Simultaneously intimate and anonymous

<p>The photographer who used this post's title ('simultaneously intimate and anonymous') to describe a series of her work termed it a paradox. Do you think that it is a paradox? Do you think that any -- or all -- good photographs of anonymous people feel/are intimate? Is the "good" in that question tied to that feeling of intimacy?</p>

<p>I'm thinking not just of street and photojournalism, but also of other people's family photos, whose names and identities are, to you, unknown beyond the pictures.</p>

<p>For me, the answer is, yes, I find that good photographs of anonymous people always seem intimate to me. But, oddly, non-anonymous pictures, i.e. pictures of my own family and friends, rarely feel truly intimate, even when they are good. I would guess that 'intimate' becomes as much about our relationship(s) as about what I feel that I'm seeing as a standalone person.</p>

<p>This is the first time I have posted to this forum (though I do read it often) mostly because I often feel a bit out of my depth. However, on reading Julie's post I found I often felt the same way about photographs of strangers. And particularly family portraits, they seem to me somehow poignant and perhaps nostalgic. This, by the way, also applies to my own family's photos from the past - people who I don't know or maybe just have a name.<br>

<br />Though I can't give a rational, thought out reason for this, it occurred to me that some of this feeling (for me at least) maybe because we project our own stories on to the anonymous. We, and I guess it can also be unconscious, imagine the character of the person, the reason for the photograph, the history of why they are photographed in that particular environment. With people we know, the "story" is provided by reality because we know them. I don't know if that makes sense.<br>

<br />Not to sidetrack the discussion but I often feel this about other types of photos. An image of a place unfamiliar to me can draw me. I feel I would like to be there and experience that moment. This rarely happens with images of places I am physically familiar with or indeed images I have taken myself.<br>

<br />Two more quick thoughts. It is interesting that intimate is defined as "<em>Closely acquainted; familiar</em>"(<a href="http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/intimate">Oxford Online Dictionary</a>). If you have the same reaction as I have described above, the feeling of intimacy(familiarity) is directly opposite to the actual situation. I think intimacy also implies interaction, <a href="http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/intimate?showCookiePolicy=true">relationship</a> - but at most the above reaction can only be one sided.<br>

Laurie</p>

>>> Though I can't give a rational, thought out reason for this, it occurred to me that some of this feeling (for

me at least) maybe because we project our own stories on to the anonymous. ... I don't know if that makes

sense.<P>

 

That makes a lot of sense. For me, interesting photographs pose questions rather than provide answers. If

there are people in the frame where a connection seems to be made (though that's not a requirement), then I

think it's natural that a viewer's imagination might be stirred to the point where a narrative, any narrative,

might be released. That happens to me as a viewer.<P>

 

When I'm out on the street and make photographs of people many times there will be a direct engagement

with a stranger with some resulting conversation and ultimately a portrait is made. Sometimes I shoot

candidly where a subject may not be aware. And some times there may be a momentary interaction where it

is clear I'm making (or made) a picture, but with no further interaction beyond that point - as in the photograph

below. <P>

 

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<img src= "http://citysnaps.net/2013%20photos/Couple.jpg"><BR>

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San Francisco • ©Brad Evans 2014

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<p>When you look at pictures of people you love, you can fall in love all over again. How does that work with strangers?</p>

<p>Julie, can you provide a link to this photographers work? I need to see it before I can come to a conclusion, at least in terms of her own approach. From the get-go the term she is using strikes me as standard, pretentious artist statement gobbledygook. <br>

In the meantime, keep in mind that a photograph is simply a description of objects and/or people in a particular place at a particular time. You stated that good photographs seem intimate to you. "Seem" is a word that can imply uncertainty, something may seem one way but in actuality it may be any but. Do you mean you get a sense of intimacy on the part of the photographer in relation to the people in his/her photograph? </p>

<p>Anonymous to the viewer or to the photographer whose work we're looking at?</p>

<p>I see very few truly intimate photos and I think intimacy in a photo is a significant and also difficult achievement. An intimate encounter or situation doesn't usually translate to an intimate photo, and I think intimate photos are rare . . . and wonderful. Often but not always on the way to intimacy, but not necessarily there yet and sometimes confused for it, are acknowledgment, permission, engagement, familiarity, sweetness, openness, closeness, and sensitivity, even charm and surprise.</p>

<p>Intimacy often suggests some sense of privacy, which is difficult to convey in a photo.</p>

