Jb

i agree with much that has been written here. everything has been photographed in some way or another. we have all had harsh reality checks as you have had by seeing this blog. but you have not started, so make it your own and you will be fine…… but really make it your own. that is my whole point here, ideas are cheap. everything has been ‘done’. but we should at least try to interpret in new ways. especially when we know something already exists. what is the point of doing the exact same interpretation?

3 years ago, I’m driving to a shoot and see all this tire debris on the roadway and it hits me. “Look at all the interesting shapes those scraps of tires make. Awesome!! I’ll shoot it on white and add highlights to accentuate the damage! What a a unique idea for a portfolio of still life images ”

I’ve got a plan, I’ll stop on the way to and from photo shoots, with assistants rolling their eyes as I dodge on coming cars as I start collecting my bits of tires from the roadway. I catalog which highway I collected the tire bits from and I carry a box of storage bags in the car so I can deposit my specimens. http://www.tustinpix.com/bagz

My work has been slow lately; I’m so excited to finally get a chance to start work on this project. I haven’t shot anything but have bags of tire scrapes. This AM I was goggling for title ideas for the project and I FIND THIS “F-IN” INVERVIEW, SHIT!!!!!

So I ask, do I trash whole damn thing? Use a new approach even though 2 other people (that I know of) have had the same “unique” idea?
Maybe we can make this a contest and see if other people want to interpret the same subject?
Bummed!!

Robert,

As you can tell by the follow up responses this touched a nerve and yes I know that Longo’s work was graphite, but it started as a photo. And Christopher responded to that issue. Though I doubt CG was a photographer back in 1979, which leaves that co incidence issue a little stretched. Was lucky to see a suprematist show around the same time as a dozen or so seminal Duchamp sculptures, early 80’s. This is a reference to Rodchenko.

As former photographer for the USAF with my share of forensic shoots, I just questioned some aspects of how we describe original work. And believe me my work is published. It hangs in airbases around the world, the Pentagon, private collections, public collections. In the local base newspaper. On the web as part of an archive. But guess what, I do not own it, it belongs to the USAF and in real terms the U.S. public.

Now back to Longo, I was an art major in the late 70’s early 80’s, Lived for the neo expressionists and the whole new art scene. I could not get enough. Today I walked into Santa Fe Community College, to see a photo show. As I walked around I saw images that referenced that whole era, to even Jonathan Borofsky type images hung from the ceiling. ( his hammering man series). Copying maybe, but I liked it none the less. I like Christopher’s work too.

A thought:

If you put Longo’s work and Christopher’s work together on a wall and ask people standing a good distance away what they saw, they would probably say two photographs. What they would not know from that distance that one represented a passing of time, the other an instant. And that is the reference to Hockney and his polaroids. He was trying to reference the passing of time in that series of work. But the images are composed of hundreds of snapshots. An instant of time. Absurd, no Robert, a truth.

Btw, when I lived in DC during the early 80’s I would take in as many shows as I could. I stumbled across a photographer who then shook me to my core, Joel Peter Witkin. Scoot forward 26 years and who puts on a small talk for the public here in Albuquerque, but JPW. I then find out he and a photographer I assisted in 2005 ( Robert Reck ) are best buds and JPW lives here! I knew of his brother back in Syracuse( during that Neo Expressionist era). JPW’s work now seems to reference Edward Hopper. He even said so. Funny how all comes together in the end.

I take photos thinking how they would look as paintings, though people like them as photos.

Finally:

I will keep reading this blog because of yours and others insights. I have learned so much from the discussions and links here. It would be wonderful if you put together a roundtable where a lot of this discussion could be explored. We need churn, it helps in keeping me curious.

