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<p>Fred Goldsmith wrote in another thread in this forum: A Philosophy of Photography thread on "gesture" and its personal and universal effects would be a great idea, both from a nuts and bolts, practical aspect and from a more theoretical or esthetic point of view.</p>

<p>I am not familiar with "gesture" in this context. What is being referred to?</p>

 

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<p>I noticed that too and found Fred's comment intriguing. I was reminded of guitarist Eric Johnson's unusual use of the term embouchure to summarize a guitarist's entire approach - technique, flourishes, timing, attack, etc. - since there was no directly equivalent one word term applicable to the guitar.</p>

<p>It was a particularly interesting comment in the context of that thread (debating the rhetoric of critical analysis), because it was a pithy example of how the language must be malleable to accommodate a discussion of the visual arts.</p>

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<p>I believe that the "Autonomists" (The 1948 "global refusal", sometimes even linked to "The Quiet Revolution" and Separatism in Canada) started their Montreal contemporary art movement, which rejected past art and employed, amongst other approaches, gestural movements in painting. Riopelle's paintings, Pollack's as well, are no doubt other examples of "gestural" approaches applied to the canvas.</p>

<p>In photography? Perhaps some of Hass' s work? Or perhaps randomly directed photgraphic imaging?</p>

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<p>Well, thanks, guys, for noticing.</p>

<p>I was struck in the other thread with the conflation of composition and gesture. The way I relate to it is that, when I first started doing portraits, I approached them with mainly two aspects in mind: expression and composition. The person's facial expression and the composition of where things stood in relation to each other and in relation to the whole. Did a finger look good in its placement relative to the eyes or mouth, was the hand too dominant, etc.?</p>

<p>After some time, I realized that people gesture, they don't "compose" themselves. Yet most photographers seem to compose or concern themselves with composition at the expense of the actual gesturing. Noticing how people move and hold themselves, how they interact and how expressive their bodily movements can be is a very personal thing, of course, but also often translates universally. Gestures get through to us, often more than where in the frame the person is situated. The tendency is often to see, for example, a pose in relation to the shadow it casts, from what perspective it was shot and at what angle it relates to the background. (Read through the critiquing section on PN sometime. Notice the amount of comments about whether or not the person is centered in the frame and then notice the amount of comments about how the person is holding themselves or what a hand is telling us.) There's a lot of geometry. But what does a stance say? Is the hand on the hip indicating something about personality as much as it is creating a triangular shape because of the bend of the arm? What is the subject of the portrait projecting? Perhaps composition is the more abstract (the more mathematical/universal?) side of the equation and gesture is the more human (more personal) side.</p>

<p>Photographers can capture gestures and use them expressively and I think photographers can also gesture. Lately, I've become more "active" with my camera. I tend to swing it up to my eye with more abandon. I tend to move it around a scene trying to make something happen instead of waiting to "capture" something. I think that can be sensed in a photograph.</p>

<p>I like Lex's take on it, which I interpret as a more "gestalt" usage and it makes sense. Gestures are things we often don't think about but really express visually and palpably what's going on. Sometimes, of course, we think quite specifically about certain gestures we make. So a photograph can be (somewhat metaphorically) a gesture from the photographer. A photograph can tell you something very personal but in a way that the photographer, without words, will assume you know not only what he means but something about what he's feeling. Gestures can be their own language or the enhancement of a language, including a photographic one. (NOT using language in its stricter application here.)</p>

<p>Internet dialogue can be difficult because, even if meanings are relatively clear, there are no gestures to give life to the meanings. A gesture is a sign of life. Many photographs could use more life and gesture is a way to accomplish that.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>Don-- I don't understand your response.</p>

<p>Larry-- Yes, but not limited to bodies and not limited to the bodies in the frame.</p>

<p>Gesture is non-verbal communication. The significant aspect, to me, is the photographer who gestures. If we say the "body language" of the photographer, it will be misconstrued to mean how the photographer stands and holds the camera. That's not it, although it's relevant. It's that we, as photographers, are gesturing, we are not talking and we are not limited to "meaning" things. We are expressing and communicating with our tools not like one using sign language but rather like a mime.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>I subscribe very much to the concept of "gesture," I think many great photographs employ it and composition in these photographs can be somewhat secondary. I think one of the most obvious examples of gesture is<a href="http://www.laurencemillergallery.com/images/harbuttexhibition27.jpg"> this photograph by Charles Harbutt</a> , terrible reproduction from a gallery selling it, but I can't find a better one online. One could say that the composition is awkward, but both the line and the boy's body position can easily be seen as "gesture," one inanimate and one animate. That the animate can't perceive the inanimate makes his even more compelling.</p>
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<p>For me gesture is absolutely critical in street work or portraiture, to echo what Fred wrote, even more important than facial expression or composition. And I think gesture differs from body language in that body language is generally perceived by people in real time, whereas gesture seems to be considered in stopped time, or in a short moment in time, and we gather meaning from the static pose. I suppose a moving gesture in real time can be considered part of body language, but for me it isn’t the equivalent.<br>

