Fantasy

Norma Desmond · December 7, 2009

"If content is everything, "

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Who thinks that?

It's about more than content and context.

The difference between Goldin's pictures and the cops you mention looking at lots of drug photographs is Goldin's use of style and technique to present her stories. Art is often to be found where content and form (style, etc.) meet. Goldin's voice is embodied in her work, whether I know anything about her or not. The photos the cops find are, for the most part, voiceless. They represent people and scenes.

luis_g · December 7, 2009

RB- "If content is everything, then access to things that are interesting is required for being a photographer. "

I certainly don't think that is true. If you want me to cite photographers that photograph publicly available quotidian subjects, I can. It is a mistake to confuse access or content with quality. If you require access for your pictures, get it.

It's not just about what's in the frame, but how you look at it.

One glaring example comes to mind. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pictures of Gloria Swanson were made during her lifespan, but the one Steichen took of her through a veil stands out. Same content as all the others, but not the same.

http://artdecoblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/edward-steichen.html

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=Gloria+Swanson+photographs&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=h3gdS5H6Ftywtgfi_uXkAw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBwQsAQwAA

RB - "If context plays a role in how we see things, which I suspect that it does, how much do the photographs require the framing narrative?"

I do not think they require it, except to convey a very specific meaning. One of art's greatest stengths is precisely in escaping from a fixed meaning. It becomes a psychic generator, like a letter that gives up specificity in order to carry much more information than its envelope can hold. It uses the viewer's energies to create bespoke secondary narratives in each user's mind. One thing that hasn't been touched on here is the polyvalency of symbols. Those who misunderstand them think they're like signs, and they're not. The best art seems to read the viewer in the same way a barometer can tell air pressure. That kind of art grows with you. It renews itself every time you look at it, not because it's changing, but because you are, and it mirrors the slightest nuance.

RB - " The carefully framed shot taken with first rate equipment has a different sort of implied photographer without any other information necessary at all."

It's not the quality of the hardware, but the quality of the photographer.

RB - " Certain looks imply photographer who has a quality camera."

Wow, another affluent photographer. Yawn. That only matters on Photo.Net and other techno-oriented sites.

RB - " Go back to Wilde's day and those photographs would have be criminal offenses, hidden."

Funny you would say that, because one of Goldin's photographs (owned by Elton John) was taken down a few years ago for being kiddie porn, but a judge ended up seeing it as art. Times haven't changed that much.

Clark revels in reinventing himself and revising his own history. It's part of his hucksterism. Look at what he did when he invaded the skater culture. He acted and dressed like he was 13. The older he got, the younger his subjects became. Both Clark and Goldin's work was unseen for years, but Goldin took hers out into the public in her own way and channel, the slide show. Clark is a Modernist, much older-school than Goldin, and he held out for conventional venues. There's interviews where Clark bemoans how long he had to wait, and how slow the networking was that led to "Tulsa".

I also think Clark's grandiose revisionisms are not nearly as much as a sign of the culture (because they would then be pandemic, and they are not) as they are a sign of Clark's need to claim he created himself and ego (which is why included that sordid paragraph in his own words on why he did Teen Lust).

mizore · December 7, 2009

Fred, I think that context plays a large part of why Goldin hangs in galleries and not some of the porn I've seen that was actually rather memorable, and well-done. Goldin's work is wrapped in a narrative beyond the style and technique used.

Would the same style and technique produce pictures that were as memorable with different subjects? Jane Bown took pictures that I remember as being remarkable before I was interested in who the photographers were. If I learned more about Bown, would that change how I saw the photographs? I don't think so. With Goldin, I think the meta-narrative is part of the art, just as with Van Gogh entered popular culture more because of the narrative about him than did Renoir, who was just a fairly stable guy who painted. Other examples abound. The meta-narrative shapes how many people see the art. In some cases, it is part of the art.

The question is if Goldin's tribe were the women and men who ride horses and fly falcons in Middleburg, Virginia, even with the same technique, would she have gotten this much attention? I don't think she would have, not that she shouldn't have.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I've put it in and probably edited it out a couple of times. A friend of mine who lived in rural Virginia went to an exhibit of Appalachian photographs. She noticed that the focus was on the poverty, the marginalized in Appalachia. We used to call these the people who'd ignore eight brick ranch houses to photograph one unpainted frame building in need of repairs.

