intimate

don_e · June 11, 2009

"Don, I thought we settled the quid pro quo business a while back."

So? I was asked a question: what does intimate/intimacy refer to, and I replied.

"[This looks like Don E's take: "A shared relationship among at least two sensisble entities who freely and wholly participate".]"

I've made a distinction between "intimate knowledge of" and "intimate relationship with". You and Lannie may want to shoehorn 'nature' into an intimate (of the "with" kind) relationship with you. I'll stay out of it. But I think it is the inappropriate language for it.

luis_g · June 11, 2009

Perhaps it is in your own chosen meaning of the word, but it's no shoehorning according to the other, widely accepted meanings of the word. In my opinion, what's important is not who or what you exclude, but your own angle of acceptance. I see what I would call intimacy in some of your nature photographs. In some way, you must have too, or you would not have put them under a thread by that title. The trees stand out in memory. That picture of the desertscape and the one of the naturalist/guide in the w/NW thread, too.

I am by no means saying you're wrong. I respect what you're saying as valid for you, but when it comes to others, leaving the maximum number of degrees of freedom for language, the medium and expression, matters.

I am curious...what would you say is the appropriate language for what others call intimacy in nature photographs?

Norma Desmond · June 11, 2009

Regarding intimacy, the experience of shooting itself -- my behavior toward and relationship with my subject(s), the emotional risks I am willing to take, the level of knowledge of or familiarity with what or whom I am shooting -- is different from the photograph, that ultimate piece of work that we might call intimate.

When we say that a photo itself is intimate (as opposed, say, to the intimacy between two subjects in a photograph or between the photographer and subject), what does that mean?

We all know we've been in intimate situations that haven't yielded intimate photos. Often, that's because we didn't use our tools well enough. What are the photographic tools you use or would consider using to express in the picture whatever intimacy you experience in the moment or even to create an intimate photograph from a moment that doesn't feel particularly intimate?

I often come back to shadows in my own work. Somehow the revelation of what's going on in the dark, even in cases where the focus may be on the light, seems to add intimacy for me. I am working more with the nuances of highlights lately -- more difficult for me than working with shadows -- and I think I'll be able to be more intimate with them, but it is more difficult.

I tend to find less sharpness conveys intimacy. I often find that too sharp a focus can be piercing but not intimate. I often feel more of a connection to well-handled suggestions of movement than I do to what appears to be stopped action, of course depending on the situation.

Certain perspectives feel more intimate than others. Being tall, I've learned to kneel and even sit more. Certain skews pull me more into a photo.

Some situations seem to warrant more proactive participation by the camera to express intimacy and others seem to demand that the camera be quite neutral, my having to take a step back to allow the scene simply to play out before me.

The intuition and/or experience to use the various tools in harmony with the particular situation seem crucial to the creation of an intimate photograph.

jtk · June 11, 2009

The notion that all ideas are "equally valid" indicates fear...fear that one's ideas might be "valued" by someone else... fear that one's treasured, protected, unexplored ideas might be threatened by other "more valid" ideas.

Validity, like intimacy, springs from participation by at least one other person.

jtk · June 11, 2009

...also, I think intimacy is a simple experience, if often difficult to achieve (or deal with), especially in photography. Talk of intimacy with nature or with oneself seems (to me) to suggest fear of risk-taking...fear of intimacy...isolation.

Fred has just described part of his method of achieving photographic intimacy. He was talking about photography, not talking abstractly about a word.

don_e · June 11, 2009

"I am curious...what would you say is the appropriate language for what others call intimacy in nature photographs?"

The creative use of the clone tool...but seriously, folks...

Please, refer to posts above. I am not referring to the genre of nature photography, nor, as I've written, the vine or the wire, the tree or the pole, but the concept of 'nature' reified and claiming an intimate relationship *with* that.

"I am by no means saying you're wrong. I respect what you're saying as valid for you, but when it comes to others, leaving the maximum number of degrees of freedom for language, the medium and expression, matters."

