Fantasy

[fate_faith_change_chains]

<p>That is a creepy doll. I stumbled on a website once were there was a videoclip of a supposedly possessed doll, it just sat there on a chair with the camera pointed towards it, running for I don't know how long. Nothing really happened, but it was creepy as hell to watch, because anytime I expected it to move, however so subtle... But Rebecca's post reminds that a fantasy can be anything, any <em>feeling</em>. So again the question : "what does a fantasy feel like ?" I suppose it can feel like anything, from love to hate, from pain to pleasure,...A fantasy feels like the emotion, or mix of emotions, it is directed to. <br>

I've read that Edgar Allan Poe used to write at night and all the time with his back towards an open streetwindow imagining that any moment he could get stabbed in the back. Fantasy may be as much propelled by emotions as it can trigger them. </p>

[sobeystudio]

<p>To all,<br>

I have to clarify my position a bit- my last post with the lingerie photograph <em>was not</em> about the fantasy of the women in said photo, although this is a great part of the fantasy sought after by the general public, or at least placed upon it by the powers that be in the media world- it just happens to be one of the shots I made last week. It <em>was </em>about the fantasy I have associated with being a New York photographer with studio here and a career- the fantasy of the globe trotting, jet setting, party-hopping and pill popping man about town who sleeps with models and makes money by pushing a button- the fantasy that movies, books and magazines continually play upon. Of course I'm a married man with kids and the only pill popping I do is my daily vitamin, but.. I do have a career here in New York, I have flown on private jets to international tropical locales for work, rub elbows with billionaires and I do have a studio here- and sometimes I just don't believe it all! It's like a fantasy world! This isn't ego, mind you. This is about the fantasy that I and many have associated with great archetypal photographic characters. Of course the fantasy about the glitz and glamour of the industry is mostly over blown, but it does have its moments. The reality is that hard work can render one more opportunities to live your life as you choose- maybe this is the fantasy I truly feel. The fantasy that one can live out their dreams, actually.</p>

[mizore]

<p>Martin, what was interesting to me was the model's almost butch face, looking rather detached, above the fantasy body, surrounded by the fantasy hair. Woman posing as fantasy.</p>

<p>Fred, yeah, I think it's the too forced trying not too look too forced that bothers me. </p>

<p>Phylo -- you know about the Uncanny Valley effect in designing robots? If it's too close to human, we're creeped out.</p>

[tomwatt]

<p>A friend I was in school with used to get creeped-out by something at roadside, a small, thin evergreen tree that resembled a shrouded figure standing. When I pulled up some image examples in classical art illustrating the shape as an archetype that seems to evoke something from the human subconcious, she 'got it' and got over being upset by the shape.<br>

I think there are a lot of things out there than can touch something deep within us, that set off either alarm bells (Roller Wilson, or Joel Peter Witkin or his brother Jerome) or happy things (Disneyland, the South Pacific, etc.). The image of chairs in the pool is mostly cast in that peculiar color of aqua/turquoise that seems to set people off to a happy place - I'd blame it on good times at the HoJo swimming pool, except it predates that (Paul Gauguin middle work).<br>

To the 'almost', I'm reminded of an Irish proverb that tackles the issue of 'almost' in a humorous way...</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Almost fell in the ditch, and almost didn't.</p>

</blockquote>

[luis_g]

<p> Does fantasy in photography force the photographer and/or viewer to a tipping point? If one suspends disbelief, it goes to a certain clear-cut level. But if it doesn't, it gets more interesting.</p>

<p> There's a boundary layer where one doesn't fully embrace what's suggested in the picture, nor is it rejected, or put out of one's mind or emotions. We play along, as Fred alluded to when mentioning watching a play. A great example of this would be Julia Margaret Cameron's fantasy portraits, wherein with minimal props, she would suggest her sitters as characters from myth, literature (including the Bible) and more.</p>

