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<p>Phylo "I still think, that the intimate in context of photography, has more to do with the quality's / insights hinted at and shown in that flying bag scene that I've linked to...it reveals something bigger then the intimate, perhaps something that encompasses any concept of " intimacy", surrounding it and making it less transparent."<br>

Phylo, Jun 07, 2009; 03:01 p.m. Other examples of intimacy ? : in response, i remember clearly my feeling the first time i saw the the bag video in American Pie. I was seduced and experienced an intimate reaction. I find that putting an explanation to this form of intimacy in words to be very challenging. but i will try.<br>

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In an attempt to make the connection i feel from the bag video and intimacy I first would need to exclude the more blatant tools that the filmmakers used that differentiate it from a still.. The gentle music, the soft spoken dialogue and the fact that it is motion which went a long way to heightening the 'feelings' i had. I had a personal stake that i also need to consider. nostalgia. I was a videographer some years ago and the style and motivation of the bag video is not unfamiliar. <br>

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Intimacy and personal are difficult for me to separate when not discussing the narrower view of intimate photography.. Intimacy is personal to me. Therefore i find it difficult to extract taste from the equation. I find photographs that are not images that many would consider intimate, yet they are for me . I think it is fair to say that the bag video is an video example that many would not consider intimate. They would ignore or laugh at the thought. For them the bag is just an unfocused artsy piece or nothing of worth. That video connected the world inside myself to the outer world in an somewhat uncommon way. Not spectacular, just a small private moment. It made the world more transparent if not by definition but through the depth it reached into me where it heightened my senses and awakened...something?. It simply felt intimate. Fred mentioned his discussion with a Buddhist friend and summed it up with "Intimate connection to the world" <br>

At first glance the photography that you see in the current NW forum presents the face of intimacy, on the surface, and yet if any of those photos are capable of making you experience more than the image then perhaps you can experience intimacy in more than one obvious way. If you can get inside the subjects (or they you) that are in close proximity to each other maybe there is another form of intimacy. The subject matter in the no words forum is 'a moment of intimacy' but if any photo heightens your awareness, and creates a meaningful experience to your inner world and /or the outer word then maybe you can call that intimate. When a photo speaks outside the borders i think it is more likely to be able to create an intimate reaction for the viewer. In particular the photo that seems to speak especially for you, one that shares its knowledge or secrets with you ... the bag video had this quality for me. What the f.... it said? i don't know, but i kinda do. of This can be labeled a broad interpretation of what an intimate photograph is but when a photo becomes part of my vision or interpretation of the humanity it becomes a very personal and intimate. Even if i am unable to define it. or explain it.</p>

n e y e

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<p>i also wanted to mention that there are photos (or less frequently bodies of work) that make me feel especially close to the photo or photographer. A photo that John mentioned that i feel have this intimate reaction to is Westons pepper(s). Inanimate yes, but such a personal revelation that feel i have had an intimate relationship to the first Weston pepper I saw. The photo itself perhaps not intimate (excluding EWs relationship) but the reaction was.<br>

Before i learned of the circumstances surrounding the singular work of Masahisa Fukase 'The Solitude of Ravens' i remember feeling that this was a very intimate collection of an unlikely subject. It struck me as powerful on first sight and when i asked myself why i concluded that i was seeing something from deep within the photographer. no bs.<br>

Another obvious style of photography that i would offer as one form of intimacy is unabashed self portraiture. Generally not very well conceived and presented imo but for me frequently intimate. John Coplans self nudes are intimate i suppose, not interesting as single photos but intriguing as a study. but not the sort of intimacy i am most drawn to.<br>

i found Kerteszs' 'from my window' inanimate series to be intimate. in setting in scale in lighting and in how the objects feel personal.... also felt before learning the circumstances.<br>

I think Brassai consistently shot people in at such a natural moment at a distance with gentle light and i suspect a preferred lens that many photos have a strong flavor of intimacy. His night shooting often gives me the sense that i am sharing an intimate moment with him in the street.</p>

n e y e

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<p>Josh,</p>

<p> Yes. And while the music and dialogue are an essential part of the scene, for me those aspects aren't necessary to connect the actual video that's being played, where the videocamera is following the flying bag and ' dancing with it ', with a moment of being intimate with ones surroundings, truly connected with reality, almost by stepping out of ones socially default day to day perception of it. The video itself for me illustrates perfectly and without words a moment of the intimate.</p>

<p>True, many would not consider the bag/ video example intimate, for it just being a plastic bag in the wind and laugh it away. But I think that's exactly the main point, because it's not about the bag or the videocamera filming it, no, it's about what made it possible to even consider that bag, it's simplicity, and to see the wind in it and to recognize in an instant a possibility emerging. </p>

<p>I believe it's about tuning in to the deepest ( not quite the right word ) frequency and with that the possibility of being awarded with some other ' flying bag '. I think it's all around us, in every form. The intimate / intimacy suggests something of value, something with a meaning, disclosing a message almost. In this regard I think the concept of the intimate, at least the way I see it, has a correlation with Carl Jung's Synchronicity. </p>

<p>Landrum Kelly spoke of tuning in ( not in those words ) with nature and quoted "<em >The mountaineer returns to the hills because he remembers</em> always that <em >he</em> has forgotten so much." I can relate to those words whenever I go back to the sea, staring at the ocean, as if there's something hidden in those waves, something that I had forgotten. Tuning in to nature, yes, but why not tuning in to the universe, it's everywhere...<br>

<br /><br>

Connecting to the universe can become claustrophobically intimate in it's openness, showing a different aspect of intimacy ( not cozy, warm or fuzzy ), but nevertheless very intimate ( if we imagine a birdseyeview of ourselves, beginning at the ceiling, and then zooming out...rooftops, clouds, Earth,...., a black void,.....,....? ) <br>

In art, I think Edvard Munch's ' The Scream ' is a good example of the intimate ripped wide open, and still evoking and essentially being about the intimate and how confrontational it can be. Over-tuning :<br>

<br /><br>

”I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature.”<br /></p>

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<p> Kertesz' From My Window...</p>

<p>http://think-in-pictures.com/2007/12/02/andre-kertesz-the-polaroids/</p>

<p>....was one of the works that came to mind when first reading the posts in this thread, but it can be said that intimacy has been a salient part of his work all the way back to Hungary.</p>

<p>Kertesz said about his work: "I photographed real life—not the way it was, but the way I felt it. <strong>..."</strong></p>

<p> There is a French saying saying that the passion one's parents put into their lovemaking on the occassion of one's conception is the passion one will be capable of during their life. Photographs are like that.</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>Two things about that bag scene that express intimacy to me:</p>

<p>It prolongs the kind of mundane moment that we normally don't notice or care much about. In following that scene through, I experience something similar to what I do when watching a ballet. But since the scene has no human dancers, I almost feel as if I'm in touch with the essence of dance rather than with <em>a</em> dance. The focused movement itself is intimate.</p>

<p>It also makes tangible something that is not visible, and this done in a visual medium . . . the movement of air. "Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind."</p>

<p>I see intimacy in Pnina's Follow the Light folder as I experience a closeness with her subjects and with the photographer, through her use of light and, in some cases, perspective. There's a transcendence in the best photos of that folder. Perhaps intimacy also has a transcendent attitude. It is a moment or situation or experience so personal yet one that transcends the individual to move beyond itself into some sort of relationship of knowing, sharing. Intimate seems opposed to superficial. I don't find such intimacy in her NW photo, despite the subject matter and title.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>The From My Window photographs by Kertesz have definitely an intimate quality, a quality of sharing also, sharing by way of looking true the photographers eyes and only secondly ( if at all ) true his mind, of that what he saw and set up in front of him and took under consideration, nothing more and nothing less. It's the sort of photography that doesn't have to be drenched in any other meaning then that what it depicts. Weston's peppers are very similar in this regard. The best of Walker Evans comes to mind also.</p>

<p>Fred, yes, the intimate seems opposed to the superficial. I take it that you deliberately used the word " seems " and not " is " , because it's only without looking intimate at it, that the superficial lacks in the intimate. A flying plastic bag ( or something else entirely, but in the same manner ) is in fact quite " superficial ", until one starts looking at it intimately, recognizing in it a certain value without it having to be valuable ( if that makes sense ).</p>

<p>In a way I think the intimate depends as much on the superficial as the superficial depends on the intimate.</p>

<blockquote>

<p><strong>In another thread, Fred G used the concept of intimacy</strong> (not just the word) to depict something rare, that's typical in his photography.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Don't know if you agree with the above but perhaps the intimate isn't rare at all, being superficially around us in many forms, and for us to be considered like the character in American Beauty did with the flying bag.I think what's rare for many, all of us, is the willingness to tune in and become aware of the intimate in the superficial, relying to easily on predifined, almost fictionalized forms of it, like shown in the nw thread.</p>

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<p>The photograph is not the photographed.</p>