<p>Interestingly, the verb "to intimate" suggests delicacy and indirectness, which are often associated with intimacy. Closeness and even a strong sense of engagement will often be in-your-face without being intimate, though the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. I also think a non-intimate but effective and moving in-your-faceness is a significant photographic achievement.</p>

<p>I think a lot has also to do with atmosphere. Brassai's photos strike me as particularly intimate because the night and the artificial light and sometimes the fog have a depth that surrounds its subjects and me as a viewer. It is enveloping.</p>

<p>Intimate photos don't have to contain people. They can even be of peppers.</p>

<p>Larry Clark was the master of "intimate" and "anonymous" simultaneous snapping. He did it with a simple method - sit around with people until they forget you are taking photos. I have found this to be a good way for me to work, with both strangers and people that know me. Ultimately, by not participating and relaxing, people eventually lose any awareness of the camera. Simple example here.</p>

 

<center><img src="http://spirer.com/images/roses.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="525" /></center>

<p>Anonymous means unnamed, and authors sometimes use a pen name to write more intimately. A name ties us to time and place and names link us to social contexts that may inhibit the full disclosure that anonymity can provide. We might say some things about ourselves to a total stranger that we wouldn't say to someone we knew.</p>

<p>So photography could be a good medium of self-expression by a subject in a photograph because no one knows who they are, no one knows who it is that is being so honest in a photograph. We are anonymous in a crowd, the viewers of a photograph <em>are</em> the crowd and we might be more willing to be more revealing in front of a camera than anywhere else. Sometimes being in a crowd is the best place to let it all hang out. Sometimes letting it all hang out just happens, like in a who's afraid of Virginia Woolf type scourging at a restaurant. That's a photo that would create a sense of intimacy, familiarity, that it's all in public is just part of <em>that</em> ritual.</p>

<p>So I don't see any contradiction. In a sense theater is an anonymous portrayal of the far reaches of everything inside of us accomplished by a ruse about identity. No one knows at which point the actor is or isn't acting, maybe not even the actor. If someone is sharing something about themselves it is usually something with which we are intimately familiar anyway.</p>

<p>Photography is an art form that has an element of theater and so like in theater we as viewers would try and sort it all out. Do we really know where we begin and end, what is mine, what is yours, ours, a name itself just a convenient fiction.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Intimate means, closely acquainted, familiar, close. That meaning is in contrast to "barely know the person". Opposite of barely knowing a person, being casually acquainted, we know them intimately. Ordinarily to know someone intimately is a positive thing, though if we don't like someone we might say we don't like them because we know them "intimately", an indirect way of saying the person is unreliable, tedious, etc.</p>

<p>That's why intimate also means private and personal. An intimate picture isn't of a person smiling, not to me, it isn't a picture of two people sitting next to each other. We don't know as viewers what's going on just from proximity and any story we attach will do. For me there has to be something in the picture that makes it personal about the person or person's pictured, not that I might feel personable about them from their picture.</p>

<p>If we feel intimate toward a picture of someone smiling and don't know why they are smiling? I mean, we know they are smiling because their picture is being taken. What else? What else? Part of the reason a picture of a family member doesn't look intimate to us is because in those pictures we know the person too well to think of the capture as of the person <em>we</em> know.</p>

<p>Right now my dog is having a barking dream. I know him intimately, I know why he is barking. He wants a thing and can't get it, it's a frustrated bark.</p>

<p>Some of the pictures I take frustrate me. I know what I want and can't get it. The intimacy I knew was in the moment is unrecognizable.</p>

<p>Here's an example. I know what this coyote is feeling, I know it precisely. The precision isn't quite in the photo. The story just isn't there in one single frame. I was sitting at my look out point with a friend. We waited for the nightly return of the coyote who would pass under us, we on a bridge. The coyote knew we were there and wouldn't pass under the bridge. My friend and I were keeping her from meeting up with her youngsters, she wouldn't take the risk of passing under so closely even though she was taking a risk in not going to her youngsters. My friend got tired of waiting and left. The coyote made a mistake. She thought we had <em>both</em> left. When my shutter clicked she stopped. She knew she had made a mistake and that the silly man had accomplished a "gotcha". But her routine isn't just a hobby to her. It's life, it's growth, it's danger, it's keeping family private and protected. We all know the "look into the distance" of an exasperated parent that we have childishly bothered with some unwanted prank when the parent is seriously busy. With our infantilism they are exasperated and pause before giving us "the look". Yeah, you got me. I couldn't believe the coyote was messaging me in such a parental way. The thing is, she knew I was old enough not to do such a silly thing, to play a gottcha on her. That she wouldn't just run away on hearing the shutter? I wasn't a danger. But I was an unnecessary annoyance, unnecessary because she is all about necessity at her age. Stared into the distance long enough for it to seem like forever. Just long enough to make me feel some shame. I did. From a parent bothered in this way, we know they are going to turn their head to look at us and the suspense makes us wonder if all they are going to do to us is look. It's edgy. The thing is, in the picture she looks like she is looking at something when she isn't. A different story is suggested, a false one. All she was doing was delaying her look at me, she accenting the look she will give me. Boy did she! But I don't think the picture shows it without me writing the story.</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

