Exercise 39: Evidence of Action

The brief asks for a photograph "in which it can be seen that something has happened."  It is part of a discussion on illustration, the ability to tell a story in a single image, and the difficulties of conveying abstract ideas.

Film Review: William Eggleston in the Real World (2005)

I didn’t think much of William Eggleston in the Real World, at least at the beginning, where 20 minutes of film consists of 5 minutes narration while Eggleston ambles about taking photos, or while a somewhat drunk (or perhaps demented) friend (by the name of Leigh Haizlip) sucks on a lollipop and babbles about cancer and death while Eggleston doodles. The film seemed rather self-indulgent.  But once past these scenes, the director begins surveying some of Eggleston’s images, and the photographer begins to talk a bit about his work.  By the end I was inspired, not so much by Eggleston’s images as his work ethic.  I remember someone in the film citing a huge number representing Eggleston’s career output in individual images (which I can neither recall nor find).  Eggleston himself says he never used contact sheets and printed every image he ever took (surely an exaggeration but even so suggestive of his habits).  Obviously, Eggleston was obsessive.   His energy and drive could sustain a few photographic careers.

In our current age of mass ownership of cameras, in which a picture of just about anything can be found with a Google or Flickr search, perhaps Eggleston’s work has been stripped of its context. A massive collection of images of everyday things is now ordinary.  All that remains to Eggleston is his historical importance and a body of work inspirational in its enormity.  

Barrett, Criticizing Photographs, Ch 6: Evaluating Photographs, 3rd ed, 2000

 

In Chapter 6 Barrett turns to the evaluation and judgement of photography.  He uses these terms interchangeably to define “a what that demands a why.”  Judgements are statements that demand reasons.  Without them they seem like little more than preferences, about which no one would reasonably contend.  They are arguments that require evidence.  They can be persuasive, convincing, compelling  - but not right or wrong.  

Judgements, says Barrett, consist of appraisals based on reasons founded in criteria.  Appraisals are about the merit of the work, reasons support an appraisal, and criteria are assumptions about rules and standards of what makes art good or bad.  These are most often founded on definitions of art and aesthetics.  They may be explicit or implicit.  

Exercise 38: A Narrative Picture Essay

I had the good fortune of having an interesting event fall into my lap. A group of cleaners visited my apartment building to wash away a year's worth of sand.  They do this in the most dramatic way possible, by rappelling down the face of the 200 meter, 30 story building with high pressure hoses.  There was little time to research or plan, simply to follow these guys and shoot. I spent the better part of the day with them, from their early morning set-up to late afternoon clean-up, shooting from on the roof and on the ground.

I took approximately 90 images, which on reflection seems little, but for the purpose of the assignment turned out to be adequate.  I think I didn't shoot more because once the men were hanging from ropes, there were few unique angles from which to shoot. One angle I didn't pursue was from an apartment balcony and that was simply because of timidity.  I don't know anyone living on that side of the building and didn't feel comfortable ringing a stranger's doorbell to ask if I could take photos from his balcony. 

Review: Master Photographers: Jacques-Henri Lartigue, BBC, 1983

In episode four we meet our first non-German photographer, a citizen of France who for most of his life was not known as a photographer at all, but as a painter.  He had the good fortune of being born into a wealthy family and took his first photo in 1901, when he was only seven and when cameras were rare and expensive equipment.  During the interview he shows off some of his cameras and discusses his love for racing cars and aeroplanes, toys of the privileged in an age when the majority still worked on farms or in factories.  Lartigue even had his own darkroom, perhaps the only child in France to have had one.   Many of his most well-known photographs are those taken during his childhood and young adult years capturing the lives of the Parisian rich at the turn of the 20th century.  

Clarke, The Photograph, Chapter 8: Documentary Photography, 1997

Arthur Rothstein 1936 Oklahoma Fleeing a Dust Storm

Where Clarke finds portraiture ambiguous, and the nude contentious, documentary is misleading.  Linguistically it is based on a medieval word for a piece of paper providing evidence.   The ability of the camera to reproduce reality led to the idea that the camera never lies, that a photograph is a kind of evidence of past events.  Clarke uses the American FSA project to argue otherwise.  This was a government funded scheme intended to document conditions of the working poor and which fed into Roosevelt's political designs by creating public support for public works projects.  While much of the work is beautiful and produced some of Americas iconic images, it is clear the photographers, and the agency, were not out to document what they found, but to find what they hoped to document.

Assignment Four: Applying Lighting Techniques

Introduction

I got stuck.

For weeks I fretted about how best to tackle this assignment.  I had whipped through the exercises in the course of a week’s vacation, but when I began to think about how to approach the assignment I was restrained by a lack of confidence.  I read books about lighting.  I watched videos about lighting.  But I never got any closer to actually doing the assignment. 

Barrett, Criticizing Photographs, Ch 5: Photographs and Contexts, 3rd ed, 2000

Having explicated his classification scheme, Barrett proceeds in Chapter 5 to explain that without prior knowledge it is often difficult for the average viewer to place any one photograph in one of his six categories (which we will recall are:  descriptive, explanatory, interpretive, ethically evaluative, aesthetically evaluative, and theoretical).  This contextual information can be internal, original, or external.

Internal context is provided by the photograph’s subject, medium, form, and the relationship between them.  Barrett cites the rather obvious example of one of Edward Weston’s peppers.   We understand the pepper is displayed as an object of aesthetic appreciation, rather than as a botanical description.  (If we know something about the photographer and his work (an example of original context), this interpretation is even more obvious.)

Which way to go?

I feel best about my photographic practice when I'm not reading the opinions of others.  Inevitably when exposed to these, I get anxious and distraught.  I think I should be doing something differently, that my practice is somehow deficient, that maybe I'll never learn anything and I ought to just give up and do something else.

Should I be planning my work, or should I let the work emerge from my time with the camera?  Perhaps there is some balance to be found here.  I tend to like working spontaneously, seeing what the camera reveals.  I don't like faffing about with all the dials and controls, but perhaps that's because I don't have a strong vision, because I don't see any images I want to produce.  Maybe it's because all that faffing about requires quite a lot of knowledge and practice to get right and having them only in small quantities I get frustrated and retreat.

This may also be part of my character and habit.  I don't spend lots of time on any one thing.  I move around a lot.  I change jobs.  I don't have a lot of long-term relationships. I prefer variety, uniqueness, spontaneity.  For me the camera has been a tool of exploration.  With it in hand, I have reason to get out and visit a neighborhood, a village, a landscape.  The process of creating images involves me in place.  It helps me look at and evaluate in ways different from walking around without a camera.

I think the key here is persistence.  Working repeatedly and diligently the knowledge and skills slowly accrue.  The key is to keep moving, keep thinking, keep exploring.

And not listen too closely to the gaggle of opinion.

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Workshop: The Working Photojournalist (Gulf Photo Plus May 2013)

Yesterday (03 May 2013) I attended the first of a 2-day workshop at Gulf Photo Plus entitled The Working Photojournalist.  The program as advertised is pasted below. 

My initial impression is that while all three speakers had interesting things to say about their experience of being photographers, I did not really learn any skills that can be deployed in current or future photography projects.  In essence, the “workshop” was little more than a chat show with working photographers.

The day ended with participants being given photographic assignments to complete in advance of next week’s lectures.  These were handed out in printed form with instructions about the number and type of images to be provided.  My brief is for 15 photos of the Dubai Metro demonstrating how it is integrated into the life of city.  From several hours of talk, here’s what I learned to help prepare me for my assignment: