Section
Three: The Legends
Alexey Brodovitch - Brodovitch on Photography
Unfortunately,
the extract is not referenced. Shame as
it is quite good: clearly written and
obviously based on years of experience as an editor and teacher.
On what makes
good photograph:
“A
photograph is tied to its time—what
is good today may be a cliché
tomorrow.”
“...the problem of the
photographer is to discover his own language, a visual ABC’s
to explain this event. The photograph is not only a pictorial report; it is
also a psychological report. It represents the feelings and point of view of
the intelligence behind the camera.”
“It
is every photographer’s responsibility to discover new images and a new
personal way of looking at things. If he can do this his pictures will command
attention and have surprise quality.”
He notes the
insipidness of most images and feels that much of this comes from too much
attention to staging images, rather than letting them happen.
“...things should be used
which could happen, not things which are obviously posed, obviously artificial
only to meet the needs of that ad.”
He believes
cropping is an important tool, even though some purists insist on perfecting
framing within the camera at the time of the event. He argues that photographers should make
three to four prints from each negative cropped differently.
On the act of
seeing/looking:
“There
are two phases of seeing in the making of a picture. The first takes place when
the photograph is actually shot. This is when the instinctive decision is made
which results in the picture being recorded on the film. The second seeing
comes in examining the contact prints of the pictures. It is important to be
able to recognize the pictures which express your viewpoint and also how these
pictures can be printed and cropped to bring out that view point. It is also
important to be able to recognize the lucky accidents which can often result in
good pictures.”
On developing
style, he notes the tendency of new photographers to shoot everything and
anything.
“He
must learn that shooting just for the sake of shooting is dull and unprofitable
and he must develop a general
tendency in his work. With this maturity the photographer will begin to develop
his own photographic vocabulary to express new discoveries of vision and
understanding.”
On education, he
notes that in his job as editor he could always tell from which school students
had arrived as they delivered images of similar style and presentation. He fears too much cliche is the product of
formal education.
“Rather
than a teacher in the accepted sense, what is required is someone to tease or
irritate the student and to help him discover himself.”
Finally, on the
career prospects of photographers, he notes:
“The
creative life of a commercial photographer is like the life of a butterfly.
Very seldom do we see a photographer who continues to be really productive for
more than eight or ten years.”
Helen Gee - Limelight
(Excerpt)
Career gallery
owner (named Limelight) who showcased the work of such photographers as Berenice Abbott, Robert
Frank, Julia Margaret Cameron. This excerpt describes the day she got the
idea for her coffee shop gallery, but doesn't say much more. The full book might make an interesting read,
though.
The Privilege
to Work for Artists - An Interview with Peter MacGill, Director,
Pace/MacGill Gallery
Minuscule
excerpt that makes two good points, both on approach to work:
“Make
photographs because you believe in what you are doing, not because you think
people might want to buy them. Stay away from what you have seen or done
before. Nurture your convictions. If you find yourself in a corner, photograph
your way out.”
“The
best artists are committed to the development of their ideas and the
advancement of aesthetics—not
a bad ambition which, if developed properly, will have great impact.”
Visualizing
Martha - An Interview with Gael
Towey, Creative Director, Martha Stewart Omnimedia
Wow. This is an interesting read. Not so much because I admire their
aspirations. Quite the opposite, in
fact. Their work is to promote a brand
through a range of lifestyle magazines.
One sentence pretty much says it all:
“Product
photography is about turning the product into a hero.”
This is what
they do. The interview goes into detail
about how photographers are chosen, what editors look for, how shoots are
designed and executed. What struck me
most about this is the manipulative nature of the process, of designing images
to sell products and feelings. Look at
all the adjectives:
“We
use different photographic approaches to help differentiate and focus our
magazines. While Living is seductive and sophisticated, Kids is colorful and
graphic. Weddings is elegant, and Everyday Food is bold and simple. At Everyday
Food... it is meant to
feel modern and streamlined without being austere.”
And look at this
cliche list of values:
“I
have heard that a brand could be defined as a cluster of values. Included in
our list, then, would be: Respect our audience—never
talk down, never design down. Encourage excellence. Assume that the audience is
sophisticated. Be active, be encouraging, be curious, be real. Deliver quality
at whatever price. Service, honesty, the physicality of life. A glorification
of the humble and everyday.”
If you are
selling a product or prepackaged "lifestyle," you are thereby engaged
in work which disrespects your audience and demeans the experience of living.
Documenting
in the 21st Century - An Interview with Robert Pledge, President and
Co-Founder, Contact Press Images
Contact began in
1976 and serviced news weeklies and dailies for a couple of decades. Now focused largely on education through
exhibits, books, special events. At time
of interview represented 30 photographers, half doing documentary news, the
other half working on long-term projects.
The interview touches on the evolving nature of photography and
documentary.
On the changed
nature of news reporting, news dissemination and photography:
“...when there is anything
spectacular it is usually done by amateurs; it’s not the professional
photographers. Yet the general level in photography has gone up tremendously
and the picture is changing dramatically.”
