Photography: Seeing and what else?

<p>In a recent Casual Conversations thread, I brought up the importance for me of sometimes NOT taking a photo and in a subsequent post mentioned that many pianists will practice on a piano board, a slab of wood with no keys, before a performance in order to help them internalize the music, without sound (except for the fingers tapping on the wood). This can also be done in the air. So they are getting in touch (!) with other senses besides hearing.</p>

<p>Got me to wondering about senses and faculties we use other than seeing in relationship to photography. Do you ever hear a photo? I actually have. And I often consider rhythm an integral part of photo-making and photo-viewing. I've also talked about the texture of photos, much as I would talk about the texture of a symphony orchestra, the blending of different instruments and the various sounds, timbres, and articulations. Then, of course, there would be using various faculties such as emotions and thinking. There's the relationship of one's own movements and gestures while photographing to the making of the photos themselves and there is movement and gesture within the photos as well.</p>

<p>Well, that's just a start. Curious to hear wherever this might take you, your own experiences of things in addition to sight that you utilize in making and looking at photos.</p>

<p>[by the way, this is not to assume that photography will be more or other than seeing for everyone. I'd want to hear about that as well, if it's seeing, seeing, seeing for you!]</p>

<p>For me, it depends on the type of photography I'm engaged in.</p>

<p>If it's an "assignment" like concerts, wedding, walk-around or travel, then I will mostly rely on "seeing" for composition, framing and lighting.</p>

<p>If it's something I've planned in advance or made to my mind's eye, then I will often associate it with music even before I shoot. </p>

 

<p>The effect of this all depends on the direction of the current:</p>

<p>• <em>from</em> ambient feelings >>>> <em>to</em> photograph = 99% of the weak or failed art photography (technical failings accounting for most of the rest): you think you're getting the symphony that you were feeling; you deliver a piccolo solo, if that. Most of what you were feeling <em>is not in the picture</em>.</p>

<p>But reverse that current to be:</p>

<p>• <em>from</em> what you see through the viewfinder (the prospective photograph) exclusive off all other bodily awareness >>> > <em>to</em> tonguing the bodily feelings provoked via the eye = dilation from condensation: you may be about to make a masterpiece ...</p>

<p>Not sure if I could state I heard a photo, but some scenes do evoke pretty immediate relations to a piece of music (in the sense it pops up the second you see a certain potential photo), and vice-versa, listening to certain music can sharpen my mood for certain images. It's a combination of mood, rhythm, musical style. Rhythm is an obvious link, but also density/texture plays its role; vast symphonic music doesn't sound like a minimalist image, for example.</p>

<p>Some time ago, as a little study for myself, I grouped a number of photos I felt turned out coherent, and added pieces of song lyrics to them (and used the song titles as photo titles). It didn't work 100%, but thinking in terms of interaction between text, music and images was a rewarding exercise.</p>

<p>Interesting OP, Fred. As to seeing - I've often felt that a photographer's seeing a subject prior to clicking the shutter (let's call it seeing[p]) is more than just seeing in its literal and most basic sense. In my opinion, although I have no real support for this, seeing[p] is holistic. It's not simply a matter of light entering the eyes, interacting wit the optic nerve, and being processed by the brain. It can invoke the other senses - hearing, touch, taste; it also can be interpretive or emotional. It also can be rhythmic. </p>

<p> </p>

<p>Michael, I bet if you tried, you could find some support for it in your own experience. That's actually what I'm looking for here.</p>

<p>Wouter, I don't know if you were involved way back, but early in my membership on PN, I was part of a group of about 10-12 photographers here who chose a line from a song each week to inspire a photo we would take for that week. It was actually quite a bit of fun. Music often seems an inspiration and an accompaniment to a lot of photo work. I like your idea of interactions.</p>

<p>Julie, appropriate that in a thread about the interrelationships among senses, you'd get your thoughts to look like a mathematical equation on paper. Love it! And you've actually come up with the formula for creating a masterpiece. ;-)</p>

