Are You Pursuing Answers or Establishing Questions?

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Julie--</p>

<p>"I think we can all agree that there will always be ambiguity, overlap, nuance in Q and A."</p>

<p>Kind of dismissive, this reduces my thoughts to nonsense, babble. I'm not talking about ambiguity, overlap, and nuance and I'm pretty sure you're smart enough to know that. As I said, I'm talking about a paradigm that doesn't apply for me . . . and many others.</p>

<p>But moving on to your latest thoughts, I did not have the same kind of experience as you when I took my first picture. It was a little instamatic. I was about 12. And I went around the neighborhood taking pictures that I assumed wouldn't look like what they looked like to my eye without a camera. I knew, from having seen movies and other photos, that a transformation would take place and I wanted to see how I could, with my camera, transform what my naked eye saw. I may not have worded it that way at the time, but those were my feelings. There was nothing factual about my endeavor and there rarely is to this day. My pictures didn't look funny because I wasn't expecting to have captured facts. I was expecting to have made a picture. Which I had. Instead of question/answer or mystery/problem-solving, I see my own photographs in terms of creation and transformation . . . among other things. Within that, there is some documentation, some expressing, some ethics, some values, some aesthetics, beauty, prettiness, ugliness, some expectation, some surprise. If some sort of transcendence takes place, hell, if some sort of feeling takes place, I am content, yet ever restless. When I solve a problem, I am not complete. I am simply ready for the next level. It's a little like diving into a pool of water, going deep, the blue water enveloping you, swimming back up toward the surface, thinking you're breaking through that surface only to find you're just in another level of the water.</p>

<p>I don't understand why (1) and (2) that you've posed just above can't coexist in the same photographer in the same photograph and at the same time. I may well seek funnyness and rightness. Especially if what seems funny feels right. I can make decisions and still ponder mysteries. Mysterious expressions can be very deliberate. Funnyness can be pre-visualized. Spontaneity and staging/posing are not mutually exclusive. The wonder of photography is that it can be transcendent, which requires both an immanence (a ground) and a going beyond.</p>

[jtk]

<p>Julie, I think you've abandoned Baker's point and you're drifting it further and further away.</p>

<p>Winogrand isn't perceptive about his own work.</p>

<p>He is famous only because we've been continuously told by inconsequential people (magazine writers, curators, photo class teachers, P.N fanboys) that he's onto something..</p>

<p>His photos stand or fall on their own, but he's evasive verbally, knows it, and thinks that's cute.</p>

<p>Photographers are not generally the people we should turn to for quotations about significant photographic issues, as emphasized by Winogrand.... Smith and Callahan are, by contrast, honest about themselves and their photography..</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Steve,</p>

<p>The word "intrigues" could be applied to either motive, but in the context, I understand what you are saying. Thank you.</p>

<p>Fred,</p>

<p>Thank you for a beautiful description of the making of photographs.</p>

<p>I'll try to explain why, even though I find your description absolutely valid and know many of the same feelings, that I am trying to more or less choose to not consider what you have so elequently evoked.</p>

<p>As you know, I am sure, philosophy hasn't settled:</p>

<p>consciousness, being, knowledge, free will, persistence, the nature and location of an "act" . . . and . . . I could go on (you could go on better than I could).</p>

<p>We're not going to settle those. I hope we don't have to debate those every time we want to consider some small part of the act of making a picture. So, if we admit that they are open questions, how do we have any kind of discussion about our own special interest which is the making of photographs?</p>

<p>For us to have a discussion of <em>anything</em>, to, as I have said earlier, "try on" an idea or play with a concept, we need to more or less arbitrarily be willing to agree/choose to <em>temporarily</em> accept a platform on which to base ourselves. Otherwise we have no footing -- all the side issues impinge and the discussion and it can't be focused.</p>