“The
only problem today is that thousands of people want to do this. And it’s
not just in the U.S. You see hundreds and hundreds of photographers from all
different countries....There
are fifteen times more people and not that many more publications. In addition
you have the competition of television and the Internet.”
“...photojournalism has become
more of an applied photography with a more conceptual approach and less “instinctive.”
“Photography
is more like poetry now. It’s in a different dimension. It’s
like jazz.”
On the value of
mentorship:
“...if you can meet somebody
who can become a mentor or somebody in the business who likes your work and
personality and can help guide you and push you and make it happen, that’s
great. That is probably one of the most invaluable things. Don’t
find someone who will give you the answers, but who will help you to look for
them, and then find them by yourself.”
And finally, on
the nature of great photographers:
“The
best people who work often feel very solitary. People like Jane Evelyn Atwood,
people like Salgado, people like Don McCullin, all the people I know—Giorgia Fiorio, Zana Briski—are very solitary in
their work. They are not seeking anybody’s approval or pats on the shoulder.”
The Photobook
- An Interview with Yolanda
Cuomo, one of the medium’s most
distinguished and enduring designers
Great contrast
with the Martha Stewart interview, from selling a lifestyle to crafting
individual pierces of expression. Duomo
describes her work as building or things, in this case books. Her operative motto might be to do whatever
it is you want to do and let the rest sort itself out.
On sequencing
images, rhythm, and use of text:
“You
can kill a photograph or you can have it come alive by what it’s
paired with, what comes before and what comes after.”
“..books have to have
different “beats” through them, just like
exhibitions. Monotony, the same beat and tempo, is bad. I think of music and
also of made-up narratives: they move from dark to light, they have peaks and
valleys, slow movements, choppy movements, then upbeat ones.”
“If
you have to explain from the beginning of the book what you’re
trying to do, then you haven’t visually done it. If you use words, you don’t
use them to illustrate your pictures: the words and the images must work in
tandem. Words should be a jumping-off point.”
On the value of
photo books:
“Books
can be better than exhibitions, because you don’t have glass between
you and the photo. You can be very intimate with the image.”
On being
involved in one's work and it's presentation:
“...you don’t just give a box of
your prints to a publisher, and they design it, and then you feel funny about
it—“Oh, I don’t like that.” No, this is your work.
Once it’s out there you can’t pull it back and republish it. I love it when
photographers are involved. It’s much more interesting.”
“This
is what I have to say to young photographers: you have to be involved in every
single step. The selection of paper, everything.”
She also talks a
bit about the value of establishing or finding a community of artists with whom
one can share ideas and help motivate each another. She places great value on doing what you can
right now, like self-publishing.
Editing
Visuals - An Interview with Elisabeth Biondi, Visuals Editor, The New
Yorker
Biondi, it turns
out, has worked with numerous magazines and the interview presents an interesting
look at the variety of approaches used at different magazines, depending on
audience, the types of stories, and the personalities of the editors. Photographers could be seen as authors, whose
work was to be minimally edited, or as technicians entrusted to capture images
designed and produced by a team tasked with producing visuals.
The Artist in
the Marketplace - An Interview with Charlotte Cotton, Director of
Cultural Programming, Art+Commerce
Read her survey,
The Photograph as Contemporary Art.
Makes a useful
point about academic discussions of photography, in which “photographs are
illustrations of arguments rather than the objects at the center of your
thinking.”
On the state of
contemporary photography, she observes that “the locus and the center of attention of
photographic practice is contemporary art. New practitioners are more likely to
couch their photographic expressions in art world language and production
values and associate cultural visibility with galleries rather than other photographic
contexts such as magazines.”
As with Cuomo,
she stresses the need for artists to engage in and create networks for sharing
work, whether that be in exhibits, books, or magazines:
“...the importance of thinking
of magazines, or other forms of dissemination such as galleries, not as the
goal but simply the context where you can place your work. You cannot afford to
wait for that moment where context somehow accepts you. It’s your context—create it.”
Some lengthy
discussion ensues on commercial/fashion photography, it's representation in the
canon, and the ability of photographers to move to and from art and commercial
worlds.
“The
odd thing about fashion photography is there’s no way to be a great
“aspiring” or “occasional”
fashion photographer. Either you go fully into it and are driven by it,
or you’re not.”
On then defining
feature of successful photographers:
“I
think they share the degree to which they just literally wouldn’t
survive if they didn’t create.”
Finally, she
notes the difficulty of writing photographic history from the postwar period:
“When
I was curating shows that deal with the whole chronology of photography, it was
very exciting but also frustrating. We have a relatively linear history of photography up to the early postwar period and
then it becomes a very difficult history to write or exhibit. Either you
proceed with a canon that distinguishes a few innovators from the vast number
of “others” or you have to find
ways to invest your interpretation of that history with ideas about networks
and structures, the constant re-appraisal and re-thinking of photography’s
history, the significance of contexts on the meaning of photography.”
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