Preconceived photographs

Didn't Gary Winogrand, responding to the idea of previsualiztion (and to some extent I think it goes for the preconceived photograph too) say something along the lines of "why would I take a picture if I knew what it was going to look like?"

Quoting Galen Rowell here, from Outdoor Photographer, July/August 2000...

 

"Very few of my top landscape photographs represent my initial interaction with a subject. My most enduring photographs almost always come from repeat visits to scenes I feel passionate about."

 

When I go out to make a photograph, I almost always have an idea of what I expect to capture. If, when I get there, things don't pan out as planned, I open my eyes to the unexpected compositions. But I won't cross that original shot off of my list until I get what I envision.

�Preconceived� is in my experience used only in a pejorative sense. Preconceived ideas, theories, notions etc. are things few are willing to fess up to. Preconceived photograph is a phrase I don�t think I�ve encountered before. The title of this thread stacks the deck by transferring this pejorative word to LF photography. No one is going to come to the defense of preconception.

 

Previsualization is both a necessary and desirable facet of LF photography IMO. We�re not concerned here with handheld 35mm with lenses with lots of DOF and backed up by computer programs allowing the correction or alteration of the data taken in the field. We all know the many variables that come into play in the production of a successful LF b&w photograph. Prior consideration of these variables is not necessarily a form of �preconception� where this term somehow implies a closed or uncreative mind at work, thoughtlessly aping some well-known or clichéd work of a forerunner. Even the most startlingly original inspiration still needs to be planned and executed.

 

Music always provides useful parallels. A child might think that you can pick up an instrument or sit at a keyboard and spontaneously produce the music you hear in your head. Those of us who are musicians, or are trying to be musicians, are fully aware of the talent, hard work, and constant practice that are required to perform competently�and music never ceases to be work, although an audience may not be aware of anything other than the music itself. After many years of shooting 35mm, I got into LF mainly for pleasure, but while it has turned out to be intensely pleasurable, it�s also a lot more work than I had ever imagined. But a good photograph, like a good musical performance, should appear effortless.

 

Then there�s vision�something we talked about a lot on this board a year or two ago. Is a vision �preconceived�? And is there something wrong with having a vision? My own approach is introspective and individualist. Where vision is concerned, I think it�s a mistake to look outside oneself for inspiration, for the sources of originality---or at least it�s unnecessary. Each of us has the potential for producing a unique vision corresponding to his or her uniqueness as an individual person with a unique background, circumstances, etc. But it takes a lot of work to discover one�s vision and to learn how to express it. Is this �preconception�?

 

I�m puzzled by the mention of trophies, although I suspect what the poster had in mind is particular time-worn or hackneyed photographic subjects. But this would be to give too much weight to content at the expense of the formal features that have always been so large a part of b&w LF photography. I don�t think Stieglitz� 1903 photograph condemned to the charge of �preconceived� idea, photograph, etc. anyone who attempts to find something new or interesting in the Flat Iron building. Shape, line, texture, contrast, that�s what it�s about in this art�and formal characteristics are, ultimately, I suspect, a deeper reason underlying the popularity of clouds against darkened skies, shining rock cliffs, barkless dead trees, breaking waves, and so on. Let�s face it, certain kinds of subjects give themselves more naturally to b&w film.

 

Why all this self-flagellation? Why are we photographers so hard on ourselves?

I find most of the pre-visulaization stuff if generally more hockus pocus than anything else.

 

As for music, I think the better analogy is between creating a photograph and composing, not performing. Unless you are happy with just trying to interpret what others have done before.

Every photograph, regardless of format, has been pre-visualized at some level. When you set up your tripod and duck under the dark cloth, you have some idea of what your going to see. For some this is visualized as you scan the scene with your camera at your side. For others, this is visualized years before. Call it what you want, or ignore it all together, but it does happen.

How about the photographers like Kim Weston, Ruth Bernhard and Robert-Parke Harrison, among many others? John Sexton? These photographers all had pre-visualized images in mind and attempted to stay true to those pre-visualizations when shooting. And what is wrong wanting to produce your own Moonrise Hernandez? Or Clearing Winter Storm? Or a beautiful iris or lilly? I question Micheals assertion that doing this leads to dead images. If this is what you want to photograph, then who am I, or who is Micheal Smith to impose our ideals and prejudice on anyone else? Are Micheal Smiths images of rocks or Paula Chamblee's images of farm buildings really breaking new ground or are they merely "true" to those photographers ideals and philosophy? Where are the new images? The new photographic ideas? Few are really new. I must admit a certain love of Paula's images of Tuscany, Provence, and especially her high plains images because these are the same type images, or should I say the same type subject matter I enjoy photographing. But is it new and creative? No. Been done over and over. But they are hers. And the rocks are his. They are as valid as anything else in photography today. Why? Because they are their vision of what was there. Their interpretation. I have read just about everything Ansel Adams ever wrote, or read about all that was written about him and I have come to the conclusion that what he talked about as pre-visualization meant that as he stood there visualizing the scene in front of him, that was what he would attempt to recreate in the print. If he stood before a bold scene, that was what he would print the scene like (Clearing Winter Storm). If it was a soft warm shimmering light, then that was what he took with him into the darkroom. He writes about this in his famous "Trailer Park Children" from his FSA days. He told of a soft glow from the open door on the youngest childs face and borrowed the 35mm camera from (I forget who it was, but could have been Cunningham) and snapped the image because it was so powerful an image. But he preconcieved how it would be printed. And he printed it softly. He "pre-concieved" how he wanted the image to appear on paper. I find all this thyselfs art better or newer or more creative than thous art stupid. Especially all the philosophical hair splitting. So is using x film, y paper, and z processing. Embrace it all. Minor White, Wynn Bullock, and Weston would turn their backs and walk away from this. There are many looks and many styles. And who are we to say any different.