Of course many acclaimed photographers have been masters of stopping time to freeze the gesture that conveys what the photographer wished about a subject, but the one that immediately jumps to my mind is Dorthea Lange. When thumbing through her famous F.S.A. work, one could at first glance be somewhat unimpressed, but if you spend some real time with the images, you get a sense for the authenticity of the work, based on the natural gestures of the country folk, farmers and average people who are the subjects of the work. <br>

If we go WAY back in our history as a species, we remember that before we possessed spoken language, we identified friend and foe by analyzing body language -- posture, attitude, 2 legs or 4 etc. It is hard wired into our brains to size things up based on how we perceived them at first glance, and I would imagine that instinct must come into play in even today when we engage in the creation and subsequent interpretation of a photograph.</p>

 

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<p>"Don-- I don't understand your response."</p>

<p>I didn't know what "gesture" meant in this context. I didn't know if it referred to some technique by , or something done by, the photographer, for example. I understand that "gesture" refers to the subject, but it can refer to the movements of the photographer.</p>

<p>I make a distinction between the animate and the inanimate. "Gesture" would map pretty well to what I mean by "animate". Not only people, or other living things, gesture (or are animate), a ripple in a pond is animate, for example, or a rock tumbling down a slope, or a taxi pulling away from a stop light. It is not simply movement, but meaningful movement, even if the meaning is only gravity at work. Human movement or gesture is meaningful in more complex or nuanced ways.</p>

<p> </p>

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Isn't "gesture", than not also that what's being described in Kertész's / Cartier-Bresson's the decisive moment ? Maybe not the " gesture " in

itself but the capturing of it, where in both the photographers mind <> eye gesture comes in ' harmony ', for lack of a better word ( because I

feel this could as well mean ' conflict ' ), with the subjects own gesture, be that animate or inanimate.

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<p>Don-- For me, it's more than the movement of the photographer. It's a way of expressing and communicating. I can gesture photographically sitting quite still with my camera on a tripod beside me. And I can gesture sitting relatively still in front of my computer with a photo in photoshop on the screen.</p>
We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>A highly successful commercial illustrator, trained at Art Center School in LA, then working for years with Hallmark Cards...knocking out new greeting card cartoons every day, on order...said Hallmark evaluated an illustrator's skills by his hand-rendering.</p>

<p>Why, how? Humans see, therefore know, hands better than any other body part.</p>

<p>He used a mirror, mounted over his work table, making faces the he could feel in order to better render the expressions his cartoons called for ...hilarious to watch.</p>

<p>Perhaps someone who makes his living depicting human expressiveness as simply as possible is dealing with "gesture."</p>

<p>Maybe a gesture is a visual experience with which we physically empathize...like dance or acting.</p>

<p>Fred...does that fit your use of the word?</p>

 

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<p>"Maybe a gesture is a visual experience with which we physically empathize...like dance or acting."</p>

<p>Fits like a glove.</p>

<p>My only hesitation is that it sounds like it's from the perspective of viewer. How would that translate to the photographer's role? The photographer is making the gesture, not solely empathizing.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>Fred, I think a well-done cartoon or illustration carries a gesture from the artist (there...I'm using the word) to the image, and the image carries it to the viewer...who is actively participating in viewing, perhaps or likely with subtle kinaesthetics...physically, not just conceptually empathizing</p>

<p>No human is anything like a brain in bucket, absorbing images by osmosis without muscle action. By contrast to humans, some photo philosophers do seem to be.</p>

<p>I like your "gesture" metaphor. I also like it in Lex's guitar context ...played with feeling, there's drama...whether or not one "likes," say, a pre-teen shredder.</p>

<p>The photographer you mentioned isn't "making the gesture," he's participating in something that involves "subject" and the responses of the subsequent "viewer" of the resulting photograph. If the photographer isn't participating at some physical level in a gesture he sees (external to him) he probably isn't even seeing, and isn't going to convey much to anybody else. I'm as certain that Weston felt his peppers as that he felt his nudes :-)</p>

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<p>Matthew--</p>

<p>I agree with you about the gestures internal to the frame and that's a great point about how their "stopped" action makes us feel, even differently from how we might feel seeing those gestures in actual motion. I think people were missing or avoiding "gesture" in the other thread where this whole idea got started and it's been really helpful to consider it here.</p>

<p>I also think the way the photographer gestures through his photographs is key here.</p>

<p>John--</p>

<p>I agree with you about Weston feeling his peppers as well as his nudes and am smiling along with you. Gestures include inanimate as well as animate objects.</p>

