstowards the legitimation of their medium as an art form.

Historically, this split from the world of painting occurredlargely through the work of individuals like Alfred Stieglitz andthrough the Photo-Secession (founded in New York in 1902).The work of Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession can be under-stood in terms of Bucher and Strauss’s discussion of &dquo;profes-sions in process&dquo; (1961: 328). The Photo-Secession was a socialmovement within the world of art. The effort was to distinguishphotography as an art form-a medium worthwhile on its ownterms; to give it its own distinctive language, to provide a wayof talking about photographs which did not borrow so heavilyfrom painting and the other media. The purpose of &dquo;secession&dquo;in this case was not to divorce photography from the world ofart, but to give it the status of an independent segment withinthis world-to place it as something distinctive, but co-equalwith the other media. Stieglitz himself was well aware of thefact that secession was often the road to autonomy and

legitimate status. He is quoted as saying, &dquo;In Europe, in

Germany and in Austria, there have been splits in the art circlesand moderns call themselves Secessionists, so Photo-Secessionreally hitches up with the art world&dquo; (quoted in Newhall, 1964:106).The fact that photography is still marginal in its relationship

to the art world is evidence that its struggle for legitimatestatus, represented historically by movements like the Photo-Secession, has not been totally successful. The &dquo;hitching up&dquo;process is incomplete. Art photography is frequently foundsomewhere between the photo-craftsman on the one hand, andthe legitimate artist on the other; estranged from the world ofphotography by its denial of technique, commercialism, andsnap-shot, but at the same time, only partially successful inestablishing a firm identification with the traditional art world.In the present analysis, fine art photographers’ attempts at

identification with the artists’ role will be considered alongthree dimensions-dimensions which essentially outline what itis that fine art photographers want the larger society to think



[144]

they do. First, their work is properly seen within a traditiondefined as art; their colleagues are artists. Second, the intent oftheir work is artistic; their clients are art consumers. And third,their work is evidence of a personal artistic talent; they possessthose special qualities which make an artist.

Art Is Traditional

&dquo;New occupations, like new families, seek a heroic genealogyto strengthen their claims to license and mandate&dquo; (Hughes,1971: 293). In the case of fine art photography this &dquo;heroic

genealogy&dquo; has been sought, first in the history of art, and inmore recent years in the history of their own medium. If

photographers can convince the rest of the society that theirtrue colleagues are the &dquo;real&dquo; artists, then their own status, andthe collective status of their occupation is considerably less

problematic:

There is a growing awareness among artists in general of the powerof photographs. It used to be that photographs were made to looklike paintings, and now it is the other way around in many cases. A

strange reversal of roles that validates photography to a great extent.Camera vision is becoming a very important aspect of art. I see theartificial barrier between photography and the other arts beingdestroyed because everyone is using it. Anyone who uses lightsensitive materials, anywhere in his process, I consider him a

photographer. That’s why when art historians look back at Rauchen-berg and Warhol, they will have to think of them as photographersand not painters.

When a photographer does experience a sense of colleagueshipwith artists from other media, it is an event worth talkingabout:

When [famous painter] saw my work he found a lot of correlationsbetween what he was doing in painting, and what I was doing inphotography in terms of tonal concern, in terms of fantasy andreality of the surface. I was doing selective toning so he becameaware of the surface. I was able to talk to him the way I had never



[145]

been able to talk to another photographer. I wasn’t interested in

photographic concerns at that point....

