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<p>I was looking over Eggleston’s “Hasselblad Award” book of color photographs with a painter friend. I always sought his opinions about art but felt he held back a little with his regard to photography. He used photos, including his own as reference material when he needed them. I didn’t voice an opinion that might prejudice his reaction to the book.<br /> As he thumbed through the pictures he said: “But, where does he go from here?” Coming from a painter I held in high regard, the comment – more of a musing – was insightful.<br /> <br /> Where does a photograph go from there?<br /> <br /> I think the view of photographic <em>finality</em> pervades art. Other conversations with artist friends came to mind. Photos were, for them, commonly felt as <em>departure </em>points for the <em>art</em> to begin. <br /> Other media do not have the burden of seeming to be a true record of what things <em>really</em> looked like at that moment. We know that to be a myth, (don’t we?) yet we still <em>feel</em> it in a photograph’s unshakable <em>record of the moment</em> mystique.</p>

<p>At what point are you <em>done</em> with a picture? Or, at what point are pictures <em>done</em>?</p><div>00dV3V-558527584.jpg.523b89774a5b0f2acc6c09490cc8516b.jpg</div>

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<blockquote>

<p>Other media do not have the burden of seeming to be a true record of what things <em>really</em> looked like at that moment. We know that to be a myth, (don’t we?) yet we still <em>feel</em> it in a photograph’s unshakable <em>record of the moment</em> mystique.</p>

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<p>What if not only the idea of a photo being a true record of what things <em>really</em> looked like at that moment is a myth? What if the idea of there being such a thing as what things <em>really</em> looked like at that moment is also a myth? <br>

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Might relieve some of photography's burden.<br>

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Maybe we're focusing too much on the meaning of photography and art and not enough on the meaning and myth/s of <em>really</em>.<br>

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<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/6888567-md.jpg" alt="" width="679" height="423" /></p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>My friend Mel, an illustrator, mostly used photos as a starting point for his work. Here's a painting he did with the original photo he took of me. As you'll see, Mel has a good sense of humor as well, something we often miss when discussing these kind of "heavy" topics.<br>

Original photo Admirer

Illustration Painting of picture </p>

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<p>Where do you go? You go back in time in your mind and attempt to re-envision what you know or have seen now and ask your young self if it's what you expected. Are the scenes you're seeing now what you would've thought to expect when starting out? I can tell you I'm seeing things I never expected to see even the mundane moment to moments of uneventful living.</p>

<p>My images look sweet and exquisite to me with this frame of mind. I don't know nor do I care what others will think of them. I won't be looking at family snapshots which is all I had before I went digital. My images reflect my love of the short time I have in this world reflecting every insignificant moment I saw, felt, reacted and tripped the shutter.</p>

<p>So with that perspective I know that an image I shoot now will be different with new images in the distant future being even more different with different feelings decades later when it was an impression of my reality as I saw then, and now, a new memory created with a fresh eye allowing me to look back. The image will keep giving in this sense. That's where it will go.</p>

<p>I've started thinking about this concept with my own images especially the mundane scenes shot reacting and not thinking to split second glances around my apartment that appear odd and new to me. I say to myself no matter how pointless and mundane that moment of capture is I come away saying I truly have not seen an image like this mainly because no one else is living the same life in the same environment, time and place to capture such moments.</p>

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<center>.

<p><img src="http://citysnaps.net/2015%20Photos/15.jpg" alt="" /><br /> <em> San Francisco • ©Brad Evans 2015 </em><br>

.</p>

 

</center>

<p>I have no worries about when photos are done or whether they're a "true" record. Making photographs on the street there are always new opportunities to experience and plenty of new photos to make. It's more of the memories lingering; i.e. certain situations I've experienced, interesting people I've talked to, things I've learned. Those are enduring and for me never done.</p>

www.citysnaps.net
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<p>I have to say, I find this remark very hard to understand. Was this the only reaction to Eggleston's work? <br>

The best answer I can give to the question "Where does he go from here?" is "I hope he continues to produce more interesting work with his typical off-kilter viewpoint, which I have known and admired for decades. However the only way to find out where he goes is to wait and see what he produces - whatever this is, even if it is nothing at all, this consideration should surely be secondary to attempting to engage with the actual body of work he is presenting now."<br>