<p>You're so right, Fred. Here it comes.</p>

<p>When I consider rhythm, I find it usually in subjects involving patterns - lines, shapes, colors, people walking in formation, people looking in the same direction, etc. Emotions are part and parcel of every photo I shoot. For example, when I shot photographs of my father-in-law, I was feeling a connection with him based on our mutual love and respect, and based on how he taught me so many things I never would be able to learn from any other source. Sometimes, while ferreting out a subject to shoot, there is something about him, her, or it that hits so hard that I may feel a tear or two trickling down my cheek. There have been many scenes in nature that fit this description. Finally, my abstracts tend to satisfy my ongoing quest to make sense out of myself and my world, hence the interpretive component. </p>

<p>I love your last sentence, Michael, and think there's so much to abstracts. My first art love and a guy I still have a soft spot for today is Mondrian. While I completely understand your doing them to make sense of things, I usually find a component of non-sense in abstracts that fascinates me. Maybe a true making sense requires some non-sense!</p>

Indeed, Fred, sense and nonsense exist in a cooperative relationship.

<p>It just struck me that the word "sense" is used in two such different ways. I was talking about the use of our senses and now we're talking about things that make sense. Abstracts, by often stripping away context and content, reducing things to forms, shapes, lines, etc., have an appeal to my senses that doesn't necessarily get clouded by intellect or the knowledge of "what it is" coming into play. Mondrian's work, for example, has an orderliness to me in its geometry but a disorderliness in ways that it affects me because of the lack of more pictorial aspects. It's like working with mathematical proofs. There's an ordered way one will proceed but the abstraction of it all (the <em>number</em> of apples is well beyond the apples themselves) opens up so many possibilities in terms of its reach.</p>

<p>When I am looking at (more specifically, seeing) the world around me in a concentrated fashion, to the exclusion of other overlapping activity, I often equate what I am receiving as a visual sense to the senses of other and sometimes past experiences, to particular music, to substances I have touched, once to the feel of soft snow (lazy large flakes) falling on my face, to poems or writings of others that the scene calls up, and sometimes I relate the sight to something I had been thinking about, and sometimes to sounds. I love walking outside on a fresh and very cold winter morning in full sun. Before my feet touch the hard snow I "hear" and welcome the eventual cracking sound I know from experience it will make (Do you remember the winter movement in Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" and the staccato sounds of a violin?).</p>

<p>A visual composition I have found or contrived may be so much in harmony or equilibrium (masses, lines, tonalities) that the moment I see it I thinking about ABBA sonata form and a familiar music that equates to that. Sometimes an atmospheric scene or one with a vanishing point will recall in me the enveloping and haunting music of Billy Budd when he is hung and his body falls to the deep of the ocean and mixes with the sound of the water, or "The Lark Ascending" of Vaughan Williams on violin as I picture birds flying in formation at migration times. There is a 7 or 8 minute song that Canadian poet Felix Leclerc wrote about touring the island where I live and invariably I am humming parts of that when I search out photos in that place and recall the poetic metaphors he used as I see some of what he wrote about.</p>

<p>A few weeks ago I bought several sugar pies to take to work colleagues on a trans province consult. I asked permission of the owner to photograph workers in the bakery and the smell of the different baking processes became a companion to my photography.</p>

<p>These experiences are not everyday occurrence, but I welcome the interaction of my senses, memory and experiences with my process of photography when it occurs and I am stimulated in that manner. Other photographic experiences (capturing images) have something that brings my mind back to former experiences and I sense the smell or sounds that accompanied them.</p>

<p>It may seem trite, but whenever I revisit Well's Beach Maine and venture onto the warm sands at a neighboring small island I smell and taste the "homemade" warm donuts of Condon's donut shop of former times; Condon's is still there but they have "lost" the former donut recipe. It puts me in a receptive mood for exploring that contemporary place and people.</p>

<p>Addendum: ("the <em>number</em> of apples is well beyond the apples themselves") (Fred). I love that.</p>

<p>"I love walking outside on a fresh and very cold winter morning in full sun. Before my feet touch the hard snow I hear andwelcome the eventual cracking sound I know from experience it will make (Do you remember the winter movement in Vivaldi's "Four Seasons?")." Arthur.</p>

