ROSALING KRAUSS:

KEY POINTS AND THOUGHTS

In order to make this easier for me to write and to follow I have highlighted my
written work:
Purple fill in words
Green key points
Yellow quotes
Blue My thoughts
This has enabled me to whittle my written work down but still keep to the point
in both the key points and my thoughts about them.
In this very thorough writing by Rosalind Krauss about Photographys Discursive
Spaces: Landscape/View she talks about Photographys place in art and in
exhibition.
She begins by using Timothy OSullivans Tufa Domes as examples of different
discourses
Image one The Original image:
Now viewed as Art (Aesthetic Discourse) in the sense that it is an interpretation
of a view an example of the mysterious, it shows no proper information about
where it was taken.
Image two Lithographed altered Image
This image has been copied by a Lithographer but has also been altered (by the
lithographer) the missing information from the image to show where it was taken
(for example a horizon which now stands out more, a sense of where the rocks
stood (water) is now obvious due to ripples and reflections and the rocks look as
they have now been more equally exposed) has now been replaced all in order to
for the image to fit and to be used within the discourse of geology
(topographical).
The discourse of geology is a different set of criteria to the aesthetic discourse;
for GD (geology discourse) this is about mapping out surveying the land which
is why all detail needed to be replaced.
A couple of notes:
1) The first image (the one not altered) is definitely the more pleasing image
out of the two.
2) How was this information replaced - this part confuses me some-what, as
I understand it the lithographer copies an image however somehow

information that was missing from the image has been put back, how
exactly was this done?
RK (Rosalind Krauss) then asked what discursive space photography belongs as a
whole;
We are given an insight by RK about the art world in the 1860 and how the place
of art in the world of exhibition (and what it means to the artist to be accepted in
this prestigious world of galleries /salons) affected the approach to painting
landscapes, in a manner that flattens and takes a way depth - it was rapid and
these images became increasingly more 2D like in appearance, but artists found
more ways to respond to the gallery wall sometimes for example making the
landscape the actual size of the wall.
Quote Historians of photography have assimilated their medium to the logic of
the history
My Thoughts:
This is trying to say that they are looking back into photographys history and
they are looking to see if the trends of the painting world and the style of the
photography world are the same at the same time and therefore trying to
legitimise
the
photography
at
this
time/era
in
the
world
of
Art/exhibition/aesthetic discourse.
The legitimacy of it is called into question for good solid reasons and that brings
us back to Timothy OSullivan (and those like him) the question is did OSullivan
mean to create art or was the sole purpose to be topographical to record/survey
the land as it was as at this time a lot of photography was done for this reason
(as research shows).
Peter Galasi his aim was to legitimise photography as an art he tried to do this
by organizing/fronting an exhibition Before Photography.
To properly legitimise Photography Galasi needed to dig past family prestige and
money and really look at the formal structures of the Art of Photography and
show that 19th Century photography was developed within the discipline of
painting.
Rosalind Krauss uses more photographers (OSullivan, Samuel Bourne and
Auguste Salzmann) and their work to show examples were the trend of the era
eradicating depth and giving a 2D impression was put in to their images.
The problem with Galasis argument? Theres no evidence to back up that
OSullivans actual intention was for his work to be anything more than survey or
geological as the only work that was distributed was through stereography,
which is a different medium to the one which captured the Tuffa Domes.
Thoughts

Two different mediums for two different types of picture one so obviously
intended for survey/topographical, and the other? Was it his intention to dive into
aesthetic discourse with stereography and to use the other medium for the
topography?
In paragraph three and four of page 315 it echos my thoughts
about
ownership/authorship career etc. in my eyes Sullivan is not the sole person
behind this art if he is not the one working the camera, how you approach the
picture in a technical fashion is something you learn though experience and
often decided not beforehand but on the n the spot and unless OSullivan
specifically chose EXACTLY (technically)how the image was to be taken then he is
only part responsible anyway because he did not physically do it his is not a
skill mastered; RK discusses careers and mastership of a skill/art in less than one
year and less than one decade, in my eyes it would appear mastership was only
seen in technical terms and not one of composition but even then would that not
mean that they had a FULL UNDERSTANDSTANDING of this field and would then
be making breakthroughs that nobody had ever done, dreamt or even considered
possible wouldnt they be known for questioning boundaries.
It has been decided by scholars that 19 th Century photographs belong in a
museum, that they are seen as aesthetic discourse, that these images are
landscapes not views.
There are still problems still things to clear up -- oeuvre (a collection of work)
and Authorship;
I cannot help but wonder whos the artist? So many of these images that make
up oeuvres are done by the photographers photographer and this just does not
sit right with me; for example the employees of Mathew Brady and Francis Friths.
Which employee took what was not archived which is a shame because what I
would like to do is get the names of the employees next to the pictures they took
and see if they have a genuine style of their own that comes out in the views by
the same concept artist surely the work by these men cannot be considered
an oeuvre of their own as they didnt take them?!My argument would be that the
work should be seen as art but maybe the accredited artist shouldnt actually
be given the credit.
I cant help but wonder about the setup after all it may have been such an
overwhelming task to take a picture/photograph then that it had to be at least a
two man job, but even if this was the case then surely this should be seen as a
collaboration and not just be accredited to one single man/the man that chose
the view and did nothing more.
On discussions of Oeuvres and now moving on to another photographer, Atget it
is trying to be worked out and whether Atgets collective work of say 10,000
images in an Oeuvre, but then goes on to say that if his work is to be seen at Art
and decided that Atget is an artist this his body of work must then be an oeuvre,
but although it has been decide that Atget started to consciously make his work

