November 2005
Postgraduate degrees - Cultural managers - Professional career
Photography has no established artistic past in our country. The sporadic exceptions were not enough to constitute a significant sample of artistic photographic production. Furthermore, the great flowering of photography abroad during the interwar period and after did not seem to interest our compatriots, let alone our photographer-compatriots, since the most important names of the famous photographers were unknown to them.
I have been teaching photography, especially its artistic aspect, for almost 25 years. When I started, the so-called new Greek photography was in its infancy, and the few old and good Greek photographers were barely known. Over the years, I have taught artistic photography to thousands of people aged 15 to 65. Among them were many who later became well-known and good new Greek photographers.
Comparing past years with today, one will undoubtedly realize that photography in our country is now in its best period, that there is a plethora of new photographers, more or less known, who have both knowledge and skills, and that an increasing number of people are interested in artistic photography and know its history and its representatives. However, this rosy picture does not fully satisfy me, even if I partly contributed (and hope to continue contributing) to its formation.
The flourishing of Greek photography coincided with photography's embrace by the Fine Arts, an event that, while interpreted as an upgrade and recognition, essentially denies the unique elements of this new medium. It coincided with the prevalence in the international scene of a specific artistic orientation, which (with a great deal of arbitrariness) we would define in terms of "postmodern" and "conceptual". It coincided with the universal acceptance of a new value named "professional artistic career", something that until today was not only not taken for granted but was considered to contain an inherent contradiction. It coincided with the emergence of the new order of "cultural managers", which also symbolically brings large corporations closer to artistic creation. It finally coincided with the combined omnipotence of various art-related figures who are teachers, curators, gallery owners, and art theorists. The fact that I belong to some of these categories does not make me more lenient in my judgments.
The Greek imitation of Western artistic products has been and is a common phenomenon and partly logical. Thus, contemporary Greek photography can showcase a full sample corresponding to what is produced by foreign photographers and promoted through exhibitions and publications. However, a key difference is that the West has a rich and secure intellectual and artistic past capable of withstanding any seasonal exaggeration and closing any commercial parenthesis whenever necessary. In contrast, carried away by the manifest provincialism that followed our known and largely justified "misery," we invest with uncritical fanaticism in anything that gives us the illusion of belonging to any avant-garde, even if an avant-garde presupposes a background we do not possess.
Our new photographers know much more than the old ones and perhaps have greater talent (although this is something so vague and unstable that it is better not to mention it), but unfortunately, they are mostly motivated by non-artistic reasons. The passion for photography and the need for creation that accompanied some of the pioneers of Greek photography have given way to a passion for career and the need for all kinds of distinction and promotion. It is characteristic that most of our new photographers give more importance to professional establishment, earnings, fame, and social projection than to their personal engagement with the artistic act and its improvement through it. However, if someone initially chose the artistic field, they should not have done so with the above goals in mind. Because these goals are not only more effectively served by other professional activities but may also be necessary in the case of art, yet they are secondary.
What we usually observe today with new photographers is that, after their first or second qualitative and promising presence in the field, they either give up on photography or indulge in the pursuit of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. They thus spend a productive period of their life chasing degrees, just like corporate executives. But obtaining a degree, which has already led to what we might call "university art" and "university teachers' art" (another contradiction), entails many negative aspects. It implies association with teachers whom the student-photographers do not necessarily respect since they are simply necessary for obtaining the degree. And one can see how absurd it is for an artist to be taught by someone they do not admire and appreciate. It entails "university-level" theoretical support for their works, which would instead need sincere and strict artistic (not "scientific") criticism. It entails many months, if not years, of wear in highly specialized theoretical studies that should not concern a creator but only a theorist, even if it is a fact that theoretical training is beneficial in practicing an art. It implies a perception of competition in terms of grades, exhibitions, and promotion. And if all this were done only to find a teaching position, as many claim, it would be understandable. However, there is a suspicion that the pursuit of titles has more to do with their presence and existence in the artistic firmament since very soon without these titles they fear (and perhaps not unjustly) that they will not be socially and commercially accepted as artists. Moreover, it wasn't long ago that a well-known artistic organization announced a visual arts competition requiring participants to be graduates of Fine Arts Schools. And since the number of graduates is dangerously increasing, it is not unlikely that we will see competitions only for holders of postgraduate degrees.
These new and talented young people, our new photographers, who I suppose start with enthusiasm, and whom I know firsthand start with quality, are crushed by the new values. They are no longer allowed to satisfy their artistic idols, those they admired before starting, nor to express their instinct and spontaneity. To gain their much-desired promotion, they must necessarily seek the new and impressive, which is never as new or as impressive as their youth makes them believe. They must worry about their resume more than the essence of their work (usually spending more hours on it than on the work itself) and enrich it with degrees and necessarily some annual new activity. They must have the support of at least one art critic and curator and a journalist (the gender distribution here corresponds to the usual reality). They must convince a gallery, whose owner (or more commonly the owner) rarely knows about photography and permanently confuses it with painting, which they usually appreciate more, that they deserve to open its doors to them.
These young photographers, of course, have all the rights on their side. The theorists, the university teachers, the international galleries, the all-powerful fashions have convinced (or imposed on) them that this and only this is the right path. And in all this, their photography occupies the smallest space and time. The conception of a theme, its theoretical support, the search for suitable exhibition spaces, its promotion, and all the accompanying activities occupy the young creator for significantly more time than what is devoted to the realization of their artistic work.
Some of these young photographers had the strength to turn their backs on the above fashions and continue their work silently. The price is usually their anonymity. Some (and probably few) of the rest may become somewhat affluent, as well as somewhat known. But the time will come (at least I hope) when they will look with contempt and despair at the hours they sacrificed to satisfy the market. They will realize that their seemingly profound thoughts were nothing but simplistic philosophizing intended to satisfy the semi-education and emptiness of the few buyers, even fewer merchants, and either naive or cunning art critics, and that along the way, they forgot the reasons that initially made them start their artistic journey. It will be too late to become brokers, notaries, or merchants. However, it will not be too late to make at least then the good photography they can and which their youth showed them they would do.
The current leveling of artistic values will not be eternal. Every new artist will not always invent new codes to avoid comparison and conflict with the past. And the commercial artistic market will saturate and turn to other directions. And then each photographer will remember the personal confession of Picasso:
"Since art is not the nourishment of the chosen, the artist can express his talent in any idiosyncrasy, with any invention of the spiritual charlatanism. But the refined, the rich, the idle, the essence-refiners, search for the new, the strange, the unprecedented, the scandalous. And I, since Cubism and after, satisfied these gentlemen and the critics with many strange things that crossed my mind, and the less they understood them, the more they admired them. By constantly amusing myself with all these games, the slanders, the enigmas, the brain-teasers, and the tomfooleries, I became famous and indeed very quickly. And fame for a painter means sales, profits, wealth, richness. As you know, I am famous and rich today, but when I am alone with myself, I do not have the courage to consider myself an artist in the ancient sense of the word. Great painters were Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya. I am only a public entertainer who understood his time, who appeased as much as he could the stupidity, vanity, and greed of his contemporaries. My confession is bitter, more painful than it may seem, but it has the virtue of being sincere."
Plato Rivellis