Can we discuss photography here?

DadaKopf

Since we don't talk about art here anymore (not that we really did), maybe we can talk about photography. I think discussing the greats in detail is the best way to improve.

This is my new favourite photographer, Raymond Depardon. I don't like all of his work, but this Frenchie, and member of the Magnum Agency, seems to really like varying his style, bordering on snapshot, art, objective and journalistic photography.

I particularly enjoy his book Le Ferme du Garet because it combines my favourite forms of photography in one beautiful narrative of past and present. I particularly love his large format photos, which feel at once like German objectivist photography (cold and clinical), but also they're warm, intimate psychological spaces emblazoned with colour.

He said he realised after years that large-format photography implies a universal language. His large-format ones look formal, but are composed the way we see the world, with objects in shot existing beyond the picture plane.

But it's not just these photos I admire. The guy taught himself - there's hope for us all if we're obsessed enough. His book 7x3 is fascinating. He challenged himself with photographing 'the glance', or confronting the glance with itself. It's an amazing collection snapshots, some entirely mundane and naturalistic, some visually curious, even surreal. What I find interesting is his decisison to take all these photos in portrait, even landscape-y subjects. I think another of his books did this. It has an interesting effect on the experience of looking, transforming the act of reading a photo and their meanings. That's what I got, anyway.

He seems reluctant to stick with one characteristic style. Depardon looks as if he carefully tailors his style and methodology to the task at hand so he produces a real synthesis between what he's photogaphing and the methods required to achieve that.

Here's some nice photos:

DadaKopf

Evidently not.

Yer all jerks.

Merrion

Photography is a very subjective subject (erm, could've written that better)
For example of the photos you posted I really like the barn and really don't like any of the others. And I don't really know why....

My current favourite photographer is Tom Mackie because I really like the sillouettes against dramatic sky stuff that he does (e.g. this selection)

I also really admire the work of Michael Frye because what he does is so much more than taking a photograph - he does these long an/or multiple exposure shots and uses flashheads with colour filters to "paint" the scene. This shot took 1 long exposure to get the comet/stars and 96 flash shots (with orange and blue filters respectively).

Benster

Merrion - Was Frye the guy that did a whole series of pics of the ghost towns in the far western US? The style of lighting using flashes with coloured gels is very similar and looks just as spooky. The ghost town pics were very engaging, I thought.

Personally, I like the photographer Lee Miller. Perhaps not really for her pictures, oddly enough, but more for the story of her life in general. I find it a most romantic journey from the heady days of American Vogue in the 30'sa and 40's, through WWII and then mixing with the giants of the creative arts later in her life. And she could strike a pose to beat the band...

I could talk all day about this sort of thing, but I gotta get back to work

Cheers,
B.

Benster

Forgot to say - The pics above, the only one which sticks out for me at all is the first one. Apart from the earthy colours which I like, it looks like it's about to turn into a Larson cartoon.

Sorry, no high-falutin' critique from me today

DadaKopf

Photography is a very subjective subject (erm, could've written that better)

Of course it's subjective. I want to get a decent, passionate discussion about photography going. NO technology-speak allowed. I want us to talk about concept, composition, the philosophy of photography.

Forgot to say - The pics above, the only one which sticks out for me at all is the first one. Apart from the earthy colours which I like, it looks like it's about to turn into a Larson cartoon.

Imagine the farm photos really big (although I think they work small, too). Do you not feel that they all capture the colours and the matter of farming life? The dirt, the air? Every photo captures a psychological space. E.g. the farmyard, to me, hides as much as it reveals and has the ability to place the viewer in the site?

Depardon says he owes a lot to the works of Stephen Shore, who recently won a big prize in the UK. I like both these guys because they photograph space, which I think gives the objects in photos a more concrete reality. And, as Depardon said, the language of LF photography is universal, which is an interesting point.

I mean, Benster, aren't photos meant to be about more than being tickled by 'earthy colours'? (I mean this as a point worth arguing). At least in Depardon's case, he was set the brief of returning home to capture the farm he grey up on with as much fidelity as possible (working within photography's oldest tradition). In terms of achieving what he set out do do, I think he effectively married this task through the careful use of colour, form, composition, time of day and year, deep depth of focus. There's more to photos than mere style. And it's these things I'd like to discuss: concept-execution.



If *anything* looks Larson'y to me, it's those 'painted' night shots. Gimmickry unless done with extreme intellectual rigour. Some Italian dude did it well, but I can't remember his name.