I would hope your painter friend would do this - however, he sounds if he is so blinkered that he can only think of photographs as crude raw material for use in making a "higher" form of art (painting) and not as ends in themselves. Just how much notice do you take/do you feel you should take of his opinions?</p>

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<p >David B.</p>

<p >That’s just it. My friend was known for wicked irony and wit. As I recall, even without further comment his appraisal wasn’t a dismissive shrug. He may have only been saying that there were no “take-aways” and banality as a subject quickly dead-ends.</p>

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<p>One idea that came to me while reading the Szarkowski analysis is that Eggleston also seems to me to play with the boundary that is the frame itself, the boundary between photograph and world.</p>

<p>The idea of boundaries is intriguing. While they seem to separate two areas, inside and outside, this country from that country, etc. a boundary can also be straddled. Alan started the thread by asking when we cross over to that specific point of being done. The finish line? Maybe the purview of the photographer and artist is the in-between . . . rather than the THIS or THAT.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>I hate to say that I like the Eggleston on page 5 per the Szarkowski excerpt. There is something ineffable about it as Szarkowski writes.</p>

<p>How picture this, though maybe, maybe not as banal: I found my neighbor, sitting on a towel in the park at the end of the street. He spoke to me in earnest of the great mass of mycelium consciousness that is our creator, that massive subterranean substrate that is all things; and how we don't see that trees await in conscious eagerness for us to play with them. And if I did take that picture, how could I ever be done with it? It's heartbreaking. He had one of the finest minds I have ever encountered. I miss that, its just gone now.</p>

<p>Something Matt wrote: "Those photons are bouncing off of your subject whether you're there to ponder them or not."</p>

<p>For me to state that "those photons" when I'm there with a subject would not be <em>those same protons</em> is as much a philosophical statement as to say that those protons would be there regardless if I was or wasn't. My neighbor wouldn't be in the park without his mind were I not his neighbor; and without me no photon could have reflected off him in the park because he wouldn't be there, and I wouldn't have been there if not that he existed and I knew him? So I offer that we are recording events with cameras that are even more complex than the complex optics involved. (Hey, it's a philosophy of photography forum so I riff in that direction...)</p>

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<blockquote>

<p><em>Attempting to translate these appearances into words is surely a fool's errand, in the pursuit of which no two fools would choose the same unsatisfactory words.</em></p>

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<p>It appears from that ornately written foreward John Szarkowski decided to play the fool anyway. God bless him for his restraint because I really couldn't take one more paragraph of his analysis of Eggleston's work.<em><br /></em></p>

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<p><em> banality as a subject …. Eggleston … was about color . . . regardless of or at least as much as any literal concern for "subject." … Eggleston's photographs are about perception itself, and so much more ... in these photographs form and content are indistinguishable - which is to say that the pictures mean precisely what they appear to mean. Attempting to translate these appearances into words is surely a fool's errand … </em><br>

Fascinating how different people view Eggleston! My view is completely different - Eggleston's subject matter is of course everyday life, the word "banality" seems unnecessarily prejorative, and to some people his pictures may seem to be casual snapshots. However, for me , the outstanding quality, particularly of the early work which appeared in William Eggleston's Guide, The Democratic Forest and Ancient and Modern, was his highly effective portrayal of people who are not in the pictures but have left traces behind (in certain cases, traces which suggest they may be back any minute). This has been a major inspiration to me.<br>

If Alan Zinn's painter buddy has seen only later work, he may be excused for missing this - I would say to AZ - get your friend to look at any of the books I mention above - this should answer his question.</p>

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<p>Phil, I wasn't referring to the THIS or THAT as being art and photography. As I hope to make clear by re-quoting what I said below, I was talking about the idea that I wouldn't look at either the artist or the photographer as reaching the finish line, as being <em>done</em>. But rather straddling whatever boundary there is between <em>not being done</em> and <em>being done</em>. I'm adding bold emphasis to stress what I was actually talking about.</p>

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<p>a boundary can also be straddled. Alan started the thread by asking <strong>when we cross over to that specific point of being done. The finish line?</strong> Maybe the purview of the photographer and artist is the in-between . . . rather than the THIS or THAT.</p>

