Gesture

<p>I think many would come away from seeing the collection feeling as if they had experienced the essences of the people in his photographs. </p>

<p>I think what would cause that impression is that Avedon was so good, stripped much extraneous matter away, and focused audiences in on something many hadn't experienced before, certainly not in the way he presented it.</p>

<p>With portraiture, I think that (and other things) often feels like "essence" to the viewer.</p>

<p>And I think it's not.</p>

<p>It may be an unadorned style, but it is a distinctive one. I'm not sure a distinctive style projects the photographer any less than an unadorned one.</p>

<p>I think what we are seeing in this exhibition is about as deeply superficial as you can get. Revealingly external. Significance but not essence. (I love the work. This is not a put down.)</p>

<p>Luis--</p>

<p>"Embellishment" doesn't imply to me leaving the field of reality.</p>

<p>An embellishment can just be to acknowledge your take on reality, which is as real as some supposed objective view of reality (which is impossible in any kind of pure state of objectivity).</p>

<p>"I walked down the road." = unembellished</p>

<p>"I slowly walked down the winding road taking in the woodsy scent, thinking of what tomorrow might bring." = embellished and every bit as real.</p>

<p>This may just be a matter of semantics and how we define "embellishment" (because we otherwise seem to be on the same page for the most part), but for me a photographer's embellishments are like the above, and don't leave the field of reality.</p>

<p>Don, I used the Newman/ Krupp portrait to answer your own question of an example of photographer's gesture in photography. I could have used a multitude of pictures. It was a great example precisely because Krupp's own gestures are quite limited in that picture.</p>

<p>I just looked at a few of your pictures, and one thing that came to mind immediately is what a honed and heightened awareness of space you have, and how expressively gestural it is. Whether with individuals or groups, it is obvious you are using the space not only aesthetically, but to indicate a sense of relationships between people and each other as well as people and the space they occupy. The picture of the man by the chain link fence, for example. In all of the pictures with multiple people in them, I know the arrangement of their bodies fluctuated or was evanescent. You chose one configuration over all others. None was more valid than the others, but each changes the meaning of the image, or relationships within the frame.</p>

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<p>Luis. I have come to agree with your questioning of the word embellish. I was using it too loosely myself as to mean adding details.<br>

Perhaps Monet embellished/beautified by choosing a sweeter color for his view of the scene. He may visualize it or not, he may simply feel it. Is it fictitious to choose the sweeter color? or an accurate representation of what he saw in his minds eye or felt or smelled.... His choice is a reality i believe even in the face of his embellishment. As i believe we have twist and turns in our everyday realities that are not a straight representation of what is before our eyes.<br>

"I agree that fictions can and do often wormhole to truths better than a linear approach."</p>

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<p>"It was a great example precisely because Krupp's own gestures are quite limited in that picture."</p>

<p>Luis, Newman eliminates them. The combination of lighting, lights, choice of lens, color, shadow and highlight placement, contrast are all designed to obscure the ostensible subject. It is murder by photography, in a way.</p>

<p>"The picture of the man by the chain link fence"</p>

<p>I was considering replying to Josh about being "stern" and including a link to it because the subject is normally an animated (the opposite of stone faced), even brilliant, storyteller, with a 'happy go lucky' persona, captured in an uncharacteristic moment.</p>

<p>"I know the arrangement of their bodies fluctuated or was evanescent. You chose one configuration over all others."</p>

<p>I like to show people in their context and activity rather than statically in street portraits. I was in the alley photographing some archetectural details of the old building when the chef school students came out for a smoke break and had plenty of time, chatted with a few. It was a great moment for me because I am always alert for them on the street. Maybe it is the cases with the long knives they carry, but they seem always to be self-assured and full of attitude. I was remined somewhat of the rhythm of the figures in Botticelli's Primavera . Looking down the alley I saw the two young men, and snapped when their feet and hands created a moment of graceful good humor, a bit like a dance.</p>

<p>Thanks for the comments, Luis. Your perceptions are accurate.</p>

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<p>[Don]"Luis, Newman eliminates them. The combination of lighting, lights, choice of lens, color, shadow and highlight placement, contrast are all designed to obscure the ostensible subject. It is murder by photography, in a way."</p>

<p>_____________________________</p>

<p> Don, of the two, Krupp is undeniably the murderer. Consider that, as you emphatically pointed out, Krupp was photographed with a remarkable consistency over decades by a wide variety of photographers. Not _one_ of those pictures show him as a man who used concentration camp victims for slave work during the war, often abused until they died (at the jobs that required little training). Whatever else Krupp may have been, the man was also a corporate monster in a suit, a murderer by any measure.</p>

