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Is vitality important in your photographs?


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<p>Arthur -- Your thread came to mind recently when I was going through the Fine Arts department website for my daughter's high school. Like both her parents, she leans heavily toward the creative (the old right/left brain classification). Theatre, orchestra (cello), choir and an auditioned a cappella group. I'm on the parents board for both theatre and music departments. I occasionally see student photographs posted in the hallways of the school and was curious as to the teachers and curriculum because my daughter is not involved in painting and photography and I have not met or been involved in the visual Fine Arts department. I found a link to one teacher's work assignments and her Pinterest board where she put up examples and student photos divided into different categories. One of them was "Street Photography", another "Documentary" (the genres I currently have the most interest in). As I went through the student photos in "Street" I noticed that even the few photos in which a student got very close to a subject lacked something. That's when your thread came to mind and I thought, "vitality! The photos lack vitality." </p>

<p>Now, this is not to disparage the student efforts. I see a lack of vitality in much beginner street photography, and in a large portion of my own work. I just edit it out in terms of what I choose to work on, post, or print. But I well remember my excitement when I first began -- where every close shot of a stranger (and even some not so close photographs) in the street was new, exciting, and a triumph of sorts. And, as has been covered somewhat in this thread already, the "vitality" or lack thereof does not necessarily mean literal physical action or decisive moment -- it can be atmosphere, a surreal feeling, quality of light and shadow, juxtaposition of contrasting elements, visual puns, etc. And, like Lex, I keep coming back to Barthes notion of "punctum". </p>

<p>I like Barry's suggestion of linking to concrete visual examples, rather than ust leaving this to the abstraction of words. Alas, I have none at this time!</p>

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<p>In regard to Barry's suggestion, I thought I would link to 2 of my photos. One is an example of an image in which there should not really be vitality, and another image in which there is literal physical, and facially expressive vitality but which I do not think really has vitality in the sense of Arthur's original post.</p>

 

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<p>“Man with scarf, Michigan Ave 2014” <a href="/photo/17833394">http://www.photo.net/photo/17833394</a></p>

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<p>The photo is taken of a man from behind. Strike One in terms of classical SP dogma. Outside of the large and unusual scarf wrapped around his neck, there is not much going on here, no “decisive moment”. Strike Two. The scarf, while mildly interesting or amusing (and even that may be a stretch) does not give really give us much of a clue as to the man's character (unlike the explication of a Vivian Maier photograph we discussed in another thread, where a claim was made that her frayed hat gave provenance to her aspirations and socioeconomic standing). Strike Three. There is some geometric contrast (the circular patterns of the scarf and the linear stripes of the shirt), but still... Big deal. Who cares? Yet, for me, I find a certain odd vitality in it that I can't quite put into words. The man, seen from the back, is to me much more effective than if I had photographed him head on. (Maybe this is not such a good example because the judgement of vitality may be mine alone. Still, I'll go with it for this example...)</p>

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<p>“Outside the Marriott” <a href="/photo/17854141">http://www.photo.net/photo/17854141</a></p>

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<p>The subjects fill the frame. Two are seen face on, possible looking directly at the photographer. There is an expression, possibly of surprised amusement, on the faces of the two men facing the camera. They are directly engaged and one seems in mid gesture of some sort. Yet outside of these literal expressions of physical vitality, I don't really care much for this photograph. (“Then why did you post it in your portfolio?” The man on the left vaguely reminded me of my friend and fellow PN photographer Jack McRitchie and it amused me to post the photograph.)</p>

<p>I don't think technical aspects play that large of a role in these two examples, but photo 1 was taken in direct midday light, low ISO, and I had more time to focus and compose. Photo 2 was taken quickly, on the fly, in late afternoon skyscraper canyon shadow, high ISO, and utilizing preset zone focusing.</p>

<p>There may be better examples of what I'm trying to say, using the photographs of other photographers, but this is what I came up with for now.</p>

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  • 4 months later...

<p>Today I peaked at PF, and was rewarded with Aurthur P’s great topic and the good, thoughtful responses to it. It seems to me that ALL the feelings expressed here about vitality in a picture meshed in a comprehensive and stimulating way. <br>

A year or so ago, PF was draining my vitality so I went on a sabbatical from it (didn’t even lurk) and only did a personal art journal. Over-all the journal has turned out to be about vitality. <br>

I am satisfied if only I <em>get</em> a picture. I like my pictures to arouse others, of course. I don’t believe (as James may) there needs to be a check-list of criteria for art. But “good” art has significant <em>layers</em> of interest. Intentionality isn’t necessarily required. I agree that how art is conceived is the artist’s business. Liking it is the viewers’. <br>

Some looked at the topic as depicting vitality in some kinetic or formal way. Some saw a more <em>felt,</em> latent, or potential vitality - the kind that grabs you and you can’t at first see why. <br>