<p>Arthur, you are lost in poetic academia....and constantly trying to grab on to those who have walked before.</p>

<p>Your subconscious is rebelling ...hence your excellent photograph, which you really like, but perhaps not worthy in your mind.</p>

<p>The photographs tell the stories not academia Arthur.</p>

<p>Just my thoughts inspired by your photo.</p>

<p>Otherwise I would have said nothing. </p>

<p>Allen, I expect that extra photographic thoughts or sensations might be as important as our intended photographic approach, experience, momentary emotional situation, sheer chance, and also our subconscious in perceiving and making photographs. I'm not sure which photo you are refering to (maybe the market scene in another PofP post) but you may be right that a part of the spontaneous reaction to the image was subcoscious. I find more appealing at present the present post and the discussion of extra photographic motivations or accompaniements to photography, only a very small part of which relate to direct influences from others rather than my own sensations, memory and thoughts.</p>

<p><img src="http://static.photo.net/attachments/bboard/00d/00duLD-562677184.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="627" hspace="5" vspace="10" data-original="http://static.photo.net/attachments/bboard/00d/00duLD-562677184.jpg" /></p>

<p>"I'm not sure which photo you are refering to (maybe the market scene in another PofP post) but you may be right that a part of the spontaneous reaction to the image was subconscious."</p>

<p>My mix up, apology. </p>

<p>"maybe the market scene"</p>

<p>Boring...just another market scene among many others of the same ilk.</p>

<p>The perception of tunes associated with images is probably very vivid in some people, and in others subtle. For me, it happens more often when I see a mountain landscape picture or visit a mountainous area. The sensation for me is a melancholy tune of flute. Another sense is that of smell. The immediate one that comes to mind is that of nicotine, upon seeing a photo with lots of swirling smoke.</p>

<p>It is a very interesting point that Fred has brought up. It motivated me to go and read about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia_in_art">synesthesia</a> and how it has affected artists. I am still reading. This one is from wikipedia, it refers to a photographer's experience:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.<br>

<br>

"I taught myself to take pictures by shooting whenever I experience a synesthetic reaction to what I see: if I experience a sensation of texture, motion or taste, I take the picture. If the reflection elicits the sound of cello, I shoot the picture. I photograph reflections on moving water. It works like this: I watch the surface of the sea until I experience one of my synesthetic responses. When I do, I trust it to be a reliable signal that tells me it is the right time to take the picture, so I click the shutter. Within the creative process, I think of my synesthetic responses as vital messengers that arrive faster than thought to deliver one urgent message which I always heed: beauty is lurking."</p>

<cite>— Reflectionist Marcia Smilack on her photography technique</cite>

</blockquote>

<p>When I do slide shows, I add background music often selected to match the sights in the pictures. Slide shows can be boring especially of vacations shown to friends and family. But music holds their attention longer. My video editing program can also change the time of each image frame so they transition with the downbeat of the music. The syncing adds to the magic.</p>

<p>Hollywood adds music selected or written specifically to match the drama, cadence and aesthetic effect of the movie. Watch a horror scene about to happen with and without the volume turned up and you will be less scared if at all with no background sound music effect. </p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>Coming late, as always,<br>

I try to remember what I almost heard.<br>

The light avoids my eye. — <em>W.S. Merwin</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>While music is inevitably the prime candidate, taking a bit of a leap to a more and simultaneous less literal take on the OP.<br>

How much do textures, and the sensation a certain texture would cause when touched, influence the interpretation of a photo, and likewise the creation? I'm not just talking about smoothened-out portraits of models, versus wrinkley, high contrast portraits of weather faces at a certain age. But the nerves in wood, the gravely appearance of a wall, or perfect smooth marble. How much does the tactile feel dominate the interpretation and meaning we give to a surface?<br>

I was aware of Synesthesia, and thanks Supriyo for reminding me of its name! I think like with many neurological/psychological phenomena, it's not so much a defined phenomonon, but a scale, shades of grey. We all have it, some more, some less. The example quoted tends to the far range of the scale, and Arthur's description to a more regular, normal occurance (or at least, I took it that way). While the link between music and visual is the most noted, I don't see why it wouldn't be with all senses. Though I'm happy I cannot smell some photos ;-)</p>