Identification with painting has been the most common

pattern among fine art photographers, but it is not the onlymeans of demonstrating photography’s relationship to tradition-al art forms. A more novel genealogical line has been drawnfrom music to photography. Those photographers who empha-size the similarities between music and photography are glad tobe free of the comparisons with painting since they feel thatthis relationship has done more damage than good to the

integrity of photographic art. It is an interesting, and perhapsnot insignificant fact that several of the better known contem-porary photographers have had serious, professional interests inmusic before turning to photography. (For example, AnselAdams, Wynn Bullock, Paul Caponigro, Oliver Gagliani, andDon Worth are all photographers with musical backgrounds.)The musical metaphor has been especially prominent in thework of &dquo;straight&dquo; photographers following in the tradition ofStieglitz, Strand and Weston. Stieglitz himself photographedclouds as &dquo;symphonies,&dquo; and a famous Weston quotation drawsa similar parallel: &dquo;Whenever I can feel a Bach fugue in my

work, I know I have arrived.&dquo;Oliver Gagliani relates that when he first saw the straight

photographs of Paul Strand, &dquo;it was his beautiful counterpointof light and shade, object and space, just as in the music I hadstudied for so long, that started me seriously in photography&dquo;(Gagliani, 1972: 5). Subsequently, Gagliani &dquo;discovered&dquo; manymore similarities between the two media. Early training in bothmusic and photography is purely mechanical and involves a

perfection of technique. Both photography and music are

fundamentally dependent on precision instruments which mustnot only be mastered, but need to be tuned periodically, andwhich are limited by specific, scientifically demonstrable ranges.Both media are concerned with &dquo;tones&dquo; and &dquo;scales&dquo; (forexample, Ansel Adams’ specification of the ten &dquo;tonal zones&dquo; inthe photographic print). And just as a &dquo;fortissimo will sound



[146]

louder if preceded by a pianissimo; a light tone will appearstronger if surrounded by darker ones&dquo; (Gagliani, 1972: 7).

In addition to their strong identification with painters andmusicians, photographers have developed an affinity for andallegiance to their own brief tradition-especially with thosehistorical figures who have attained some recognizable status inthe art world. The history of photography is a very importantpart of graduate curriculum in the schools which train fine artphotographers. The allegiance is to Malraux’s idea that art

comes from art, that it is generated and sustained by tradition.Consequently, if a photographer is not part of some tradition, ifhe is ignorant of pure &dquo;camera vision&dquo; and of the work which

the important photographers have done in the past, then he’snot very likely to turn out anything worth looking at:

There is a difference in the work of students who have been exposedto other photography-to the history of photography-and studentswho have taken it up and worked on it on their own. I find that in

looking at graduate students’ portfolios, a lot of these are fromstudents who have taken up photography on their own, and theirfriends are kind of impressed-photography is still kind of mysteri-ous medium to the general public. They’ve majored in engineering orEnglish lit or something, but they send their photographs off to be agraduate student in art. Their work all looks alike.

How would you characterize it?

Well, sort of blah. They’re sending exactly the same things. One doesthis at a certain point. They do things like mysterious figures indoorways-they go down to 3rd and Howard and take pictures ofwinos, this is very common. This is a real life. And they’re all outphotographing drip and drizzles and this sort of thing-sort ofJackson Pollack imitations.

An especially important aspect of the novice photographers’contact with the history of photography as an art form mightbe called the conversion process. Individuals who were previous-ly interested in photography in a general way-who may havelearned how to make their own prints and so forth-areconverted into persons who are committed to photographyspecifically as art. All of the photographers interviewed in this



[147]

study indicated that their attitudes toward the medium changed(often dramatically) when they discovered the work of photog-raphers working with artistic intentions. In several cases theycould recall the specific incident which sparked their photo-graphic conversion:

... my first introduction to the camera came through my musicteacher. Photography at that time was just a hobby. I used to pack acamera when I would go fishing. I think where I got really interestedin photography was when I was in the service ... a camera kept mebusy during the whole three or four years I was in the Pacific. Atthat time I didn’t know anything about photography; I didn’t evenknow of any of the big names in photography like Ansel or EdwardWeston. But when I came out of the service, for some darn reason I

happened to go into the San Francisco Museum, and they had a bigshow with Paul Strand. So when I saw thc Paul Strand photographs Isaw what a person could really do with a camera. I went back to thatone show at least twenty times. And I think in another month theyhad the Edward Weston show in there....