<p>Krupp, like most psychopaths, managed to maintain a seamless persona/mask over time. This is not unusual. Here's another example, the portraits of the BTK killer, Dennis Rader:</p>

<p>http://www.freewebs.com/thebtksite/btkphoto.htm</p>

<p> The Krupp picture is quite similar conceptually to Steichen's masterful picture of JP Morgan:</p>

<p>http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424356061/80628/edward-steichen-jpmorgan.html</p>

<p> All other photographers missed/neglected/disregarded that aspect of Krupp, which, admittedly, is very, very hard to capture, almost as hard as gauging a mountain range by the echoes bouncing off them. Newman's picture is a singular photographic revelation of the one aspect of Krupp everyone else missed. In defense of the other photogs, I once had an acquaintance, a co-worker of my wife's, who turned out to be a serial killer. Until his capture, I failed to see his dark side, with one irrational, mystifying exception that I can only label as a Jungian warning from the subconscious.</p>

<p>As I see it, Newman walked into the Monster's domain, played him for a fool, and slew his chances of lying his way into History. Don sees Newman as a murderer, I see him as the photographic equivalent of the kind of hero poets wrote paeans about. Newman's photograph is the one that will be remembered. The others no one remembers, even now. I have no doubt it was exactly the way Newman saw him, too.</p>

<p>"I have a come as a novelist, that is - a spinner of lies.<br>

Novelists aren’t the only ones who tell lies - politicians do (sorry, Mr. President) - and diplomats, too. But something distinguishes the novelists from the others. We aren’t prosecuted for our lies: we are praised. And the bigger the lie, the more praise we get.<br>

The difference between our lies and their lies is that our lies help bring out the truth. It’s hard to grasp the truth in its entirety - so we transfer it to the fictional realm. But first, we have to clarify where the truth lies within ourselves."</p>

<p>From a speech given last week by novelist Haruki Murakami, claiming the Jerusalem Prize for Literature.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>"Newman's picture is a singular photographic revelation of the one aspect of Krupp everyone else missed. In defense of the other photogs, I once had an acquaintance, a co-worker of my wife's, who turned out to be a serial killer. Until his capture, I failed to see his dark side, with one irrational, mystifying exception that I can only label as a Jungian warning from the subconscious."</p>

<p>Luis, I find it interesting that you, Josh, and I have responses to the other photos of Krupp, that despite their differences, seem to reach a similar conclusion. We don't seem to need an image of Krupp made up as the bogeyman. Maybe it is due to being photographers and so we see more deeply, but there is sufficient 'folk wisdom' that such perceptions are not so rarified. It's always the quiet ones. He seemed such a nice young man, so helpful and polite, said the neighbor upon hearing of the bodies found in the freezer.</p>

<p>Newman's photo will not help you identify "Monsters" or serial killers when you next meet one.</p>

<p>"As I see it, Newman walked into the Monster's domain, played him for a fool, and slew his chances of lying his way into History."</p>

<p>As I see it, Krupp conformed to what I gleaned from the other photos. His imperviousness to, or indifference towards, the external world landed him in that photo session. I think it might have been easy to play Krupp for a fool.</p>

<p>"Don sees Newman as a murderer, I see him as the photographic equivalent of the kind of hero poets wrote paeans about."</p>

<p>I think Newman, and you, romanticized Krupp -- a dark, negative romance, but romance nonetheless -- and you now you romaticize Newman. Against that, I have no argument that can compare.</p>

<p>To say I see him as a murderer doesn't quite capture "murder by photography, in a way". Not romantic enough so you have to say "murderer"?</p>

<p> A murderer kills an undeserving victim. Krupp wasn't, and Newman did not do that. He created an image that via carefully orchestrated gestures connotes what Krupp did in WWII, which by the time that picture had been made, had already faded. Was that picture "needed"? Editors around the world thought so and published it many times, and over several years. I knew who Krupp was and what he had done well before that picture was made, so I personally did not "need it", but am nevertheless glad Newman made it because it resulted in a public reassessment of Krupp, specially since products bearing his name were flooding the US marketplace, and he was easing his way into History. Not any more.</p>

<p> I never said or implied that Newman's photo is a generic Identi-Kit for Corporate Psychopaths to instruct others to detect them, but (and you, of all people, should recognize this), a specific picture of a specific man, and his specific actions at specific timespace coordinates.</p>