But now we come to the other side of the coin. Street or photojournalism. There can be nothing but unprevisualized images. The street photographer may start out with a preconcieved plan of the type of image they will be after (protest rally, lovers lane, abandoned people) but there can never be a previsualized image. It happens to fast. If they capture what they want and it is close to what they concieved then that is fortuitous. But that is the other side of the coin. But what about the printing of the image? When they snapped the picture, and when they go into the darkroom or in front of the monitor, hwta does the photographer do? Do they have a previsualized idea how they want the image to look? Sometimes, and sometimes not. That is their call.

"Every photograph, regardless of format, has been pre-visualized at some level.

When you set up your tripod and duck under the dark cloth, you have some idea

of what your going to see. For some this is visualized as you scan the scene

with your camera at your side. For others, this is visualized years before.

Call it what you want, or ignore it all together, but it does happen."

 

I'm not playing semantics, because certain photographers have chosen to use the term "pre-visualize", but what you are talking about above is visualizing the photograph NOT pre-visualizing it (I not you actually revert to that as you continue).

 

I have no problem with visualizing what the photograph will (or may) look like - it's "pre-visualization" that I tend to think is bunkum... There is a difference. Perhaps because I feel there is less relation between the scene we see before our camera and the final print we make than msot of us would like to think?

All I have been referring to is this: When you are photographing

keep your eyes and heart open to whatever may excite you.

Period.

 

Many, perhaps most, already do this. What some do, however, is

instead go looking for something that they already have a picture

of in their mind before they get there. If you go out with that

mindset you are likely to miss the many thousands of other

photographic opportunities that are present. If that satisfies you,

hey, no problem. But if you feel you are in a rut, not having

something in your mind in this way will be an important factor in

helping you get out of it.

In fact, while playing the semantic game - doesn't visualization mean 'trying to picture in your mind's eye'? So, what is 'pre-visualization'? Sounds like a tiger chasing its own tail....

 

And besides, if previsualization is the lodestone to aspire to, does Ansel Adams' reprinting of his negatives in his later years somehow repudiate his previsualization at the time he made the photograph?

 

Let's not confuse the issue by calling different things by the same name. If you say that one needs to work through how what you see on the ground glass will translate into a print, yes, we all presumably work through that ahead of time. But I think people who are advising against preconception are referring to something else i.e., setting out to photograph X, to the extent that you close yourself off to other experiences.

 

What is wrong with me having my own 'Moonrise, Hernandez' or 'Clearing Winter Storm' or 'Pepper 30'? It is trophy hunting when you put it that way - the need for posession (My Moonrise, My Pepper). It may be therapy but its questionable if its art.... It's different if you want to do it, because you believe there is something to learn there, because you believe it will lead to new ways of seeing for you etc. But if you are doing it because you want your 'Pepper 30', it seems a waste of everyone's time trying to fill shoes as large as that. I'm not denying the value of learning from copying the masters but I don't think that is what folks are referring to here.

 

Cheers, DJ

Alex - you are right: �I still think I could do better�. So do I. Then try again. Your latest composition is a faulty one. No, I do not mind the �the top of the foremost tower blends into the dark sky�. Should you try this scene again? I bet you should.

"Preconceived" is a particularly odious concept when, as in academic circles, it means that a person embarks on a search with mind already firmly made up about what the outcome of that search will be. So the investigator sees only the conforming evidence, passing over everything else--the very stuff that, were it acknowedged, might lead to a quite different result. Applied to photography, the "preconceived" photograph means that the subject was never seen in its own right but only in terms of some predecessor's image of it or of already deeply held cherished ideas or approach, etc.

 

Perhaps there are photographers who are engaged in this kind of work, but I have yet to meet one outside of the usual run of snapshot or studio imaging. That's why it's important to add that hyphen, pre-conceived, which is what previous posts have made clear we're talking about here. Yes, a semantic distinction, but an important one since to each corresponds a distinct approach to photography.

 

I'm a firm believer in the notion that to get from point A to point D, you have to go through B and C first. So, DJ, you mentioned the dissatisfaction that followed when you finally got all those longed-for shots. But, unless you'd gone through that stage first, could you have arrived at your present understanding of what it's all about? Also (and I say this with due respect for your many penetrating contributions to this forum), be careful about supposing that others you witness or imagine are pursuing that same earlier course of yours are also themselves harboring the same misapprehension that you did. Just maybe they have a pretty good idea of what they're doing and why they're doing it.

 

"Growth" frequently comes up in these discussions, and this one is no exception. Three points. One, insistence on growth may reflect the mindset of a more youthful set--if not literally in terms of age, then with regard to some other process of personal development. But what's the point of growth unless it leads eventually to some conclusion, to (in the case of photography) some satisfactory and settled vision? A person with a half century of living behind them might be less concerned with still more growth and more concerned with expressing the vision that prior growth had culminated in. Two, "growth" is sometimes used as politicians use "change"--that is, without specifying what kind of change, change from what to what, change for whom, change for what purpose, etc. The same questions could be posed to the usually unqualified mention of "growth" as though it were an unquestioned universally accepted notion requiring no further justification. Three, having paid some attention to the whole business of images as we now know it (criticism, museums, academics, popular vs. highbrow culture, and so on), I fail to see how anyone in this pluralistic environment we now find ourselves in could possibly endorse some particular esthetic as the goal that we should all be growing towards.

 

Respectfully,

Nicholas