Quick, Think: Who Would You Rank As The Greatest Photographers?

So - Paul Strand deemed unworthy the top ten, with at least seven fellow American photographers ranked above him?

I wonder how Galenson would factor in the following:

"Paul Strand is the greatest American photographer… simply the biggest, widest, most commanding talent in the history of American photography."

Susan Sontag

The author might do well to weigh in copyright and the fees demanded by rights holders, both of which impact the frequency with which images are reproduced.

Just FYI, re the first comment below, Paul Strand came in tied for # 11, with Alvin Langdon Coburn, on this list.

I've written about this topic before, specially to Artworld Salon.

What David Galenson has employed is called "historiometry," and as crude or ludicrous as it might seem -- the reputation of artists is to be determined by publishers balking at the cost of book illustrations? --it has a 140-year-old tradition. It's generally taken to have been invented (or actually, popularized) by British eugenicist Francis Galton with his 1869 book, Hereditary Genius. The link between Galton's racialist ideas and his promotion of a certain kind of white, European achievement continues to dog historiometry.

For example, one of the better known recent applications in book form came out in 2003: Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 by Charles Murray -- he of the infamous Bell Curve. In it, Murray set out to compile "humanity's resume" by determining all of the "greatest" in human endeavors: the Einsteins, the Michelangelos, the Lao Tzus. Murray compiled his list of 4,002 significant figures from standard encyclopedias and art histories.

And he did this by, yes, counting the number of lines each genius received in each book. Then he counted the color plates in each book.

In short, Murray's greats -- and Galenson's -- are those people who have already been called great by others. The solipsism of this is plain. The biases and economic or cultural limitations of those people who write, edit and publish art histories is rarely addressed in these studies. I have not read Galenson's working paper so perhaps he addresses this issue by essentially noting that these photographers are not, by any objective standard, "great." They can be considered mostly great in reputation -- as far as historiometry is concerned.

One test of any such scientific system, for example, is consistency, and all historiometrists buttress their work with large databases and in-depth statistical analyses. Yet Murray flatly declared, "I am choosing one type of expertise and rejecting another, allying myself with the classic aesthetic tradition and rejecting" what we might term ˜relativistic modernism." Conservative critics loved this, but it did tend to undermine any claims toward objectivity or consistent results despite all the charts and statistics; what Murray was making was clearly a political argument, not a scientific case.

Another test of such a system -- especially for cultural critics -- is the fineness of the system's distinctions. Having compiled far too many year-end "top 10" lists, I know that it's always easy to pick the top two or three spots, the Stieglitzes and Steichens. Who's going to argue against Dante being superior to Carl Sandburg? Or Walker Evans over Bruce Weber?

But it's the choices toward the bottom that tell you more about the values in play, when it's often a muddle among three dozen writers kinda-sorta like Sandburg, and you have to pick one.

In Murray's book, he makes an arbitrary 50 percent cut off because there were so many figures cited by only a single source -- which also seems to be what Galenson did, judging from the point about listing only photographers who are mentioned multiple times. What this meant to Murray is that as beloved as they might be, James Thurber and Dorothy Parker simply aren't up there with John Steinbeck or Theodore Dreiser.

Perhaps. But this is a difference in genre, not genius. Thurber and Parker were humorists. They weren't even trying to write major novels. The same point could be made with 'commercial' vs. 'gallery' photography.

Ergo, historiometry -- like the Oscar for best movie -- has a definite bias toward the big and publicly defined "important" as being inherently more "profound." Ditto when it comes to the epic or tragic over the comic. Mahler is valued, Milhaud isn't. Michelangelo, not Miro.

This approach also presupposes that all of these artists were, in effect, in one big competition with each other, creating works intentionally to supplant one another in the history books instead of, as with commercial vs. gallery photography, working in entirely different directions, in very different traditions, with different aims and limits.

In short, as you note at the end of your post, this isan intriguing parlor game, it can produce some glancing insights and provoke discussion. But its statistical basis provides only a veneer of objectivity or truth.

I'm not familiar with Professor Galenson's work, so can only judge from this article. In which case:

Professor Galenson's approach can, in the right context, be refreshing and can alter perspectives in useful ways. But as a way of measuring 'greatness'? Seriously?

The great John Cage had an enormous - indeed, immeasurable - influence on late twentieth century music, but if you measured him against the reproductive power of and column inches devoted to the many pop musicians he influenced he would appear to be a minnow.

Land Art pioneer Michael Heizer is another example. Many would rank him as one of the 20th century greats, more important than, for example, fellow Land Artist Robert Smithson. But the latter would probably have a considerable edge in Galenson's universe given Smithson's greater desire and knack for popularizing his chosen medium and the resulting exponentially greater media coverage of his works, notably Spiral Jetty.

In Heizer's case, he consciously shun publicity for decades, only providing media access to his monumental project "City" as a last resort when trying to repel government intrusion on his construction site by publicizing his cause.

Does a choice to "fly under the radar" in this way - and thus disqualify him from being featured in the anointed anthologies - lessen his greatness as an artist?

Similarly with Paul Strand. For a number of reasons unrelated to his greatness as an artist, he has hitherto flown largely under the mainstream radar. His work was artificially suppressed, and, many would argue, is under-represented as a result - including in this article. Yet many of those in the know would place him without hesitation alongside Stieglitz, Weston, Evans and Steichen as one of the greatest American photographers of the 20th century.

I just don't buy it.