<p> I think to say Newman committed "murder by photography" is more than slight romanticizing on Don's part, specially when the "victim" murdered thousands, never mind the slave labor. Krupp deserved to have been prosecuted for his part in the deaths of thousands in his factories, and for slave labor, not being endlessly lauded (photographically) as a successful CEO, and sliding untouched by justice (as so many Nazis did) because of his wealth.</p>

<p> I'm sure if I dressed Mugabe up in Armani and photographed him in the right light, in his beautiful ersatz French Empire home, that I could create a ridiculous fiction of him as a cultured philosopher-king instead of what he is. That's what happened with Krupp's stock portraits.</p>

<p>If you read Joseph Campbell's _The Hero With a Thousand Faces_, you will see that Newman's actions in making this picture fit, almost exactly, those of classic heroes in many cultures and my description of what he did is far more factual than romantic, literally. I could easily find the quotes to support my statements but I haven't the time, nor would it be on-topic in this already wayfaring thread. To say that Newman (and I) romanticized what Krupp did I consider as a (perhaps unintentional) hit below the belt.</p>

<p>[Don]"His [Krupp] imperviousness to, or indifference towards, the external world landed him in that photo session. I think it might have been easy to play Krupp for a fool."</p>

<p> All that may be so, but no one else did it before Newman, except for Steichen, and I can't think of too many CEO portraits that have revealed their dark side since. So I can reasonably conclude, given the zillions of exec portraits made every year, that it cannot be that easy. Not only literally, in the sense of getting past agents, publicity, security, lawyers, etc., but in terms of risking one's own life and career. Frankly, how many are there in the entire history of the medium? Where are the Enron CEO/BOD pictures showing them for the robber barons they were? Pol Pot? Somoza? Aaron Burr? Where's the Bernie Madoff portrait? Nowadays men of power carefully control their image. The last thing of this type I can recall was Jill Greenberg's pictures of John McCain, which aspire but fall far short and crude of Steichen's and Newman's.</p>

<p>http://gawker.com/5049776/mag-photographers-grotesque-mccain-trick</p>

<p> [Don] "To say I see him as a murderer doesn't quite capture "murder by photography, in a way". Not romantic enough so you have to say "murderer"?</p>

<p> You're right: It would have been far more accurate to have said: "photographic murderer".</p>

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<p>I've read that Krupp, upon seeing the photo, crumpled it and tossed it on the floor. Where was Newman for those shots? Just wondering how hard a smack it would take for his face to register something, if it did, and if it didn't, that would be interesting, too.</p>

 

<p>Luis wrote: "Newman's intentions are imperceptible to the uniniated."</p>

<p>If I'm an initiate, I'm unaware of it, so I decided to do some research. I don't think initiates are Illuminati hunters -- though there's a lot of that on the web about Krupp. I wanted to learn something about Newman; Krupp I know about, but what about Newman? Considering Luis' hagiography, I wanted to know more, so I looked for Newman interviews.</p>

<p>Newman has a good story about the Krupp shoot, and possibly an initiate is someone who sat at his feet and heard it from his own mouth. I do not give much weight to inconsistencies; it is easy to misspeak in casual conversation, but I do note them when they appear more than once. Fwiw, Newman sometimes conflates Gustav and Alfred. No biggie, but he doesn't seem to question his notion that Alfred, the son of a Krupp (Gustav) "married a Krupp and took the Krupp name". That's Gustav, not Alfred. The Krupp photo shoot, and to offer it to Newman, was the bright idea of an editor at Newsweek. Does anyone know who that was?</p>

<p>There are shifts on the "knifing": "There's so many of them because things keep coming in for request for purchases, there's Krupp, who I put a knife in his back--he deserved it..." he says in the Robert Farber interview. But in the Peter Adams interview he says: "Lately, people have been labeling my Krupp picture as the greatest photographic "knife job" ever done on anybody, but I'm not so sure."</p>

<p>So, I'll keep "murder by photography, in a way".</p>

<p>The Peter Adams interview is about the Krupp photo. I found Newman's style as raconteur to be familiar; his language is interesting. I recommend it:</p>

<p>http://www.wac.ucla.edu/bishop/People/Arnold%20Newman/Adams.pdf</p>

<p>The last bullet in the Wikipedia article on Newman under "See Also" links to an interview that is not sourced to any publication, by someone named Alexis Anne Clements, who I gather is a photographer (her website is in a rebuild it seems, so that's all I've got about this interview). It contains this</p>

