HCB Exhibit

Interesting article in today's NY Times on the first solo HCB show since his death in '04.

Featured are some juicy quotes from the sainted father of street photography:

HCB called photography a 'duel without rules." The subtitle of the show (they seem to have

omitted the main title from the article) is, "The Inner Silence of the Consenting Victim",

borrowed from one of HCB's phrases. This begs the question, "how natural can a portrait

ever be?"

 

Of course his portraiture, especially after HCB became world-famous, was completely

different from his street work. Contrivance was common in his portraiture ("Thus a large

cross appears above the head of painter Charles Roualt"), etc.

 

At the HCB Foundation in Paris.

"Street photography" often seems the ultimate "contrivance."

 

The street photographer's contrivance is that of an adolescent peeping-tom, arranging for subjects to be unaware, ignoring them as individuals, shy or literally afraid of personal contact.

 

Portraits can by contrast be a reciprocal breaking through of (for example) the photographer's adolescence or the subject's rigid adult poses by photographer and subject ... HCB's adolescent pose is blatant in the quotations Jeff Cosley cited.

 

The superior portrait photographer (eg. Avedon or Arnold Newman or Weston) aspires to openness or insight, is unconcerned with theatrical coincidences (arguably HCB's moments), yearns to establish relationship with his subject rather than lowering himself to victimization or duel. HCB was bolder, more the man, in his portraits than in his wonderful street work. But adolescence gives us a lot, after all: think about our own.

Photographic processes are essentially contrivances, an artifactual bundle of supposed

auto-writing born out of a fascination with 'realism,' whatever that meant to the

nineteenth-century.

 

Hattersley wrote about the arrested emotional development of those who photograph

because they don't have the courage to, "approach the object of their desire and offer their

manhood," thus placing themselves in a vulnerable spot.

 

I don't necessarily see street work an exercise in adolescent pining and avoidance of actual

contact with the world. It can, at its best, be a brief conversation between adults or

between the visible world and the artist, but it's true the person with the camera is a

predator, thus giving him or her cover and a potentially frightening upper hand.

The camera doesn't make a predator of an adult human and no photographer dealing respectfully with his subject has a "frighteningly potential upper hand".

 

That's precisely the adolescent contrivance to which I was referring. Adolescents are commonly proud of "predatory" or "outsider" identity (think about punk imagery), which is their immature self-deception.

 

Predators feed on the weak. Watch an eagle in a marsh. Street photographers prefer the homeless, old, and unfashionable: they're predators. In adulthood we stop being predators if we continue to develop. HCB, who claimed he was a predator, stopped.

I see the 'frightening potential...... " as exactly that, a potential that, pretty much anyone

immersed in a culture of self-conscious social and economic status, is going to have at

least a flash of concern ranging to outright dread when the camera swings his way.

The entire 19th century enterprise of striving to 'fix nature's image permanently on a plate'

seems quaintly vain to say the least if not downright narcissistic. Now, in the video age

with print stills relegated to the tabloids, we have a mainstream culture consisting of

narcissism blended with irony.

 

The best of the lot, Newman, Avedon, Lange, etc. excelled mainly because of their human

qualities. Besides bashing the girl-watchers, Hattersley also maintained that if your aims

were well self-understood, there would be a tendency for people to open up and accept

your presence. His prime example was Ken Heyman, a huge guy who knew how to get the

attention off himself by behaving in a totally unassuming way.

<I>Street photographers prefer the homeless, old, and unfashionable: they're predators.

</I><P>

 

Yikes!!! <P>

Hooey Alert... Please share a few names that went into your survey rather than broadbrush

with only an opinion. Do you even know any serious "street photographers?"

<i>Street photographers prefer the homeless, old, and unfashionable: they're predators.</i><p>

 

Why don't you give some examples of this, so we can be enlightened.

John can speak for himself on this if he wants, but as I am in some agreement with the

idea that there's an immature, and perhaps purile aspect to this, I'll say that the fault lies

mostly in the wider culture of modernism. Post-modernism has allowed for an explosion

of norm-justified narcissism.

 

Maybe I can come at it another way: Jacob Riis photographed the destitute in order to

effect changes in public and private attitudes about poverty. Same applies to Walker Evans,

Dorothea Lange, etc. Lissette Model worked more for art but always, even when portraying

the grotesque, showed respect for humanity.

 

The preditors: Ron Galella and his spawn, and, unfortunately, most beginners who can't

help but take certain cues from our common media obsession: shaping an alternate but

cannily similar version of real life and encouraging us to choose it over the evidence of our

senses.<div></div>

Huh? Ron Galella photographed the <i>homeless, old, and unfashionable</I>? Have no

idea about his "spawn"...