<p>http://www.geh.org/ne/mismi3/cameron_sld00001.html</p>

<p>http://www.masters-of-photography.com/C/cameron/cameron.html</p>

<p> As viewers, we <em>know</em> what JMCameron is doing, but we play along. We suspend resistance, not disbelief.</p>

<p> Some fantasies are much more ornately staged. Take Sandy Skoglund's tableaus, for example.</p>

<p>http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=Sandy+Skoglund+photographs&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=-lMBS6eFEovCngeS89QQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQsAQwAA</p>

<p> These are not suggestive. Here we are ejected from the quotidian into fantasy forcefully (and without photoshop), though the means are "real".</p>

<p>Chris Waller's picture is along these lines, though it involves more context as support than Cameron's greenhouse portraits, but nothing like Skoglund's. Arthur's chairs are a different order of fantasy. They're unfamiliar, yet "real", and photographed in a straightforward way. William P's overlay is, like Fred's carefully constructed, fusing mundane elements to create a surreal image. This type of image encapsulates questions for both maker and viewer. Martin's intent gets a little lost with this one picture (I doubt I would have gleaned it without his accompanying text).</p>

<p> With a nod to the Greek mythology chatter, I'll throw in Baron Von Gloeden's fantasy portraits, which explore, like Martin's picture, multiple fantasies.</p>

<p>http://www.artnet.com/Galleries/Artists_detail.asp?G=&gid=1050&which=&aid=669860&ViewArtistBy=online&rta=http://www.artnet.com</p>

<p>[Personal note: Go cross-country running with the Meanads more often]</p>

<p> Then there's the fantasist self-portraitists. Forget Cindy Sherman. Take genius and heroine Claude Cahun:</p>

<p>http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=Claude+Cahun+%2Bphotographs&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=CFoBS-WQHcO9ngfC_Z0R&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQsAQwAA</p>

<p>Last, but not least, the indomitable Contessa Di Castiglione:</p>

<p>http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=Contessa+Di+Castiglione&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=S1oBS47iGIGknQfm7siRCw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQsAQwAA</p>

<p> </p>

[sobeystudio]

<p>Rebecca- I agree with all that you said (I wouldn't go as far as "butch" maybe...) but you are going to the alternate fantasy- the girl- not me as photographer. I should never have used this picture (an early edit of a proud moment)- it goes too much towards an explicit fantasy that I wasn't necessarily addressing- however that opens the door to the subconscious and our decisions. Let me post a more appropriate photo- a lighting test for the aforementioned shoot- a beautiful photograph in its own right, in my opinion. The idea behind my OP was that I feel I am in a fantasy world- a world of opportunity, with the ability to do what ever the hell I want. If its a girl I want pictures of- I do it- if its a left over chair, so be it. <em>That</em> is the fantasy- I imagine it, I create it, its done- it has its own magic. Really though, how many photographers out there are fantasizing about being the one behind the camera on a lingerie shoot? - and I'm here doing it. Looking back at the photographs, I can easily say it feels unreal, or surreal. I get the same feeling sometimes when I look at my family- am I really this guy? - a husband with 3 kids. So maybe fantasy isn't just about dreams, or the fantastic, but looking from outside of one's self and seeing the story. <br>

Now that I've rambled I have to get to actual, non-fantasy work:)</p><div></div>

[jtk]

<p>While excursions into victoriana, porn, faux history/myth, surrealism/photoshop/grotesque/horror, and professional aspirations do relate superficially (IMO) to Fred's OT,<strong> the more interesting question has for me to do with the thoughts/emotions of photographer, and possible subject, while photographing</strong>...which seem to me, with theatre, the only direct fantasy that we've touched upon. </p>

<p>I think photos that refer to fantasy are precisely what they appear to be: markers, stimuli...but as phenomena they're devoid of fantasy.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Thanks John. It's a significant distinction.</p>