Another photographer tells a similar story. After the initialinterest in making photographs, there is the discovery that

photography has some sort of status as an art form:

Can you recall any crucial turning points in your development as aphotographer?Well, one thing was the World’s Fair in New York in 1939. I was incollege. The Museum of Modern Art had a big show called ’Art inOur Times’, and it included painting, sculpture, architectural design,things from the Bauhaus, and photography also. This sort of

surprised me, and I went back to see the show a number of times,and I saw that these people were really taking photographyseriously. I still have the catalog from the show, and I can stillremember some of the prints. This was the first time I realized that

people took photography seriously as an art form.... This was justsort of a revelation to me that something with the prestige of theMuseum of Modern Art really took photography seriously.

Taken as a whole, fine art photographers have been onlypartially successful in their attempts to &dquo;establish their heroic

genealogy.&dquo; There are probably several factors which have



[148]

hindered the general acceptance of their claims on artistic

traditions, but a major institutional problem has certainly beenthe shortage of written criticism and historical scholarship. Inthe art establishment it is the critic and the historian who

connect the past with the present and who place individualworks and individual artists into traditional perspectives. With-out this kind of firm identification with traditional artistic

concerns, photography will remain marginal.

Art ls Intentional

Not only is art traditional, but it can also be defined as workwhich is intended for specifically artistic purposes. These

purposes are not static-they vary over time and across

cultures-but at any given social location they can be identified.In the current situation art is usually intended for use withinthe institutional framework formed by galleries, museums andcollectors. These are the &dquo;proper&dquo; clientele of the workingartist, and to one degree or another his work is intended for

them. Photography, if it is to gain a place for itself in the artworld, must be done for specifically artistic purposes; it mustdevelop the proper clientele-persons who will treat it with the

respect and deference demanded by works of art in this culture:

... What I did was get a certain kind of reverence for the

photographic image. To deal with it in a reverent way, like it was a

sacred object.How sacred?

I don’t mean sacred in the traditional way. I could quite easilydestroy one of my photographs. I don’t mean in that sense. I justmean that while you’re dealing with it ... as being an importantthing and I feel differently about it than I do about my camera or

sometlling.

Fine art photographers are generally aware that if they arehaphazard about the uses to which they put their photographsthey are not likely to receive the kind of reverential treatmentart deserves. A photographer who shows his work in grocery



[149]

stores or at sidewalk art sales or the state fair is dealing with adifferent clientele than the photographer who shows in theMuseum of Modern Art or even the Witkin Gallery. And it is

only in these latter places that photography is going to be giventhe kind of consideration the fine art photographer intended forit.

Because photographs can be reproduced by a printing presswith relative accuracy, photography can be published as art.Printed photographs don’t have the status or the economicvalue of &dquo;original&dquo; prints, but publication has been a legitimateuse of fine art photographs for a long time. Of course, just asphotographs need to be shown in specific kinds of places, theymust also be published in specific journals. Once again the

intention is specifically artistic:

You mentioned that you had been published in some Europeanmagazines-what’s involved in publishing your photographs?Here again there are a lot of things you could do. I mean I could

spend a lot of time and publish 50 pictures next year. The problemis which places? I can go out and take a picture of a deer and get itpublished in Field and Streatn. There’s not much trouble about

getting published, but what’s important is what is published. Whatthey’re [artist colleagues] interested in, and what I’m interested in,is publishing my own work. That is work that I do for myself thathas no commercial value, but is published as an art work....

So what kinds of magazines publish art photographs?There are really only four magazines that deal primarily with goodphotography. Aperture in this country, Camera out of Switzerland,Album out of England and Infinity which is really a magazine thatpublishes magazine photographers-it is kind of on the edge.