<p>In the simple either/or question that I have posed -- <em>as a self-applied exercise only</em> -- I think there is a small, but genuinely valuable kernel of <em>(trying to think of just the right word)</em> what and why one is doing what one is doing with the camera that comes to light if you think about "am I asking or am I answering?" It seems to me to give some form to something that was previously less formed (why and what are people after with their cameras?).</p>

<p>Having said all that, I do understand that, as you have explained convincingly (if I am able to express this right) my proposition can't be translated to the nature/content/feeling of your visual experience. Which I find interesting all by itself. To be considered and mulled over. Thank you.</p>

<p>John,</p>

<p>Without agreeing or disagreeing on the merits of the individual photographers, the only thing I'm interested in is their <em>own</em> idea of what they were doing, just as I'm only interested in anybody who contributes to this discussion's idea of what <em>they</em> were after when they made their pictures. Which is why I appreciate your own in-depth description of your current work.</p>

[joe_jackson4]

<p>"Answer or question? Both?"</p>

<p>-------- - ----- --- --- - -------------- ----------- ---- - ------ ----.</p>

<p>"I don't think you can claim neither -- else why would you take the picture at all?"</p>

<p>Guess.</p>

<p><br /></p>

[jtk]

<p>" I'm only interested in anybody who contributes to this discussion's idea of what <em>they</em> were after when they made their pictures." - Julie H</p>

<p>In that case, quotation of Pop Photo photographers (Gibson, Winogrand) seems out of place.</p>

<p>Winogrand is a paid performer. Like many "famous" people, he says what he thinks his audience will find interesting. Neither Smith nor Callahan were paid performers. They were more honest than is Winogrand. In other words, I reject what Winogrand says because he's saying it because he thinks it sounds profound... but embrace what your poet said .</p>

<p>Lee Friedlander is often thought to be like Winogrand, but Friedlander has balls...he tries things that sometimes don't work, he's not praised for accidents. His projects are easily understood to in fact be projects and they wind up as books...some are wonderful (self portraits, nudes, and his Sixties stuff). Some stinks IMO (his "scenic" pomo BS). Winogrand hasn't contributed anything significant since he was first touted (much like Sherman and Gibson).</p>

<p>If we're to consider people "photographers" we should IMO ask "What has s/he done lately." If s/he is mostly a celebrity s/he is not worth listening to as if s/he was still a photographer. I think this sort of question/distinction is crucial. It's silly to quote somebody about what they're doing if they're not doing it.</p>

<p> </p>

[albert_richardson1]

<blockquote>

<p>I'm not sure than once a person gets beyond simply pushing the button on his camera, he can possibly avoid using some sort of artistic license to make pictures to please the eye.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I didn't do a very good job of stating my own case as John got my point about art in photography backwards! Anything a person does to control the eventual appearance of his photo demonstrates artfulness. (A good thing!) This is not to get into details of trying to figure out the 'genetics' of a photograph whereby one might try to map photographer skills and opportunities to produce a DNA-like map of the application of his mind to his work. Some people clearly produce brilliant results. It interests me, and I find it a little odd, that I can never imagine the amount of time and application of effort it takes to produce the finished result. The work stands on its own, but it can never tell you how it got there!</p>

<p>I have paused to read 'NEVER-ENDING BIRDS.' I see that I missed the point about Baker's essay by giving him too much credit. The flight of birds overhead is a metaphor for the passage of time, or more properly, the passage of life itself. A family of three sits watching them. The daughter has grown up and has established a household of her own. "I have another house. Now you have two." There are now two households with the two parents living in one. The actual theme of the poem comes out at the end when the poet says, "I am your father. That's us three pointing up. Dear girl. They will not--it's we who do--end." He says that, although each of us must face death eventually, the flow of life continues. I'm not sure if I'm reading too much into the piece to conclude that he also means to say that strong family ties create a continuity that also survives individual family members. Isn't this the heart and soul of poetry? It's rich ability to suggest things that lie beyond the actual text. Good poetry points to something else.</p>