<p>I'll piggy-back on John's comment. I said in one of my posts above:</p>

<p><em>"I am thinking also that there are two perspectives from which to look at fantasy. Seeing fantasy in a photo may, in some cases, be different from fantasies occurring in the making of a photo or being utilized to do so."</em></p>

<p>There are certainly the Wizard of Oz or Cinderella kinds of fantasies that may be represented in photos. But I agree with John that we may do a disservice to the notion of fantasy if we overemphasize the photographic depiction or "representation" of fantasy. Julie also hit on that distinction early on. I also meant it as a way of approaching the act and process of photographing. That's why I used the example of the photograph of my dad, which doesn't <em>represent</em> a fantasy nor does it really bring "fantasy" to mind or heart. Rather, that photo needed <em>my fantasy</em> in order to get made.</p>

<p>Martin, I understand you to be saying that being a professional photographer and getting to do the things you do (the sort of "trappings" of being a photographer . . . plane rides, tropical locales, billionaires) is a fantasy-come-true. That, to me, is more a question of lifestyle and career benefits than photographic process, at least as far as you stated it. I have a feeling, having read more from you over the years and looking through your work, that there's more photographic juice to it. For example, does the fantasy fulfillment you express about the "job" of photographer actually inform how you work? If that happens, how so?</p>

<p>Luis, do you see or surmise fantasy in the actual making of many of the examples you linked to? They seem clear depictions of what we consider fantastical. In many instances, I'm not made to feel that there was actual fantasy involved in the creation of a lot of those photos. The fantasy appears, to me, to be the goal of the content and not necessarily a factor in the process.</p>

<p>Tom, you talk about certain images creeping you out and I understand and there probably are even physiological or certain cultural/psychological "reasons" for us being creeped out by certain types of things. Have you ever used, for example, the feeling of being creeped out, in the moments when you were in fact creeped out, to create a photograph (that wouldn't necessarily creep someone else out)? Have you let yourself go into the fantasies that fear can provide in order to photograph from that space without necessarily trying to portray or depict either the fear or the fantasies resulting from it?</p>

<p>Others' thoughts on this aspect?</p>

<p>It may simply be a distinction between fantasy specifically relating to subject or content and fantasy relating to photographic process and emotion. Surely there is overlap, but I think it's a key distinction.</p>

[jtk]

<p>...on the other hand, Joel Peter Witkin's work does inspire upset and curiosity for many. Perhaps the curiosity is fantasy? Beautiful prints..that was my equally strong response to a recent exhibition.</p>

<p>...and music, and sports, and presumably dance. I don't have the sense that viewing photographs is typically nearly as as particpatory as listening to music...and I think "participatory" is a significant part of fantasy...much different from objective responses such as "it's an allegory" or "it's a myth." </p>

<p>I wonder if, when we identify a photograph's content as "fantasy" we are merely catagorizing , attaching that label rather than experiencing fantasy?</p>

 

[aplumpton]

<p>Fantasy may be operating on three levels, the first two being (as John aptly suggests) that of the photographer or artist (and the process), and that of the result, of the image itself (in terms of what the photographer intended, or not). The third is the fantasy in the mind of the viewer. Barthe considers the viewer as an essential part of the communication, and he is probably not alone. That seems self-evident, if we consider a photo as being explicitly one thing or another, and capable of illiciting a viewer response. But is the image so explicit and invariable. Many responses are possible, including the most fantastic, as generated in the mind of the viewer. I may be tripping over my words here, or stating something already said, but I do think that fantasy in the mind of the viewer is important and can be triggered by certain images with different people, although not predictably.</p>