If Goldin keeps up her reputation and style as she shifts to less extreme subjects, good for her. If she needed the extreme subjects to get the attention, I do have some concerns about this. And I think she did and I do.

The other question is should art have an obvious ego -- an implied artist -- behind it? There are traditional that say no.

Art today, perhaps art always, is an interaction between form (technical ability, eye, style), meta-narrative (the artist's story -- the artist who must be a shaman as one gallery owner told my brother), and content. I think when we start focusing on the biography, we've proven that meta-narrative does play a part in how we see work. I know writers who lie about their biographies (the meta-meta-narrative of one of them is that he is a compulsive fabulator); I've had people writing about me make shit up because they liked their narrative better than any of mine (child born on the most beautiful street in Louisville stolen away to academic small college town in backward South Carolina, escaped to New York, made the mistake of leaving; and other variations).

I don't know if you know the Language Poets, but refusing narrative seems to me to be part of their art. They tend to lead fairly conventional lives, as poets go.

We don't know with the photos the cops seize. We assume that the photographs are more likely to be bad than good because we're assuming that the kids who took them didn't have art training or cultural experience. This may be like the professor who assumed that Rowling couldn't have had a classics education because she was a mother on welfare when she started the first Harry Potter book. It may be that people turn to drug dealing because they can't make a living at art and do fabulous photos without caring to share them. I've never actually seen them, just heard about them.

Goldin took photos with a camera that leaves a very distinct signature, the sharpest lenses in 35 mm format with out of focus background to die for, the right amount of grit/grain for her subject matter. And the marriage of implied narrative in the photos/titles (two naked people in my bathroom in Paris is very different from two people in their bathroom in St. Louis) with the meta-narrative is very tight. Even here, with mostly relatively sophisticated people, we can't avoid the meta-narrative. Goldin has claimed these people as her tribe. Unless we absolutely never read anything about her, the meta-narrative is part of the art. Part of what she's being sold as is the bohemian bisexual woman who flirted with destruction, the rehabbed junkie. This isn't all of what she is, but I think it would be naive to say that at least part of the interest in her is because of that.

I used to find my <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rebecca_ore/4167653132/sizes/o/">fighting cock slides</a> would get me in doors even thought I didn't get assignments. They weren't typical of what women were photographing in the early 1990s.

Norma Desmond · December 7, 2009

"The question is if Goldin's tribe were the women and men who ride horses and fly falcons in Middleburg, Virginia, even with the same technique, would she have gotten this much attention?"

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I can't abstract technique from subject like that. For me, it's not like you simply apply a given technique you've come up with to whatever subject suits your fancy. My subjects and a lot of other factors help dictate my style and my style sometimes helps me choose my subjects. I don't think either content or style rules and the other follows. They feed off each other. Many unsuccessful photographs I see on PN are ones where the style simply seems to be applied to whatever content comes along, willy-nilly. It's when I feel that the style comes forth from the photographer because of or at least in relationship to the content that I am usually more moved.

I understand that there are schools of thought which suggest that everything is political, art is about who you are and who you know, etc. That stuff has limited sway for me. Honestly, not because I don't think it has validity, because I do. More because I find it a distraction. I'd much rather look at photos and get what I get from them. If that's because I'm being told by culture or some meta-narrative to appreciate it, OK. I still experience what I experience. Many philosophers tell me there is no reality and that context dictates everything. Some scientists are attempting to reduce what things feel like to each of us to particular brain states. Life may well boil down to chain reactions of scientific events determining exactly what's going to happen. Maybe I'm a puppet and God is pulling the strings. As long as I feel like I'm free, I'm doing fine. For whatever reason, as long as I think I like what Goldin is doing, even if I don't really like it, I'm also fine.

