what is the importance of subject?

i've been thinking about this for a while. i bring it before you now, so that you can add your questions to my own, or if i'm lucky, so you can lend me some hard earned wisdom. put generally, i'm wondering what exact role the subject plays in a photograph.
specifically: if art can be used to make a statement, if portraiture is a window into the soul and if fine art is said to have meaning, then how are these meanings changed depending on what the lens captures. for example: two people take two different pictures. ansel adams sees beauty in the shape and form of sand dunes. warhol uses a picture of marilyn monroe for his art prints. these are drastically different forms of photography. next, take the guy who takes pictures of birds with a ten billion times zoom lens. take war photography. is there any merit in calling any of these 'better' or 'worse'? or are they all just different categories of art, which happen to also all use cameras? what do you think?
'but wait!' you say. what about when it's not two different forms of art? what about two people who go about trying to say the same thing with a photograph, but they use different subjects to accomplish the task? i want to know what social critique a photo of a flower could possibly provide. or a bird.
i suppose part of what i'm asking (and i might also be asserting it) is whether there is a point where beauty becomes secondary to the purpose of the artist, a mere tool in the box alongside shock, fear, line, texture, color, you get the idea. a picture of a flower or a bird is nice, and if it's pretty, great! but what role do these types of subjects play in art, a term which should be preserved for something higher than mere beauty.
too often i bring my camera into the forrest in order to take a picture of the forrest, because i want to see something beautiful. so when it comes down to it, i suppose my question is this: how can we begin to see the variety of unused images available for visual artists to use to make informed statements about life with, and in what situations are those images more valid than others?

professionalism

so i wrote that postmodernism was going to bring the end of the professional. perhaps i was wrong. let me tell you why

i believe that 'pure' postmodernism is next to impossible. also, when it comes to art, i think that there is always a category or division into which a piece of art will fit. there will never be a photograph that is purely postmodern, since even if all of the characteristics of a photo are postmodern by definition, those characteristics will still fall into categories like 'found' 'cubist' 'dada' and so on.

so. if that made absolutely no sense to you, suffice it to say that art will never be purely subjective. the categories that we fit every piece into will accord us with the criteria by which to judge it. this is where the professional comes in. even though everyone and avril lavigne has a canon, (an advertising campaign that truly sickens me) there is still a criteria by which to value the professional quality photo, so long as it continues to be better than the photo made by the amateur.

after that little foray into artistic philosophy; something nice to look at:

ctrl c

i have run into something interesting. lets see if you agree. copyright as we know it is going down the tubes. i can't tell you exactly what is going on, all i know is that there has been some activity in the artistic blog world recently following several legal cases where artists have been attempting to hold on to the rights for their work.

so my question (and anything i write here should likely be attributed to either fred ritchen-- check out his new and extremely provocative book 'after photography'-- or chase jarvis) is what will the future of artistic rights look like? is authorship truly dead?

the nature of postmodern art, combined with the ease with which digital photography can be copied and manipulated suggest that there needs to be change. it looks like a change away from the professional, to the world where everyone and avril lavigne has an slr, and news photography is done by the average citizen. questions, questions. where are the answers?

here is a completely unrelated photograph (if that is indeed possible) of my beautiful new nephew:

tidal waters

this is a photo from today: ice in the tidal river near my house.

examining the portrait

today i read an article by chase jarvis (photographer with a masters degree, perfect!) called 'the dichotomy of the photographic portrait'. his point is this: the nature of art, portraiture in particular, is such that in is nearly impossible to avoid creating a manipulated view of the subject, because of a collaboration that occurs between the subject and the photographer. this manipulation is, says jarvis, almost always a form of advertisement for the individual. he claims that it is nearly impossible for the subject not to react to the camera, just as the photographer inevitably attempts to 'color' the look of his or her subject.

on the one hand, i think this is true. and not only for dedicated photographers doing serious portraiture. the general idea, at least, holds true for point-and-shoots at parties. we all think something when we see a camera, whether it is an intentional smile, or an intentional non-smile. perhaps you are one of those who has a well practiced photo-face. or, you may be camera shy, and cover or hide your face. whatever the case, it seems true that the photographer and the subject almost always collaborate to make some form of advertisement of the individual.

the problem for me is that this line of argument ends in the claim that the essence of the individual cannot be portrayed photographically (or the more difficult, philisophical claim that there is no essence, but that is a digression). certainly i will agree that an essence is very difficult to arrive at, particularly for the professional photographer who meets a subject once, for an hour. in contrast to this, however, is the serious photographer who spends years getting to know his/her subject, and makes prints with the weight of that knowledge in mind. i am thinking of an american photographer named edward sheriff curtis, who spent thirty years getting to know and then photographing tribal native americans (check out the national geographic history of photography). perhaps these different types of portraiture are simply two different shades of grey, but curtis's is without doubt a much closer 'essence' of the individual than we will find in the standard portrait, particularly in today's media.

perhaps candid portraiture is the way of the future.


http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/2007/02/dichotomy-of-photographic-portrait.html

stock photography

today i read an article about the merits of stock photography. it you don't already know what this is, it is essentially a massive collection of photographs which are taken and edited with the express purpose of sale (often at a low price) to art/photo buyers who have a specific vision or photo in mind. stock photos might be used for a magazine ad, a logo, a poster. it could be anything, but often it will be marketing.

so here is the issue. the author (post-production man on board with chase jarvis, a popular adventure photographer) contended that the specific guidelines and editing process involved in stock photography, as well as the 'crisp perfection' required for submission, stifle the 'raw emotive' quality of photography. stock photography, he seemed to be saying, is dead. it lacks imagination. i suppose that the issue here is dependent on the stock company. certainly imaginative photos could be found within the stock photography tradition, but the question is not about the exception so much as the rule.

i believe that part of the issue is that people are lazy. it is just to easy to log into google, type in 'zebra', and up comes your picture. if you want something of printable quality, you throw in the word 'stock' or 'photo' and presto, somewhere in the top ten is going to be something you can buy, print, advertise. you get the picture. lazy buyers make lazy artists. if i, the aspiring photographer, see pristine, edited photos of frogs and lamps all over the internet, then that's what i'm going to try to learn, make available, and thus the cycle.

let me just cut to the chase. i believe that emotion is an integral element to art. i also believe that creativity can be almost anywhere.

the question is, does every photograph need to fall into the same category of art? could the distinction between 'fine art' and 'art' be the difference between 'raw emotive' photography and the picture of the tree frog that sells cell phones? taken to the extreme, the question becomes, should thoughtful and artistic people be making stock photography?

lucas

distance and time are a womb. where will all the love go?
when i fear i will run out of places to put it?
child
you stretch my heart; i fear i could burst for want to meet you. for want to break this second water and release you into pure reality. into existence as i know it
lucas