A creative contradiction at the heart of photography?

[gaule]

<p>I have only turned to photography, at least with slightly more serious intent, in recent years, but I have been intrigued to experience here, perhaps even more strongly than in other art forms, the curious contradiction that lies at the heart of them all. They begin by making use of time in one way or another, yet ultimately they all want to transcend it by becoming timeless. They are all seeking, as Nietzsche would put it, “tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit”. Our photography always begins with the capture of a fleeting moment or a sequence of them, but the implicit desire behind the capture is to place what is captured above time, to confer on it a kind of eternity. That is notably true of photography when it is driven by artistic intent, but it is even true of the less ambitious “happy snapping” of tourists who are just trying to hold on to their precious vacation time lest it be swallowed up in oblivion. When I take a photograph, the measurement of time is very important to me, but it is only a means to an end. My mind is really set on transforming, like an alchemist of old, that base metal of time into the gold of an artistic expression that, so I dream, will have an a-temporal value. Through whatever beauty it may have, it will, I hope, endure. In the end, I find that the contradiction experienced in photography, far from provoking confusion or a sense of futility, is what energizes the entire process of creativity. By embracing it, it becomes a positive tension; by failing to respond to it, I am condemning myself to less meaningful transience, to the ephemeral. I’m not sure if this strikes a chord or not with others. It would be interesting to hear.</p>

[JAPster]

<p>I think you should quit photography and become am Obama speech-writer! :)<br>

(just joking, though he might hire you if he reads your post)......</p>

<p>Sorry but i lack the time for deep response to your musings. I have to leave the library in a few moments.</p>

<p>I understand the time capture - time never stands still, yet a good photograph is capturing a moment that will be gone, maybe never to return. But to me, in addition to the time-slice, its more about LIGHT. What is the LIGHT doing here - how can I capture and express something with and by that LIGHT that will be memorable for the viewer. Something that will not be trivial, meaningless, or stupid.</p>

<p>But, of course, the LIGHT is being captured in a time slot. So they go hand in hand.</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>In one sense, PJ, I think you are referring to the created photograph as the photographer's object and quest for immortality. I may die, but my image is timeless. In a situation where there is less fixation on self, the intention that the photograph be timeless is the desire that either the moment and context of the photograph, or its contained message, be of a universal quality, a quality that subordinates or goes beyond its instantaneous nature. One of the most powerful of such images was taken by a photographer whom I think was named Gardiner in the second half of the nineteenth century, a picture of a young southern rebel who had just unsuccessfully tried to assassinate a politician, was in shackles in a pit and awaiting his execution. The life force, virility and determination of the youth are evident in the image. At that moment he was going to die, he is dead, but instead his face and character are present forever. A sports photograph that captures the instant of the third period USA goal in Olympic ice hockey against Canada, or the latter's game-winning shot in overtime, are statements of those particular instants. They can be perceived as more (much more for one hockey crazy nation) but it remains they are each also a souvenir, or record, of one instant in time.</p>

<p>If I fully understand your point, I really see no more creative contradiction in photography as I might do in one of Toulouse-Lautrec's picnic scenes with his depiction of the French enjoyng a sunny summer afternoon. All paintings, sculptures and photographs are necessariiy moments in time, but they are not hostages of time.</p>

[albert_richardson1]

<p>I see no contradiction at all. There are two different independent things at work here. Who asks if the length of time it actually takes to manufacture window glass affects the scenery you see outside? Any contradiction you find between camera exposure time and the significance of the subject comes from using similar language to measure entirely different things.</p>

[iliafarniev]

<p>"Thief! Steal Forever." - my own creative translation, in spirit with old maestros unforgetable penning style, hopefully.</p>

<p>Well. True enough, but, like anything else, it has to be practised in order to achieve virtuosity. Otherwise, affordable and automated substitute toy suitable for the less demanding fellow travelers.</p>

<p>Life wouldn't be the same without pictures, wouldn't it? :-)</p>

[albert_richardson1]

<p>I do see your point. It is remarkable that something as quick as a shutter release can capture an image that may occupy us for a long time later on. This is not just a photographic thing. We have all said and done things that in themselves were very quick, but had lasting consequences we had to live with for a long time afterward. Sometimes it seems unfair or unjust, but the original thing cannot always be undone. Generally the thing that was done is more important that the time it took to do it. Contradiction? It's all in your point of view.</p>

[iliafarniev]