<p>Reading the list of NW threads and seeing one with the subject "intimacy", one can almost hear the readers as a collective consciousness thinking 'Well, hello young lovers!' And so it is when you open the thread. So, we have lots of photos of people in circumstances that are intimate...</p>

<p>...but are the photos themselves intimate? The photograph has subjects who are commiting an act of intimacy, but the photographer isn't, and so the photos themselves aren't intimate.</p>

<p>Anders, I'd like to read a response from you on the above.</p>

 

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<p>Yes, Phylo, that's why I am so moved by the fact that it happens with a "mere" bag, which would most of the time go unnoticed. Your words capture well what I tried to say to John above when I talked about masks and "cheese grins" having the potential for intimacy. I think the superficial can be intimate. But I also think it most often stays simply superficial.</p>

<p>In the thread John referenced, I had said that, for me, portrait-making is intimate. He picked up on that and added that he thought it was rare in photography. The rarity is not something I addressed.</p>

<p>It's probably more a semantical difference, but I wouldn't say that there is intimacy in the superficiality all around us if only we tune into it. I would say the superficial can become intimate when we tune into it a certain way.</p>

<p>But I don't think intimacy depends on superficiality. I think intimacy can begin and end deeply. The bag in the movie scene and the "cheese grin" seem superficial yet the bag is and the cheese grin might be penetrated to its more essential self. On the other hand, the subject of mother and child in a photo is a subject with depth, so an intimate photo of it wouldn't seem to me to have an element of superficiality. The photo of it, however, does seem superficial when handled without intimacy.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>Lots of interesting perspectives (<strong>revealing in context of their P.N portfolios</strong>..<strong>visit them</strong>) .</p>

<p>Some claim "intimacy" with nature or still lives ...different strokes. I've spent a lot of time in the wilds of my very wild West, but for my purposes "intimacy" has to do with humans. </p>

<p><strong>Fred asked (<em>my italics</em>):</strong> "How do you feel about the lack of remarkability in an art context? Would you like to have that in addition to the intimacy you feel you achieved or is that something not important to you? Do you ever think about creating art or does that not usually come up for you? I think many moving and compelling photographs probably don't qualify as art. But I also think there's something compelling about the <em>quest to create something that is art</em>."</p>

<p> "Art" is a self-satisfying word ( like "I'm OK")... seems irrelevant to my photographs. Nonetheless, I'm proud that a widely noted collector has hung one of my portraits (of a person I've posted on P.N). He wants another...but I don't understand his response. I admire his collections and it is "self satisfying" to tell myself that my photo is among them. Does that make it "art?" I'm genuinely puzzled. </p>

<p><strong> "Quest to create remarkability" means more than "quest to create..art" ...maybe.</strong> The great, defunct "Camera Magazine" had entire issues devoted to the "banal," and that work was "remarkable." It was also another era.</p>

<p><strong></strong><br>

Photographing people, I hope to find some intimacy...challenging given limitations and masks. An emotionally "unremarkable" photograph may be satisfying if the subject is happy and I evaluate it as "good" (expression, light, technique, print etc). </p>

<p><em>As you know, I think "art" has become an inconsequential concept in photography generally, if not among a few individuals... such as yourself. </em></p>

<p> </p>

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<p>" 'Art' is a self-satisfying word"</p>

<p>John, I do understand and accept your take on art, though it's not my way of seeing it.</p>

<p>As for the self-satisfying part, most artists I know and many I have read about are rarely if ever satisfied, with or without applying the label to themselves. I think any complex definition of art would include something about longing, desire, and satisfaction, perhaps even angst.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>Fred, I experience "longing, desire, and satisfaction, perhaps even angst" ...which means "self satisfaction" isn't enough...but I often console myself with it, just as I might if I called my photos "art."</p>
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<p>I am beginning to think that intimacy between two subjects is less important than intimacy between the photographer and the subject--the person/scene that is photographed. It is the latter than can show the intensity of feeling on the part of the photographer. Perhaps that is why the NW folder does not strike us as capturing a great deal of "intimacy" as many are using that term here.</p>

<p>Perhaps the most interesting photos reveal more about the photographer than about the subject--and thus may we say that intimacy can be about the photographer's vulnerability and risk, for in revealing oneself one is always vulnerable.</p>

<p>At other times, however, one definitely can seem to capture the sense of vulnerability of the subject.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<p>Sometime around 1993 the <em>New York Times</em> ran a photo of two Jewish women (naked and with eyes as big as saucers) being herded by Nazi guards across the grounds of a concentration camp. I have not seen it since. Various Hasidic leaders objected to the photo on the grounds that the public display of the naked body showed lack of respect and reverence. The <em>Times</em> stuck to its guns, however, given how powerful the photo was as refutation of claims that the Holocaust never occurred.</p>

