Feedback on my writing from Professor Yasser Aggour

I got an feedback from my professor Yasser on my essay about Walker Evans, Robert Adams, and Ed Ruscha.

One of good advise he gave me was to write about the style of these photogrpahers. I had spend decent amount of the paper discussing their difference and similarities of artistic intention. On the other hand, I should have written more about their styles since my whole structure was made based on similarily of their style. I think I made this mistake since it seemed too obvious visually. However, it is very important to translate visual quality to sentence when you talk about art. It will help to settle standard point of my argument for my readers. Also, by putting them into words, I can analyze them even further.

Also, my argument of Ruscha being inspired by New Topographer is doubtful.
Since his gas station series came out a few years before New Topography show. I remember I've read him being inspired by the show somewhere but I can't quite recall where it was...

I'm attaching my essay below, I appreciate more advise on any technique, grammars, etc.

Here in this essay, I’d like to compare mainly two photographers, Robert Adams and Edward Ruscha. It is very interesting fact that they were both born in same year, had been obviously influenced from same parson, worked with in similar style, however, their intentions were very different. Robert Adams used art to comment about the world and Edward Ruscha used world to comment on art.

Very often Robert Adams and Edward Ruscha’s work are considered as landscape and documentary style. In traditional way of documentary is something represented by the early 20th century photographers such as Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis, who has utilized photography to inform general public, raising awareness of New York City’s problems such as of slams and child labor. It was very direct and simple method of utilizing art to make change in the world.

American Photographer Walker Evans falls into this tradition, However, when Evans has started photographing American West for FSA (Farm Security Administration) in 1935, he has shifted the balance of subjectivity and objectivity compared to former documentary photographers, the subjectivity in his photographs were kept much subtle. (Figure 1) Evans has developed a style in which photographer appears to be absent to the viewer. According to Lewis Baltz, “The ideal photographic document would appear to be without author or art. (…) The power of documentary photograph is linked to its capacity to inform as well as to reflect our perception of the external world.”(Barrow, c7)

This development of the style was soon adopted and further advanced by photographers who worked with landscape in new ways. In 1950’s some artists have shifted their subject matters away from unaltered perfect nature to place where people live on. The exhibition called “"New Topographies: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” was curated by William Jenkins in 1970’s was a show to group these artists all together. The names of the artists who took place in the show include Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Frank Gohlke, and Stephen Shore. They are often categorized as new topographers.

Although he was not included in the show, Edward Ruscha who was already know as pop artist, was greatly inspired by the works of new topographers. In 1963, Rascha has published his first artist’s book titled as “Twentysix Gasoline Stations” (Figure 2), which consists of pictures of twenty-six gas stations along Route 66. These images were presented in very confronting manner and also very casual and automatic qualities. Edward Ruscha photographed often from the other side of the highway, some were blurred since the car he was in was moving or lack of light at night without tripod.

Ruscha took Evans' invisible authorship-documentary style to challenge traditional definitions of the artist as maker in the process of art. Ruscha has very consciously avoided including the aspects of beauty, emotion and opinions in his photographs. As a pop artist, his primary intention was to create a product with mass product finish. Ruscha’s approach to this process was as David Campany describes as “simply using photography in such obvious inartistic way could force a different relation to visual, and a different understanding of the role of the artist.”(Campany, 18) Ruscha’s use of photography was anonymous industrial process and material, similar in manner of former conceptualist Marcel Duchamp’s readymade when he contextualized a urinal as art piece “Fountain” in 1917.

One of the essential characteristics of photography was to look outwards in manner of representational non-expressionism. Therefore, vanguard artists called photography medium of the world. (Campany, 23) This photographic process of artless and descriptive image making was a reaction and manifestation against Abstract Expressionism and picture making attitude. Ruscha ‘s photographs of the gasoline stations were not about gasoline stations as well as Duchamp’s “fountain” was neither about a urinal nor a fountain. His first intention was to make impact on art through this medium as well as numerous other conceptual artists.

However, another photographer who was considered as a new topographer, Robert Adams, was using photographs in more traditional way, utilizing artistic style of Walker Evans to comment on the world. When Adams returned from Europe to his native the Rocky Mountain and the prairies, he has realized how much of human alternation of the nature has destroyed that place. As Thomas Weski describes as “the creation of whole new urban infrastructures and the consequent destruction of the environment drove Adams to take up his camera.”(Dexter, 23)

Adams photographed landscape of where people lived to capture the relation of the inhabitant parts and nature. (Figure 3) His has adopted style of documentary photograph derived from Walker Evans to keep distance emotionally and intellectually from his subject matter. Adams’ images were not judgmental but just as records of the place. They were also artless and authorless images as Evans’. Strictly maintained distance of the photographer and his subject matter allowed Adams to embed honesty without having a problem of vulgar sentimentalism in his series of photographs. However, as John Szarkowski states, “Though Robert Adams’ book assumes no moral postures, it does have a moral. Its moral is that the landscape is, for us, the place we live.”(Barrow, c.5) This execution of highly developed method of photographing landscape is good example of a way use of art.

There are numbers of ways to use art to comment on the world or to use the world to comment on art. However, if artists are able to succeed either to use art or to make statement about art, I believe art is not useless. As culture develops further, we need something to help us push forward to deal with the new realities. Art function as fuel to cultural advancement but also can help us to recognize what is happening as medium or a tool.

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Reference

Badger, Gerry. The Art that Hide Itself – Notes on Photography’s Quiet Genius.

Barrow, Thoma. John Szarkowski., Robert Adams., William Jenkins. and Lewis Baltz.
Reading into Photography: Selected Essays, 1959-1980. University of New Mexico Press, 1982.

Benezra, Neal. and Kelly Brougher, Ed Ruscha. Washington D.C.: Hirshhorn Museum
and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, 2000.

Campany, David. Survey. Phaidon Press,2003.

Dexter, Emma. And Thomas WeskiCruel and Tender. London: Tate, 2003.

Freidus, Marc., Rod Slemmons. Typologies : nine contemporary photographers.
Newport Beach, Calif. : Newport Harbor Art Museum , 1991.

Grundberg, Andy. Crisis of the Real: Writings on Photography Since 1974. Aperture,
2005.