A rebuttal to “Is Photography Yorgos Lanthimos’s True Calling?”

A rebuttal to Is Photography Yorgos Lanthimos’s True Calling?

To answer Aperture Foundations rhetorical question: no.

Photography is one of the most accessible artistic mediums. Anyone can take a decent picture. Here we have the premiere fine art photography publication Aperture Foundation reporting on an established filmmaker as a ‘fledgling’ photographer while advertising his published photobooks created on the sets of multi-million dollar films starring A-list actors. The article calls them “narratives that live somewhere between photography and cinema” and it feels exactly the kind of fawning coverage plaguing criticism across all arts. Even The New Yorker has recently observed music criticism losing its edge to celebrity worship and access journalism. It’s happening everywhere.

I’ve seen a few of Yorgos Lanthimos films. I thought they were interesting and unique. Poor things was a visual carnival, Kinds of Kindness was mind-bendingly horrific, I couldn’t look away from either of them. Bugonia is on my watchlist. At this point I consider myself a moderately avid fan of Yorgos’ films, as hes one of few directors whose work I actively seek out. The ability to make a movie is probably the ultimate test of managerial prowess, it’s an unbelievable skill to coordinate all the moving parts filmmaking requires. It involves hundreds of people working together for a common goal, and its success often rests on the skill of a director to keep all the aforementioned parts well oiled and moving smoothly. He’s clearly an amazing filmmaker. So to answer aperture’s rhetorical question - no, I think he should continue making movies.

I can see why the solo act of photography might be appealing to an exhausted director on set as a way to blow off some creative steam, as mentioned in the interview it was a way to regroup mentally and make portraits with his large format camera if things weren’t going well during filmmaking. Stanley Kubrick was well known to photograph behind the scenes as well. Filmmaking is a photographic endeavor, after all.

The images highlighted in the article are technically good, intriguing and well composed with a noir-like mysteriousness. They were made on large and medium format film, created with an appreciation of the craft of photography. But they offer little of the deep artistic and narrative substance Aperture says they contain. They are a fascinating collection of behind the scenes imagery. But Aperture is elevating them to a level of undeserved lauded praise simply because of the famous director behind them.

To me, the intrigue behind most of these images is the immediate recognition of the stars the director has access to, the costumes and sets designed by talented craftspeople, already in place, all lit by hundreds of thousands of dollars of professional lighting. The environments depicted in these images were constructed by artists and IATSE workers for the foremost purpose of filming a movie. Anyone with access to a film set can make interesting images because such an environment has been crafted by talented folks working tirelessly behind the scenes for the sole purpose of looking good on camera. Is Yorgos within his right to photograph on the set he’s managing and in charge of? Absolutely, and they’re superb images! I’m reminded of Jeff Bridges behind the scenes images of his movies with his iconic Widelux camera. Bridges’ images are fun and evoke nostalgia, but they don’t feel like they are trying to be anything else besides candid shots from behind the scenes of his well known films.

Photography is perhaps the most democratic art form today. There are brilliant images made by talented young photographers of all walks of life every day that truly push the limits of photography and craft deep meaning that deserve recognition. Instead of uncritically platforming a successful director’s hobby work and new publication on the threshold of his new movie, Aperture could use that editorial space to continue championing true ‘fledgling’ photographers whose primary vision is in still photographic imagery, rather than a byproduct of success in a motion picture career.

Meanwhile other photography oriented journalism outlets like PetaPixel have been doing the hard-hitting reporting we’re all asking for with the sort of smooth brain articles like ‘Hot Girls Are Using AI…’. So maybe I should be grateful that at least Aperture Foundation is still putting out quality in articles like this one regarding the living legend Daniel Arnold.