PROJECTS
Phillip Soupault: The Present State of Photography
Translated by Robert Eric Wolf
After being scorned, neglected, and slandered, around 1923 photography suddenly began to a vogue still difficult to characterize. As always when any sort of new fashion is involved, all sense of proportion was quickly lost. The craze knew no bounds. Photography simply had to be considered an art, at whatever cost. What was really serious was the photographers began to believe themselves artists, and everybody rushed to confirm them in that conviction. Let’s not exaggerate, But when all is said and done, that claim to high status would not really not have mattered very much if the photographers, on the pretext of “making art,” had not suddenly and deliberately neglected the very experiences they ought to have been pursuing further. With a very few exceptions, the sort of exceptions that prove the rule, photographers tried to turn out paintings: that is, with very different materials they set out to follow in the wake of painters. As a consequence their attitude became totally distorted and their point of view outright dangerous. If instead of Prising to the skies the photographers efforts and the results they were obtaining (some of which, I must say, are truly remarkable) people had taken the trouble to give careful study to the technique of photography, perhaps we might have been spared those uncoloured paintings that bore one so quickly.
What needs especially to be stressed is that a photograph above all else is a document, and it should from the start be considered as such. It can represent a subject to be exploited in painting or even literature; but conversely, it should never be detached from its subject or even from its usefulness. What photographers ought to do now is forget art and orient their activity in a direction likely to prove infinitely more fruitful. If they persevere along the path they have chosen, continuing in that essentially artistic domain, they risk seeing their efforts end in miserable failure. It is obvious that the beauty of a photograph is totally different from the beauty of a painting: one could even say it is at the furthest extreme. Those who believe in photography and have faith in its future are beginning to understand the danger. Coming years will see the most solidly established reputations sink into oblivion, and only those who are willing to give some serious thought to their metier and rid themselves of all artistic pretentions will be able to carry their effort forward to any useful purpose.
It is clear that the experiment attempted by Arts de metiers graphiques, this comparison of ten photographs of the same face, gives convincing evidence that, for photographers not afraid of renouncing their misplaced ambitions, a passionately interesting adventure lies ahead. This album obliges us to believe that all hope is not lost, but since the collaborators in this special number of Arts et metiers graphiques have the courage to face up to the most urgent problems
Original publication: Phillip Soupault, “Etat de la photogaphie,” Photographie (Paris 1931)
The poet and novelist Phillipe Soupault (b.1897) founded the avant-garde literary review with Andre Breton and Louis Aragon in 1919. In that same year he and Breton carried out a famous experiment in automatic writing which was published as Les Champs magnetiques. Active in Paris Dada and the early surrealist movement, Soupault was expelled from the surrealist group by Breton 1926. His subsequent novels carried him progressively further from surrealism and towards a lyrical realism. This short essay appeared as the introduction to the second Photographie annual published by the magazine Arts et metiers graphiques. The annual served as a yearly showcase for the work of the most highly regarded international photographers. In his essay Soupault describes a widespread turn away from photographic experimentation that took place at the end of the 1920`s, accompanied by a new interest in photography as a medium of realistic imagery. He belittles the notion of photography`s kinship to art and stresses the value of its contribution as a visual document, advising photographers to attend to subject matter and craft and to set aside “artistic pretentions.”
The photographs Soupault cites at the end of the essay are ten strikingly different portraits of the same female model made by ten photographers (including Andre Kertesz, Germaine Krull, Man Ray, Maurice Tabard, and George Hoyigen-Heune), which were published in Photographie.
Here at Herbalverse we like experimenting and pushing boundaries through projects in our spare time. Some of the subject matter is controversial. Some may find the projects and views personally offensive. However, Herbalverse neither condemn`s nor applauds the views expressed by the artists and authors. Herbalverse is merely a platform hosting individual projects to further critical debate and conversation in the various subject matter. Here are some projects showing the wonder of the Herbalverse.