Art Is A Matter Of Talent

In all occupational groups seeking professional status, the

notion of one’s &dquo;calling&dquo; plays a significant role, but this ideareaches its fullest expression in the artistic professions. In theart world, art is not simply tradition, nor work intended forspecifically artistic purposes, but above everything else it is the



[150]

sign of an individual’s special gift. Art is basically a matter ofgenius; genius which a few persons possess but which most donot. One photographer provided an interesting description ofthe frustrations his students experienced in discovering that

perhaps they had not been truly &dquo;called&dquo;:

... photography is more than a sequence of acts that comes up witha print. I have students all the time who come in and say, ’I can’t

print it any better; how do you learn to print it better?’ And I say,well maybe this is as good as it is able to be printed. And they say,’no, look at what this guy is able to do, look at the way the tonesrelate, look at what’s happening; how come his prints seem to

vibrate?’ They’re using the same paper, the same developer, the samecamera-it’s analogous to the fact that Pablo Cassals can sit downwith an old cello and something magical happens.

This idea, that it takes more than a teachable sequence ofmechanical acts to come up with a work of art is somewhat

contradictory in a field where masses of people are being taughtphotography as an art form by artists. If only a few people canever do it (the photographers interviewed usually quoted a

figure of 5 or 10% of their students), what are the photo-artiststeaching to all the persons who flock into their classes? If youcannot teach people to make art, how do you justify teaching inthe name of art? The response to this dilemma is an interestingone. It is true, they say, that our schools train only a smallpercentage of real artists, but we are training a &dquo;creativeaudience&dquo;-a growing group of individuals who may not be ableto make art with the camera, but who can learn to be more

appreciative of the work of the gifted few:

The young hopefuls who start learning photography and for variousreasons drop out, constitute an ever-growing audience with somedegree of disciplined exposure to photography-as opposed to

uncritical ingestion of millions of images every year. Frustration orjealousy may activate their responses rather than love of the mediumor photographer, so that they may not make ideal audiences. To thedegree, however, that they have learned to see openly, they form anaudience of viewers with a creative potential ... few stumble on thisawareness in the dark. Consequently we propose that colleges offer



[151]

courses that aim to develop creative audiences for photography[White, 1971: 31 ] .

This bit of occupational ideology appears to serve two

significant functions for fine art photography. First, it is true

that any art medium &dquo;needs&dquo; a sophisticated clientele, and artschools have traditionally been an important source of knowl-edgeable audiences. But beyond this, photography has a specialproblem due to the immense popular demand for photographicclasses. This clamor for teaching gives the struggling artist ameans of making a living somewhat related to his calling, but atthe same time it leaves him suspect at a crucial point-that is,regarding the conviction that real art is a work of genius.Switching the emphasis from creative doing to creative lookingis one way to accommodate both aspects of this contradiction.The fine art photographers retain both their right to teach inthe name of art (although they readily admit that they areactually training few &dquo;artists&dquo;) and their right to claim a specialand unique calling for themselves.

The matter of interpreting the work of fine art photographersas a visible sign of a special artistic calling is perhaps the mostimportant aspect of photography’s passage into the world ofart. The notion of genius, of art as a special gift, epitomizescontemporary ideas about art, and without the ability to

convince significant others that one’s work demonstrates genius,a would-be artist has nothing. From its marginal position,photography can do everything else right in defining itself as afine art, but if it fails to convince the art establishment that its

practitioners possess some special, unlearned quality-somemeasure of artistic genius-then it will fall short of full artisticstatus.