<p>Don't go Obama... he will never get to second term imo,-</p>

<p>And let us not overglorify neither ligt nor time because its nothing, really. The light is but some narrow spec electro-magnetic emanation, a vibe cought in speedy alterations, like you and me and anything else around and the time - nobody even knows what it is. There is actually no way to know it is there. And on top of it all is ultimatelly finite, a subject to dissipation.</p>

<p>So, lets not exaggerate this nurse. Ok. Say, if you haven't left your hopes at the gate all will be convulsion and agonia, selfinflicted sm treat, deception in a bad trip to mirage zoo. A hot sulpho bath under the brassy fork dude laughing at you like crazy.</p>

[User_5888660]

<p>I don't disagree with you. But, I think that the use and dissemination of photographs has changed greatly in the last decade and continues to change daily. More and more photographs are being taken, but fewer prints are being made. Today, many shooters take snaps not to provide a record for the future, but to share their experience with others. The photo is never meant to be printed and kept (or even kept in digital form) but are e-mailed to others. (Here I am drinking a beer on the beach at spring break.) The e-mail gets deleted as soon as read. </p>

<p>To me this is like a shift from writing in a journal or diary (so you can later recall the details and impressions of the trip or meeting your first true love) to sending post cards with a cute little note attached. One is meant to be a long lasting document, the other a throw away. </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>I may not always have an overt desire to make timeless photos, but I try to understand how it can be achieved and how getting it might be effective in many instances. I like your idea of transcendence, PJ, that I agree timelessness suggests. And it's a nice observation that mediums concerned and even based on time can project timelessness.</p>

<p>All good and great art is not necessarily timeless. Some art is very fleeting (unrecorded performance art) and meant to be experienced in the moment and not to last. Of course, even some fleeting performance art has a more timeless feel than others.</p>

<p>Much art is a product of and even contributes to the making of a specific era. Examples: The Stones and The Beatles are pretty timeless and universal because of the way their music relates to the history of music and adapts other genres and periods to its time and also because of the suggestiveness of the lyrics. There is universality. The Grateful Dead, musicians every bit as significant as other bands, are much more located in their own milieu. Though we may read about The Dead decades from now, I don't think their music will have the same emotional effects and draw that it did in its heyday. It is too intimately related to acid, the seventies, and a certain kind of sound and sensibility that I can't see remaining as timeless as The Beatles or Stones. You kinda just had to be there. Nevertheless, The Dead are significant musicians and artists, possibly because they are so local and specific as opposed to timeless and universal.</p>

<p><em>The Graduate</em> -- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061722/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061722/</a> -- will likely remain timeless because it deals with fairly universally-felt generational matters, though it is certainly a product of and was an influence on its specific era. <em>Getting Straight</em> -- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065775/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065775/</a> -- with a young Elliott Gould and Candice Bergan, had a profound effect on me and was incredible in its time but likely will not be remembered much beyond those who lived through those times. That doesn't detract from my experience of it.</p>

<p>I like my photo of Kevin -- http://www.photo.net/photo/7232933 -- but it is a disappointment to me. I think it might have had a more timeless quality and been more effective for having that quality had the clothes been less specifically Abercrombie and Fitch looking. I think his clothes detract from the overall tone of the photo. (There are other problems with it I won't go into.) It was an early one. But I can imagine a different photo where I'd specifically want the more localized Abercrombie and Fitch look, for a variety of reasons, and wouldn't want that feeling of timelessness at all, yet it would be an effective and meaningful photo and I could easily consider it a work of art in spite of its lack of timelessness. Some photos seem by their nature to seek timelessness, and if they don't achieve it, they feel lacking. Others don't seem to require timelessness at all.</p>

<p>_________________________________<br>

*Sorry for not changing words into links as I normally do, but the PN response box has been acting up today. It's been brought to the administrator's attention by several of us.</p>

[colin carron]

I tend to agree with what Arthur said with his story of the picture of a condemned man - that the freezing of an instant in time by photography is perhaps one of its artistic strengths. Each photo is saying, 'look at this subject at this moment - it is special'. So perhaps photography, by capturing the moment, transcends time by isolating that moment. That seems to me more a paradox than a contradiction. The mechanical elements of the capturing of an image at one instant in time are special to photography. But that instantaneous mechanical capture is both a strength of photography and also a weakness. It seems to me that the trade off is that this leaves the photographer with less scope for imbuing an image with his personality than the painter or sculptor.