I photograph all the time but am limited now to producing pictures only for screen images and Blurb books. Finding a creative, enjoyable, and personally distinctive method to replace material-media is my quest. <br>

I continually worry if my screen-only work is purposeful and engaging on a par with traditional material media. I gain comfort in the fact that the audience is fully capable of <em>being in the moment</em> with the terms and conditions of every media. My No.1 fear is that it over-reaches and is only a poor substitute for more venerable media. The curse of photography! <br>

Being a product of “60’s-think” -- originality and creativity is everything and anything else is “so over”, and the idea of there even being “contemporary art” - I’m always decades behind – is angst-producing. I have to talk myself out of it in my journal. <br>

I wrote in reassurance to myself: <br>

“<strong>All</strong> art is contemporary”<br>

“Cultural memories dissolved in the stew of global communities are felt more than consciously acknowledged.”<br>

“ Something about a picture (or the moment) just seems right for that picture”<br>

Old camera store sign: "Photographs Live Forever"<br /><br>

AZ<br /></p>

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  • 2 months later...
<p>Outlook of each person about vitality may be different if I take it like an amateur imitation of thought without seriousness than it is fruitless and only opening in thinking and sinking. What is in real means its result will be enough for achievement. So I think it is a inner quality and how someone leading with his thoughts, means… actual words or only requirement of thoughts that have to be fulfilled.</p>
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  • 1 month later...

<p>To be perfectly honest I have a nagging feeling that the vitality and other such terms too often relate to an aging photographers or any artists need for connecting with their former attitudes and outlooks but with hopes of applying their acrued experience "this time around".<br>

To this end I would think that terms like vitality are often psychologically connected with the idea and need for virility.<br>

A photograph can depict a subject that symbolises vitality or expresses vitality either as a cultural archetype or a psychological archetype (ala Jung) of some type but as a universal property I cannot really find a place for the term vitality when it comes to photography as a whole.<br>

A photographer can have vitality but can a photograph have vitality? Upon an additional separate ponder in between writing this, I have to still say no.<br />My personal experience with other photographers, especially those older than me and even more so especially those who I had contact with at places of artistic learning so to speak, was that many of them where personally obsessed (that is their personal lives seemed to revolve around it more than their proffesional lives) with applying their control over the form to the goals of their youth and somewhat obsessed with youth in general.<br>

I think photographers want to have vitality - that is they do not want their photographs to suffer from the lack of vitality in the author so to speak. I think it is more about the perception of getting weaker or older or less viral. Photography to some extent is a technological struggle so that pushes the scale towards the general feeling of becoming progressively more dead if one does not actively try to do something to balance it out.<br>

In comparison in music I am experiencing something similar when it comes to sound engineering where it seems that everyday spent on it ages me a month so ever since I've been working in that field I suddenly feel the need to play an extended blues and crank up the amplifier while before that I felt plenty alive styding Charlie Parket transcriptions. <br>

I appreciate Shakespear but I cannot shake the feeling as a reader that he is very much dead, even as I am fully trapped in the context of a given play. Considering the immense heft of the tomes collecting his work I would conclude that me not getting a sense of vitality from his work (even from Midsummer Night's Dream) does not damage his artistic stature.<br />Shakespears voice on youth seems to come out of an old mans mouth to me while Jules Verne voice even on the topic of old age still seems to come out of a youthfull mans mouth to me.<br>

So maybe there is some quality like vitality to be had but again I feel it's all about the author and what we can gleam of the authors attitude, not about the work itself.<br>

Communicated through the work but about the author and on the side, not the main substence of the work itself. In my opinion it's not related to the work being great or not. Then again these days many people make the substence of their work to be about them and their own identity so achieving the desired perception in the viewer of who the artist is could be considered an artistic success.<br>

As for my own goals I want to remove my self personally from the substance but impose my self on the eloquence aspect - To close a loop, I feel some older photographers are trying to add something fresh to how they work by inserting themselves into the substance more now that they have a handle on the eloquence or so it seems to me. I am not yet an older photographer yet so I personally do not want to go that way and do not strive for it - I feel it's not nessesary to produce good work either. I might change my mind as the technological struggle grinds me down further though.</p>

<p>Is this of any insight? Is it even relevant, I don't know - I think our global culture is obsessed with virility so because to me vitality connects in my laymans understanding of psychology with virility I feel constant sensory overload with images of virility and people striving to express all it's representations.<br>

I suppose an artistic success could be had by expressing vitality in a very clever way by doing it in it's most typical way (ala Venus de Milo) but without people as subject matter, to express the same angular properties and the same proportions, the same balance of composition. If those chairs in that photograph posted would cleverly read with all the shapes and ratios of the classical world's idea of vitality then it would express eloquence I suppose - I'm just again very tired of this kind of thing because I think too many people in the higher structure of creative learning are using that as a gimmick in some form or other so I almost refuse to try to read these things out of a work.</p>

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