<p>The image stays with me, and I have not seen it since. What I remember the most is the look of abject terror on the faces of the two women--as well as the look of total indifference on the faces of the guards. It was a powerful photo, and I do not remember who took it or how it made its way out of the concentration camp. (Perhaps the Nazis themselves took it.)</p>

<p>Regardless of who took it, it was a powerful photo. Was it intimate? If the Nazis took it, then I can hardly say that it showed intimacy or vulnerability on the part of the guards. (Do I contradict myself [in the previous post]? Well, then, I contradict myself.)</p>

<p>Sometimes I wonder if the word "intimacy" is quite up to the burden that we are placing upon it--although I think that it is important that we analyze this concept as a neglected concept in photography.</p>

<p>This is a very challenging thread. Thanks again, John, for starting it, and to you, Fred, for inspiring it.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

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<p> If <em>one truly thinks art: "... has become an inconsequential concept in photography", why would one talk about its insignificance constantly?</em></p>

<p><em> Like Fred, I understand John's ideas, and heartily disagree with them. What I don't get is the obsession with the "inconsequential".</em></p>

<p><em> Congratulations to John for his getting a picture accepted in an art gallery. <br /> </em></p>

<p><em> <br /> </em><br>

<em><br /> </em></p>

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<p>Here's something I'm thinking about: I love Arnold Newman's intimate-seeming "Picasso," dislike his "Chagall" <a href="http://www.arnoldnewmanarchive.com/">http://www.arnoldnewmanarchive.com/</a> I've come to think Newman's portraits-with-artifacts crudely rely on their symbols (Chagall's easel)....I used to admire that seemingly formula-driven stuff.</p>

<p>Luis, not "accepted," found, not "gallery," collection. I'd photographed a painter and a social figure the collector knows and now he has a portrait of one of them...that's my puzzlement: he collects pieces that even I call "art". I look forward with trepidation to making his own portrait: His taste and sophistication are beyond me and intimacy may take a miracle. </p>

<p>Good of you to observe this: I fuss about "art" because the term evidently means almost nothing to photographers. It's "art" almost because they've dubbed themselves "artists". I prefer words that refer to something. "Intimate" refers to several specific ideas for people on this thread... expressed with some precision... clear thinking like that rarely supports use of "art". </p>

<p><strong>Re Weston: an interesting anecdote:</strong> <a href="http://www.photographyblackwhite.com/tag/ansel-adams/">http://www.photographyblackwhite.com/tag/ansel-adams/</a></p>

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<p>"I am beginning to think that intimacy between two subjects is less important than intimacy between the photographer and the subject--the person/scene that is photographed."</p>

<p>That's my understanding.</p>

<p>"Sometimes I wonder if the word "intimacy" is quite up to the burden that we are placing upon it"</p>

<p>There is no way to convey intimacy (or anything else) to a viewer unless they either share the intimacy of the photo through familiarity or are discerning enough to relate to it by analogy to their own experiences. I have not encountered many viewers who are capable of -- to use an expression from the Jesuits -- the discerment of spirits, as are, for example, Fred and Luis. Thus, we get photos *of* intimacy that are not intimate photos themselves. Intimacy has to have the obviousness of blunt force trauma to register (one can hear the tinkly piano music in the background). It is obvious that intimacy is difficult or incomprehensible for many...risky, even dangerous. The vicissitudes of 'making a commitment' involves intimacy. These are all common tropes in our culture and they do not indicate we are comfortable with intimacy. It seems instead to make us squirm and want to be elsewhere.</p>

<p>"Finally, there came a time when everything that men had<br /> considered as inalienable became an object of exchange, of<br /> traffic and could be alienated. This is the time when the very<br /> things which till then had been communicated, but never<br /> exchanged; given, but never sold; acquired, but never bought -<br /> virtue, love, conviction, knowledge, conscience, etc. - when<br /> everything, in short, passed into commerce."<br>

-- Karl Marx, Grundrisse</p>

<p> </p><div>00Tbyq-142605684.jpg.6796df101fb9eaf351056e1287aa0e99.jpg</div>

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<p>"...where the videocamera is following the flying bag and ' dancing with it ', with a moment of being intimate with ones surroundings, truly connected with reality, almost by stepping out of ones socially default day to day perception of it. The video itself for me illustrates perfectly and without words a moment of the intimate." Phylo, thanks for that insight on connection, and being able to tune in. Remove the physical motion and apply the same thoughts to to still imagery and you have one workable definition of intimacy that i can relate to. To give enough of yourself over to experience the moment in a way that you can allow yourself to be intimate.<br>