You must consider the degrees of freedom discarded -- excluded-- already in what I refer to. For example: " Of course I can be intimate with nature. I _am_ nature..." Are you? To you, yes; to me, yes, and that means we think what we do is nature and that means our skyscrapers are nature. As I said, you can discuss this with Lannie. He doesn't get intimate with skyscrapers. Granite in a mountain seems to have a different ontolgy than granite in a building.

If I say to you my lover's face is like a red red rose that gently blooms in May, I would hope you do not think my lover has a thorny bush of a face. Language gains its expressiveness by analogy, metaphor, simile. They are the building blocks of meaning (there's another one). We apply to 'nature', by metaphor and analogy, the intimacies of our human lives. That's all.

Or, if you are nature and we are all nature and all our works are nature, then how do you respond to someone who splits things up into human and nature, natural and artificial?

luis_g · June 11, 2009

Don E -

Aha...the concept, not the thing in itself. Yes, you said it earlier, and I forgot, sorry. I agree with that personally, but adhere to the fact that the definition of the word allows for the other, too.

Skyscrapers are nature in the same way that a termite mound is, except we with the hot-rod brains coordinate, manipulate resources, complexify and inflict design on each one, and build them for profit, not for the well-being of those who inhabit them, unlike the termites.

I respond to someone who splits things up into human and nature, natural and artificial, as creating useful categories that help them make sense of their reality, thrive and navigate their culture, exactly in the same way I regard the categories in what Borges called 'a certain Chinese encyclopedia', in "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins".

The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge

Where animals were divided into:

1.- Those that belonged to The Emperor.

2.- Embalmed ones.

3.- Those that are trained.

4.- Suckling Pigs

5.- Mermaids

6.- Fabulous ones

7.- Stray dogs

8.- Those included in the present classification

9.-Those that tremble as if they were mad

10-Innumerable ones

11-Those drawn by a fine camel-hair brush.

12-Others

13-Those that have broken a flower vase

14- Those that from far away look like flies.

_____________________________

don_e · June 11, 2009

"I often come back to shadows in my own work. Somehow the revelation of what's going on in the dark, even in cases where the focus may be on the light, seems to add intimacy for me..."

Some of your comments remind me of Marshall McLuhan's hot and cool media, in that 'hot' is complete, filled in, detailed ('sharp and contrasty'); it may be admired, but it is distancing. But 'cool' is the opposite of it and invites participation, filling in, completing -- akin I think to intimacy. With a few caveats, I agree with MM and if this is close to your meaning, I agree with you.

don_e · June 11, 2009

Luis, the nature that is not the human domain is not benign, benevolent, caring, balanced, intimate. It is red in tooth and claw. It is harsh, and a terrible mortal beauty. I may live in the inner city, but this city still retains about 75% of its canopy, unlike most cities which have only 10 or 15% at best. I am not isolated from that nature. Please, ask any termites you come across to let my house be.

Or, I do not accept the distinction you've made between us and termites as true.

jtk · June 11, 2009

Distinct categories:

1) Photographers (we see their work in P.N galleries)

2) Non-Photographers (nothing in P.N galleries).

luis_g · June 11, 2009

Don, I was half-kidding with the termite mound. I understand what you mean, but the human domain is hardly benign, benevolent, caring, balanced or intimate. Maybe it is where you (and I) live ( I live in Florida, two blocks from the water) but you can't say that about too many countries, or even many places in the US. Ours is a terrible, harsh, mortal beauty, too, you apparently are lucky enough to not get to see it. 50% of the world population lives on $2.50/per diem. What do you think life is like for them? Benevolent? Benign? Balanced? Try desperately poor. The US ranks 29th in infant mortality. Tied with Slovakia, lower than Cuba. We are nature, in an accelerated, consumptive, self-destructive form.

I never intimated (had to use the word) that nature is utopian. From a very early age to this day, I've regularly hiked, kayaked, fished, hunted, back-country camped, etc in nature. I went for a short hike in a mangrove swamp earlier this evening. I am no stranger to the ways of nature.

Norma Desmond · June 12, 2009

"invites participation, filling in, completing -- akin I think to intimacy" -- Don E.

