Is Quantity Everything?

Het glas wijn or The Glass of Wine by Johannes Vermeer c. 1660

I was privileged to view the Vermeer exhibition in the Dutch Rijksmuseum recently. Many things struck me. Apart from the incredible mastery and quality of the paintings on view (the Rijks have gathered 28 of his surviving 34 paintings together - Vermeer is credited with painting around 35 images in all), the amount of visitors that have made this exhibition a total sell-out and the time that each visitor studies all 28 paintings is testament to The Guardian’s review of the exhibition:

Vermeer is a camera, a human eye looking at the world with the clarity of the lenses he learned about from scientific pioneers. He has a special place in the modern, camera-addled imagination, for he fabricated the world’s greatest photographs with eye and brush. But he is also like the woman in his The Lacemaker, who doesn’t take her eyes off her detailed work as she melds strands of brilliant colour – threads of flaming red and pearl white.

Indeed, I noticed myself spending a long time in front of particular paintings - such as the Glass of Wine above - and appreciating the depth of field and angles of view that Vermeer was able to portray on a single flat canvas. Viewing this image on a backlit computer screen does little justice to the subject. If you want to view the real deal, then book yourself a visit to the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin after the end of the Rijks exhibition in June.

The main point of this blog article though, is to consider the question of quantity. Vermeer painted ~ 35, 36 paintings. Van Gogh on the other hand produced over 2000 artworks. Renoir 4000. However Taco Dibbits, the General Director of the Rijksmuseum, commenting on Vermeer's paintings, said “Their impact is unforgettable. In a world making constant demands upon us, the calm and intimacy of his work brings time to a standstill".

So we don’t need to produce work en-masse to garner attention.

Or do we?

Whilst the average length of time visitors spend on Instagram is just over 30 minutes per day, the actual view time per image is mere seconds. Seconds viewing but that possibly takes hours (researching the view & lighting, capturing the image and post-processing) in producing. Hours in a digital age. Days in an analogue world. And for this to be just scrolled past, possibly a “like” on Insta or other social media and then forgotten about.

This isn’t a judgement article btw - I’m also culpable as a viewer to scrolling past images that have been proudly presented by the photographer who took a number of painstaking hours in getting this photo to where (s)he wanted it.

I think sometime just before or during Covid and the various lockdowns and chaos over those two years of 2020 and 2021, a photographer that I have a lot of respect for, David duChemin, announced he was withdrawing from social. Arguably he was in a position to do that, having already a serious mailing list, on-line course subscribers and many books to his name. People just starting on their journey, or not as far along it as him, felt it was impossible for them to adopt such a stance. How would people hear of them? See them? Hear them?

Leaving the Vermeer exhibition, I felt myself asking the question as to how active he would have been on Insta, TikTok etc. Looking at the production figures above, I think there is a good argument to be made that the likes of Van Gogh and Renoir would have lived on social whereas Vermeer may not even have opened an account - never mind being an irregular poster.

With so many voices and far better talents “out there”, why should I bother? I saw a post from a friend and colleague on LinkedIn recently which went along the lines of “For each person that gets value from your LinkedIn content, there's 2.5 Million people who couldn't care less, and another 4.5 Million people who didn't see it.”

I think I’ve better things to do - like spend time in actual photography…

If you want to get to know me, I’d be delighted for you to spend some time here. This is my home and you’re welcome. You don’t need to find me on social too often.

Talk to you soon. And yes - I love a Glass of Wine!