I know very little about Goldin, although I've looked at her photos carefully. A friend turned me onto her a couple of years ago because he thought some stuff I was doing related. I was immediately drawn to her work. I've learned more about her personally in this thread than I've known for the last couple of years. I had no idea she was a bohemian bisexual until you just mentioned it. Wouldn't have guessed it. Or at least it just didn't occur to me to even think about it. I've been mostly focused on her use of color, her unique way of bleeding colors into highlights and shadows and each other, and the expression she seems to create with her subjects and their environments, also the intentional snapshot quality she often seems to get. I've even worked up a couple of photos in her style as an exercise and because it got my juices flowing to do so. I can genuinely say there's been precious little meta-narrative going on for me. Haven't even actually read a review of any of her work. I've learned a lot about color, shading, and pose from looking at her photographs and not really a thing about bisexuality or bohemianism.

"I think when we start focusing on the biography"

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I don't think we are. I think you are. I'm not faulting you for that. I find a lot of what you say interesting and it's a perspective I can learn from. But I doubt it will change the way I look at or make photographs.

"We assume that the photographs are more likely to be bad than good because we're assuming that the kids who took them didn't have art training or cultural experience."

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Another we statement I won't join you on. I'd be more likely to assume the kids who took them didn't have consciousness or intention behind them and that they would therefore lack both a substance and style that would move me aesthetically.

As for Goldin's camera, I have to admit a lack of schooling in distinct signatures of various lenses and cameras. I have a more intimate connection to various technical matters associated with music than with photographs. I am learning as I go. I tend to think more about the intentions of other photographers at this point and what decisions they might have made to get the results they got, but I rarely think about their gear . . . because of ignorance as much as anything else. Honestly, I have not once noticed the title of one of Goldin's photographs. I rarely think to look at names of photographs. Sometimes, I realize I'm missing out on something when I discover a particular title. More often, titles may as well be gibberish to me, for all the good they do.

luis_g · December 7, 2009

RB - " Goldin took photos with a camera that leaves a very distinct signature, the sharpest lenses in 35 mm format with out of focus background to die for, the right amount of grit/grain for her subject matter."

Rebecca, what exactly are you getting at? The notion that Goldin's Leica lenses, often used wide-open, usually hand-held are producing their optimum performance is at best, not realistic.

Worse, I hate to break this to you, but I checked, and from the time she started doing her work, almost out of high school in 1968, until Oct. 1990, none of her work was done with a Leica. That includes the seminal series The Ballad of Sexual Dependency and all the pictures for "The Other Side" and "I'll be Your Mirror". Those were mostly done with a Nikon and Nikon lenses. In the documentary "I'll be your Mirror", you can see her working with Nikons.

What does that mean? It means that what you thought you could tell, you in fact, could not, and that it doesn't really matter.

fate_faith_change_chains · December 7, 2009

The photographer who is photographing her tribe is yet another implied photograher. Would these photographs get the attention they've gotten if they weren't framed with the meta-narrative of the implied photographer? Cops find pictures of people doing drugs all the time, just not taken with first rate cameras by people who learned about art, so it's not just the content, obviously. How much of it is the context? Goldin's narrative? Esthetic values? The content?

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Not sure if I understand you here; it seems like you want to seperate the narrative from the content from which it's being derived. That you are making the narrative the thing that superficially gives the content its "needed" context, needed in order for the content to be seen as having more value ( compared to the pictures found by cops of people doing drugs,etc... ). To me the content shows action as the lifestyle Goldin's involved in, and which is hers. While the action may be strongly determined, her reaction to it ( as a way out <> in ) is completely her own, fundamentally free. This reaction includes photography; the making of photographs of the action and circumstances. Photography itself becomes the context, in which the pictures infer what the photographer has implied through her reaction.

mizore · December 7, 2009

You are unusual if you don't look at photo captions at all, I suspect, though it's probably a better way of approaching art. I used to think Andrew Wythe would have been better served if someone had stolen the titles of his painting and substituted numbers.

I think one of the things about Goldin is that while photographs of that life style may be unique, there's been enough of a demand for written material about it to have spawned two fakes in the last couple of years. While you may be ignoring that framing, it's fairly obvious that Luis hasn't ignored it (most particularly in the post about the lives of her subjects struggling bravely to be free).

I'm thinking like a fiction writer, and I'm even more thinking like a fiction writer who spent an hour trying to locate a notebook for a possible project that I'd started earlier which involves making some meta-narrative decisions.