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<p>Again, not talking about the distinction between an artist and photographer, and not talking about being in-between an artist and a photographer. Talking about both artist and photographer being in-between <em>not being done</em> and <em>being done</em>, which addressed the question of the OP. THIS is the <em>not being done</em> and THAT is the <em>being done</em>.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<blockquote>

<p>Photographers would get migraines if they thought that hard before they snapped the picture.</p>

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<p>Alan, I think no wise critic thinks that all he finds and talks about in a photo or painting was consciously thought about by the photographer or painter. One of the critic's tasks is to put work into perspective and into historical context. They search for themes, for connections, for relationships to other work by other artists. What may come completely spontaneously and even in a split second to the artist can actually still be intelligently and articulately discussed in great detail by the critic. The critic seems to me to be doing something very different from what the artist is doing. <br>

<br>

Eggleston said this about his photos:</p>

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<p>"I've never noticed that it helps to talk about them, or answer specific questions about them, much less volunteer information in words. It wouldn't make any sense to explain them. Kind of diminishes them. People always want to know when something was taken, where it was taken, and, God knows, why it was taken. It gets really ridiculous. I mean, they're right there, whatever they are."</p>

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<p>And yet he still owed Szarkowski a debt of gratitude, because many other critics of the time really didn't get "whatever they were" and I'm not sure the public was ready for his stuff either, just as was the case with other photographers Szarkowski introduced and supported, like Arbus and Friedlander. It often takes a visionary like Szarkowski who can see ahead to get the public beyond its expectations and habits and help explain the significance of something new and not that easy to digest at the time. I don't know, and maybe someone does, but I suspect that the describing Eggleston wouldn't have done about his own work might have been understood and appreciated by Eggleston when it came from Szarkowski, whose role as critic, educator, and museum director he would have recognized and respected and probably given thanks for career-wise as something very different from his own role as photographer. (By the way, Szarkowski was also a photographer so he was talking from the inside as well.)</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>Discussing relationships with other photographers or how it fits in historically are two areas where a reviewer can help. It's the part when he starts seeing things in the picture that aren't there or describing mental conditions of the photographer as to why he took the picture, what it means, etc. </p>

<p>Even Eggleston saw the folly in this as copied from your post. As he stated (my bold): </p>

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<p><em>"I've never noticed that it helps to talk about them, or answer specific questions about them, much less volunteer information in words. It wouldn't make any sense to explain them. Kind of diminishes them. People always want to know when something was taken, where it was taken, <strong>and, God knows, why it was taken. It gets really ridiculous</strong>. <strong>I mean, they're right there, whatever they are."</strong></em></p>

</blockquote>

 

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<blockquote>

<p>It often takes a visionary like Szarkowski who can see ahead to get the public beyond its expectations and habits and help explain the significance of something new and not that easy to digest at the time.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Then Szarkowski should write plainly especially on something not easy to digest or else it's really about Szarkowski and how he seems to be enamored with his own writing gymnastics. </p>

<p>Frankly Eggleston's work is easier to digest on its own for me than trying to figure out Szarkowski's take on it through his writing style. You know how many times I had to keep re-reading some of his sentences? I got so exasperated I just went to staring at Eggleston's photos. WHAT A RELIEF THAT WAS!</p>

<p>Oh! Wait a minute...Maybe Szarkowski really IS on to something...torture the reader into wanting to look at the work he thinks the public should get. Now I get it.</p>

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<p>I think Szarkowski writes intelligently though academically. I think, without Szarkowski, none of us would have been able to be relieved by just looking at Eggleston's work because it was Szarkowski who brought that work to us. I think art can be difficult and challenging and I don't think one has to write simply or easily about such things. I don't get the ad hominem reactions to his thoughts, writings, and style. I don't think everyone needs to read Szarkowski or will think he's comprehensible or be able to understand him. I don't fault those who don't find Szarkowski's writing helpful, though obviously many have, which probably says something. I doubt he got where he got by being only interested in himself, especially since so much of his time and energy was spent being interested in photographers who otherwise wouldn't have been noticed. I would not dismiss Szarkowski as pretentious or ego-driven for writing in a complex manner about complex things and for bringing an intellectually challenging viewpoint about photography forward.</p>
We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>Alan Klein - "It's the part when he starts seeing things in the picture that aren't there or describing mental conditions of the photographer as to why he took the picture, what it means, etc."</p>