Which Lee Miller photos do you particularly like? I think some of her stuff is really good, and for the time she was taking photos, she was a very revolutionary photographer but, to me, a lot of them just seem like whacky shots. I think she was good at taking informal portraits - and that was sorely needed back in the 1940s - and she managed to tame photoraphic surrealism a fair whack, unlike Man Ray. Her photos of Picasso are invaluable. Still, there's something that sickens me about them - they're too sweet, or naive. I'd definitely like to know more about her approach, ideas etc. Maybe you can point me in the right direction.

Edit: for some reason the second Shore photo wouldn't show so I moved it below.

DadaKopf

Merrion

I want us to talk about concept, composition, the philosophy of photography

OK - which of these is evident in that last shot?

The composition of it would be better if the vantage point was about a yard to the right..so the converging lines (pavement and road markings) drew the eye more directly to the centre.




* All the above is my opinion only...I have no 'artistic education' or other reference

DadaKopf

That'd be a conventional shot obeying 'the rules'. You're right, it's all subjective. This photo makes me feel uneasy and intruiges me, it asks questions, it doesn't give them.

Shore investigated the psychology of places and the way a photograph functions. Firstly, you're coaxed into viewing the photo from the outside in. Instead of the photo being an internally consistent, autonomous thing, completely contained within the borders of the frame, Shore's get the viewer to imagine what's going on outside the frame by selectively including and editing objects. This compositional device gets the viewer to imagine the meaning of the photo by drawing on one's own imaginative resources, one's psychology, and by extension, the psychology of the space photographed.

As for the subject, Shore photographed mundane aspects of America, ignored by photographers who liked to emphasise the monumental (industry and capitalism) and the earthy and humble (photos of Walker Evans). Shore wanted to get to the psychology of real America by photographing in a way that reproduced the experience of living there in all its banality - in unseen America (like America beyond the borders of the frame). His photos are banal, but intruiging and humorous.

With this photo, I think the composition looks unusual. It expresses something vaguely unearthly, or tenuous, or unnatural about the place. The figure waiting to cross the road is anonymous, perhaps Shore is commenting that American society is becoming an anonymous society. But there's more going on. The unusually lit tree (it ought to be in shadow, except it's in a shaft of light off the frame) is important because there's a stone plaque in front of it. Something might have happened at this junction, but you don't know what. There's a historical sign of a man in a helmet on the top right. All the same, there's a feeling of boredom and uneasiness about the scene as your eye is dazzled by having to dance around absorbing the detail of the buildings, the cars, thinking about what the hell people do there. Despite something interesting having happened here - you think - it's populated by mundane people who may not have a clue about what happened, or mightn't care, or maybe they do, but they've forgotten - the man has his back to the historical monument, afterall. (This was a common device in classical art.)

Then there's stuff you just don't get from him looking at a website:

Shore also works in series. The individual shots are placed in a sequence, in a visually complex system of references, and the cumulative effect of the photographs allows them to be viewed at several different levels.

I think this is one of the more visually intruiging ones of his I've seen. Many more others are more documentary style, like the one above. But there's always some kind of drama going on in his photos, but they're implied, not said.

The composition of it would be better if the vantage point was about a yard to the right..so the converging lines (pavement and road markings) drew the eye more directly to the centre.

That would make the photo internally coherent. It would imply that all you need to know about the photo is inside the frame and that the photo has a definite meaning. It would, ironically, take away from the scene's naturalism. Converging the lines would establish a focal point within the photo, which Shore doesn't want. He wants to set up a composition where you work in from the edges to the centre to entice you to investigate every last detail of the photo. (He never printed big - his negatives were 10" x 8" and he only produced contact prints, so they're the sharpest photos you can get in the world - the prints are 10" x 8".)

But it also provokes an emotional response. A 'good' composition would make the photo feel complete and restful. Shore's compositions are incomplete. They're also very, very funny, secret jokes or something told in a deadpan style.

That's my two cents.

Takeshi_Kovacs

Merrion wrote:

Photography is a very subjective subject (erm, could've written that better)
For example of the photos you posted I really like the barn and really don't like any of the others. And I don't really know why....

My current favourite photographer is Tom Mackie because I really like the sillouettes against dramatic sky stuff that he does (e.g. this selection)

I also really admire the work of Michael Frye because what he does is so much more than taking a photograph - he does these long an/or multiple exposure shots and uses flashheads with colour filters to "paint" the scene. This shot took 1 long exposure to get the comet/stars and 96 flash shots (with orange and blue filters respectively).

thanks for mike fry link...
hoping to learn something from his shots , hopefully...

DadaKopf

Here's another guy I like, Martin Parr:

DadaKopf

Jeez.

Um, what photographers/photos do you guys like?

Benster

Sorry, been v busy in work the last while, haven't been looking much here.