<p>The common ground between the poem and a photograph would lie in the suggestive - say symbolic - possiblities in each. Here we get to how I went wrong on Baker's comments on prose. In this case, as far as "Never-ending Birds" goes, the essay version isn't a long drawn out treatise on the meaning hidden in life, but rather it is a plain, ordinary sentiment most people would understand and agree with without another thought. I second Baker's choice. He did the right thing!</p>

<p>I'm sure that the 'prose vs. poetry' controversy would be an ongoing debate in an 'Englishmajor.net' forum someplace if anyone ever establishes one. I am something of a curmudgeon when it comes to distinctions one is admonished to put into his work, and perhaps to find in the works of others. 'Questions' and 'Answers' in photographs: which one is which? How do you tell them apart? I'm sure you don't want to see a viewer scratching his head and muttering, "I have a question about this shot. What was she thinking?"</p>

<p>Of course I'm poking fun at you. Perhaps you can do more of the great research you do with the many resources you have at hand to suggest specific ways one loads photographs with meaning clearly understood by a viewer so as to get either a question or an answer across?</p>

[Julie H]

<p>John,</p>

<p>Even the greatest photographer is not great most of the time. The rest of the time, we're all struggling (happily, I hope).</p>

<p>Here is another quote, this time from a photographer that I know you like:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>I must conclude -- after all -- that my ideas of pure photography -- unaided by the hand -- are much more difficult to live up to in the case of landscape workers -- for the obvious reason that nature unadulterated and unimproved by man -- is simply chaos. In fact, the camera proves that nature is crude and lacking in arrangement and only possible when man isolates and selects from her. The etcher or painter have all the best of it in this, with their power of selection and culmination -- while the photographer -- in trying to eliminate objectionable items from his negatives -- is usually destructive to the finest qualities in his medium. One has only to scan exhibition walls to conclude that most photographic landscapes, unless they be mere fragments could have been better done using some other medium. This being so, they should never have been made at all. The conclusion from all this must be that photography is much better suited to subjects amenable to arrangement or subjects already co-ordinated by man.</p>

<p><em>-- Edward Weston (1922)</em></p>

</blockquote>

 

[Art X Photography]

<p>"I am always bemused by people who always think that the photographer must have had something of signifigance in mind when they pressed the shutter button"<br>

for the most part photographers do Charles (even us amateurs:)), even the photojournalist has an intent and therefore a reason of significance for capturing what he/she does. The street photographer? well maybe they too have something of significance they want to capture or showcase. But perhaps they shoot the composition that lends itself to that intent rather than intentionally composing. But it seems to me that the creative photographer pre-visualizes what it is they want to capture and so proceed accordingly. Significant intent and pre-visualization are often confused as one and the same, but they are very different directions for the photographer (IMHO). The "forethought" John Kelly refers to seems to me to imply intent. I don't think anyone simply points and shoots randomly (unless to understand their equipment); and so to answer Julie's question when I capture I do so not to have questions asked so much as to suggest 'this is my perception of the world'. I don't offer answers to unasked questions.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Thanks Art X.</p>

<p>I should mention that I don't mind what conclusions you draw about yourself if you "try on" my question/answer exercise. And I don't mind if you mind that I do or don't mind . . .</p>

<p>I'm delighted that a goodly number of people have thought about it, played with the concept and found one or the other to be a good fit (in some loose sense). And I am just as delighted by the fair number who have also thought about it and found neither or both-all-the-time to be a fit. It's the <em>thinking about it</em> that I am interested in and that I think yields useful results to getting a sense of what's going on with this whole making-pictures thing that we do.</p>

<p>Thank you all.</p>

[jtk]

<p>"Isn't this the heart and soul of poetry? It's rich ability to suggest things that lie beyond the actual text. Good poetry points to something else." - Albert R.<br>

<strong>Albert,</strong> I'm glad you looked into Baker and reframed your thinking.</p>

<p><strong>However, now you have demolished your (shifting) position by insisting that poems, such as Baker's, are second-hand phenomena that require interpretation.</strong><br>