[gaule]

<p>In speaking of somehow transcending time in the context of photography I was referring to the dimension of artistic creation rather than to the constituent elements in the realization of a photographic image, of which light, self-evidently, is the foremost. Photography, if truly human, is not a thoughtless activity; it implies at least a minimum of reflection. Nor is it a purely mechanical act; it implies at least a minimum of creative volition. Thought and volition, however, are capable of raising the photographic capture of an instant to a higher plane that has, I would contend, a potentially timeless quality. When we submit a photo for critique, for example, we are tacitly implying that it has a value that goes beyond the moment in which it was created. We are inclined to think that it embodies some degree of artistic value that is not exclusively personal but also universal, and not solely momentary but also enduring. We have the fond hope that others will recognize that, too. I don’t think this is a quest for personal immortality, although that ambition may also play a role in some lives. It is more an intuition about the intrinsic nature of the beauty – however defined – that we hope to have encapsulated: "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." The greater the success we have in infusing the work of a moment with this added value, the more ‘timeless’ it becomes. I think that’s an experience that opens interesting windows of reflection in life, too, if one cares to look through them and isn’t too taken up with the bare mechanics of photography!</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>"I think that’s an experience that opens interesting windows of reflection in life, too, if one cares to look through them and isn’t too taken up with the bare mechanics of photography!" </em><strong>--PJ</strong></p>

<p>It is with the "bare mechanics" of photography that the photographer or artist expresses herself. The artist is not theoretical. The artist makes art.</p>

<p>Many submit photos here because they are proud of the moments of their family that they've captured and want to share that pride and those moments with others. They are not trying so hard or even at all to be artists and they are not considering whether they imbued their photos with artistic value. </p>

<p>Many artists, on the other hand, are expressing themselves personally and not also looking for universality or something enduring. Check out Andy Warhol, Eggleston.</p>

<p>Many artists do interestingly search for universality and the enduring. Many just get there, without needing to search or seek it.</p>

<p><br /></p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>I take the liberty of just responding to the topic start, without reading the existing replies yet. Not because I'm not interested, but more because the subject matter crossed my mind often, and I just want to blurt out thoughts. My apologies upfront for doubling on what is already written.</p>

<p>The idea of capturing a split second (or seconds) and "holding" that moment for ever, for a long time I thought this was a bit a 'goal' in photography. And for many photos it seems to be: holiday photos, weddings, parties.. The goal seems to be to extend that moment into the now, and keep and hold it.<br /> And thanks to this forum, making me consider such things, I've come to realise that this, in my opinion, is not the case. Not so much because of photos that do not have this intent at all in the first place (especially art photography, in my view, is not looking to eternalise moments at all). Also for the photos that explicitely seek to do it (journalism, and the ones listed before).<br /> It's not time, or a moment, we're capturing. It's a memory. Memories have no timescale, are not "realistic" but coloured interpretations, and they are not fixed. We're not looking to capture that moment, but the feelings associated with that event. Something to re-tell the story of that moment. It's not the moment itself what remains, but the story of that moment, interpreted and seen from a particular angle. And as our memories change over time, so will our explanation of the photo. So even when the image did not change, the perception of the image does change - which of the 2 is the photo? The collection of pixels/halides, or the way we interpret what we see?</p>

<p>Maybe if I stretch this thought, you could say one removes time from the moment, and makes it a seperate thing. By that means, one could say the picture becomes something eternal, or timeless at least, but that's another kind of eternity that I think I read in the start post.</p>

<p>Sure there are artists that made photos they envisioned to be for the eternity, much like painters, architects, composers and so on do that. I consider it an artistic goal, or a quest for being valued. But to me this is something unrelated to the moment at which the art was created. It has to do with a value we contribute to it, as admirers (or not) of that work.</p>

<p>Time is eternally fascinating. Looking forward to read all the posts I've skipped.</p>

[gaule]

<p>Fred, I take your point. Potentially, no doubt, there as many approaches to photography as there are photographers, and hence there can exist a multiplicity of photographic intentions, not all of them artistic. That does not mean, however, that the photographers who draw their inspiration from non-artistic motivations escape completely the need to add ‘something’ to their picture – some value that raises it above the time in which it was created. You use the example yourself of the person who wishes to share through a snapshot the pride of a meaningful moment in life. That pride is experienced in a moment, that is true, but its meaningfulness extends beyond that instant. It envelops the photo and makes it much more than the result of the instantaneous click of the shutter. If the photo is treasured and preserved afterwards, it is because its value content abides. It has acquired, in some sense, a ‘timeless’ quality. Unless we are talking about some spur-of-the-moment, impulsive and almost unconscious snap, there is always some degree of thought behind a photo and it is through that door that timelessness enters. It can, indeed, be anything from a vague inspiration or flash of insight to a fully elaborated intellectual visualization, but it will place the ensuing photo on a level that, I would argue, is beyond the mere freezing of a moment in time. I think an awareness of that complexity is helpful to photography. It contributes to making it more interesting, more human, less mechanical.</p>