Laurence Zankowski

http://www.flickr.com/photos/science/sets/72157612023473806/

On another point. While I am not one to dwell on Tech issues and don’t consider myself a tech head, I am bothered by photographers who claim that the post production work on digital images is necessary to make it look the same as film. Good digital captures are every bit as good as film captures. If a photographer is not getting good results that equal or exceed film, then they don’t know how to use the digital tools correctly. (most DSLR’s can not equal film) We have a retouch department in our studio and the mantra here is do not let Photoshop be an excuse for lazy photography. If a photographer is spending lots of time with photoshop, then they are not doing their photography job properly.

Maybe lightning strikes twice? I had a similar experience with Mr. Salinas where I had a full page composition in a large very successful fashion mag. One year later an exact replica of the shot: styling, lighting, propping, was published in the same mag as a well story by Mr. Salinas. I am feeling like there is a trend here.

I have frequently been presented others photographers’ work as “inspiration”. I find it a little unsavory but I guess that it can be helpful to establish a common visual language. But as a photographer who is trying to establish a semblance of a unique voice, I see it as a jumping off point, not an opportunity take the path of least resistance and simply mimic. Not a good plan for one’s karmic future either.

Your examples are absurd. An original idea that sits in the negative sleeve is hardly worth comparing to exhibits at the NY Photo Festival and a finely printed book.

People think of shit all the time… you have to get it published to own it. It’s always been that way.

http://www.hackelbury.co.uk/artists/vitkine/vitkine_sm.html

Vitkine was shown at Paris Photo some years ago and also at AIPAD here in NYC. It was all shot in the mid sixties and was most likely shot on proper lithographic film before anyone even had a home computer, let alone photoshop.

To clarify, I clearly state that this might well have been a sheer coincidence. We all have similar ideas all the time. No one lives in a vacuum. I do not even question wthat we had the same idea. As I said, I am sure I am not the first to study blown out tires.

I do however think it is a very questionable decision for a curator and a photographer to have found an identical pre-existing body of work prior to even shooting, ignore it and to then promote the Salinas work as a new direction in abstract photography in a festival exhibit. In lieu of that knowledge, why not at least do a different interpretation of the idea? But that is me. I am biased no doubt.

Several years ago, I was working on what I thought was a great idea about the embedded rubbish in the tarmac of NYC streets. I then became aware of a really beautiful series that had already been done by a photographer named …..Horacio Salinas. I dropped the project. It was the right (or for me it was the smart) thing to do….. and I then found out Irving Penn had done the same idea years earlier. Of course he did.

The point being that I believe we should at least attempt to make new statements. We are human and we are all inspired by those who precede us. I am hugely inspired by The Bechers, Callahan, Rodchenko, Renger-Patzsch and Blossfeldt. But I have never consciously replicated what they all did. What would be the point? STATES?…. definitely came from seeing the Bechers and Rodchenkos work. Is it the same thing? I like to think it is not. Others may well feel differently, as I may now find out.

The power lines are actually inspired by 4 images that know of that Callahan did in 50’s in Chicago. Frank Breuer did a recent series mostly from the Boston area on telephone poles/ lines in situ for DWELL. The Tokyo series is so completely chaotic that the images really turn into an abstracted study of positive and negative space which is quite divorced from what the subject is in reality. Inspired by other work? Absolutely. Same final product? I hope not.

http://www.artnet.com/usernet/awc/awc_workdetail.asp?aid=424216480&gid=424216480&cid=79783&wid=424299374&page=1

Did Griffith steal from Robert Longo?

Recheck the Men in the Cities series again, you tell me.

Does the fact that Marcel Duchamp talked about filming/ images of telephone lines come into play? I have been taking photos of telephone poles/ lines for years, does this mean I am copying Griffith’s work?

Come now, there so much image making / taking going on right now, no one person can say they are the first and all others should stop their work because they are “copying”.

A little off topic:

Does the fact that forensic photography of car accidents, tire failures, lab testing fall outside the region of art?