<br>

John - "Some claim "intimacy" with nature or still lives ...different strokes. I've spent a lot of time in the wilds of my very wild West, but for my purposes "intimacy" has to do with humans."<br>

I browsed your portfolio (i hadn't spend time there after you rebooted the work). I came across 'first dslr image' thinking that it was not a standout example of an intimate nonhuman photo, but i had a sense 'a feeling' that there was more intimacy than i was first giving it credit. When i read the title i read intimacy into it. I am not subscribing to using titles as a focal point to take up the slack. But it did connect me to you the photographer as a person. I had a vision of you/me bringing home a camera and searching for the first image to run through it. Accuracy of my interpretation aside, it brought an internal smile of familiarity to me. Unknown to you we shared a moment together. Then i looked into the photo more and connected with the collection of buttons. Collecting buttons seems to me as a generally private pastime that i was being privy to. Someone took some care to sort and string, they are displayed, perhaps even kept with other tchotchke(s?). Had i looked at the photo and gotten the clear sense that this was the photographers/your collection i would have felt the intimacy more strongly. A relatively superficial reading of intimate - from a photo that no doubt was not intended to present intimacy? but in context of another comment you made - "I've come to think Newman's portraits-with-artifacts crudely rely on their symbols (Chagall's easel)....I used to admire that seemingly formula-driven stuff." perhaps there is some merit. I am not a fan of Annie Liebovitz (like yourself i believe reading somewhere ..?) but i have admired and taken note of her ability to use 'the formula' to occasionally reach an intimate photo of her subject(s) - in a more obvious fashion imo. Those formula photos are rarely able to convey the photographer to me. Her latest 'personal' monograph had more success in achieving that for me. Better this way or that? it makes little difference to me as i do not have a taste for her work but i do admire it and think it is a good learning tool for some. </p>

<p>I think Steichen is an excellent example of a prop master that achieved intimacy from a distance. I rarely felt that i was becoming intimate with him (aside from choice on my part) but often felt an intimacy with/from his photos. They were like invitations to me to climb into the frame. His technical abilities often were so controlled/precise that it almost seems contradictory to many definitions of being intimate. And yet he consistently pulled it off. Sometimes his prints seem so lush and rich that i would have to look away to avoid being intimate with them. His mastery of the nuts and bolts was beautiful.</p>

 

n e y e

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<p>"I have not encountered many viewers who are capable of -- to use an expression from the Jesuits -- the discerment of spirits, as are, for example, Fred and Luis."</p>

<p>Don, I don't understand you here. Would you please elaborate about how Luis and I differ from the many viewers you have enoucntered? What have I said about spirits?</p>

<p>"There is no way to convey intimacy (or anything else) to a viewer unless they either share the intimacy of the photo . . . "</p>

<p>This seems almost tautologically true. Do you think I'd disagree with it? </p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>"What have I said about spirits?"</p>

<p>"virtue, love, conviction, knowledge, conscience, etc" -- and intimacy -- are not concrete, material, objective things like bootlaces.</p>

<p>If your anti-religion alarm is clanging, just substitute another term. Heck, I included a quotation from a reknowned atheist, too. Diversity, rulz.</p>

<p>Ok, from the classics: Among friends there is no need of Justice -- Aristotle.</p>

<p> </p>

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<blockquote>

<p>"It [intimacy] seems instead to make us squirm and want to be elsewhere." --Don E</p>

</blockquote>

 

<blockquote>

<p>"I experience 'longing, desire, and satisfaction, perhaps even angst' ...which means 'self satisfaction' isn't enough...but I often console myself with it, just as I might if I called my photos 'art.' " --John Kelly</p>

</blockquote>

<p>There seems to be an assumption of running away from what's difficult or challenging. For me, longing does not demand consolation, the riskiness of intimacy is not something that makes me want to be elsewhere. Many here who've talked about intimacy and the aspect of riskiness in our work or in works we appreciate have talked about their value. In a good photograph, in much of Josh's work for example, I don't even experience them as choices. It's as if they have to be there. What we may be scared of or uncomfortable with, we don't necessarily seek to avoid.</p>

<p>"If your anti-religion alarm is clanging . . ."</p>

<p>I assumed you were ringing a bell of sarcasm by using the word "spirit" since you were referring to me and you know of my anti-religious bent. But I may be wrong in projecting that tone of voice onto you, difficult to read on the Internet. If that's the case, I'm sorry.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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