<p>Here she is again, she isn't about playing, even with her playful child trying to play underneath her. <a href="/photo/11541251">http://www.photo.net/photo/11541251</a> In part she isn't playful because she has a chronic inner ear infection that has taken a toll on her disposition.</p>

<blockquote>

<p> sit around with people until they forget you are taking photos.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>This was also the hallmark of W. Eugene Smith. He had the most uncanny knack of being, seemingly invisible (anonymous), during the most personal of intimate moments. <a href="http://www.gisy.it/Alfa/Blog/EugeneSmith-TomokoUemuraInHerBath(1971)Big.jpg">Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath</a> represents this this type of remarkable talent in one of the most intimate photographs I've ever seen. In so many of his finest works from Country Doctor, to Albert Schweitzer, Man of Mercy this quality comes through repeatedly. </p>

 

<p>On the other hand, there are subjects like <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/271570">Georgia O'Keeffe</a>, who I don't think forgot Stieglitz was taking pictures, and I'm not sure he would have wanted her to. I think the intimacy in some photos is about a kind of connection either to the photographer, the implied viewer, or even the camera itself (and the audience or humanity represented by that camera), likely some aspects of all . . . and then some.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Stieglitz: <em>"When I make a picture, I make love."</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Interestingly, O'Keeffe was not anonymous either to Stieglitz or to viewers.</p>

<p>___________________________________________________________</p>

<p>Personally, for the most part, I'd worry that a subject forgetting I was there would create a safe distance rather than something intimate. But, obviously, we all work differently. It all depends on the type of shoot and the situation, but mostly I want that personal connection when I'm shooting. I don't want them forgetting.</p>

<p>Louis's point is a good one and some of the documentary work I've done would be the exception, where I would remain somewhat discreet and out of the way, at least some of the time.</p>

<p>I agree Louis and Smith gave us contexts and reasons (I understate as does Smith's title) for caring about a subject with such an ordinary title. It's a matter of fact title for a scene intended to move the public to action.</p>

<p>Laurie wrote "Though I can't give a rational, thought out reason for this, it occurred to me that some of this feeling (for me at least) maybe because we project our own stories on to the anonymous."</p>

<p>So subjects like Georgia O'Keeffe in Fred's linked Stieglitz photo draw out projections since there isn't anything personal in the picture. She looks mysterious and we are intrigued, gets the imagination going and that is probably what both Stieglitz and O"Keeffe intended, avoiding intimacy; and because from that photo we still barely know her.</p>

<p>I also have experienced the phenomenon of people ignoring and/or forgetting you are there taking pictures. This is how my 3rd St Promenade pictures are done. </p>

<blockquote>

<p>He had the most uncanny knack of being, seemingly invisible (anonymous), during the most personal of intimate moments. <a href="http://www.gisy.it/Alfa/Blog/EugeneSmith-TomokoUemuraInHerBath(1971)Big.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath</a> represents this this type of remarkable talent in one of the most intimate photographs I've ever seen.</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

Posed photo. Hardly anonymous.</p>

<p>Todd pick one of those of yours, display it this thread and please tell us in detail where the intimacy is? Because this thread isn't about candid photos and how to take them, it's about intimate and anonymous. I get the anonymous part.</p>

<p>Here's how your photos look to me, here's one of mine. <a href="/photo/12767724">http://www.photo.net/photo/12767724</a></p>

<p>Do you see anything intimate in it? I don't. It's familiar all right. But unlike the great photographer W. Eugene Smith, I don't give the viewer something more than the familiar to <em>care</em> about.</p>

<p>Jeff she isn't anonymous because she is posed. She isn't anonymous because we know her name. </p>