<p>I think Fred's comment about some of the interesting 19th century photos brought to our attention by Luis is comparable to my own take on that. The authors seem to be giving vent to their fantasies, but the result is often only an explicit portrait that may not trigger 21st century appreciations of fantasy, and perhaps only mild amusement. Equally, it may be questioned whether fantasies in the mind of the artist really come out in the image, or are simply only a part of the approach (modus operendi?) which is invisible to the viewer. It would be nice to have an example contradicting this. Van Gogh's image of internees walking around in a circle? </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>I've talked about music and dance as existing more in time than still photographs, and there's certainly something to that which I think you are recognizing, John. And I'm not doubting that you get a more immediate or intimate sense of participation from other mediums. But much of how I consider a still also has to do with time, particularly the unfolding nature of many better photographs. If I feel I've grasped everything there is to grasp in the first instant I encounter a photograph, that can sometimes be powerful but it often doesn't last. If, on the other hand, a photo makes me keep wanting to look, then time becomes essential to the viewing process, and not just the time it takes to view but the overall sense of time in which the relationship grows. This unfolding of a photograph is participatory.</p>

<p>Some photos stimulate me to participate more deeply with myself or even with something like political or social issues. A photo that makes me feel something provides me with a sense that I am participating with it and with the photographer in a sort of dance, a coming together, a moving apart, even a rhythmic take. When my eye is led through a photo by light, composition, focus, or my eye is made to dart to and fro within a photo, there is a physical rhythm established that is not so different from musical rhythms. I've used the word "counterpoint" often lately in describing photographs and photograph making. Independent yet interrelated voices supporting and contrasting with each other. Counterpoint has always drawn me in. I'm a full partner.</p>

<p>Perhaps also, but a little more extrinsically to the photos themselves, I find myself participating with stills in other ways.</p>

<p>There is a kind of theater that happens with prints I have hanging around my house and studio. I routinely stop in front of them and my relationship with them grows and changes over time and when I'm in various moods and situations. I get a lot of varieties of lighting in my house, both natural and artificial. I have lots of glass, a skylight, glass bricks, all of which reflect light onto various of my photos at different times of the day. It's almost like music to watch reflections and crystal-like light refractions slowly take shape and "dance" across an image in the course of an hour or two. I think an essential part of prints is the environment in which I view them and the surroundings allow me to see more in the prints I view. These things may seem extraneous because they are extrinsic, but I don't find that to be the case. I can't view prints without context and environment just like I can't listen to a piece of music in one instant. Prints have to be seen in a particular light and most often are seen with different lights. The shadows of my hand as they fall across a book of prints I'm looking at allows me a way of participating with those prints. Even the turning of the pages is my participation, and not just from print to print, but the revelation of each print as the page is turned.</p>

<p>When people visit, we often stand in front of some of the photos (my own and others) talking about them. Very participatory. They seem always to transcend their stillness.</p>

<p>Screen images are quite fluid, actually. They fade on and off the screen, they pop up at me, they get bigger and smaller. I discuss and share them readily.</p>

<p>Photos live, for me.</p>

<p>P.S. Arthur, just noticed you posted while I was writing.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Actually, Arthur, I didn't take those as examples of authors giving vent to their fantasies. I took them as authors creating a representation of "fantasy," not a personalization of it.</p>

<p><em>"Equally, it may be questioned whether fantasies in the mind of the artist really come out in the image . . ."</em></p>

<p>As I said, I think they don't necessarily come out at all as fantasy in the images themselves. But the fantasies enable the photographer or artist to get where he's going. And, while they may not stimulate the move to fantasy on the part of the viewer, the fact that the photographer has been in touch at this level may at least help the photo reach out to the imaginations of the viewers, which to me is significant. I don't think all imagination is fantasy, but I like to think that many better photos stimulate viewers' imaginations.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>By the way, Arthur, I agree with you about the viewer's importance and about the viewer often responding with his or her own fantasies. I like how you've addressed the unpredictability of a viewer's fantasy and how the photo can act as the trigger.</p>

<p>It reminds me that some fantasies are not literal or verbal. One reason I've always disliked Disney's <em>Fantasia</em> is that it is so unmusical in its fantastical representations, so literal. Music doesn't ever put those kinds of images into my head. Perhaps more rapidly appearing and disappearing dream images, but certainly not those kind of storylike narratives. (Well, maybe some of the more programmatic type music does, but. . . . ) The viewer of photographs may as likely have impressionistic and expressionistic fantasies as storybook ones.</p>