Well, from what you've posted, it just shows what a wide range of tastes there are represented here. I'm familiar with Martin Parr's name as a photographer, but not his work. From what you've posted here, I can't see myself warming to his style, it's just not what excites me about photography. Fair enough, call me mainstream or whatever, but I like to have photos show me something to make me go "wow", or show me an event from a new perspective, or show me a scene in beautiful light, etc, etc. Documentary photography needs some explanation to introduce it, otherwise it could be just a series of random shots. If Parr's pictures are documenting something (I have no idea what they are of), I'd need some words of explanation, but even then, I don't think they are pictures that I would take too long to look over. There's just an "everydayness" about them that doesn't excite me.

This post isn't meant as a dismissal of your own views, btw, just a forwading of mine. This is a very subjective topic you've started here .

Cheers,

B.

davej

Jeez.

Um, what photographers/photos do you guys like?

I can sense your frustration at the lack of "interesting" dialogue. Most attempts to get a discussion going tend to get pushed back into the direction of "normal" photography talk.

But maybe you should take this point in itself and think about why there is a lack of interest in engaging in discussions of a more erudite nature when it comes to photography (or the arts in general) ?

Perhaps it is the case that much of the philosophising is artificially "tacked on" after the fact of the photograph? People who subscribe to a particular system of ideas often have an agenda in mind when discussing artistic human creation. That agenda is generally to perpetuate and expand the sphere of influence of the perspective from which they see things. So for example, a feminist or marxist might have some very "insightful" things to say about a photograph of women working in a textile plant in China.

Digital photography seems to fit in nicely with the prevailing philosophical mood of our time. It is easy to duplicate, erase, reshape, redefine and deconstruct all of our images (or anyone elses for that matter). Just look at worth1000.com or flickr.com to see the impact of this. Everything is up for grabs, for example unorthodox or impossible compositions (via digitial manipulation).

The postmodern world makes it difficult for anyone to have a coherent, systematic set of ideas from which to judge things. Instead the prevalent mindset means that people tend to focus on things like, "what piece of equipment can i purchase to enhance my 'photographic experience'?" or "What piece of software will provide me with a shortcut to doing X,Y,Z ?"

I want to get a decent, passionate discussion about photography going. NO technology-speak allowed. I want us to talk about concept, composition, the philosophy of photography.

In a way, I think this thread is, by its silence on the subject, saying a lot about concept and the philosophy of photography.

davej

Benster

What about widening the discussion a bit more then?

Photography-wise, I know what engages me and it isn't always the "greats" in the business (although for picking up techniques, inspiration, etc, they are a starting point). I'll be honest and admit I don't know enough about the philosophy of master photographers to debate into the wee hours, but I know what I think about my own approach to the subject. Maybe, then, we can discuss our own photography and what each person wants to get out of it?

What is your favourite subject?

What's your motivation? (recognition, money, following your muse?)

Is it easy for you? (to arrive at a satisfactory result)

And I agree that this is not the place to descend into the techicalities of dpi, f/stops etc. They, although important at the end of the day, are at a different level of discussion.

DadaKopf

Thanks for the replies, folks. There's lots to respond to there! I'll do it later, but Benester, I don't necessarily want the thread to just be a "here's another photo by one of the greats", just here's a photo(s)/photographer(s) who really turn(s) me on", but I'd love for people to start discussing why that is in a creative or artistic sense, not like "hey, that's a cool effect, man, what camera did you use" kinda way.

The thread shouldn't be art fascism, just poeple sharing their likes and dislikes and hopefully getting passionate about photography.

I think discussing photography requires people to talk about other people's photos, famous or not, whether they're successful or failures (they can be just as illuminating), and what motivates us etc, as you said. Sharing what we ourselves like in photography is just another way of saying what motivates us, what our favourite subjects are.

DadaKopf

The postmodern world makes it difficult for anyone to have a coherent, systematic set of ideas from which to judge things. Instead the prevalent mindset means that people tend to focus on things like, "what piece of equipment can i purchase to enhance my 'photographic experience'?" or "What piece of software will provide me with a shortcut to doing X,Y,Z ?"

Actually I think it's because most people aren't trained or don't take the time to learn to see art and photography as a language like writing or design. Photography is a non-verbal language, it's hard to understand, there are no fixed rules. So the perception emerges that what's actually important is the technology - photography = equipment. The technology are only instruments to capture aspects of human intentions.

Alun

DadaKopf wrote:

Actually I think it's because most people aren't trained or don't take the time to learn to see art and photography as a language like writing or design. Photography is a non-verbal language, it's hard to understand, there are no fixed rules.