<p>From what we glean of her from that photo, she might as well have no name, there isn't anything intimate about her being disclosed by the photo, whether posed or not. We only care about that photo because we know her name.</p>

<p>I think there's a lot that's personal in the picture of O'Keeffe. Her hands, for example, which read almost as do many of her painted flowers, graceful, shapely, female, her eyes appearing to see just beyond her hands, the mostly subdued tones allowing the sensuous fingers a ground, the light drawing us from those fingers to a place just beside and beyond her eyes.</p>

<p>The visual connection is from the hands which are a part of her to the flowers which she makes. The narrative connection is from the abstracted visual shape and texture of her hands to those same very real hands which are the tools that help produce her art. The photograph is very much her story . . . and Stieglitz's love for and photographic appreciation of her. Her hands—in literal, visual, and metaphoric ways—are her.</p>

<p>OK. I didn't notice the hands because I thought she was an actress; had her confused with Marlene Dietrich. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlene_Dietrich">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlene_Dietrich</a> .</p>

<p>Do we generally <em>have</em> to know her name to gain a more intimate insight into her character in that photo? What do we see in the photo if we don't know her name?</p>

<p>From the O'Keeffe text quoting her: "Stieglitz had a very sharp eye for what he wanted to say with the camera."</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>Do we generally <em>have</em> to know her name to gain a more intimate insight into her character in that photo? What do we see in the photo if we don't know her name?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I think the photo, and not her name, is telling me to notice her hands. They loom large. They are so much of the expression. I see a lot in the photo if I don't know her name, but it's more abstract. Because I do know her name, I get to see and know even more. And the hands become even more meaningful, though no more sensual than they already were. The known connections make me feel something more. The photo, without knowing her, is beyond her character. The dance-like fingers and soft yet focused eyes give me an immediate sense of body and soul, no matter who she is.</p>

<p>OK, so seeing through your eyes we know to look at the hands, the pose of the hands is a nuanced device. Her name gives us context with her life. And a third element that is a reflection of body and soul regardless of who she is.</p>

<p>In one sense her hands are a prop, but the prop is important because it has a special meaning as <em>her</em> hands. Hers are the hands of an artist. Her contributions to art are drawn into the photo by association to her hands, her art touching many and our wonderment at her abilities and her entire being, expressed as body and soul using Fred's language. OK. I think I get that interpretation. O'Keeffe said Stieglitz used his sharp eye to construct what he wanted to say and its plausible that we're within the territory of viewer experience that he intended when he posed and took the picture. He used elements of a visual language to express something like that to us.</p>

<p>Still, though illustrative, she is not anonymous, we do know her name. In the bath photo referred to above, we also have a name. My coyote is anonymous, but I missed the shot.</p>

<p>I'm still looking for something similar in an anonymous shot. Am I overlooking something already presented? My people at creek shot didn't have it, the people were props with <em>only</em> a sentimental, sappy intent and any body would have done.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Before I give the source of the title quote, I'm going to try starting with an example (one that I love) of photography, a photographer, who works very, very hard to de-anonymize her subjects. This will be Mary Ellen Mark and I'm using her <em>Prom</em> project as example.</p>

<p>Mary Ellen Mark is a documentary/photo-essayist. In the <em>Prom</em> series, and in her work in general, she gives a ton of background information, including lengthy interviews, names, dates, places and so forth. An interesting "marker" for me of this kind of approach is the multiple levels/instances of permission that she needs. Each school, each student and their parents, each location, each time, gets asked and terms agreed to (sometimes written and signed). But in the case of <em>Prom</em> -- and before it, <em>Streetwise</em> -- she also has an accompanying film of the people made by her Academy Award-nominated husband, Martin Bell. So from the links given below, you can sample not only her photographic essay but can compare/match it to video interviews. Unfortunately, the full-length video has had the sound removed, and the ones with sound are only clips. If you buy the book (available very reasonably used) you get the video on a disc at the back of the book (like you get in computer books). It's a great read -- with not one drop of theory, for those of you allergic to theory. Links below:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/books/prom/text002_prom.html"><strong><em>Prom</em> stills</strong></a><br /> <a href="

video clip</strong></a><br /> <a href="http://www.maryellenmark.com/films/titles/prom/screening_room/prom_complete_film.html"><strong>Full video without sound</strong></a><br /> <a href="http://www.maryellenmark.com/films/titles/prom/screening_room/prom_dates.html"><strong>Clip with sound</strong></a><br /> <a href="http://www.maryellenmark.com/films/titles/prom/screening_room/prom_fashion.html"><strong>Second Clip with sound</strong></a></p>

