Some Progress and Debate

Progress has officially been made in the construction of my website.  http://elisetanner.carbonmade.com/

On August 12 I updated my deviantArt journal and the resulting discussion was quite surprising, yet thoroughly enlightening. deviantArt is the website I have been using to host my images for the past five or so years. In those five years I've watched the website change immensely. In this journal entry I listed some of my complaints about deviantArt 2008. Don't get me wrong, dA has served me well over the years and has introduced me to endless numbers of pieces of art and artists. I discovered my favorite photographer and have made numerous friends while residing on dA.com.

Unless you are a user of deviantart.com, this discussion might not make as much sense. But I'm posting it here because many image host websites similar to dA probably face many of the same issues that we discuss.

This discussion is still in progress and I'm trying to encourage others to join in. Swallowingwords is me, lunothehellion is Bo, Shozen is my friend Jay Sato (and English is his second language).

"I have 5,242 deviations in my deviantwatch right now. It's over a year's worth of deviatwatch updates that I have yet to look through.

So now I've started looking through them, page after page.

And here are my list of complaints:
dead girls
homo eroticism (specifically lesbianism)
bathrooms
edges darkened in photoshop
cheesy titles
SNAPSHOTS of children
studio portraiture of pets
misogyny
blood and gore
TRITE portraits
"effects" added in photoshop

and the list goes on.

Normally I would say, "Who am I to judge when I fail to produce any work of my own?" At this point, I'd rather produce no work than the awful "art" uploaded to this website every day.

The more I learn about photography, the more I grow conflicted. High Art Photography is easily appreciated (for the most part) and wholly respected. But just like in cinema, technology has made it possible for anyone to take a picture or shoot a film and call it Art. This is an old argument, a tired one, really. I don't really know what to think anymore.

Shozen: well thats the dilemma i go through. especially when i was i columbia or even today. either i'm just knowing it now or its just the way it always been. but producing art has become disposable. like the time when the camera became something a photographer can only use, when the disposable came out and people started shooting themselves. they became a photographer too...just cause they have a camera. so does that mean because i have a soccer shoe make me a soccer player? not really. people depend on the material or tools. but they don't know how to use it to its full potential. i've seen a lot of people having the right tools but not really using it the right away. the people who can't afford to are the once who actually know how to use them. 

but yes. this site is great. but i only check it once in awhile as well. i also hate to check deviations that are always the same. like he or she is really good but keeps producing the same stuff. like i wanna see something different. i dont wanna see another deviation of a girl looking like she was dead and nearly naked. it gets tiring.

swallowingwords:"but they don't know how to use it to its full potential."

You've made a valuable point there, and that's what I try to tell myself every time I see these images nextto my own work. However, unlike you, my work isn't remotely inspirational or something I could say is the result of a photographer who knows what she's doing. If I had your talent, then maybe I'd feel that way.

Shozen: i think the problem with the motive to this place is uploading something impress people. but technically we should try to impress ourselves first. which is why sometimes or most times, i just dont give a fuck if people like it or not. i just upload it in here for me. haha. just so happens that people get inspired on some shit i freakin doodled on.

swallowingwords:That's entirely true. I remember when I was in middle school and first discovered dA and thought it was so brilliant that people could review each other's work. So, back then it was all about impressing people, getting them to like what I put up. It wasn't about producing something I thought was beautiful, but what I knew other people would like. That's why everything on this site looks the same. People have grown to understand that contrasty, flashy, studio-looking portraiture will be popular on this website, so that's what we see all the time. The same with portraits of pets...a cute kitten gets thousands of favorites and a landscape photograph that probably took hours to make gets none. For some reason my Hippy photograph has hundreds of favorites (the most any of my others have is maybe 20) and it's a terrible picture in my opinion. It's a snowball affect, the more times its favorited, the more people can view it, therefore its popularity continually grows, whether or not it's a good piece of art.

That's probably how it is in the real world, though.

Shozen:ive even come to realize i dont even browse anymore. i tend to add 3 favorites month and usually from the artists that i 'watch'. 

damn i didnt know this site was around even when you were in middle school. i knew about this from some kid from iowa who came for an interview in columbia and then i got hooked to it. i guess just having people making comments on my work was something fresh. even if i dont see them or dont know of them. guess its a fresh feeling since you're so used to hearing comments from people you know and you try to be humble and or not accept their opinions too much just because you feel like they're just being nice and encouraging you. which i'm sure half the time or most of the time they do mean it but its just hard to take that opinion from your mom or your dad...

although being in DA for a few hours have got me some annoyance. like 

'oh geesh that piece of shit favorited again....whats so good about that crap'

or comments that go

'nice' 

put some constructive comments for gods sake. i can understand if its some kid. but come on. you gotta say something better than nice after nice. at least say you like the composition. the color. what it may trigger you to feel. something deep so you know that the person who created knows you actually looked at it closely and actually took the time to try to absorb what you just did. but not in that pretentious museum way of looking at art.

swallowingwords: I've been on dA since 2002 or 2003, I can't remember which. So, I've been on here for almost the entirety of it's existence. I remember when the big "wallpaper debate" went down. People argued for months over whether the Wallpaper section should exist because the majority of the pieces posted used copyrighted images without proper copyright permissions. This made sense, however, as a fan of numerous wallpaper artists, I saw both sides. The ironic part is that, today, this debate seems frivolous compared to the "art" allowed to posted on here.

I almost never receive comments when someone adds my work as a favorite, and even when they do it's the usual "I like it!" plus an emoticon or two. Back when I actually cared enough to browse artwork (not just the Daily Deviations, which is a whole other argument entirely) I'd make sure to leave constructive criticism, especially with every piece I added to my favorites. Whenever I go back through my favorites I notice I add pieces that aren't specifically popular on the website, and sometimes I catch myself wondering why I added it in the first place. A favorite is based on that initial feeling the piece gives me, which is why I trust my gallery of favorites as legitimate pieces of art.

lunothehellion: Hah, well i'm pretty sure a few of mine at least made one of those.

guilty; 
I fear i've fallen into the same disillusionment trap.

swallowingwords: We're all guilty, I think. This site doesn't really promote good art. I think it's a great place for people who want to spend some free time browsing, but I have a hard time taking anything on here seriously.

lunothehellion: well it takes a keener mind to sort through the bullshit. 
i tend to take very few things seriously anymore

swallowingwords:Well that's just the problem. Art should be taken seriously and our Math/Science/Business oriented society needs artistic people to continue to be proactive in exposing the Art World to society. I like that deviantArt is the kind of website that brings non-artists and artists together, but then the conflict of true art and non art arises. I'd like to say I'm the kind of person that loves the idea of non-artists attempting to make art, so that maybe one day they will become artists, but a website like dA is too political (and by that I mean it's just a popularity contest, numbers)."

If you have any opinions about this discussion please share. It doesn't have to be focused on deviantart, because it applies to all places that host art.