<p>For discussions sake, here's the picture I like from the link in the excerpt <a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qsSkaXuuUE8/TTUbueanS-I/AAAAAAAAADc/ZbzqWi6O_qE/s1600/050820101166_resize.jpg">http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qsSkaXuuUE8/TTUbueanS-I/AAAAAAAAADc/ZbzqWi6O_qE/s1600/050820101166_resize.jpg</a></p>

<p>Szarkowski writes "<em>But the meaning of words and those of pictures are at best parallel, describing two lines of thought that do not meet; and if our concern is for the meaning of pictures, verbal descriptions are finally gratuitous.</em>"</p>

<p>So Szarkowski is writing some words, is using a few words to illustrate that the words he wrote are gratuitous.</p>

<p>And Szarkowski also says "<em>Such speculations, however, even if not simple nonsense, presumably relate only to Eggleston's pictures - patterns of random facts in the service of one imagination - not to the real world.</em>"</p>

<p>So Szarkowski is pointing out that even if what he just wrote was not nonsensical, his words would relate not to the real world, but to the picture. The real world stimulated Eggleston's imagination, he took a picture, and Szarkowski doesn't imagine that he can know to satisfaction much about either Eggleston's intent or much about that part of the real world Eggleston concretized in a photograph.</p>

<p>Some photography is starting to look to me as though performed by a scarcely hidden puppeteer using the puppets of a photograph to lure the imagination of the viewer. So Alan I wonder if all we can do with a photograph at times is to just see things in the picture and not know if they are there or not, not know why a pictures was taken, and not know for sure what a picture really means.</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>Thanks for the English translation, Charles. I never thought I'ld get a laugh in the POP forum and I thank you for that. I saw the picture being referenced from Phil's link.</p>

<p>So Szarkowski is the real "Captain Obvious" just in a smoking pipe and jacket brandishing a very thick Thesaurus. See...now that is me writing plainly and I got to the point rather quickly with fewer words.</p>

<p>I really don't see the point of writing academically as Fred put it on a subject that is so abstract and subjective.</p>

<p>Why would he have to convince highly educated people of Eggleston's work by employing an academic writing style the common man can't even decipher? I was under the assumption educated people already get his work and don't have to have it explained to them.</p>

<p>Or maybe they're all just a gang of like minded people who like talking this way to give credence and respect to their own endeavors much like street gangs employ their own language system that create the ties that bind.</p>

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<p>Captain Obvious? Yeah <em>kind</em> of, if you mean he uses a lot of words to say something fairly easy to understand. And he is hard for me to understand. I find myself rephrasing to get the gist of it. I don't get it all. I'll show you what I mean.</p>

<p><em>One can say then that in these photographs form and content are indistinguishable - which is to say that the pictures mean precisely what they appear to mean. Attempting to translate these appearances into words is surely a fool's errand, in the pursuit of which no two fools would choose the same unsatisfactory words. For example, </em><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qsSkaXuuUE8/TTUbueanS-I/AAAAAAAAADc/ZbzqWi6O_qE/s1600/050820101166_resize.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><em>consider the picture on page 75</em></a><em>.</em></p>

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<p>Perhaps these photographs mean precisely what they appear to mean. Perhaps. To translate appearances into words is difficult. If two translators tried, each attempt would be unsatisfactory and no two translations would be the same. Let's try a translation of the picture on page 75.</p>

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<p><em>Think of it as a picture that describes boundaries: the boundary between the city and the country, civilization and wilderness, the fail-safe point between community and freedom, the frontier of restrained protest or cautious adventure. And the boundary between the new and the old, the new neighborhood advancing into the old land, but the neighborhood itself not so new as last year, the house in the foreground no longer the last in the line, and the '56 Buick that stands by its doors already poised on the fulcrum of middle age, still well-shined and well-serviced, competent and presentable, but nevertheless no longer young. And the boundary that separates day from evening, the time of hard shadows and yellow heat from the cool blue opalescent dusk, the time of demarcation between the separate and public lives of the day and the private communal lives of evening, the point at which families begin to gather again beneath their atavistic roofs and the neighborhood sounds with women's voices crying the names of children.</em></p>