Don, McLuhan's description makes sense. I hadn't thought of the inviting he refers to. I thought more about revealing. But I think there can be a play between revelation and invitation.

"Fred has just described part of his method . . . He was talking about photography" -- John Kelly

John, Thanks for the nod.

Is anyone keyed into particular visual aspects of their work that make their own photographs intimate? Nuts and bolts about the photos themselves? If not, is anyone thinking about what might accomplish that or even if you'd want to?

fate_faith_change_chains · June 12, 2009

More generally speaking, I think it has something to do with balancing between the familiar and the unfamiliar. If something becomes familiar, in our own way of working and our methods of approaching photography, then patterns / a style may emerge from which we can lay the foundation to build / create work that is intimitaly our own. But the intimately familiar, once we've been accustomed in cultivating it in our own work, may be gradually taken for the intimate, when in fact it's reasonable to assume that the familiar softens ones perception of the intimate, while the truly intimate, for it to stay intimate, has more a piercing hard quality to it, an openness to perceive not only that which we have taken as granted.

Remember visiting a place / a street / a scene,.. for the very first time ? Somehow everything seems more vibrant, more sparkling with energy and focused attention in this first time being around a place, vs when we go back to the place, again and again, the focussed attention softens, fades out in the background....

luis_g · June 12, 2009

I often use shorter focal length lenses to lessen the physical distance between the subject and I, perhaps because closeness is often a sign of intimacy. Not ultra-wides, more like 28-35-50-85 (or zooms in that range). If the moment isn't feeling intimate, I do my best to get the subject to relax and elicit a variety of expressions via banter, changing poses, or relocating, and using reflexes honed by years of street shooting, I can get expressions that simulate or better yet, depict momentary intimacy.

I find that using a camera with a WL/swiveling finder or Live View makes my face visible to the subject, which is conducive to intimacy. Even a rangefinder helps with that. One habit I picked up from way back in the day when I worked for a studio that had us using 4x5 for portraits (they retouched the negs) that also increases your odds is to use a cable release when working from a tripod with a relatively static pose, or restricted field. It lets the subject see you, and you can control where the subject is looking simply by moving around. When using an SLR, I make it a point of coming up for air frequently.

Shoot a lot. Keeping the mask(s) on is difficult over extended periods of time. Projecting an image is exhausting. Working through those energies, the subject begins to drop the masks. And the subject is also becoming more comfortable with the process and you. Solvency and confidence inspire trust and intimacy (and although this is the topic at hand, there are a LOT of other things involved in all this besides intimacy).

There is nothing generic when I photograph. Everything is specific. As with all things, this generates its equal and opposite reaction, and brings out universality.

[in spite of the above, I do not want to give the impression of anything formulaic. Sometimes I do all of these things, sometimes none. I work intuitively. Intimacy is best conveyed by living it. One's mental state/approach is by far the most important thing.]

" I bet your father was in, say, the clock trade, was it? -- and when you were a boy you took his watch to pieces looking for Time. Why don't you talk? You're not like that man who came here last year and told me that he waited until there was a magnetic flow uniting himself and me. A technological flirt. Nor are you like that happy fellow with the waving fair hair who said he unselfed himself, forgot money, wife, children, all, for a few moments to become me!"

--- V.S. Pritchett, "The Image Trade"

don_e · June 12, 2009

Luis, the nature that is not the human domain is not benign, benevolent, caring, balanced, intimate. It is red in tooth and claw. It is harsh, and a terrible mortal beauty. I may live in the inner city, but this city still retains about 75% of its canopy, unlike most cities which have only 10 or 15% at best. I am not isolated from that nature. Please, ask any termites you come across to let my house be.

Or, I do not accept the distinction you've made between us and termites as true.

don_e · June 12, 2009

I don't know where these post duplications are coming from. Odd.

don_e · June 12, 2009

"Is anyone keyed into particular visual aspects of their work that make their own photographs intimate? Nuts and bolts about the photos themselves? If not, is anyone thinking about what might accomplish that or even if you'd want to?"