<strong></strong><br>

Earlier you indicated that you felt photography and poetry were importantly dissimilar. Now you're proving how similar they are ...they both intentionally evade interpretation or allude only accidentally, but you are determined to leap to interpretation.<em><strong> If the photographer or poet had wished an interpretation s/he would have stated it in an essay or speech, would not have bothered with a poem or photograph.</strong></em><br>

<strong><em></em></strong><br>

<strong><em>Now that you've considered Baker, Julie's poet, and have your "answer," believing that you have interpreted his writing, maybe you will interpret Julie's photography? </em></strong><br>

<strong><em></em></strong><br>

<strong><em>Was the satisfaction you derived from interpreting Baker as stimulating as reading him?</em></strong><br>

<strong><em></em></strong></p>

<p>"Good" poetry doesn't necessarily (you mean "necessarily") "point to something else." Poetry can, and often does, stand on its own, evoking non-verbal responses. The classic haiku includes references to the season, to mortality etc...it's designed to be interpreted. Various antique European poets, and certainly "not good" contemporary poets, write for interpretation. <strong>Interpretation, "pointing to something else" leads away from the work itself...diminishing the work through analysis (the very reason academics interpret: to elevate themselves above their artist or literatter). </strong><br>

<strong>Some living artists/poets etc do perform their tricks for academic interpreters because that's how they butter their bread. Most don't. Some amuse themselves, on the side, by leaving interpretive hints, intentionally making fools of academics, who look for "something else."</strong> <em>James Joyce's "Ulysses", for example.</em> Joyce actually stated that he indended to create fools.<br>

<strong></strong><br>

<strong> </strong>The notion that a "good" poem must point to something else is claiming, as some critics do, that Picasso's paintings importantly point to something else...that, for example, we need to know that we're looking at a particular Picasso wife. <em> <strong>I think any eyes-open non-academic, viewing Picasso's first-hand work (not reproductions) would conclude that he was a PAINTER and not an allusionist. If that person had open ears they would hear poems in poetry. </strong></em><br>

<em><strong></strong></em><br>

<em><strong></strong></em><br>

<em><strong>I think Julie has been scattering breadcrumbs to divert and tease ...in her last post she's even suggested this was intentional, Joyce-like :-)</strong></em></p>

<p> </p>

[Julie H]

<p>I will neither confirm nor deny that I am an infamous scatterer of breadcrumbs (or toast, or fruit loaf or bagel crumbs).</p>

<p>John Kelly will probably also tell you that there is no Easter bunny.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Thanks, Julie. I was going to comment that your penchant for simply scattering quotes by others and your early bizarre reaction to those finding your initial formulation quite lacking is proof that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. :) My guess is that the truth lies somewhere between John's patronizing and my putting you down. In any case, it's doubtful either you or John rise as far above the rest of us as John seems to suppose. If you're "playing" us, as John seems to think, you haven't succeeded and you should stop trying. If, on the other hand, you've been confused and are now changing your story midstream, I hope you have learned something. In any case, I'm about done with this one. See you around.</p>

[kristina_kraft]

<p>Julie.<br>

thanks for putting these wonderful opinions of Caponigro and Doisneau. I understand both of them because I can see myself in their comprehension of photographing. <br>

The most exciting part of photographing is when I see a possibility to veil the ordinary objects in nature that are not particularly interested at first sight. But as I look longer at something that attracts me at the giving moment, I see the possibilities to capture them pulling the soul out of them, so that photograph may look alive as a separate reality wanting to pull the viewer inside.</p>

 

[jtk]

<p>Me? Not believe in Easter Bunny? The following probably applies as well to pussy cats .<br>

http://www.recipeview.com/view.php?ItemID=44203</p>

<p>Fred, I'm not "patronizing" Julie at all, and she knows that.</p>

<p>In fact, I think her online photos are several levels more compelling than, say, Winogrand's (not to mention mine), who she seems to hold in higher esteem than I do.</p>

<p><strong>Kristina Vidanec's understanding of photography seems similar to mine. I don't see "soul" in "possibilities," but maybe I should. </strong></p>

