Conceptual Photography

Wikipedia tells us that conceptual photography depicts an idea and that one of the earliest examples was Self Portrait as a Drowned Man (1840) by Hippolyte Bayard.  It goes on, though, to explain that Conceptual Photography has evolved from the Conceptual art scene of the late 1960s and today it can be used to describe a methodology or a genre.  As a genre, it argues that it might refer to photography when it is being used in Conceptual Art or in contemporary art photography but that the term is not used consistently.  Wikipedia argues that as a methodology conceptual photography is most often used in advertising to represent an idea.  It says that, with the advent of photoshop, digital manipulation has made the realisation of the portrayal of an idea through conceptual photography more of a possibility.  It gives as exponents of Conceptual Photography Cindy Sherman, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Demand and, more recently Aaron Nace and Rosie Hardy who was commissioned by Maroon 5 to create a piece of conceptual photography for their Hands All Over album. (Wikipedia, 2015)

John Hilliard states, in the Source photographic film, that very few contemporary photographers use the term Conceptual Photography.  He argues that it is a term used by curators and critics to describe photographers and artists.  Critic Loucy Soulter also posits that it was a term invented by critics in the 1960s.  The critic John Roberts suggests that the new generation of photographers in the 1960s/70s had to begin to do the thinking for themselves as they were faced with American Modernism that was different to the relationship between art and thing and also there was no critical industry as there is now. (Source, 2015)

John Roberts says of Hilliard's work that he pays a great deal of attention to technique.  Hilliard agrees and says that if he is to pay attention to technique he might as well incorporate it into a photograph as he did in his 1970 image 60 seconds of light.  He explains that his work is very prepared and he begins by drafting out ideas and draws a photograph before it is ever made.  He uses Scarecat, used to advertise a garden cat deterrent, as an example. (Source, 2015)

Lucy Soulter suggests that a visitor to a gallery often has no access to the ideas and motivation behind an image and so calling the work conceptual may give a clue to the fact that there is more to the image than meets the eye.  She goes on to say, though, that conceptual photography is anti-personal, anti emotional and anti-subjective.  Continuing in Part 2 Guardian critic Sean O'Hagan argues that conceptualisation became a market commodity in the 1980s.  It was what galleries wanted to the exclusion of other types of photography.  He adds to this by saying that going out into the world and photographing things that resonate with the photographer is just as valid as conceptual work and this style of photography brought us Lee Friedlander, Dianne Arbus and Robert Frank.  Should their work be consigned to the bin, he asks, because they are not deemed conceptual?  He feels that work should have a humanist thrust and tell us about how and where we live.  Contemporary photographer Suzanne Mooney states that the term conceptual photography is derogatory to other types of photography, assuming that they do not require thought or research. (Source, 2015)

In Part 3 both critic Lucy Soulter and curator Louise Clements suggest that there are two types of photographers: those who like to think of themselves as photographers and those who like to think of themselves as artists.  Clements says that she never uses the term conceptual photography and Soulter postulates that all contemporary photography is conceptual to some degree so the question is - what isn't conceptual?  Sean O'Hagan's issue with conceptualisation is that the idea over-rides everything else, but it is much closer to the art world than other types of photography.  He takes issue with the work of conceptual artists Adam Boomberg and Oliver Chanarin who went to Afghanistan, ostensibly as photojournalists, but refused to take any photographs as such.  Instead, periodically, in response to some event they would unroll a huge roll of photographic paper and expose it to the light and filming what they were doing.  They argue that the point of the project was to point out that photojournalists are operating within a bubble of censorship.  Sean O'Hagan was scathing and asks "Did it not dawn on them at any point the arrogance of what they were doing, that they were in a war zone and fooling around with some conceptual joke."  He regards them as patronising and arrogant.  He argues that that is where conceptualism becomes self important, narcissistic and inward looking. (Source, 2015)

I think that the upshot of these three videos is that it is not totally clear what Conceptual Photography is.  My thinking is that an idea comes first and then that is translated into a photograph.  But, how does that differ from the work of Ansel Adams and others who previsualised their work and then realised it.  As Lucy Soulter  and the course notes say: all photography is conceptual to some degree.  Although I wouldn't consider myself a Conceptual Art Photographer I do go out with an idea in mind.  Normally my flower photography is fairly traditional, such as the early purple orchid below, but two days ago I wanted to show wild flowers within an industrial context and went out with that idea or concept in mind and then realised the concept as the second two images show.

Early Purple Orchid

Dog Rose, Container Terminal

Common Mallow, Sea Wall

Aaron Nace is regarded as a Conceptual Photographer and he is an expert at digitally manipulating images through photoshop and, in fact, teaches this to people.  He doesn't try to hide this and he is totally upfront about it.  There is a great deal of humour to his work, which is planned out following an initial idea.  Rosie Hardy's work, on the other hand, is otherworldly and ethereal and in some cases slightly disturbing.  In many of her images she uses herself as the model.  I really like her Maroon 5 album cover; it is fascinating to conjecture where all of the hands come from.  Cindy Sherman achieved international recognition for her conceptual tableaux photography Untitled Film Stills which are self portraits where she poses in different roles and settings to produce photographs reminiscent of stills from films of the 1940s and 50s.  Yet another conceptual image that I really like is Anorexia by Santiago Alvarez which features an apple eaten down to the core in front of a mirror; the reflection in the mirror is of a whole apple.

Source (2015)  What is Conceptual Photography [online] Available from: http://www.source.ie/feature/what_is_conceptual.html [Accessed 17.6.15]

Wikipedia (2015) Conceptual Photography [online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_photography [Accessed 17.6.15]