Fred, I don't do anything specific to create a sense of intimacy or a sense of anything else. In the taking, there is often no time to think through the situation and make conscious decisions. In developing, I tend to favor some of the things you mentioned, preferring lower contrast and less obvious sharpness. The past few years I've lost interest in the technical aspects of 'good' image quality, and use old, and often cheap, lenses which effortlessly achieve some of the qualities you mention, mostly shooting silver b&w, which these days, like film generally, is an "alternative" like pinhole or toy camera photography, and can evoke a sense of...something or other in those who were not around in the b&w age.

I think the most important thing is choice of subject as a class or category of subject. Whether or not I have time to think through a shot, the subject is familiar, even if they are personally not known to me. We have lots in common. If this were a painters' forum, I'd be classed as a regionalist, maybe a primitive regionalist. I parse the scene before me, the people in it, as natives, locals, transplants, and transients. I avoid photographing transients (meaning, uni and teaching hospital students and staff, people from the burbs who work in the city, tourists, panhandlers I don't recognize etc). I have little to no connections with them and no urge to photograph them.

I avoid portraits unless I know the subject personally -- the portrait is made for them and for me. Otherwise I want to situate the subject in a context, which means I pull back from tight framing. I think the context enhances the subject, adds characterization. The viewer sees them in situ and may get a sense of familiarity with the subject simply because the subject is not an isolate, a unit of data with no context.

I think complexity can enhance a sense of familiarity more than simplicity. A portrait may see into the soul of subjects but it tells us nothing about their daily life, their circumstances. I'd rather pull back, show the subject among his or her things, books, paintings, furniture, the mess or order of their lives. Complexity may pull the eye away from the so-called main subject, but it comes to rest on things that add substance to the subject as an actually existing person. Oh, almost forgot, sfumato, chiaroscuro -- I'm not settled on that. I experiment in the opposite direction, attempting to give the light dimensional depth, to make it visible in the atmosphere, rather than creating shadowy depths. Probably more in the direction of Monet (but not just in bright daylight) than da Vinci.

ps, the duplicate post issue is not a pnet issue, but an old and somewhat wonky browser of mine. I keep many different browsers on several computers due to website devel needs and some are a bit long in the tooth.

don_e · June 12, 2009

"Don, I was half-kidding with the termite mound. I understand what you mean, but the human domain is hardly benign, benevolent, caring, balanced or intimate."

No it is not. Nature is not like that, and we are nature, too. It is "just naitures waiy" as Steve Irwin would say. Sometimes nature just plunges a stingray spine into your heart. No blame.

Looking at the common sort of Animal Kingdom chart with our species at the top and maybe ants at the bottom demonstrates degrees of signal-bound behavior, and there is a major difference between our species and the rest, even the rest of the primates. We are far less signal-bound than other species, therefore we think we are somehow not in nature or far less part of nature than other species, more responsible for our actions, but this is just nature's way, too. Nature, the signal-bound world, seems balanced and peaceful compared to our perversity.

Norma Desmond · June 12, 2009

I really appreciate the concrete responses. This is the stuff that ties philosophy and photography together and is helpful on both fronts. I'm not going to say too much about each response other than that I read them carefully and got a lot out of each. For me, this is not stuff that's in the arena of argument or agree/disagree as much as listen and learn. It would be boring if each of us made intimate photos using the same methods.

Phylo, thanks for sharing a different perspective on sharpness and softness than my own. I love the way you describe the vibrancy and clarity of seeing something for the first time. You also used the word "energy," which is one of those intangibles that photos have and that can be used to express so much.

Luis, it's good to point out that little if any of this stuff is formulaic and that flexibility and attunement to the moment is surely a key to intimacy.

Don, I can relate to your talk about choice of subject being so key to intimacy for you. And I love how you've described the kinds of portraits you like to do and the way you work with simple/complex. Makes a lot of sense to me.

I do a lot of my thinking about photographing at night when my head hits the pillow or when I'm at museums or browsing through books. Since I sometimes have time when shooting, some decisions are quick but have enough time to be conscious yet have likely been more thought about and honed at other times and in other places than the shooting scene. Some are just gut reactions to a situation, but those reactions still often seem influenced by experience as well as thought I've put into it previously.