<p>Wouter and Supriyo, thanks for the reference to Synesthesia and your relevant comments. There are those who like synesthetic abstract artist Carol Sheen who experience multiple sense perceptions. Another, I read, is a photographer, waits until she experiences that dual or mutiple sense condition before making her images.</p>

<p>I guess for most of us the analogies or cross references between visual and other senses are mainly conjured up in our minds rather than being part of a neuro-physical response. One of the few short art workshops I have taken was at the national museum of beaux arts of Quebec (MNBAQ) in the city of that name, where a Université Laval professor had us touch a variety of unseen objects in a small bag (beads, feathers, etc.) and draw abstract images based on what we perceived by touching.</p>

<p>Are we drawn to specular highlights, strong visual textures or silver like tones in B&W photography because of some experience of touched surfaces? I often am drawn to touching scuptures to fully appreciate what my eye sees. Before shooting details of otherwise banal nailheads and rough used planks on the side of a building I want to touch the surfaces before making a photo, something I can sometimes replicate visually by waiting for an angular lighting that reproduces something of those sensations. I am sure that, when the person is agreeable to it, to touch the face of a subject being photographed, just as my dermatologist does when she wants to detect whether my asperities are pre-cancerous or just marks of age, may add to the photographer's perception in making a visual record or creative work. However, that is something that you might not want to try in most situations. But you might ask the person to do that and to tell you how he or she perceives his or her own only skin deep character.</p>

<p>Arthur, what struck me about your first post here is the role of memory, such an important faculty to consider. While we tend to think (sometimes overthink) of photographs as memorializing people, places, situations, and events, and we think of photographs invoking memories in us, your post reminded me of how the act of photographing can stir memories.</p>

<p>I've always liked the idea of memories having linkage through time to the present. It sounds to me like some of your photographic experiences are a kind of fullness. That's very different from the emptiness many describe as they shoot, the being-in-the-moment where everything seems to disappear. In some ways, however, I'll bet they're very much the same thing.</p>

<p>I've never touched a face dermatologically while photographing but various kinds of touches do occur. Even when I photograph someone I've never met, I will often feel pretty comfortable touching most of them in certain ways, perhaps to move their head a bit to get a certain light in their eyes. Doing that comes naturally when I'm photographing someone and I think the naturalness of it helps make it OK for the shoot and also helps establish a kind of intimacy (not meaning sexual intimacy here, necessarily). I'm pretty good at reading when it will and won't be acceptable and have never been rebuked for doing so, though there could always be a first time. Just a light touch on the shoulder or the head can be very significant in establishing a connection.</p>

<p>Probably even more important is the notion that my pointing my camera at someone, even without physical contact, is a kind of touching. One, I believe, can caress with the camera, and I'd suggest that a lot of great portraits (and photos of all kinds) do just that. Which is not to say there can't also be an element of aggression (a la Sontag) in pointing a camera at someone as well. It's sometimes the tension and balance between caressive and aggressive sides of photographing someone that can be such a challenge and joy to experience.</p>

<p>I think, the association of senses not only plays a role during shooting, but also while appreciating others' works. I would say that viewing photos in a printed book has a very different (positive) effect on me than viewing them on the computer or an iPad. To take it further, I prefer viewing photos in a library than at home. I love the smell of the books around me while browsing through photos. Also the fine surface of the print, and the specular reflection (as Arthur first highlighted), sometimes the imperfections in the printing such as color shifts, all contribute to a very tangible experience. I don't know if this is relevant in this discussion, but this is how I feel.</p>

<p>Fred, regarding your 04/28, 4:09 PM, post - It seems to me that you're suggesting a phenomenological approach, but definitely not Husserlian. That's how I tend to look at my abstract work as a whole. These images don't allow me to go " . . . back to the things themselves," i.e., to glean their essence. Instead, in creating them, I try to disregard preconceived notions of what they're supposed to do, how they're supposed to look, etc. I suspect I'm able to do this by taking the sort of holistic approach I mentioned in a previous post.</p>