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<p>He imaginatively free associates out loud while his eyes scan the photo. He sees boundaries. Pulls a bunch of boundary examples out of his hat and embellishes them. New/old. Day/night. Public/private.</p>

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<p><em>One can say, to repeat, that in Eggleston's pictures form and content are indistinguishable, which seems to me true but also unsatisfactory because too permissive. The same thing can be said of any picture. The ambitious photographer, not satisfied by so tautological a success, seeks those pictures that have a visceral relation to his own self and his own privileged knowledge, those that belong to him by genetic right, in which form matches not only content but intent.</em></p>

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<p>One can say Eggleston's pictures mean precisely what they appear to mean. It's true as far as it goes, but to only go that far isn't saying much. That can be said of any picture. An ambitious photographer wants to say more in a photograph than A = A. An ambitious photographer seeks to spill his guts and impart his own privileged knowledge, known down to his bones, where form matches content and intent. [Form = content = intent. What the heck does that mean????]</p>

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<p><em>This suggests that the pictures reproduced here are no more interesting than the person who made them, and that their intelligence, wit, knowledge, and style reach no farther than that person's - which leads us away from the measurable relationships of art-historical science toward intuition, superstition, blood-knowledge, terror, and delight.</em></p>

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<p>That's just bad writing. E.G. "This suggests" what suggests? This? What's 'this'? He has a problem. He's just said this is a picture book of mere objects. Most photogrpahers want to do more than take pictures of apples that look like pictures of apples. Here's Eggleston. His pictures of apples look like apples. He wants you to buy his picture book. But what's intersting about apples and what's intersting about a photographer who seems to only be able to photograph an apple as an apple. How interesting then can Eggleston as a person be? He writes "which leads us away from the measurable relationships of art-historical science toward intuition, superstition, blood-knowledge, terror, and delight." Measurable relationship of art-historical science???? What??? Toward what???? As best I can tell he is blowing smoke to hide that he has nothing to say here that would transition to the next paragraph.</p>

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<p><em><em>These pictures are fascinating partly because they contradict our expectations. We have been told so often of the bland, synthetic smoothness of exemplary American life, of its comfortable, vacant insentience, its extruded, stamped, and molded sameness, in a word its irredeemable dullness, that we have come half to believe it, and thus are startled and perhaps exhilarated to see these pictures of prototypically normal types on their familiar ground, grandchildren of Penrod, who seem to live surrounded by spirits, not all of them benign. The suggestible viewer might sense that these are subjects capable not only of the familiar modern vices (self-loathing, adaptability, dissembling, sanctimony, and license), but of the ancient ones (pride, parochial stubbornness, irrationality, selfishness, and lust). This could not be called progress, but it is interesting. Such speculations, however, even if not simple nonsense, presumably relate only to Eggleston's pictures - patterns of random facts in the service of one imagination - not to the real world. A picture is after all only a picture, a concrete kind of fiction, not to be admitted as hard evidence or as the quantifiable data of social scientists.</em><br /></em></p>

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<p>Here is where he had better tell us why we would want to buy this picture book. He says the pictures are fascinating. He says why they are fascinating. The pictures challenge our preconceptions. Lofty half believed preconceptions at that. But what are we looking at in these pictures? Who knows? What we do know is that they fascinate. What else can we know? Not only is photography not rocket science, it isn't science at all. {I think Szarkowski is in that paragraph modeling some imaginative grooving for potential buyers. Essentially he's saying groove on it.}</p>

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<p>But if Eggleston's work is truly fascinating, and I do see where some of it is, then how do you explain that? Tim, I doubt anyone has adequately explained that yet. I take Szarkowski at his word when he says the work is fascinating. But he can't explain it and others criticized him for that. He had to respond to his critics, colleagues, academics. To his critics he just couldn't simply write hey, beats me why I like it, just groove on it.</p>

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