In Goldin's case, the meta-narrative, which is where the captions and the beaten face come in, is a redemption narrative. She almost died but she didn't. Her friends died. She went to rehab. Only luck, deciding to snort heroin rather than inject it saved her. As a Real Life Story, it sells quite well in a number of different media.

The meta-narrative is how she's presented to the public by her galleries and by the interviews (perhaps I am too much of a word person).

Agree with you on the first paragraph, by and large. I'd saw that most of the accomplished but boring work tends to be technically accomplished only, and a fair chunk of it draws on its exoticism. I'd like to see one shot of a wolf scratching its behind on a tree trunk, not looking like The Wolf.

Why would the kids taking photos of their lives not have consciousness or intention behind them? I think we have far more interesting art in all medias that we can pay attention to, so we limit what we pay attention to. The discriminations can be kinda rough at times, lopping off whole genres. We all have only so much time.

Photography is a collaboration between gear and photographer -- the technical is part of it, whether it's just the one camera and mostly the one lens or mastering a range of different cameras. I suspect that one thing that also helped Goldin is that she learned how to draw for the training in seeing.

As for the political stuff, I think that it's not completely political, but that most of the political concerns are why some works don't get attention in their day. In poetry, Emily Dickinson is the extreme example. She didn't appear to have any interest in talking about what she was doing and it's taken people the better part of a century to figure out what she did which probably seemed utterly obvious to her. The political concerns can work against aristocrats as well as against people who weren't, as my brother puts it, born to the club. I've met art collectors who were concerned with fashion, with keeping up with the latest trends (my brother's mentor said he'd been discovered several times in his life though it didn't appear to him that he'd been lost). I suspect that these people can be marketed to as effectively as any other group in our culture. I don't think the context pressures are completely predictable, either, but I think that it takes a massive education in the minutia of art to develop a resistance to the social pressures -- and the people with the time for that are generally either academics (and it's rare among the liberal arts people and sometimes found in the scientists who do follow the arts) or the rich, who have their own biases but can sometimes overcome them (and haven't generally if they simply start ranting in favor of the left).

Look at shots taken by Leica 50mm f/2 Summitars and then by Nikon 50mm F1.8, particularly the out of focus areas. If you don't see a difference, then maybe I've got a case of Leica Hypnosis.

For you, Goldin's work has interest independent of the meta-narrative. Galleries don't apparently trust that there are that many people like you out there (one gallery told my brother that what the buyers are looking for is connection to a shaman -- my brother's story is that he has an MBA from Wake Forest and quit a sales job to become a fairly traditional landscape painter and part-time drawing instruction and part-time financial consultant).

I suppose I would be a better person if I didn't pay any attention to the meta-narrative.

mizore · December 7, 2009

Phylo, the implied artist concept here comes from literary theory about implied authors. The idea is that the work has an implied author, who may not be the author as he is in the future or was in the past, or even was when he was photographing/creating the work. Some implied authors have been actual inventions -- and people created implied authors for works I've done. Nobody is completely in the creation.

Goldin was doing landscapes before she showed landscapes because the implied photographer she was wouldn't have been expected to do landscapes.

The implied creator is the one we imagine creating the work. We use clues in the photograph to build an image of the photographer. One of the fun things to do with this is create an implied photographer that conforms to cultural cliches and then walk the viewer over a cliff, totally break the sense of the implied photographer, and forcing the viewer to look at the earlier work more cautiously. People have done this in fiction quite a lot with the implied writer, even some in non-fiction. We build the implied creator from what's in and what's not in the work.

The implied photographer in Goldin's work would never shoot the horse and falcon shots in Middleburg. What if she did? Can you imagine Arbus doing it? I can, but perhaps not Goldin, though the Kate Moss on a horse is suggestive of a somewhat different implied photographer.

fate_faith_change_chains · December 8, 2009

Ah, kinda like John Malkovich stepping outside the implied by suddenly and very seriously becoming and presenting himself as a puppeteer in Being John Malkovich, : ) . While ofcourse it's the implied of the one - the "author" - inside his head, played by John Cusack.

luis_g · December 8, 2009

RB - " Look at shots taken by Leica 50mm f/2 Summitars and then by Nikon 50mm F1.8, particularly the out of focus areas. If you don't see a difference, then maybe I've got a case of Leica Hypnosis."