SUMMA R Y AND CONCL USION

In some respects, what is outlined in this paper-the strategieswhich photographers have used and are using to pass as



[152]

artists-can be viewed as a general list of the social character-

istics of all &dquo;real&dquo; art in this culture. Art is a matter of genius,not simply of technical prowess; art is generic and traditional,not simply specific and personal; art is done with artistic

intentions for artistic purposes, not for commercial reasons. Tothe degree that a particular artist or an entire medium can

convince the established art world that their work does indeedfall into the genius, traditional, and artistic intent categories andthat it shuns the reverse of these, they will be accorded the

artistic status and the privileges which this definition implies.This study has argued that photographers as a group have beenonly marginally successful in making the transition from craftto art-from folk art to fine art. This is not an aesthetic

judgement but a sociological one. In terms of aesthetics there isstill an argument over photography’s status-sociologically thereis no real question. Photography is a socially marginal art form,and the photographers themselves sense the incomplete institu-tionalization of their role. The meaning of their work is not

settled, and the qustion &dquo;Are they photographers or are theyartists?&dquo; has not been answered in the minds of many personsincluding the most crucial people of all, those who populate theofficial art establishment.Of course, photography has made considerable progress. Even

its marginality is an achieved status. Looking at the problemhistorically, it is obvious that some photographs and somephotographers have more artistic status these days than everbefore. This status is relative to other, less valued, photographicwork, to be sure, and it does not compare to the aesthetic valueaccorded the best work in painting and sculpture. The successof some photographers, relative to the work of other photog-raphers, however, does raise another set of questions: How is itthat certain photographers and certain types of images havebeen able to pass into the art world while others have not? Isthere some objective quality in these successful photographicimages which naturally reflects genius, links with tradition, andartistic intent? The more emotional rhetoric of the art worldoften contends that there is this inherent quality-that art is



[153]

somehow self-evident truth, and that the straight photographsof Weston, for example, are inherently more deserving of thelabel &dquo;art&dquo; than are the soft-focus salon photographs of all thecamera-clubbers who were Weston’s contemporaries. Whetherthat kind of contention is true or false (in any absolute sense)has little to do with the fact that the official art world-thesocial constructors of art-have been far more favorablydisposed in the past few years to Weston’s work than they havebeen to the work of the salon photographers. In terms of thepolitical struggle within the artistic institutions, Weston haswon. Somehow the important persons have been convinced thathis work has an artistic meaning and most of the work of hiscompetitors does not.

This perspective may appear cynical, demystifying and

de-sanctifying, as it does, objects which have been defined asmysterious and sacred. On the other hand, it is not so cynicalthat it takes away from any of the beauty, visual strength,aesthetic meaning or whatever which a viewer might find in thework of Weston or any other photographer. The sociologicalperspective simply reminds us of those social processes bywhich objects gain definition and meaning and by which certainparts of our cultural experience are sanctified. (How else can itbe explained, for example, that the San Francisco Museum ofArt showed the work of camera club photographers on a regularbasis until 1948 and then suddenly excluded this type of workaltogether? Obviously someone in a position of power changedhis mind about photography, and specifically about which

photographs should be officially sanctioned by an art museum.)The important question for the sociologist, then, is not the

determination of photography’s artistic status, or deciding thatWeston is an artist and his aesthetic competitors are not, butrather, how do these definitions come into existence and howdo they gain legitimacy?From this perspective the interests of the sociologist studying

art are closely parallel to his interests in studying any

profession. The social characteristics which serve to separate artfrom non-art are clearly analogous to the factors which separate



[154]

professions from non-professions. Likewise the processes in-

volved in professionalization-&dquo;pathetic conmanship&dquo; and &dquo;one

upmanship,&dquo; in Peter Berger’s terms (1964: 213)-are the

processes involved in the social construction of art. Both involve

convincing significant others that the work one does is beyondtechnique, that it is intended for artistic (professional) uses, andthat it is somewhat mysterious and the result of a specialcalling. In both these processes-professionalization and the

social construction of art-the fundamental consideration is

status. Both phenomena are essentially processes of status

striving. In both cases it is possible to find evidence of trickeryand fraud in the struggle to gain autonomy and power overone’s work. In both cases there is often as much concern with

public relations as there is with anything else; if one can lookand sound like an artist (professional)-regardless of the qualityof one’s art (service)-one can be an artist (professional). Inboth cases, the contemporary scene is densely populated withgroups crying for professional and/or artistic legitimacy. In theworld of work, everyone from undertakers to sociologists aredemanding professional status; in the art world there is likewisean amazing array of characters demanding the status of art fortheir work.