in that of the genre of aesthetic discourse in 1925 there appears to be an

anomaly.
There is a repetition in location and subject in his work that makes John
Szarkowski wonder, why is their repetition? After all there could be several
plausible explanations for this; there are four possible reasons behind it
1)

He was trying to make glorious pictures and succeeded and failed in

equal amounts.

2)

That these pictures were/are the result of his gradual growth of an

artist from his novice
times to his more experience times.

3) That he worked not only for himself but for others to, and the work for
himself was a higher standard because he was harder to please.

This one is a little harder to explain in my own words but I shall attempt it
regardless; Atget had something to say something complex, a message he
wanted to relay through images one about the spirit of his own culture
and because of the goal, he was willing to accept the results of his own
best efforts, even when they did not rise above the role of simple records
(I think this is a bit of a stretch).

It is believed by Rosalind Krauss that all of these options could be true to a point
but still there is something about the last statement that she wishes to highlight
and that is of acceptance, the idea that Atgets vision was vaster than his ability
and just accepted it; he did not try to get each picture just right in order to have
his vision visually perfect, I can appreciate this opinion of Rosalind Krauss.
This idea and others about Atgets work and the reason behind it bothered
Szarkowski and he wanted answers, but predominately he wanted to know why?
Why did Eugene Atget revisit those sites?
Szarkowski was not the only one that wanted to get to the bottom of this
mystery and it was decided that the code behind his intentions needed to be
deciphered.
This must have been a laborious task, after all a sorting of 10,000 plates (each
plate was numbered, yet the numbers are not strictly successive although in
some parts of his oeuvre it shows a running theme/message it then disperses
not to be picked up again) had to be viewed and made sense of in accordance
to the other images they were then group together in categories and sub
categories.

The images when finally (and almost definitely correctly) deciphered where
shown to be in what Rosalind Krauss calls the systematization of a catalogue of
topographic subjects; divided into five major series and many smaller sub-series
and groups.
The museum of modern art and Maria Morris Hambourg (with the possession of
the key which will unlock the mysteries) are/ apparently resisting using this
key as it could potentially disprove the theories that Atgets work was
intentionally that of the aesthetic discourse and this is pretty much what
happens when it is used, they find that Atgets coding system is one that
originates from card files of the libraries and topographical collections for which
Atget worked.
In short and quite simply (as I understand it) Atgets work is that of a catalogue
they are the way they are in order to document (changes?) to take record for a
master plan which he is only a small part.
This written work by RK is about the discursive space of photography whats its
place in art and in exhibition; I admit that this is a tricky subject, I would say
even more now than when this was written, our whole lives are now flooded with
photography which can be taken with nearly any device and has a part to play in
every discourse imaginable.
Although I agree (how could I not) that painting and photography have shared
likeness as we (photographers) have adopted the painters compositional
technique (to a degree) however sometimes I feel that the approach to
legitimising photography in the art world comes across desperate by the
scholars; photography has a great history of its own which has gradually
progressed into a recognised art over time. Things are never cut and dry, and I
believe that you will always find a bit of the artist or producer of work in any type
of image even one of pure documentation, of any genre (painting, drawing,
photographer etc.) I would say that probably started at the beginning of time
humans arent robots its in most peoples nature to leave a personal touch even
it its one only they could see.
I believe that the photography of the past should be acknowledged and
celebrated as not only stepping stones but beauty in their own right; I will (like
RK) use OSullivans tufa domes as an example. Yes it appears that the image
was initially for the discourse of geology but in its original form it is Art, Whether
it was intentional to make it Art I dont think matters as many breakthroughs'
throughout history have been accidents, but these accidents/momentary
experimentation.