<p>I do think the photographer is "making the gesture," in many cases, which doesn't preclude him from participating in the triangle you're suggesting . . . photographer/subject/viewer. I think it's interesting and it rings true for me that you've carried the gesture through the process and not made it static (which, after all, a gesture shouldn't be). The physicality in the process seems significant. But I often think it's the photographer as much as and sometimes more than the subject that is gesturing. I'm not sure why you've stressed the involvement of the subject and responses of the viewer and talked about the photographer not making the gesture.</p>

<p>"ome photo philosophers do seem to be." Gratuitous claptrap, to coin a phrase from another thread.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p> Gestures can be something as simple as a subject's hand expressing a feeling, or Aaron Siskind's pictures that adopted the gestures of Abstract Expressionists. It can be spatial, as with Shore's transition from early formal gesture to later works dealing with flatter territory. Or very complex, as with David Byrne's 2001 exhibit, Gesture, Posture and Bad Attitude in Contemporary News Photography, where the gestures in each photgraph in the exhibit were designed to interact by the sequence into a meta-gesture.<br>

Light can be a gesture too. I remember when Jay Maisel was quoted in a magazine as saying that he didn't understand why Stephen Shore photographed in such "dumb" light for Uncommon Places. The consistency of the light throughout the work was a gesture.</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>This is one of the better threads I've read in a while. There is something to be gathered here. Fred, you have expressed yourself wonderfully well.<br>

There have been times where I am shooting and am so involved in what is happening that I almost dont distinguish myself from what is going on but I feel emersed (spelled wrong?) in what I am a part of. I think gesture can translate itself in that way, since I am ultimately the vehicle through which the image is made. The way you are involved in photographing something, from your mind as you study and compose, to your body as you move, react, the energy with which you are shooting, or the tranquility, in effect, birth what is a gesture that is reacted to by the viewer.<br>

at least, thats how I see it.</p>

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<p>It seems to me that to gesture is to inadvertently express something (an emotion, a feeling, one's intent) between the lines of non verbal communication. That is, the personable aspect of composition as it applies to portrait photography. Often I see human movement collectively and call it body language; but gesture seems to me to be more the syllables that, when placed together in an orderly manner, make the sound of non verbal communication, like the singular movement of the hand, a positioning of the foot or the rise of a shoulder. I see these as examples of singular signs of human persona that often become evident after a photo has been taken and processed. Perhaps it can be seen as the subliminal self of the subject being photographed. Fred made an interesting point early on about the "pose in relation to the shadow it casts". I think this is another revealing aspect of gesture, where the subject isn't always aware of the shadow they cast nor what it reveals about them. However the shadow cast is an aspect of human expression that can be manipulated by the photographer to express their own view of their subject</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>Additional thought--</p>

<p>There's "gesture" as in the wave of a hand and the nod of a head.</p>

<p>Then there's "gesture" as in "lending me that money when I was down on my luck was a nice gesture."</p>

<p>A gesture is an action (not necessarily limited to the movement of a limb or even movement at all) taken for <i>effect</i>. This discussion is not about a metaphorical use of "gesture." It's real and literal and is significant to photography and other arts and media.</p>

<p>With repeated gestures, we develop a voice.</p>

<p>Photos tell stories. We can tell those stories blandly or with effect. We can gesture along with our stories.</p>

<p>The gestures of singing are intonation, breath control, phrasing, leading lines, vibrato.</p>

<p>The gestures of photography are working with light . . . for effect, setting exposure . . . for effect, moving the camera just enough . . . for the desired effect. It is how we personalize those non-verbal communicative devices at our fingertips when we hold the camera and when we enter the darkroom or the digital lab.</p>

<p>Ilia--</p>

<p>Unintentional gestures take place and are significant. I'm at a stage where I'm consciously considering/discovering that I am making gestures, that I have certain means with which to make gestures, and that it is a part of my expression. yes, the unintentional ones come . . . accident . . . serendipity. The intentional ones can be acknowledged and developed.</p>

<p>Luis--</p>

<p>Gesturing with light. THANKS. Great example. Hits the nail on the head.</p>

<p>Arthur--</p>

<p>You're not gesturing alone.</p>

<p>Nicole--</p>

<p>Glad you find it productive. I think involvement and seeing yourself as a vehicle can be really important. Yes, a gesture that can be reacted to by the viewer, that affects the viewer.</p>

 

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>Art--</p>

<p>Sorry, I was writing as you were. I agree with much of what you've said but am not sure why you included "inadvertently." Gestures may be inadvertent, as Ilia points out. But they can be made with great intention and quite deliberately. I love your "syllables" analogy. Shadows, yes.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>Hi Fred</p>

<p>I guess I use the word "inadvertently" loosely here and only when I refer to the unintentional or subliminal message being conveyed in those moments when our 'guard' is down, however I too recognise that they can be intentional and deliberate forms of communication. As a studier (and with much work experience) of body language, I see a lot of unintentional gestures everyday (and collective behaviour) that often tells me more about what a person is not overtly communicating rather than what they are. I draw on these experiences when I talk about inadvertent gestures, however I do accept that in this forum we are looking at it from a photographical perspective</p>

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