In many respects, photographers have been the most &dquo;re-

spectable&dquo; of all those would-be artists. In the other media newartistic confidence men attempt on a regular basis to pass offtheir latest gimmicks as truly significant works, but photog-raphy has remained rather conventionally photographic throughall of this. Only recently have some photographers becomeaware of the pay-offs available to those who go one-up on thecompetition:

As far as I can tell, at the present time, success lies in the world ofart in kind of bombastic and innovative imagery. That is, if I couldmake photographs 75 feet by 75 feet-if I could make hundreds ofthose, I’d be recognized within the year, no matter what they werephotographs of. If I could vacuform on the side of a building agigantic photograph of some absurd thing-a cabbage-they wouldprobably buy it.



[155]

Another photographer says:

... photographers have traditionally been so serious and restrained.So now we are starting to get a certain amount of fun in

photography.... One of my friends is making enormous prints andpasting big things of Blue Chip stamps all over them. I think this is

healthy. I think this is really good for us.

This kind of gimmickry may be &dquo;healthy and good,&dquo; but it isalso typical-not only typical of the art world, but typical ofthe general world of work as well. In a cultural situation bestcharacterized as fluid, where the loss of traditional meanings isthe normal state of affairs, status is problematic at all levels,artistic status no less than any other kind. Art forms, like

occupations, come and go at an alarming rate. Who would haveimagined just a few years ago that undertakers might gain thekind of professional autonomy and power traditionally reservedfor the law and medicine and the clergy; or who, for that

matter, could have imagined a picture of a soup can hangingalongside the work of Rembrandt and Rouault? Obviously theold cultural order which kept the undertakers in the back roomand the soup in the kitchen is changing. Photographers seekingto be artists must be seen and understood in this broadercontext. They are symptomatic of a more universal struggle forstatus and meaning in one’s work and life. They are another actin the social drama which has been succinctly titled, &dquo;TheProfessionalization of Everyone&dquo; (Wilensky, 1964: 137).

NOTES

1. For a more complete discussion of photography’s situation in the art world seeChristopherson (1974). The present study is based on the same body of data used inthe previous paper. In both cases, fine art photographers are defined as those personswho create and distribute photographs specifically as "art." They organize theirprofessional activities in ways which distinguish them from other photographic rolesin our society, and they define themselves primarily as artists rather than as

journalists or commercial photographers or hobbyists. Their photographs are

displayed in museums, art galleries, and are published in certain books and journals



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which deal with photography as an art form. The data were primarily collected viaintensive interviews with twelve fine art photographers, all of whom live and work inthe San Francisco Bay Area. Interviews were also conducted with gallery andmuseum personnel who deal with photography. The interviews were tape recordedand transcribed and varied in length from one and one-half hours to over four hours.In addition to the interview data, the author has had numerous contacts with thelocal art world over the past several years and has done extensive reading in the

history of photography.2. This is an example of a more general kind of problem which faces many artists.

That is, what do you do when people respond to your artistic creation by saying ineffect, "I could have done that." It is not only photographers who are liable to thiskind of judgement; abstract painters, for example. have been subject to accusationsby the artistically unsophisticated that since their work takes no special lalent or

genius, how can it be real art?

3. For further discussion see Greenwood ( 1972).4. A number of occupational studies have dealt with these questions of profit,

product and advertising. See, for example, Wardwell (1972), Denzin and Mettlin(1972), and Carr-Saunders and Wilson (1933).