But what makes you think that everyone is capable of analysing what they see or read in these kinds of terms and at that level. I certainly am not. If I read a book, or see a photograph, painting or piece of sculpture I like, I take that at face value, and have no particular desire to exactly analyse why I like it. What would that achieve exactly outside of an academic environment? I don't want to come across as an illiterate philistine here, but stuff like this ...

Shore investigated the psychology of places and the way a photograph functions. Firstly, you're coaxed into viewing the photo from the outside in. Instead of the photo being an internally consistent, autonomous thing, completely contained within the borders of the frame, Shore's get the viewer to imagine what's going on outside the frame by selectively including and editing objects. This compositional device gets the viewer to imagine the meaning of the photo by drawing on one's own imaginative resources, one's psychology, and by extension, the psychology of the space photographed.

just makes my eyes glaze over

tonyj

DadaKopf wrote:

Of course it's subjective. I want to get a decent, passionate discussion about photography going. NO technology-speak allowed. I want us to talk about concept, composition, the philosophy of photography.

Sorry, we're all Level 1 photographers (Ken Rockwell definition);

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/7.htm

Equipment Measurbator: Bottom Level 1 (equivalent to "Hell" in Christian mythology)

These men (and they are all men) have no interest in art or photography because they have no souls. Lacking souls they cannot express imagination or feeling, which is why their images, if they ever bother to make any, suck.

These folks have analysis paralysis and never accomplish anything.

Does poring over a microscope analyzing test images have anything to do with photographing a Joshua tree at dawn? Of course not. Even worse, time wasted concentrating on tests is time not spent learning useful aspects of photography and certainly time that could have been better spent actually photographing. Test just enough to know what your gear can do, and then get on with real photography.

They are interested solely in equipment for its own sake. They will talk your ear off for hours if you let them, but as soon as you ask to see their portfolio their bravado scurries away, or they think you want to see their cameras or stocks. You can read why cameras simply don't matter here.

Most seem to come from technical avocations, like engineering, computers and sciences. These people worry so much about trying to put numerical ratings on things that they are completely oblivious to the fact that cameras or test charts have nothing to do with the spirit of an image. Because they worry so much about measuring camera performance we have dubbed them "Measurbators." Unfortunately, many of them wander into KenRockwell.com looking for information on camera performance.

Many of them also play with audio equipment, computers or automobiles. They enjoy these toys just like their cameras for their own sake, but rarely if ever actually use them for the intended purposes.

Younger ones play video games or engage in chat rooms and web surfing. Older ones join "camera" clubs. (You should join photography clubs, but never camera clubs or any clubs that try to score art, since art is entirely subjective and cannot be scored numerically.) Likewise, these people never create anything notable with any of this other gear either, but they sure get excited by just having, getting or talking to you about it.

The one type of gear these people ignore is the only type of gear that actually helps: lighting.

Someone with a decent portfolio is not an equipment measurbator. Someone with more cameras than decent photos just may be. People with websites teeming with technical articles but few interesting photographs probably are.

Do not under any circumstances deal with these people, talk to them, read their websites or especially ask them for photography advice. To the innocent they seem like founts of knowledge, however their sick, lifeless souls would love to drag you into their own personal Hells and have your spirit forever mired in worrying about how sharp your lens is. If you start worrying about this and you'll never photograph anything again except brick walls and test charts.

These people are easy to identify. If you've read this far you've probably seen their websites. They always have lots of info about equipment, but very few real photographs. Beware of any information from any website not loaded with photography you admire.

Merrion

I don't see that art can exist independent of it's interaction with the observer so if most people don't "get it" it probably isn't there to get - The Emperor's tailors notwithstanding.

Alun

Sorry, we're all Level 1 photographers (Ken Rockwell definition);

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/7.htm

I'm not sure I fit into any of those categories. OK, so I am a bit obsessive about specs and stuff being an engineer and all that, but that's just so I don't blow all my hard earned cash on something I don't want/need. I do try and create visually appealing pictures both from a technical and composition standpoint, but in no way would I call them 'art', nor do I aspire to do so.

One of my other passions is woodturning. I create things that, to others, are apparently visually appealing, so much so that they're prepared to part with their hard-earned cash to buy them. I can't define what it is that makes these artifacts saleable except that I like them as well, and the somehow look "right". I see stuff other people make and I know that they look "wrong". I suppose if they were subjected to all kinds of scrutiny regarding golden ratios and all that jazz I'd know why, but life's too short for that IMO.

Merrion wrote:

I don't see that art can exist independent of it's interaction with the observer so if most people don't "get it" it probably isn't there to get - The Emperor's tailors notwithstanding.

Exactly!!!