'What makes the best photographs so powerful?' (re: Erik Hijweege)

<i><blockquote> Why are great photographs so powerful? Is it simply that they stop

time (as all religions want to do)? Or that they're one in the eye for death (as all

religions would like to be)? </blockquote> </i><p>

 

More: <p>

 

<u><A href =

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1385548,00.html>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1385548,00.html</a></u>

Great article!. thanks for the link, the writer has expressed my relation with the camera so well, i am speechless. Who wrote that article? I couldnt find the authors name..

Fine piece. I believe the author is Redmond O'Hanlon.<p><p>

 

I looked around and found that the article and the author are mentioned <a href=http://www.skillbytes.co.uk/memex/>here</a>.

Slightly off topic, but Redmond O'Hanlon wrote a small classic in travel literature entitled "In Trouble Again"...highly recommended.

Okay, if great photographs are powerful simply because they stop time and thus have one over on Death, then it follows that all photographs are powerful and therefore great because all photographs stop time. The only advantage a famous photograph has over a not famous photograph (which might still be great) is that its survival into eternity (excuse me, Eternity) is better guaranteed through reproduction.

 

All original photographs, film or digital, are in danger of being destroyed. If all copies of a photograph are destroyed the moment in time kept "alive" by the photograph dies too. If there are enough reproductions the destruction of even the original is mitigated.

 

Anyway, I think that the quotation that began this thread is tripe. Photographs do not stop time. Photographs record moments in time. But that is not the same as stopping time. This is a case of mixing metaphor with real life. There is danger in doing that (the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Terror" being two examples that come to mind).

 

To actually (not metaphorically) stop time, a photograph has to be the thing in itself. Imagine you have a photograph of your beautiful girl of 20 years ago. You could simply enter into your photograph and try to relive your happiness back then. But what a mess that would make of things! You've changed, your girlfriend hasn't. You do not fit into the world you knew 20 years ago, particularly if she is black and white and you are in color. And you have a rival for her affections--namely yourself 20 years younger.

 

All religions actually do not want to stop time either. They want life to go on forever. Which means they want the flow of time to go on--but forever. I am sure there have been theolgians who have debated what physical age we shall be in Heaven for all Eternity but I haven't read them.

 

Wallace Stevens in his poem "Sunday Morning" spoke of perfection as being static and so imagined Heaven's eternity as being a place where trees were full of ripe fruit that never fell. He also said in that poem that "Death is the Mother of beauty." One afternoon in Hartford, Conn. my friend, my wife and I in my friend's car did a turn around in W.S.'s circular driveway. I wish I had a shot of that.

 

But here is thought. Most poetry ends up not being read and, therefore forgotten. Most paintings end up being trashed or painted over. Photographs endure because they are visual records of the past (though not the past itself). I mean great and not great photographs.

 

Tell me something, honestly. Has anyone here ever had anything approaching a religious experience when viewing photographs (okay "great" photographs, to stay on topic)? I never have. I've been thrilled, revolted, made to laugh, made to feel sad, and all of that. But never have I had anything resembling a relgious experience. When looking at dead family and friends I felt the sort of reverence that is the natural outcome of loss. But I cannot count that as a religious experience. Not really.

 

In Gallery I keep the photograph of an old friend, a poet, who died about seven or eight years ago. The photograph was taken in early 1980. My friend is reclining on the only bed in my one-room basement apartment in San Francisco. He was already coming apart physically and mentally back then. I've done minimal color correcting and the photograph has the patina of aged Kodachrome. I look at that photograph from time to time and remember my friend and our times together. But, sadly, the photograph has not stopped time. No matter how long I look at that photograph, my friend remains dead.

I would disagree with the premise. All great photographs are not powerful. I think you are suffering from male machismo and a need for power or to believe power is in some way more desirable than beauty.

Many of the photos that I most admire have an almost quiet beauty that in no way could be described as 'powerful'.