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Guest or host?


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<p>In some photos, I feel clearly a guest (for example, <a href="../photo/14122292">here</a> and <a href="../photo/10462376">here</a>). That is to say: there, but not really connected to the scene. Candid "stolen" images. While I can like these images, they never completely feel mine. They're just coincidences.<br>

Being the host - I'm not quite sure how to see that. In a way: unavoidably yes. My photo represents what and how I saw, so I am inviting you in, in what's absolutely mine. At the same time, no. Being a host also sounds to me as being the one that controls the content of the image, who has set the scene, made it exactly according to vision etc. Which is not at all my way of working. It's a small difference, but it's the relationship to the stuff consisting of different layers of "ownership": it isn't my property nor under my control, but I frame it (and put it into context) the way I see it fit. So inside the frame it's mine, as an actor in a play which I am directing. But once I take my eye from the viewfinder, it's just stuff. The street. Places. Going about its own business in its own ways.</p>

<p>Tour guide. Now that sounds quite right indeed.</p>

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<p>Matt, tour guide seems sort of jaded, but I know what you mean.</p>

<p>Wouter, it's not so much a hard and fast sorting as much as a what-it-feels-like if you try out one versus the other -- as you've done, and as your examples support.</p>

<p>What got me thinking about this was looking at some pictures that I've been throwing out from way back when I got my first SLR (before digital, when I was a teenager [the stone ages ...]). Looking at them reminded me of how at that time, EVERY picture, heck, every time I looked through the viewfinder whether or not I took a picture, I felt like a guest in a new and amazing world. The constant in all the looking and picture taking of that time seems to me to have been surprise and wonder, both of which seem to me to belong to new arrival -- to a guest, not a been-there-done-that-and-proud-of-it kind of person.</p>

<p>I'm thinking about what part (when, where?) surprise happens in my current stuff. Right now I'd describe my own relationship to the content of my pictures as very much host with the exceptions being where I'm just having fun and turn into something like Lucy in the chocolate factory (from the TV show <em>I Love Lucy</em>, where she can't keep up with the assembly line, so she starts stuffing her face, her pockets, her bodice with chocolate ...).</p>

<p>With this guest/host thing in mind, I was looking at some Atget pictures and thinking how they seem very much guest-like; is this because photographers were kind of weird to the general public back then, making him feel always a little "outside" and also surprised/delighted by photography in a way I am not understanding? Because Paris was his home and pretty much his only subject (he shouldn't have felt like a guest but maybe he felt like a guest when looking through the camera?).</p>

<p>Also Bruce Davidson's <em>Subway</em> series comes to mind; his fear, but his "addiction" to going and seeing/watching year after year in his home-town --guest shooter? But Avedon in his <em>West</em> series, where he was not at home, his pictures don't feel like he was the guest.</p>

<p>I'm associating "host" with "MY world", being/feeling responsible for ..., home/dwelling, native to, some sense of ownership. I'm associating "guest" with "somebody else's world", being a little bit off kilter, maybe a little careful/wary/watchful/nervous, being in some sense subordinate to what I'm in or with or at, an outsider looking in/at, being surprised.</p>

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<p>So what difference does this make? I'm not sure ... just thinking about it (uh oh ...).</p>

<p>It seems to me that what I'm calling "host" is those whose pictorial interactions are to do with "this is what I'm like/ this is what we are like." Whereas what I'm calling "guest" is about "this is what they are like / this is NOT what I'm like." The latter focuses on, is about, difference; the point of "guest" pictures is to zero in on, explore, discover, delight in or be horrified by, whatever ... at what is in some way, strange. That "not me" strangeness is not accessory; it's <em>necessary</em> to that kind of picture -- it's the draw, the interest.</p>

<p>It seems to me that the host arrives, starts and ends, in a looking to relate, to find where, how, why "this is how I/we am/are." Looking for the relation. Whereas the guest arrives, or more descriptively, goes out (out, away; departs from home) just looking. Wide open for the new, the different, the strange.</p>

<p>Some examples: I think Arbus was always a host. Her pictures seem to me to be about finding the extremities of what she/we are, what we share. Compare that to Robert Frank's <em>America</em>; who was surely a guest, arriving to see, to watch, to discover difference, strangeness. To me, Friedlander is also a guest, perfectly comfortable delighting in looking, discovering, etc. as opposed to "looking to relate."</p>

<p>Penn's <em>Small Trades</em> seem to me to be looking at difference/strangeness whereas Avedon's <em>West</em> seems to me to be looking to relate.</p>

<p>Nachtwey's anti-war photography feels to me like looking to relate (how they are like me/us) as opposed to looking at difference/strangeness.</p>

<p>Back to my original question: what difference does this make to anything? It seems to me that if you are, for example, in a "looking to relate" mindset and you try to do "looking at strangeness" kind of project, you can get pretty messed up. The following is James Agee (whom I think was always straining to relate) watching Walker Evans make documentary photographs of the sharecroppers featured in <em>Let Us Now Praise Famous Men</em>:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>" ... all this while it was you I was particularly watching, Mrs. Ricketts; you can have no idea with what care for you, what need to let you know, oh, not to fear us, not to fear; not to hate us, that we are your friends, that however it must seem it is all right, it is truly and all the way all right: so, continually, I was watching for your eyes, and whenever they turned upon me, trying through my own and through a friendly and tender smiling (which sickens me to disgust to think of) to store into your eyes some knowledge of this, some warmth, some reassurance, that might at least a little relax you, that might conceivably bring you to warmth, to any ease or hope of smiling; but your eyes upon me, time after time, held nothing but the same terror … "</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I don't know if one can switch from one attitude to the other at will. I do know that magnificent photography has been made from both/either attitude, so neither is good or bad or better or worse. I do think that it may be a problem if you're ... confused, undecided, or somehow stuck in the middle of the two attitudes. Maybe. I'm still thinking about it ...</p>