[sobeystudio]

<p>Fred- "Photos live, for me."<br>

Yes. I find my fine art to have this quality, but that's built in to the work's style. Viewing prints is meant to promote thought- it is inevitable- otherwise thinking alone suffices. What is image about? Seeing it, right?</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>I appreciate your discussion, Fred, on this most interesting topic. The Fantasia reference is right on. Somewhat like when we listen(-ed I'm afraid, in most cases) to radio serials, theatre or music, the imagination of the listener creates his own images and much more successfully and profoundly than simplistic visuals. There are of course excellent pairings of sound and visual compositions, but fairly rare.</p>

<p>"....and while they may not stimulate the move to fantasy on the part of the viewer, the fact that the photographer has been in touch at this level may at least help the photo reach out to the imaginations of the viewers" - Fred</p>

<p>Yes, and probably that is more important in the photographic creation of significant images than commonly thought.</p>

[mike dixon]

<p><strong>Moderator's note:</strong> This is not a show & tell thread. If you have a photo that illustrates a point you're making in the discussion, you can post it. It's not a thread for posting, "Here's a fantasy photo I took."</p>

[mizore]

<p>Can we do a W/NW parallel to this? </p>

[mizore]

<p>Philosophy of Photography ultimately leads to photographs, otherwise the discussions are about theoretical photographs, which is fine but kinda frustrating for me if the philosophy doesn't actually lead to taking pictures that reflect what we've been discussing, or developing a theory of work that leads to doing photography. </p>

<p>This thread stimulates me to do a set of photographs with a wooden mannikin. The thread I started had me thinking about meta-sociological concerns, which are interesting to a certain extent, but hard to translate into photographs in the way that this one stimulates play with photographs.</p>

 

[aplumpton]

<p>I believe that the following image illustrates one of the points that Fred and John were making and which I quite concur with - the mind of the photographer entertaining a fantasy about human existence and a street portrait of a woman relaxing in a southern USA cemetary. It's a fairly ordinary copy of a print series from in which another better print of this scene, also named "Life Cycle", had the honor of sitting aside other photographers and their work in a Canadian 1999 publication by Dr. Michel Lessard, art historian, celebrating 150 years of photography (....Accidents occur!).</p><div></div>

[mizore]

<p>Fred, try the Mannikin dancing with Mint Tea in my Mannikin gallery. I had a friend who put a toy cow in some of her travel photos, somewhat for scale, and somewhat for a sense of the ridiculous. One edge of fantasy might be whimsy; another edge might be horror. The shadow of the street light bisects the woman's neck in the photo above, and it's her head shadowed against the gravestone, not really horror, just a memento mori.</p>

[jtk]

<p>Most efforts at "fantasy" seem overtly to be efforts: neither fantasy nor reflective of fantasy...like the "fantasy" so commonly connected with science fiction, merely cute.</p>

<p>Fantasy seems inherently active, working imagination, perhaps a game underway...perhaps it's mutual, per Fred and his friends viewing photos ...not something visually assembled (not a painting, not a photograph in itself). Not similar to spacing out, not similar to visually wandering an image per art-appreciation/history instruction ("Looking down, I first notice the duck, the hunter, then the retriever..." </p>

<p>Viewing a photograph one might fantasize...just as one might see the Virgin in a tortilla.</p>

<p>It seems reasonable to call someone's photograph "fantastic," either as fatuous praise or to say that it stimulates fantasies...but I don't think photo holds fantasies any more than the tortilla does. </p>

<p>A strong photograph is a stimulant, not an experience.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<blockquote>

<p>"Most efforts at "fantasy" seem overtly to be efforts: neither fantasy nor reflective of fantasy. <br>

Fantasy seems inherently active, working imagination ..." <strong>--John</strong></p>