The point is that you couldn't tell between them. Goldin established her rep using Nikkors through the first three books. Goldin now uses Summiluxes, btw. Maybe we should step away from whatever this is and go back toward fantasy?

fate_faith_change_chains · December 8, 2009

Maybe I shouldn't have casually brought up Nan Goldin, her quote that is... What about Richard Billingham's cheap drugstore prints of his family ? Non Leica, slightly out of focus,... Just kidding, forget I mentioned him.

mizore · December 8, 2009

I was thinking about two shots I'd taken with the two different lenses, not Goldin's work.

Flickr tend to have people using lenses as keywords, so that's a fairly good place to see if there are differences without esthetics getting in the way. People also have posted various sample shots using both Leitz and Nikon lenses here.

luis_g · December 8, 2009

RB - " I was thinking about two shots I'd taken with the two different lenses, not Goldin's work."

Uh-huh. So, let's conveniently leave NG behind, and assume you can tell the difference. What's the significance of that in your work, or anyone else's? I trust this is not edging into the usual Photo.net lens porn droolfest.

jtk · December 8, 2009

They're favorites of a subset of older photographers and writers, but I don't think Goldin or Clark, as startling as they were decades ago, are nearly as relevant to photography generally, or fantasy in particular (the OT) as the run of work in Flickr. This is especially evident in cellphone photography.

Both Goldin and Clark illustrated (past tense) particular vintage cases of a reality William Burroughs addressed earlier: <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=8ULclRHiT50C&dq=William+S+Burroughs&printsec=frontcover&source=an&hl=en&ei=uGseS8iEJYPKsQPIpp30CQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=11&ved=0CCUQ6AEwCg#v=onepage&q=&f=false">http://books.google.com/books?id=8ULclRHiT50C&dq=William+S+Burroughs&printsec=frontcover&source=an&hl=en&ei=uGseS8iEJYPKsQPIpp30CQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=11&ved=0CCUQ6AEwCg#v=onepage&q=&f=false</a>

Norma Desmond · December 8, 2009

Rebecca--

Perhaps there are two things being discussed here: art and meta-art.

One can focus on the latter, the "art world," galleries, biographies, how art gets recognized and becomes popular.

I know that stuff is there. It's fascinating to read and think about. Hell, I've taken enough Aesthetics classes to last a lifetime.

But, this stuff is not what I see or experience when I look at a photo by Nan Goldin, or most others.

"Fantasy" is significant to me as part of my photo-making process, not as part of my becoming well known or "successful." I don't know how this became about who wins and who loses.

Perhaps the next thread ought to be about "what is success." In this thread and in Arthur's current Less Is More thread, I'm seeing a conflation of what each of us wants to express with what is "better" or what sells. What's the goal here . . . to make the winning (best/popular/recognized) photograph or to make the one we want?

mizore · December 8, 2009

I'm not sure I can tell the difference; I think I can tell the Summitar's signature, and older lenses like the Summar are pretty obvious.

Thing is that the equipment and now the coding plays a big part in what we can do.

Photography gives us a range of effects, something like the way Chinese brushes give us a range of effects (and Chinese brush effects are what makes Chinese brush painting something amateur gentlemen scholars do rather than court painting. So with lenses and film -- we have a range of interactions between the film and the lens and the shutter to choose from -- various ways to make focus easier, various ways to handle tonality, various ways to develop film or post process digital files. Some lenses have different OOF renderings than others, some obvious, some perhaps so not obvious (that Old Leica Glow effect).

Translating theory to practice is as indirect as translating raw camera gear into practice is. The ideal for me is that the end work doesn't obviously display its theory; likewise, the end photograph shouldn't have to display its little v's. or its PhotoShopping (unless it's a photo collage or something where the Photoshopping is the point). If I look at a work and think it's highly improbable that the poses just happened, then is knowing that a distraction? If I see something that is out of focus and have to think about whether that was a chosen effect or an accident, then I'm not as pleased as when it's immediately obvious that this works for this shot. If the signature of the process -- platinum prints, say, with the brushstrokes uncropped -- are hanging out on the print, did this have to be platinum process (I've seen some platinum process prints that I quite loved). Big Lights -- if the first thing that comes to mind is an analysis of the lighting set up, then something may be missing from the photograph.