Ron Galella is a paparazzi. What does that have to do with street photogoraphy? And the others you name were not street photographers. Where are you coming up with these names? Try to answer the question, use some street photographers as examples.

but as I am in some agreement with the idea that there's an immature, and perhaps purile aspect to this, I'll say that the fault lies mostly in the wider culture of modernism.

 

Classic effete Arty gobbly kook nonsense often heard among polite company and raised small fingers.

As opposed to raised middle fingers :-)

Allen knows this but....

 

The two fingered 'salute' of Winston Churchill fame (V for victory etc) was supposed to have originated with the English Longbow archers (of Agincourt era) as a sign defiantly demonstrating to the enemy that their drawing fingers were still intact. (The enemy hacked them off imprisoned longbow archers.)

 

The raised 'pinkie' of middle class English ladies when drinking tea originated in Agincourt also when the Womens Institute Reserve Expeditionary Detachment (W.I.R.E.D) were called up to make up the numbers. The two fingered salute was too 'vulgar' for these ladies so they used the crooked pinkie and 'nice cuppa tea' salute instead.

 

Those taken prisoner were forced to learn how to make decent coffee or tortured by being made to drink tea where the pot had not been warmed first!

gobbly.....<div></div>

Nothing personal here, just illustrating my point.

 

;)

Ouch!!

 

What aspect of street photography are we discussing. Waiting for some glossed-out celeb

to emerge from a restaurant is a more active and influential form of it than the

(impressive) efforts of Bruce Davidson, Andre Kertesz, etc.

 

As for the more up-scale predators, HCB has already been mentioned. Brassai is a good

fit. Eric Saloman, Bill Brandt, Robert Doisneau for some classics. Check out Jeffrey Ladd's

portfolio at http://www.in-public.com/site/index.php

 

Some of his stuff shows subjects at their unconscious worst. Other shots are icons of quiet

or heroic humanity.

Until you, nobody has ever confused paparazzi and street photography. I'd say that's quite an accomplishment.

What about those photographers makes them "predators"? Most of them were/are humanists of some sort.

Going into bars in Paris and photographing a man's anxiety at just at the point of his

hearing the woman's answer (Brassai) Surreptitiously shooting couples in their private-in

public amours (Doisneau) (OK, the subjects really can't complain as they're not in private,

but did they bargain for being in coffee table books?) Brandt made his share of

observational snapshots that exposed his subjects' environment as seedy to say the least.<div></div>

but did they bargain for being in coffee table books?)

 

Lot of wicked folk in the world dude doing lots of wicked things.

<p><i>Going into bars in Paris and photographing a man's anxiety at

just at the point of his hearing the woman's answer (Brassai)

Surreptitiously shooting couples in their private-in public amours

(Doisneau) (OK, the subjects really can't complain as they're not in

private, but did they bargain for being in coffee table books?)

Brandt made his share of observational snapshots that exposed his

subjects' environment as seedy to say the least.</i></p>

 

<p>What is your point? You are writing as if you believed that there

is some inherent <i>value</i> the subject possesses, and the

photographer is literally sucking it out. Well, I'll be the first to

tell you then that you are blatantly wrong on this, and either are

pursuing your own private post-artistic agenda by ridiculing

respected artists, or are just one of those busybodies who have too

many loose axes to grind.</p>

How are any of these people the <i>homeless, old, and unfashionable?</i> That's what you said they were. Don't look it to me.

The subtitle of the show (they seem to have omitted the main title from the article) is, "The Inner Silence of the Consenting Victim",

 

HCB used to scratch his arse due to uncensored consenting by his mentor and soul mate Capa of course not in the literal sense.. Obviously this had a serious conjectual understanding of his subjects mentality at the time of exposure.We can only presume his victums were type casted into a resonate compelling cast upon them due to lateral actions of this type. As Harden a little known friend of HCB used to conjure the soul movements were part of the aura of the missing parts of the total conjecture of the victims.

Even if they were homeless, unfashionable, or old, why not?

'fix nature's image permanently on a plate' seems quaintly vain to say the least if not downright narcissistic

 

It is often claimed the narcissistic complex was atributed to the lack of individual foresight when the subject was removed from form and shape. This led to a inner perspective which led to a lack of perception from the view of the individual conjecture and penal conjecture. The penal conjecture was often considered a total lack of conjecture. A debated of figurative complexity.