</blockquote>

<p>I agree (especially when the effort is to make a photo conveying fantasy, though I'm sure that can be done well by some). </p>

<p>Rebecca, I wrote some of my specific thoughts about the photo you referenced on your gallery page.</p>

[mizore]

<p>Fred, my extended response to your comment is on the gallery page, but some of that was posed and some of it wasn't, and I think you liked the accidentals better than the deliberate parts of the photograph. Only the mannikin was posed deliberately.</p>

<p>I think that the possible problem is that a fantasy that's based on other fantasies too obviously shows its lack of imagination. If we're part of the same community, we probably saw the originals. A more straightforward studio set up can be less obviously unoriginal because it's about the image more than the set of the image. Maybe fantasy is inherently more complex, so making it work takes a defter touch. We're making an allusion to the unreal which we generally map in prior images and language, as well as an image which has a certain reality about it regardless of the fantasy. In some of Julia Cameron's work, the children, bored now, undercut the fantasy.</p>

<p>Certain images come preloaded with assumptions and allusions -- deer and flowers, for instance. They make nice targets to check camera handling skills, just like game cocks that are muffing (fighting naturally without the steel that makes the fights lethal), but they're loaded with symbolic meaning. I think some people are put off by nature pictures because of the contemporary semiotic load nature carries for us. My thinking now about deer, is "okay, I've got deer in focus. Now can I get deer while they're doing something interesting." Our culture has all sorts of built in associations with nature -- very hard to escape them. Likewise, for some people, associations with naked or near naked young women. I don't think I've seen the equivalent for women of your shots of older men, outside senior women porn shots (there's a group for that), which have a completely different focus and feel, just as silver daddies shots have (research for fiction).</p>

<p>A plain photograph of a recognizable person can be seen naively: it does or doesn't look like the person, and the associations with the person make the photograph interesting or not for a lot of viewers of photographs. I don't think we can look at fantasy that naively; we have to bring more to the table as viewers unless the photo simply references other fantasy, which will make it seem too obvious to viewers who have seen the originals.</p>

<p>Fantasy is loaded with symbols and allusions. The risk of being stale is perhaps higher because without some symbolic meaning and allusion, perhaps fantasies are impossible with those elements. So perhaps a fantasy is always playing at the edge of the sentimental or overdone.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Again, I'm not concentrating on fantasies in photographs as much as I am aware that my own fantasizing informs my photographs, and it doesn't necessarily imbue them with fantasy.</p>

[fate_faith_change_chains]

<p>The origin of the word <em>fantasy </em>points towards almost photographic notions :</p>

<p>*early 14c., "illusory appearance," from O.Fr. fantasie, from L. phantasia, from Gk. phantasia "<strong>appearance, image, perception</strong>, imagination," from phantazesthai "picture to oneself," from phantos "visible," from phainesthai "appear," in late Gk. "to imagine, have visions," <strong>related to </strong><strong>phaos, phos</strong><strong> "light," </strong><strong>phainein</strong><strong> "to show, to bring to light"</strong> (see phantasm). Sense of "whimsical notion, illusion" is pre-1400, followed by that of "imagination," which is first attested 1530s. Sense of "day-dream based on desires" is from 1926, as is fantasize.</p>

<p>*early 13c., fantesme, from O.Fr. fantasme, from L. phantasma "an apparition, specter," from Gk. phantasma "image, phantom," from phantazein "<strong>to make visible</strong>, display," from stem of phainein "<strong>to show</strong>," from PIE base *bha- "to shine" (cf. Skt. bhati"shines, glitters," O.Ir. ban <strong>"white, light, ray of light"</strong>). Spelling conformed to Latin from 16c.</p>

<p>Fantasy may be the play and tension between two opposites, <em>fantasy</em> being an " ersatz " of <em>reality</em> but also, fantasy allowing for a deeper meaning and understanding of reality because it can embrace the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand ( to paraphrase Einstein on "imagination" ). Like a photograph / photography almost.</p>

<p> </p>