Fred's comments about the merger of subject and style are appropo here, but the camera is part of the style. We work with cameras. Lenses vary both as to sharpness and to how they render out of focus areas, some more than others.

The end of all of this is the work. If the theory helped the work, and it often does, yay. If the equipment helped the work (and for photographers, it's impossible to do the work without a camera), then knowing the equipment is critical, including knowing what is and isn't a real effect from the lenses. I think one shot of mine is a typical Summitar shot (the woman in the park in the Leica section of my gallery). Would my 105 f/2.5 Nikkor have as good an OOF rendering? Different on film than on digital DX frame? I don't have the Summitar anymore, so I can't do a head to head comparison.

I think there are differences in how my 105mm f/2.8 renders things compared with how my 105mm f/2.5 renders things (both Nikkors, one a contemporary lens; the other from the 1980s, I think). I should do a head to head on film, just haven't gotten around to it yet. My subjective impression is that the 105 f/2.5 does slightly less vivid colors, better flesh tones on digital, and is a better portrait lens, is perhaps less contrasty. The 105mm macro lens seems to be more contrasty, harsher OOF areas, not as good with flesh tones, perhaps, apparently sharper. I don't have the 105mm lens that does the manipulations that definitely create different sorts of effects. Macro, has to be the VR 105 f/2.8, since the f/2.5 doesn't do close focusing. Portraits, the f/2.5. Without the tests, this is perhaps rather subjective.

One photographer friend has several different 50mm lenses, all of which he believes do different things.

Norma Desmond · December 8, 2009

"If I look at a work and think it's highly improbable that the poses just happened, then is knowing that a distraction?"

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It's not a distraction to me . . . unless the poses themselves or the way they're photographed are a distraction. But that a pose looks posed is often obvious and part of the photograph. I've sometimes found that more obvious posing, even exaggerations, work quite well in some of my work. As you said with blur, it's when it's done in such a way that distracts the viewer into thinking something is a mistake that it's problematic. Problems come in when you try to pose someone so they look like they're not posing and you don't do it well. But intentionally working with poses that don't just happen is one of my favorite things to do. And sometimes, it's my intention for them to look like an obvious pose rather than something that just happened.

I'm not a candid sort of guy, necessarily. And I draw a distinction between "candid" and "spontaneous." I can be spontaneous without shooting "candids" and I can get off being quite deliberate as well as spontaneous. I think "candid" and "unposed" are way overrated. So many good portraits look obviously posed, and they go beyond just that. The good ones just don't look self conscious. Occasionally, one does look self conscious but may work because it's supposed to look that way.

Good way to get back to fantasy. I think there can be a lot of fantasy at play in the poses we strike and I know there is in my own process of asking people to pose*.

*"Pose", in this case, is to be taken two ways. First, as in the initial "will you pose for me?" And then as in, "let's try a different stance" or "can we do something with your arms and hands?"

luis_g · December 8, 2009

Rebecca: Okay, I have a much better idea of what you were addressing regarding the hardware (there were other things you said that seemed to point in another direction).

I do not have a blanket ideal for my (or others') work. There's a huge amount of not-so-recent and contemporary work that (more or less) obviously displays its theory in a self-referential way. Sometimes deliberately, sometimes unwittingly or subconsciously.

I also agree that the end photograph shouldn't have to display anything.

It doesn't matter to me whether the people in the picture were posed or not, in terms of distraction.

I also don't think in terms of a work having to be in a particular print medium. I love Gilpin's prints, but had she chosen to use another method, while they would look different, I doubt I would think they sucked.

The work is the sum of all choices made by the artist, and if there's synergy, much more than that.

RB- "knowing the equipment is critical, including knowing what is and isn't a real effect from the lenses."

I disagree that it is critical. I may want to know what was used for a multitude of reasons, but they have little to do with my understanding of the picture. On the one hand, you don't think we should have a PS history of a photo, but we should know the lens? I do not understand.

The theory, if it's integrated in the artist's mind, is an inextricable part of the work. Otherwise, it's a lumpen addition.

luis_g · December 8, 2009

Fred - " there can be a lot of fantasy at play in the poses we strike and I know there is in my own process of asking people to pose*.