<p>AC: Who is the one person living today that you would most like to photograph?<br /> AN: Well, are you a Republican?<br /> AC: Yes.<br /> AN: I’ve been trying to work out arrangements with the current President, who I don’t<br /> agree with, but I will not do a bad picture of him. I’ve done the last 10 [presidents] and I<br /> want to keep my franchise going.</p>

<p>There is no mention of the Krupp photo, but perhaps it was on his mind there.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Don--</p>

<p>The stock photo you included of Krupp. Obviously quite different from the Newman. You said the stock photo was more revealing. </p>

<p>If I'm reading you correctly, you talk about the stock photo in terms of viewer involvement. You think it will involve the viewer more because the Newman photo is more gestural and directed and involves the photographer more. If I knew nothing about Krupp and came across the stock photo randomly, I wouldn't give it a second thought. If I came across the Newman photo, I'd be much more likely to look into who the character was. So, at least for me, my involvement as viewer would be much more personal with the Newman photo.</p>

<p>Were I to read up on Krupp, I would feel that the Newman photo revealed something about Krupp, also revealing strongly Newman's own take on Krupp. Likely, Newman would be standing in for the way many felt about Krupp. The stock photo would reveal to me, more plainly and directly, what Newman looked like.</p>

<p>Each stock photo I found gives me a slightly different feel about him. I probably would only make a determination about what was "revealed" about him from many different portraits.</p>

<p>http://cache.gettyimages.com/xc/3310127.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=11B127B063386F61CEF94D45F4E1AFA9A55A1E4F32AD3138</p>

<p>http://pro.corbis.com/images/U1286293INP.jpg?size=67&uid=%7B427B4FB1-D59F-43B8-ACCE-5FB574BEEC34%7D</p>

<p>I'd probably guess, from these two, that he was more likely to be a businessman than a dancer. I get a much more benign feel from the second and sense much more harshness to his nature in the first. But I've learned enough about portraits not to assume that any one of them gives me revelation about the subject himself. I think single portraits are often more about expression <em>per se</em> and empathy. Series of portraits may come closer to revealing something about the subject. If one knows the subject, sometimes a portrait can amazingly capture something personal and revealing about the subject. And, if you don't know the subject, sometimes you really get the feeling that the portrait is doing just that. On this latter point, one has to be careful. Sometimes you're right and sometimes not.</p>

<p>You reminded me that the thread started with a description of the importance of noticing gesture within the photo, by the subjects. Here's a photo where the gestures of the subjects are significant, though the photographer is part of it and doing her own gesturing. Leibovitz wanted them both nude. Yoko insisted on leaving her clothes on. So, John seems to be the one most gesturing with his nude body, but it's really Yoko's gesture that makes the photo.</p>

<p>http://www.studiolighting.net/wp-content/images/leibovitz2.jpg</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Fred, thanks for the link to the first Krupp photo. I hadn't come across that one. Is it a mug shot?</p>

<p>You, I -- everyone reading this thread is probably an 'initiate' and our response to Newman's Krupp is obviously of a different order than the responses Luis mentions of his naive subjects (to use a term of art). But nearly all my "immediate reactions" referred to B movies. It takes a "considered response" to get serious about it. I tend to give weight to the evidence of immediate reactions, mine and the ones Luis mentions, and that is what got my interest. The immediate reaction of the naive viewer to the Corbis photo might be "eh".<br>

<br /> It is easy to initiate the naive viewer into an appreciation of the Newman photo: "Krupp made slaves of other men. Here, the photographer portrays him as the devil." Can that be done for the one I posted? I don't think so: "Krupp made slaves of other men." is all you can say. It is up to the naive viewer to wonder about that, looking at the placid face of Krupp. It gives the viewer room to breathe and reason to linger.</p>

<p>Maybe they'll conclude what I do: ""Then it came burning hot in my mind, whatever he said, and however he flattered, when he got me home to his house, he would sell me for a slave."<br>

(Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyon)<br /> </p>

<p> </p>

<p>I found it in a search of google images: Alfred Krupp photos</p>

<p>The only caption is "August 1947: German iron and steel magnate Alfred Krupp (1907 - 1967) who was sentenced by the Allies as a war criminal. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)"<br /></p>

<p>It seems to me that the second "handsome" portrait was shallow. The photographer was a shallow person.</p>