<p> </p>

[Julie H]

<p>Kristina,</p>

<p>This is really interesting (and beautifully put):</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>The most exciting part of photographing is when I see a possibility to veil the ordinary objects in nature that are not particularly interested at first sight. But as I look longer at something that attracts me at the giving moment, I see the possibilities to capture them pulling the soul out of them, so that photograph may look alive as a separate reality wanting to pull the viewer inside.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>-- because I do the very same thing but I treat my findings in the opposite way. Because what I see in a "straight" or "first" look at the woodsy wilderness does not match what I know to be there (order, beauty, intense and balanced life), I set about deliberately making it apparent (an "answer", not a question).</p>

<p>But I'm a compositor. In straight photography, I greatly admire the work of those who wait for the "hush" or the fragrant moment -- to form a question and thus open the door to the possiblity that there is a great deal more there than the superficial -- or, as you say, "wanting to pull the viewer inside".</p>

<p>John,</p>

<p>They have 600 recipes for the Easter bunny! He must be a <em>very</em> big rabbit.</p>

[mt4x4]

<blockquote>

<p>No one can form a complete thought at 1/500th of a second.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes, but at longer exposures, one can generally form thoughts. Usually within the realm of...did I expose this correctly, do I need to stop down more, I hope my tripod is holding steady in this small gust of wind.....<br /> <br /> All very poetic.</p>

[susan_tschantz]

<p>I think I take pictures to see what it is, really. To freeze a look so I can take it apart.</p>

[michaellinder]

<p>Asking questions and seeking answers is far more interesting (and fun) than just having the answers. This is another take on whether taking the journey is more meaningful than reaching the destination.</p>

<p>I suspect that volumes could be written (and have been) about the existential/phenomenological aspects of the act of questioning. For the moment, all I'll mention on this is a favorite line from a very wise teacher: "What you stated is either trivially true or interestingly false." I'd opt for the latter.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Thanks Susan and Michael.</p>

<p>Michael,</p>

<p>I think, like John Kelly, you're getting into the admittedly fascinating closer details of how a question can be fashioned. There's an old chestnut somewhere that goes something like, "finding the right answers is about asking the right questions" . . . and on into the idea that fiction is often more true than nonfiction (true lies and all that). But I hope to stick to what prededes that: to the simpler, broadest feeling about one's own state or sensation of certainty -- or not -- when making a picture.</p>

<p>Photographs are more than just maps for applying various amounts of ink to paper. They are supposed to <em>do</em> something.</p>

<p>When faced with subjects that are as large as, for example, Walt Whitman's galactic self, as interior as Tonio in <em>Pagliacci</em>, "When you gaze at our motley costumes, don't forget there are hearts underneath"; or the mystery that might be anywhere -- Ovid, "The strangeness is always lurking, always there but seldom visible." -- how do you photograph such things?</p>

<p>Do you try to use your creative skills to make such things explicit; perfectly, beautifully clear? Or do you ask people to see that things are <em>not</em> explicit, that they remain deliciously mysterious? Ask people to join you in exploration?</p>

[fate_faith_change_chains]

<blockquote>

<p> ' Because what I see in a "straight" or "first" look at the woodsy wilderness does not match what I know to be there (order, beauty, intense and balanced life), I set about deliberately making it apparent (an "answer", not a question).'</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Interesting, but this deliberately making apparent of this balance is an answer aimed at a viewer then, more so then a straightforward answer for yourself, no ? If you're first look at the wilderness, or any subject, does not match what you know to be there, then it seems more a matter of different perspectives, and choosing one over the other. Like scraping that first level of reality away, indifferent as it may seem, violent and chaotic maybe, to find another reality under it, one of order, beauty and balance. But this feels less conclusive then an answer / question, it is more open, more likely to change over time as new layers are added or peeled away, then if it was an answer to a very specific question. It's an answer to another answer almost. You first have to acknowledge the existence, the very thruth of it, behind that first look, before you can start ' peeling it away ', finding another thruth, another existence. But one isn't more of an answer then another is a question to it imo.</p>