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<p>Imagining you are a guest or host doesn't exclude the possibility of being both. If outsider/insider or social location is the point here I'd say that for me it operates on sliding scales of ambiguity and abstraction. The less we know the more we abstract and ambiguate. That's fine with me - being the guest. The roll of hosting comes later when the picture is presented as a new object of interest rather than a document of a moment. </p><div>00ZZPU-413213584.jpg.8a2411c713bd7dd961fb4174bcae9900.jpg</div>
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<blockquote>

<p><em>But Avedon in his </em><em>West </em><em>series, where he was not at home, his pictures don't feel like he was the guest. </em></p>

</blockquote>

<p><em>Julie:</em><br /> My first thoughts when I saw this show were outrage and wonder. Being raised in the Southwest I knew what people there were like. Then I realized it was the show's title, not Avedon that perturbed me. These people were not chosen by him for their regional uniqueness but for their oddness (or A's making them appear odd). The oddness is what intrigues and is Avedon's signature style. We are therefore his guest. It was an altogether fascinating show comprised of large silver prints flush-mounted on thick aluminum plates. They each had their own space and lighting that isolated them and invited an intimate look.</p>

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<p>You feel more or less comfortable with respect to the subject matter of your work or is it your performance of the tasks necessary to bring the work to fruition? A guest or host from what perspective exactly? Guests can be as comfortable and competent as the host, but in a somewhat different role. A guest can own his share of the setting, and, in fact, his success in doing this may be the reason for his next invitation to the party. </p>

<p>The question I have for you Julie is whether you see yourself as being guest or host how do you put your initial mental state into a finished picture? The implication I see in your remarks is that somehow the photographers you describe can actually give you clues that spell out dependable information pulled out of their minds. Are you sure? I have no answer for this myself to argue about. I simply find that most of the works I've seen tell me very little about the mind of the person who made them, or even the technical information I would need to make my own reproduction of the same thing. Inanimate objects of this sort are not usually made to be self-aware. I see the subject but not often the hand of the maker.</p>

<p>If the main point of making pictures is to feel something yourself when you're behind a camera then why bother to complete the project? I approach things too much like an engineer perhaps, but even I'm flexible enough to adjust from "looking to relate" to "looking at strangeness" without experiencing a mind warp. Whatever is in front of my camera, I'm still doing all the work!</p>

<p>I'm afraid an arbitrary - sort of glib - answer to the initial question is the best I can do. I'm the guest except when I'm the host. But sometimes I'm neither one, and other times I'm both!</p>

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<p>Alan, I'm not sure in what way the title <em>American West </em>was meant to be taken with reference to its pictures. It could be taken literally or mythically or generically or personally, etc. It was a commissioned project, so I expect there were commercial considerations.</p>

<p>Albert, I get a very strong impression of "attitude" or "position with respect to" that the photographer has to his/her subject. For example, Atget seems to stand back, like a watcher rather than a participant, where Avedon is up in peoples' face often with eye contact, etc. But I respect your different reception of pictures -- I'm interested in getting you to explore what guest/host "feels" like rather than trying to make anybody agree with my own perspective.</p>

<p>However ... to your statement, "I'm flexible enough to adjust from "looking to relate" to "looking at strangeness" without experiencing a mind warp," I would say, that people do swap/switch all the time, but I don't think it's unproblematic. For example, take an abusive husband. One minute his wife is his friend and lover, the next, she's a strange creature who doesn't dispense meatloaf the way he likes it. And back to friend/lover as suits his ... whatever it suits.</p>

<p>Or take the way humans lived for thousands and thousands of years -- with their livestock, often in their homes (this is still the case in some places, with chickens, goats, even cattle inside the home structure). For a year or two, you live with the animal, then one day you eat it. When I was a kid, one year we raised a steer (I lived in the country). We named him Marvin and we got to know and like Marvin. Later, when we were eating him, my father forbade us to refer to him as Marvin any more.</p>

<p>Flags. Do you mind if I burn your flag?</p>

<p>On the other hand, if one is really paying attention (as we perfectly creative people all are the minute we pick up our cameras), we're always seeing strangeness, everywhere all the time. There's a strangeness horizon that we plow all day, all the time and to be alive should include partaking of the joy of what's always already there, (etc., etc., cue the New Age music). In which case Albert's missing "mind warp" should be encouraged; its absence means we're missing the fun.</p>

<p>John Coplans, who made nude photographs of his own 70+ year old body, was a guest to himself. Looking, in astonishment, amusement, dismay, delight at what was always already there.</p>

<p>[Queston for Albert that he can take or leave, just an exploration of attitude for an engineer (what kind of engineer?): what do you see when you look at the Firth of Forth Bridge?]</p>

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<p>I think Julie is right, that most of us are probably playing all roles at different times and different occasions.<br>

Maybe, striving towards excellence in photography (whatever that means) demands a capability of accepting the invitation and playing the guest-role in some circumstances, and of taking the role as host in others , or withdraw as "observers" in yet other occasions.</p>

<p>To a certain extent what we use as term for describing our "<em>relationship to the stuff -- people or places --</em>" ,as Julie describes it, also depends on which parts of the relations we concentrate on.<br>

If we talk about our direct relations to the "stuff", surely, most of us are neither invited as guest, nor the inviter, taking up the role as host. We are mostly, and I among them, "co-vivant", "pests" or "a nuisance" as Luis, Jeff and Ray have called it.<br>

However, maybe, if we talk about the role we play for the viewer of our photos, I would believe that most of us are playing the role as "hosts", inviting the viewers to get a glance, how imperfect it might be, of our personal, subjective, privileged relations and view of the "stuff" around us. </p>

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