IDRIS KHAN. Home > Artists A–Z > Idris Khan > Artworks for Sale Idris Khan (British, 1978) artnet—The Art World Online. ©2014 Artnet Worldwide Corporation. All rights reserved. artnet® is a registered trademark of Artnet Worldwide Corporation, New York, NY, USA. LEE FRIEDLANDER. Photography has generally been defended on the ground that it is useful, in the sense that the McCormick reaper and quinine have been useful. Excellent and persuasive arguments have been developed in this spirit; these are well known and need not be repeated here.
It should be added however that some of the very best photography is useful only as juggling, theology, or pure mathematics is useful --- that is to say, useless, except as nourishment for the human spirit. When Lee Friedlander made the photograph reproduced here he was playing a kind of game. The game is of undetermined social utility and might on the surface seem almost frivolous. The rules of the game are so tentative that they are automatically (though subtly) amended each time the game is successfully played. The larger, dark figure reflected in the shop window is (obviously) the photographer. From "Looking at Photographs " by John Szarkowski - Lee Friedlander photo library - Lee Friedlander / recommended books Friedlander. ANDRE KERTESZ. Perhaps more than any other photographer, Andre Kertesz discovered and demonstrated the special aesthetic of the small camera.
These beautiful little machines seemed at first hardly serious enough for the typical professional, with his straightforward and factual approach to the subject. Most of those who did use small cameras tried to make them do what the big camera did better; deliberate, analytical description. Kertesz had never been much interested in deliberate, analytical description; since he had begun photographing in 1912 he had sought the revolution of the elliptical view, the unexpected detail, the ephemeral moment ___ not the epic but the lyric truth. When the first 35mm camera ___ the Leica ___ was marketed in 1925, it seemed to Kertesz that it had been designed for his own eye. Like his fellow Hungarian Moholy-Nagy, he loved the play between pattern and deep space; the picture plane of his photographs is like a visual trampoline, taut and resilient. " by John Szarkowski. WALKER EVANS.
The abstract visual games that had entranced and delighted most adventurous photographers during the decade of the twenties had lost much of their charm by the early thirties. Our fondness for historical symmetry makes it tempting to ascribe the change to the problems of the period and to a heightened awareness among artists of social and political priorities. Unfortunately this explanation, neat as it is, does not quite fit the facts, which seem to demonstrate no dependable correlation between realism and social commitment, or between abstraction and social indifference. Moholy-Nagy, deeply committed to the social utility of art, was a formalist; Brassai, the ultimate realist, seems totally immersed in the specifics of life, and scarcely aware of society. Edward Weston was not only apolitical but basically asocial; Paul Strand on the contrary has always been profoundly concerned with the social fabric.
From "Looking at Photographs " by John Szarkowski - Walker Evans photo library - EUGENE ATGET.