yeffe Posted January 26, 2006 Share Posted January 26, 2006 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtk Posted January 27, 2006 Share Posted January 27, 2006 "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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yeffe Posted January 27, 2006 Author Share Posted January 27, 2006 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtk Posted January 27, 2006 Share Posted January 27, 2006 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yeffe Posted January 27, 2006 Author Share Posted January 27, 2006 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brad_ Posted January 27, 2006 Share Posted January 27, 2006 <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?" www.citysnaps.net Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spearhead Posted January 27, 2006 Share Posted January 27, 2006 <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. Music and Portraits Blog: Life in Portugal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yeffe Posted January 28, 2006 Author Share Posted January 28, 2006 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> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brad_ Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 Huh? Ron Galella photographed the <i>homeless, old, and unfashionable</I>? Have no idea about his "spawn"... www.citysnaps.net Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spearhead Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 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. Music and Portraits Blog: Life in Portugal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allen Herbert Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terry_rory Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 As opposed to raised middle fingers :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terry_rory Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 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! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allen Herbert Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 gobbly.....<div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allen Herbert Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 Nothing personal here, just illustrating my point. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yeffe Posted January 28, 2006 Author Share Posted January 28, 2006 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spearhead Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 Until you, nobody has ever confused paparazzi and street photography. I'd say that's quite an accomplishment. Music and Portraits Blog: Life in Portugal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spearhead Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 What about those photographers makes them "predators"? Most of them were/are humanists of some sort. Music and Portraits Blog: Life in Portugal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yeffe Posted January 28, 2006 Author Share Posted January 28, 2006 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> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasper1 Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 but did they bargain for being in coffee table books?) Lot of wicked folk in the world dude doing lots of wicked things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eugene_scherba Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 <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> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spearhead Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 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. Music and Portraits Blog: Life in Portugal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasper1 Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bljkasfdljkasfdljskfa Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 Even if they were homeless, unfashionable, or old, why not? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jasper1 Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 '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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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