<p>What strikes me <em>re</em> intimacy when looking at the stills and the video, is how the more she tells me, the more interesting it is, but the more the person(s) in the pictures establish/assert claim to their own space; push back on my claims to identify them or "fill" them with my own mood merge them into my own space. This is neither "better" nor "worse"; just a different effect from intimacy in my perception.</p>

<p>Also, as Jeff Spirer has noted, W. Eugene Smith was not only not an "anonymous" photographer, he was even beyond Mark in his approach in that he had a very strong agenda which he was pushing in his photo essays. I would also note that he was far from invisible to his subjects, if you read his biography.</p>

<p>**************</p>

<p>Now, to the source of the title quote. It's from Roni Horn, describing her <em>You Are the Weathe</em>r series. It is indeed an artist's project, so Marc Todd needs to stop reading right now before he breaks out in hives.</p>

<p><em>You Are the Weather</em> is an installation (and a book) of about 100 pictures of the same woman sitting in hot springs in Iceland at various unspecified times and places. Changes from one picture to the next are very small. See how the installation looks at links below:</p>

<p><a href="http://cache.boston.com/resize/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2010/02/17/1266458245_6042/539w.jpg"><strong><em>You Are the Weather</em> installation</strong></a><br /> <a href="http://www.depont.nl/typo3temp/pics/5c57c5f9f9.jpg"><strong><em>You Are the Weather</em> second view</strong></a></p>

<p>Here is further from Horn, following the "simultaneously intimate and anonymous" bit: "The photographs have an erotic edge, but no matter how much time you spend with her you will never get any closer to her. She changes and expresses different personalities -- if you isolate out the different sequences, she looks first like a hockey player, then a pouty sexy standard; she's a multitude of things. Those changes, that range of emotion -- she looks like she's irritated, like she's angry -- were in fact provoked by the weather. It's the sun in her eyes, it's snowing, it's windy. When you are in the room with her it's as though you've provoked those responses; you become the weather"</p>

<p>"The installation begins anywhere and ends there as well. Its duration is your endurance. I have always thought that the viewer walks into the room and performs the work, although I don't think of my works as particularly theatrical. The more theatrical a work is the more it tends to pacify the viewer. I want the viewer to take an active role." To which her interviewer responds: "It's the difference between watching and participating in the unraveling of an idea." Horn agrees "Exactly."</p>

<p>In a different statement, Horn said this: "In the end I am not interested in what the viewer knows about my intentionality or identity. I am trying to make the work and one's experience of it the same."</p>

<p><em>You are the weather</em>. The woman in the picture is not the weather, <em>you</em>, the viewer are the weather. To which the woman in the pictures -- apparently, in perception -- responds. This disagrees with what Laura T wrote in her comment, above -- and what seems much more logically correct -- "but at most the above reaction can only be one sided."<br /> <br /> This idea of viewer/photo-subject interaction also goes to Brad's " a narrative, any narrative, might be released. That happens to me as a viewer." <br /> <br /> I love thinking about the idea of viewer as weather because weather encompasses, surrounds, permeates, but also, is just always there, effecting/affecting, participating, and <em>making</em> what's happening happen in one way instead of another; in short, <em>intrinsically</em> intimate. Note also that, in contrast to Mary Ellen Mark's levels of needed permission (legal and personal), weather not only needs no permission, it would be absurd to suggest that it did. <br /> <br /> The viewer-as-weather provokes the picture's response; permission is an absurdity; boundaries don't exist; "I am trying to make the work and one's experience of it the same."</p>

<p>So Horn found a way to invoke in the viewer a false sense of connection to an unnamed woman in a series of photographs. Calls that false connection intimacy. Sounds familiar.</p>

<p>Ahh...narrowly avoided breaking out in hives...thanks Julie. I'll have a look after I back from work tonight. In the meantime, a quick comment to Charles: I have to disagree with your comment regarding "Tomoko in Her Bath" by W. Eugene Smith. Knowing her name does not make a person (or at least myself, I certainly cannot speak for everyone) care any more or less for the picture; and yes, Jeff is correct, it was a posed picture that Smith took many exposures of until he felt he got it right. Regardless, it's still a powerful picture and deservedly one of Smiths best.</p>