I think this is true for a lot of photographers, and often, the fantasy and poses flow from the model(s), too.

http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424706910/117186/imogen-cunningham-and-twinka.html

Sometimes collaboratively, other times spontaneously. Photographers also influence the subjects' attitude and subsequently, their poses, in various ways, not all the conventional directorial instructional kind.

Sometimes wordlessly, by striking the pose we want, explicitly directing, or via reinforcement ( for many situations or subjects, coming out from behind the camera, and flashing a smile or wordlessly cooing, ooohs, Hmm-hmmmm, etc can work as well or better as the usual "YES!") and successive approximations, and for those with an open mind, unexpected variations and transitional poses are popping in and out of existence, a banquet of possibilities for those willing and fast enough to seize them.

Even with candids, or people I've just asked to take their picture on the street, one can subliminally direct poses. Depending on what you project (attitude, muscle tone, posture etc), the subjects will react, usually, but not always, in predictable ways (and often the unpredictable ones are best). One can shift subjects, simply by moving into their space while talking with them, or get them to move to a different background, with which they'll often interact, by walking around them. They'll turn to face you.

All of this takes being a few moves ahead with the fantasizing, of course.

Julie H · December 8, 2009

In fantasy, the whole world seems to join the pose. Not just the people -- whether they actively pose or are posed by what you do with them -- but also the furniture, the walls, the ceiling, the trees, the sky, the clouds -- always those strange clouds -- the random but meaningful bit of trash, insects ... and knife blades of light or white clouds of light or little random speckles of light ...

When you say "can you do something with your hands?" you don't take whatever they choose to give you. You wait until you see what you want. You want the buffet to include a wider variety; you're not happy with what's there already.

Circling back to a much earlier bit, self-portraits are poses. For example David Wojnarowicz's buried face with just his nose and mouth above ground. Buried alive.

luis_g · December 8, 2009

Julie typed: " In fantasy, the whole world seems to join the pose. Not just the people -- whether they actively pose or are posed by what you do with them -- but also the furniture, the walls, the ceiling, the trees, the sky, the clouds -- always those strange clouds -- the random but meaningful bit of trash, insects ... and knife blades of light or white clouds of light or little random speckles of light ..."

It's true. The Axis of Strange mysteriously seems to respond, or worse, correspond. Slipping and sliding into solipsism here...I'm glad you mentioned those damned clouds...I thought it might just be me...

mizore · December 8, 2009

Luis G,

If knowing what the equipment does is integrated in the artist's mind.....

The drills for photographers should internalize what the equipment does, what situations call for this or that. Some of the differences are obvious and not all all self-hypnosis; some may be self-hypnosis, but then there's always the placebo effect if you believe a lens can take the best portraits. I was very grumpy about the Summitar when I owned it, but looking back on some of the things I took with it, not as grumpy.

Learning about a lens doesn't end with shooting what I call box tests (of a particularly detailed carved box I have sitting behind my computer) or bricks, or test grids. But I do box tests on every lens I can use on a digital camera (not on the Hasselblads because film isn't that cheap and the old Zeiss glass doesn't focus that close except for the 50mm one and what they do unique to them is a lot more clear cut than with zoom vs. prime Nikkors.

Fred, if I look at something and immediately think about how it was done rather than react to the image, either I'm getting to be way to close to being a dedicated photographer (dedicated poets read differently than do people who aren't) or the picture wasn't compelling enough to keep me from wandering around it thinking technical thoughts. I can always find ways to entertain myself with a work of art if the work of art I'm looking at/reading doesn't do the trick itself.

Also, were you saying that context is so obvious an influence on how we perceive things that it's not worth worrying about or were you saying that you didn't think you were influenced by context particularly? The first may be saner than second guessing one's enthusiasms and hates.

Platinum prints do some things that nothing else comes close to. I keep reminding myself that when I see things on line, I'm getting the photographic equivalent of a Reader's Digest Condensed Book. I need to get into DC and spend some time at the museums.

Norma Desmond · December 8, 2009

"Also, were you saying that context is so obvious an influence on how we perceive things that it's not worth worrying about"

</blockquote>

I wasn't saying precisely that because a discussion of the influences of context requires more depth than I want to give it here but, yes, that's the general drift.