<p>" I think nearly every artist continually wants to reach the edge of nothingness - the point where you can't go any farther. " Harry Callahan</p>

<p><br /></p>

[Julie H]

<p>Phylo,</p>

<p>Yes, it's an ongoing accretion. I like the way you describe the process.</p>

<p>But there is a divide between what I'm setting out to learn or discover or uncover. I will have some subject, some target that I'm (very) interested in, that I don't understand and that I want to learn to understand. At that stage, I am excited about it; I have its general outline -- I know what it is that I want to learn about, but I also know that I don't understand it.</p>

<p>Compare that to when or after or as I reach understanding. The "I get it" moment that one gets day by day as you learn more -- by working at it, step by step or in lightbulb moments.</p>

<p>There is a difference in how you convey what you understand (even if it's a matter of degree); vs what you are fascinated by but do not (yet) understand -- and may or may not expect to ever understand.</p>

[orias]

<p>For me it can be both. Sometimes I take a photograph to document what I see. Sometimes I take a photograph in such a way that I could never see it that way, but the camera can because it can gather light over a longer period of time than my eye/brain can. I can't really say I take a photo to generate a question though, but maybe thinking about photography in that way might expand my photography.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>David,</p>

<p>Me too (both, I mean). It's hard for a compositor to do uncertainty (the process is so deliberate), but I have tried.</p>

<p>For example, in the summer, I often walk to a small, deep pool in the mountains where I live. My Jack My Russell Terriers like to splash about in the water trying to catch frogs. The pool is shadowed by the mountain, but if there are big bright clouds overhead (still catching the full sun), the rippling black water in the pool catches the clouds' reflection and deconstructs the sky in the most amazing ways -- that are evocative of things that I don't understand. I look and feel and -- I like it.</p>

<p>Anyway, I tried to do something with that water in my <a href="http://www.unrealnature.com/BlackWater_thumbs.htm"><em>Blackwater</em> series</a>. I'm not entirely satisfied with it but to me it's a question series, not an answer. I <em>know </em>that there's something there, but I don't know exactly what it is.</p>

[michaellinder]

<p>Julie:</p>

<p>A very thoughtful response - - thanks.</p>

<p>There have been other threads involving discussions of intention. Participants other than myself (Fred and John, to name two) - with me jumping on the bandwagon - have spoken at length of the photographer's intention playing a key role in the significance of a photograph.</p>

<p>I'm going to put my comments in purely emotive terms. The photographs I like producing the best are those of unusual, off-the-beaten-track. I try to shoot and process them in such a way that a viewer has reason to question the subject's appearance. (The types of questions to be asked obviously are up to the viewer.) I also love producing abstracts, some of which still have some connection with a recognizable subject.</p>

<p>In your words, I find the most meaning in my activity when viewers can explore with me. And I do not want to make it too easy for them.</p>

[saskphotog]

<p>For all of us there are objects, events, visual relationships, sounds, touches, whatever, that trigger our awareness, either conscious or unconscious, of the connectedness of everything; as I said much earlier, of the fact that all dualities are falsely imagined. Art is anything that has the power to reveal that unity to observers. As some have commented already, purity of intent of the artist seems to be a large part of the "artistic process", and greatly increases the odds that the artifact will be able to communicate that unity to others, whether the artifact is an image, music, dance, or even athletic performance. It all arises from the same place.</p>

<p>Images like Julie's Blackwater Series obviously connect her to those ideas. Since she knows "there's something there", but doesn't know "exactly what", the connections are still operating at a somewhat subconscious level for her. But they are obviously operating. </p>

<p>The enlightenment that art can produce is neither a question nor an answer, but is actually both at the same instant. To persist in trying to disect or deconstruct the artistic experience into some illusion of dualistic content prevents recognition of how the art is working on you, and why it is so attractive. One needs to meditate on art, not deconstruct it.</p>