When Hockney did his polaroid series, was it his idea, or the polaroids that mattered to you as the viewer? What about the imitators of that style? Are we really visionaries when we are using artificial means for acquisition( emulsion / sensor)? Do we really know how the emulsion is going to work or the sensor?

Ending with:

I guess that in a Unified Field Theory, ideas are for everyone and therefore belong to everyone. Some folks are just better at revealing them. Does not make them owners nor originators.

Talk about copy the image of the man in mid air. Robert Longo

http://www.google.com/search?q=Robert+Longo&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

And If you’re concept is based on serial photography then you have realistically high chance that someone else might work on the same thing. Its bad for both photographers but just seems to be the risk in doing it. Its really pointless to get all moral and upset about it.

I once presented a project to a picture editor. He said he had just seen the same concept form another artist. I wasnt aware of it and had just worked on it for a year. I have heard countless stories like this and in a lot of cases nobody knew of the other.

Its a tragic situation but maybe Salinas just had the same idea, had already put a lot of time and resouces in it when he maybe found out about Griffiths work. Who is to say he should have stopped it.

When I have learned one thing about photography it is that it’s the medium where two people can very easily produce very similar work.

I was not aware of Jamie’s photographs. If I or the editors at Muse had known of it, I certainly would not have shot my “Fossil” story with the same imprint material. The Muse story was about iconic accessories that are in our cultural memory and likely to remain so a very long time — I was thinking about about Egyptian hieroglyphs and dinosaurs more than anything else. Conceptually, the two stories are quite different, but I agree they share similar formal qualities.

Oh well, c’est la vie. And here I was thinking I had shot something relatively unique. Duh. Silly me.

As for Salinas and Ryan, only they know if they were aware of Christopher’s work before the commission. Unless there’s some weird personal backstory going on, it seems highly unlikely to me that they would intentionally copy another photographer’s work.

Best,

- M

To answer more directly, I have made very little from selling books, and nothing in comparison to what the book meant to my commercial career. You really need to be selling over 25,000 copies of a book to make any significant money. Which is a very rare moment in the photo book world.

Back in 2000 when I was talking to Abrams about publishing States, they told me that ‘In the American West’ by Avedon, which was in its 5th or 6th printing, had yet to break 100,000 copies after over 14 yearsof being in print. We are talking about one of the most revered books in photographic history.

I would follow up with one last question: When you say the book transformed your career, could I assume that the financial rewards from the book were more commercial assignments, and not actual direct proceeds from book sales?

I just think there’s a perception out there that photographers actually profit from book publishing. I’m sure there are some exceptions, ie Anne Geddes, but for serious photography, no money in publishing a book.

Could I assume that people saw your book and said, “I’d like to work with that guy. I like his vision”, and then they gave you a commercial assignment possibly not even related to the content of the book?

That the book was a very expensive promo piece? (But in your case, luckily, a very lucrative one too?)

Thank you for your candid answers.

Regarding the book, I do not think the fact that I had previously been a moderately successful fashion photographer in Europe had anything to do with publishing STATES. I think it was the 6 or 7th book powerhouse had ever published. It came very highly recommended by Art Director Patrick Li, who was at the time working at Baron & Baron who had recently designed a book for powerhouse. I think I was lucky….. and I am not sure it would be so easy now.

To answer the second part, yes…… it really was shooting what I loved. But I was also putting my money where my mouth was, as the project was not cheap. You have to have faith that you are right……. cause if your wrong, it could be crippling.

quoting: “Little did I know at the time how it would completely transform my career.”

Wow, you save the action-packed power sentence for last huh? That last sentence is a perfect segue into Part Two of the interview. Or, that last sentence could probably occupy two parts in itself.

One question: How much did it help that you were already established, leading to the fact that someone took a gamble on the book? If you were a newcomer, even with the same new images, would they have taken the chance on the book?

I just think anyone reading your comment would be hanging on that last sentence, because it would mean that “shooting what I love” could/would transform a career. That’s everyone’s dream.

Can you speak to that?