I'd liken too much thought about context and how Nan Goldin got to be where she is to your being distracted by looking at something and going immediately to thoughts of how it was done. I agree with you, by the way, that if I immediately go to thoughts of how it was done, it often turns out not to be all that compelling (though there are many exceptions where how it was done is part of the essence of the statement or vision and becomes relevant to the gut reaction I have). A reason for that is that it takes me outside of the experience. Dwelling on meta-narratives takes me outside the experience as well. I may know the meta-narratives are there, just like I know photographers often construct (not in the sense of collage, but in the sense of creation) even if they're good enough where I don't wind up thinking about the means of construction. But if either meta-narrative or construction is what I wind up thinking about or talking about, then I figure I wasn't involved with the art enough . . . either because the artist didn't draw me in or because of my own ability to distract myself.*

*As a photographer, of course, at some point I may very well engage with thinking about how a photograph was done and that will, in fact, become part of my experience of the photograph, and a significant one. I am by no means dismissing technical knowledge and practical awareness of how photographs get made.

I see a difference between responding automatically negatively to an overt or non-candid pose and responding negatively to something not well done that winds up making you conscious of the construction when that wasn't the intent. The former seems like a prejudice and the latter seems like an artistic intention that likely went unfulfilled. In most cases the latter happens because of a mistake by the artist or a lack of experience or expertise. The former, on the other hand, seems like a limit being set on vision and/or method.

Norma Desmond · December 8, 2009

Julie--

I think because I feel more of an empathic (and other kinds of) relationship with the people I photograph, their poses (their very beings) do feel more a part of my fantasies than the walls, furniture, and other objects that are also very significant to my photos. And, yes. Light and shadow for me, a lot, but still less so than the people themselves. Of course, I'm just speaking for myself. I imagine others have very different fantasies and very different objects of fantasies, etc.

mizore · December 8, 2009

Fred, I'd be curious to see what you could do with a view camera, which is a very formal medium but with considerable ease of separating photographer from the camera. The camera to the eye makes for a different interaction than you'd get with either waist level finders (generally medium format) or view cameras. Everything taken with a view camera is posed, and the results range from cliches to rather marvelous.

I came up with a sound bit after thinking about all this. My former day job forced to me to teach literature to people forced to read it. Today, I realized that trying to change people's tastes is like trying to change their sexual orientations. People can be introduced to things they might not like at first viewing, encouraged to try the material again (non-coersively and grades are coercion). People tune out academics because many of them tend to sound like they're advertising what they're promoting, trying to overwhelm by rhetoric. The explanations of what I was supposed to like despite my own inclinations was framed in similar language. I was supposed to be fulfilled by teaching or marriage. I was supposedly not capable of knowing what was good for me, even what would give me a satisfying life.

I always leveled with my students that I had to teach the course and they had to read the poetry, but they didn't have to like any of what I assigned, just explain why they did or didn't like it, and I'd grade them down if I felt I was being conned. And they, mostly, tried to con me anyway because that was the strategy that worked with high school teachers. (They were writing journals and whining about having to take the class --- obviously were too cynical to believe I actually read the journals, but the journals were the most fascinating writing they did).

One kid attacked poetry as being useless in one classroom discussion that went on for around an hour or more in a two hour night class. He was terrified the next day that I was going to grade him down because of that (I loved it, honesty, felt that we were both respecting each other, and I felt I was hearing objections that the other students weren't making). His terror, unfortunately, wasn't that paranoid because I've heard of people getting F's for having the wrong attitude in various other classes and disciplines.

I do trust that you do like Nan Goldin because you gave me specific reasons that weren't part of the Romance Of Art. Much of the support of Goldin comes across like the Romance of the Arts as Human Roach Motel (attract crazies to the arts, addict them to drugs and kill them before they breed, then teach them in colleges, glamorize the risks and idealize art as something worth dying for to to make sure new crazies take the same route). I don't think the Art as Place of Sacrifice meme is that cynically thought out, but that's how it often functions. People in metropolitan areas tend to find less toxic models, but those artists aren't well known (as they're not great news items) in the provinces.

Prejudices are like rust, they give an interesting texture to people.<div></div>

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