5. Documentary photography, on the other hand, has been careful to distinguishitself from the work done in the name of art. John Grierson in his book On

Documentary says, "documentary was from the beginning ... an ’anti-aesthetic’movement ... what confuses the history is that we had always had the good sense touse the aesthetes. We did so because we liked them and because we needed them. It

was, paradoxically, with the first-rate aesthetic help of people like Robert Flahertyand Alberto Cavalcanti ... that we mastered the techniques necessary for our

unaesthetic purposes" (quoted in Newhall, 1964: 144).6. In recent years a group of photographers has emerged who essentially use the

"idea" of the snap-shot document as the basis for doing work which receives seriousattention as art. This is sometimes labeled the "35mm slice of life" school, or simplydocumentary photography, and follows the lead of people like Henri Cartier-Bresson,W. Eugene Smith, and Robert Frank. Subject matter is of primary importance tothese photographers, and as has been the case with Cartier-Bresson, Smith, andFrank; the printed page, rather than the finished print is often the final destination ofthe work. This kind of work is among the most popular forms of art photography.Perhaps this is because it is so close to the general stereotype of what a photograph is,because subject matter is so important, and because the photograph can be read asdocument. (One could draw some interesting parallels between the 35 mm slice oflife school in photography and ethnomethodology in sociology.)

7. For an interesting counter viewpoint-how painters have learned from andcopied the photographers, see Coke (1972).

8. For example, this is a 1900 painterly description of a photograph by theAmerican Edward Steichen: "The picture, if picture you can call it, consisted of amass of light gray ground, with four or five vertical streaks of gray uponit.... Among artists in oil and water colors the impressionist leaves out of his picturemuch, if not all, of the finer detail, because he assumes-whether rightly or wrongly itis for you to decide—that the public can supply this detail much better than he canportray it.... What is true of the oil or water color is equally true of the

photograph" (quoted in Newhall, 1964: 106).



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REFERENCES

BECKER, H. (1951) "The professional dance musician and his audience." Amer. J.of Sociology 57 (September): 136-144.

BERGER, P. (1964) "Some general observations on the problem of work," pp.207-230 in P. L. Berger (ed.) The Human Shape of Work. New York: Macmillan.

BUCHER, R. and A. STRAUSS (1961) "Professions in process." Amcr. J. of

Sociology 66 (January): 325-334.CARR-SAUNDERS, A. M. and P. A. WILSON (1933) The Professions. Oxford:

Clarendon.

CHRISTOPHERSON, R. W. (1974) "Making art with machines: photography’sinstitutional inadequacies." Urban Life and Culture 2 (April).

COKE, V. D. (1972) The Painter and the Photograph. Albuquerque: Univ. of NewMexico Press.

DENZIN, N. K. and C. J. METTLIN (1972) "Incomplete professionalization: thecase of pharmacy," pp. 56-66 in R. M. Pavalko (ed.) Sociological Perspectives onOccupations. Itasca, Ill.: F. E. Peacock.

GAGLIANI, O. (1972) MFA thesis. California College of Arts and Crafts.GREENWOOD, E. (1972) "Attributes of a profession," pp. 3-16 in R. M. Pavalko

(ed.) Sociological Perspectives on Occupations. Itasca, Ill.: F. E. Peacock.

HUGHES, E. C. (1949) "Social change and status protest: an essay on the marginalman." Phylon 10 (First Quarter): 58-65.

——— (1971) The Sociological Eye: Selected Papers on Work, Self, and the Study ofSociety. New York: Aldine-Atherton.

MANN, M. and S. EHRLICH (1967) "The exhibition of photographs: NorthernCalifornia." Aperture 6 (Winter).

NEWHALL, B. (1964) The History of Photography. New York: Museum of ModernArt.

WHITE, M. (1971) "The secret of looking." New York Times (November 21): 31.WILENSKY, H. (1964) "The professionalization of everyone." Amer. J. of Sociology

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from folk art to fine art: a transformation in the meaning of photographic work

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