The Inner Slacker Speaks

There have been fewer photographs on this blog recently. Occasionally, I find my need to get out and take photographs declines, and the last month has been such a time. It doesn't usually last long, but such fallow periods are usually the result of a temporary victory of my Inner Slacker over my Inner Puritan and his work ethic.

Photography, as an art medium, has a core problem of being thought to be too easy. Let's be honest, photography is easy. The difference in the level of skill, time, and dedication that is required to practice, say, watercolour painting to the same level of representational adequacy as even the crudest snapshot is enormous. Photography removes those elements -- let's call them "investment" -- from the equation. It's a low-investment medium. People tend not to value low-investment activities, however, and so artists using photography -- wanting their work to be valued -- generally go in one of three compensatory directions.

Some make photography difficult. For example, the investment in exposing large-format film, processing individual sheets by hand, and printing the images out onto hand-coated paper using various complex (and hazardous) "alternative processes" is quite large. But this is "technical" investment. The core process -- letting light in through a hole to expose a light-sensitive medium -- is still the same in its essential simplicity. And concentrating on process, and using recalcitrant mechanisms like tilts, shifts, and tripods, can -- shall we say? -- remove the photographer's attention from the image-making. Difficult photos are not necessarily good photos.

Some make a virtue of that simplicity. Photography is a good match for certain art-philosophical concerns about agency, intention, craft and "conception vs. execution". Skill and talent have had a bad time in the contemporary art world (what, you hadn't noticed?) and using a camera in "idiot" mode neatly sidesteps such embarrassments. "Look", the artist can say, "I am curating, not creating, these mechanically-made images, which do not have any undesirable ideological or aesthetic agenda imposed on them from within my brain. There is no craft fetishism here! They are simply the world as it is". If you are so inclined (and can afford a good lawyer) you can take this a logical step further, and "appropriate" photographs made by other people. Yes, we're looking at you, Richard Prince.

Others rely on subject matter. The kit may be simple to operate, but it can be used in situations that are intimidating or inaccessible to most people. For example, approaching (or confronting) complete strangers is astonishingly hard to do, especially if they are hostile, and/or armed and unpredictable. Placing oneself in a landscape and waiting for the right combination of light and weather requires planning, persistence and patience. Even carefully composing and lighting a portrait or still-life is beyond the capacity of 99.9% of camera owners. The work of "subject" photographers has an obvious "wow" factor. At its best, you have documentary work like that of Sebastiao Salgado or insightful explorations of landscape like Richard Misrach's; at its worst, you have the exquisitely dull, self-described "fine art" landscape photography of any number of calendar-art photographers.

I don't consciously do any of these, but have to say that, for me, the low-investment factor of photography is a big attraction. Not for any ideological reasons, but because I have tried a number of high-investment media, and know that I am too lazy to achieve anything worthwhile in them. I suffer from an urge to make pictures, have a reasonable degree of picture-making talent, but am totally lacking in application. Take etching, for example. I love the look and feel of intaglio prints, and some while ago decided to learn how it was done.

First, you must prepare a plate. The simple technique I was shown involved cutting, polishing, bevelling and degreasing a zinc plate, then heating it and applying a waxy coating or "ground" to the plate. You then make your drawing using any tools that can make marks through the ground to expose the metal. When you have finished, the plate is immersed in an acid bath, to etch away the exposed areas of plate ...

No, I'm sorry, I've already lost interest, and so have you, I can tell. It can take weeks to finish a decent plate. Suffice it to say I only ever managed to make four or five etchings in total. The end result (depending on your skill at both drawing and making the prints) can be very seductive -- check out the work of Leonard Baskin, a frequent collaborator with Ted Hughes -- but it can equally well be very dull, as such a complex and time-consuming procedure encourages a conservative approach. Spontaneous it ain't.

Like most people with a persuasive Inner Slacker, I'm a great one for trying things, and dropping them. Over the years I have made drawings, painted, etched, made lithographs and linocuts, but still couldn't fill a halfway decent portfolio with my work. But, since starting to photograph seriously around 1995, something clicked, and damned if I don't find I have now exhibited locally and internationally, self-published a dozen or more books, and have made enough coherent bodies of work to rival the output of all but the most prolific artists. How did that happen?

Sometimes my Inner Puritan worries that making photographs in this low-investment style isn't difficult enough to warrant the embarrassing attention-seeking that "art" entails. That's OK, counters my Inner Slacker, we don't want that much attention anyway. Otherwise, how can we take the odd month off? Relax...