Thursday, August 13, 2015

Review: Traud, Heller, Bell eds (2006). Education of a Photographer. NY: Allworth Press. Section Three: The Legends

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 timewhat is good today may be a cliché tomorrow.

...the problem of the photographer is to discover his own language, a visual ABCs 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 photographers 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 aestheticsnot 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 audiencenever 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; its 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 its 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. Its in a different dimension. Its 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, thats great. That is probably one of the most invaluable things. Dont 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 knowGiorgia Fiorio, Zana Briskiare very solitary in their work. They are not seeking anybodys approval or pats on the shoulder.



The Photobook -  An Interview with Yolanda Cuomo, one of the mediums 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 its paired with, what comes before and what comes after.

..books have to have different beatsthrough 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 youre trying to do, then you havent visually done it. If you use words, you dont 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 dont 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 dont just give a box of your prints to a publisher, and they design it, and then you feel funny about it—“Oh, I dont like that.No, this is your work. Once its out there you cant pull it back and republish it. I love it when photographers are involved. Its 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. Its your contextcreate 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 theres no way to be a great aspiringor occasionalfashion photographer. Either you go fully into it and are driven by it, or youre not.

On then defining feature of successful photographers:

I think they share the degree to which they just literally wouldnt survive if they didnt 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 othersor 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 photographys history, the significance of contexts on the meaning of photography.

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