Honestly, at this stage in my photograph making, sometimes I simply tell myself something like "tomorrow I'm going to sit more when I shoot or be more aware of back lighting." Then I have to remember not to be a slave to those instructions.

don_e · June 12, 2009

Fred, my insight into complexity/simplicity came from a discussion with you in this forum (I haven't searched for the thread, so I may not recall the details exactly). You posted in the thread two photos and asked me something about them. One of them was of an older man sitting in an armchair. There was a lot of information in the photo that got me wondering who is this guy. What is on the table, the shelf, the wall? Frankly, I've forgotten what the other image was, but I recall I thought it very good and I admired it, but I can still see the other one in my mind's eye.

Something I haven't gotten a handle on is the effect of focal length. I may be sensitive to the compression or expansion of dimensionality, when going long or wide. Is there something 'distancing' in going wide (what I've called the 'big nose' portrait), or going long and compressing depth? Is getting really close, really wide, really intimate?

jtk · June 12, 2009

Thanks for bringing the discussion back to photography. IMO photography itself offers the definition of photographic intimacy...words can't come close.

Landrum Kelly · June 12, 2009

[P]hotography itself offers the definition of photographic intimacy...words can't come close.

</blockquote>

Well, then, we need to move this thread to a forum dealing with technique.

--Lannie

Norma Desmond · June 12, 2009

John--

My pleasure. In discussing the establishment of at least some level of intimacy (or at least comfort) with the sisters, you talked about joking. And then in response to Josh you talked about awkwardness with masks and tendency to abruptness, which can indeed lead to openings in relationships, sometimes the hard way and sometimes quite effectively. Were there specific things you considered photographically to try and make it an intimate photo, either regarding your shooting or regarding your post-processing or printing? I know you weren't actually thinking of intimacy at the time, but are there photographic aspects you are now aware of that either do or could have expressed intimacy, specifically relating to the details, aspects, and technique involved in the photo of the sisters?

Landrum Kelly · June 12, 2009

It has been argued (and I have argued myself at times) that intimacy requires mutuality of feeling, reciprocity--and thus can only really apply to a state that is found in an interpersonal context.

This might be so, but, if so, it describes a state (or states) of consciousness that is/are not verifiable by the camera--if at all.

I have spoken of a "sense" of intimacy with nature, and I like to think that some of my photos could convey that "sense." (The ontological status of "intimacy with nature" remains in doubt and in dispute, of course. My use of "sense" should likewise be interpreted rather liberally.)

Imagine, however, the following scenario: one takes a picture of a couple in the very act of love, shares it with the couple themselves, but later gets the following response from the woman in private, "I know that it appears that you have captured an intimate moment between my husband and myself, but the truth is that, at the very height of passion that you have so wonderfully captured, I was in fact thinking of my out-of-town boyfriend and our last Wednesday afternoon in his hotel room. So, yes, I was feeling intimate with my extra-curricular lover, and my husband was feeling intimate with me, but the fact is that we were not really feeling intimate in the least about each other ."

So. . . if intimacy is a psychological state (and please note that huge word "if"), how can we ever capture it with a photo ? Consider also the epistemological question: How would we know that we had captured even the external manifestations of a private, psychological state of one person, much less of two--much less of something special passing between them, intimacy itself?

Just some idle thoughts as I try to summon the will to cut the grass that I have been thinking about cutting for the last three days. . . .

--Lannie

Landrum Kelly · June 12, 2009

If "intimacy" is all about photography and not about words, then perhaps someone can try again to start a "No Words" thread in the same way that Pnina tried before. Maybe this time we can somehow summon up from the NW contributors a photo or two that literally shouts "Intimacy!"

Then, again, if anyone really succeeds in capturing intimacy, surely not even that word would be necessary. We could all just SEE it.

Or could we?

Perhaps this thread inadvertently refutes its own existence and necessity. To paraphrase Marx out of context, perhaps it contained the seeds of its own destruction. . . .

--Lannie

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