[michaellinder]

<p>PJ:</p>

<p>I'm interested in hearing about your experience in philosophy. Your original post hints at more than just casual encounters with it. But, that's another story. For the moment, accept my thanks for an interesting thread.</p>

<p>Even if a photograph's subject is just light tracings caused my moving the camera or shooting from a moving car, that subject in its barest form is a set of space-time coordinates. The subject has spatial dimensions that are moving through time. So, in a sense, as colleagues have noted above, the "capture" of the subject involves somehow freezing time. However, as also noted above, photography also involves transcendence.</p>

<p>Fred provides an worthwhile elucidation of transcendence in the sense of timelessness. I totally agree that truly good art, regardless of the medium, is not bound to a temporal context. This explains why cave paintings, those done during the Renaissance, those done in France in the 19th century, those involving throwing paint onto canvas, etc., still have appeal. It also explains why people are discovering and re-discovering the music of the 60s and 70s. </p>

<p>When I take a photograph, there is a presupposition that the subject-matter I have chosen has some meaning to me. It is no consequence that the subject-matter is a landscape, a bird in flight, a person I love, etc. The effect on me is transcended from light interacting with a chemical medium or a sensor to something I have taken within myself; I have embraced it is as mine. It becomes part of me and part of who I am. If I choose to publish it so that I may obtain feedback of one type or another, that also becomes mine.</p>

<p>To me, the act of taking a photograph has a very mystical quality to it. I guess that's why I just love to wander around alone, shooting.</p>

<p> </p>

[MathewDH]

<p>Pj,<br>

I find photography allows me to hold onto beauty I have seen so I might enjoy it later, and also share it with others. If "art is the emotional interpretation of nature", then the emotions that drive me to capture an image, is my art. The greatness of the images that are created by everyone is not one person sees the same way - because the emotions and the individuals' interpretation of beauty, or a subjects importance, vary widely. That variety is the DNA strength of photography. A photo lives when someone views it, like a book lives when it is opened and read.<br>

Confucius - a book not opened is only a block of wood. Not all books are readable when published and most are not readable after 100 years. Language changes. Words drop out of usage and new ones come into use. The time and context of a books' creation allows readers to comprehend it at that time. A few books are great and become appreciated by later generations. Most fall away to be forgotten or aging curiosities for those who bother to look at the few survivors. The same must be said of photos. The vast bulk of them amount to memories for people who have those emotions related to them. The fragility is those emotions are lost when those people die. All the photos are viewable as long as they exist but there may be no emotional appreciation of them. Look at all of the art and non-art photos found in photo albums or antique stores. Artifacts of the past. There are great photos, and some are historical records of a moment deemed to be important. Most are just ghosts after a while. They are around us and the unnamed subjects, expecially people images, offer nothing to us.<br>

I say ghosts because the images survive like a haunting, as most times the original subject has passed, along with anyone who knew what the subject was. They seem timeless, though the subject may not be that. Timeless images are rare and also not timeless. Time will take its toll on all of the materials for all of it. Everything gets old, in materials and from a viewing perspective.<br>

Therein lies some of the futility, but also the hope that the best images I have captured, will outlive me, and be appreciated by others. Will the digital negatives survive? Probably not. Will the prints survive? One hundread years if I am lucky, or an institution preserves them for whatever reason they deem them worth saving. In two hundred years I do not expect anything I created as art in photography or written form to have survived. The technology of their creation and storage will have fallen to the side. Maybe a few examples of the technology will be preserved and probably not in working order.<br>

If anything, consider your photos as emotional memories for you and your close friends. Appreciate them in your time. But realize they will one day be ghosts and someday completely forgotten. Or maybe someone will buy one of your images at an antique store and think it lovely enough to hang on a wall. Still loved for some quality we may not define but for a beauty they appreciate.<br>

CHEERS...Mathew</p>

[gaule]

<p>From the contributions to the discussion, I think it’s fair to say that our individual understanding of the concept of ‘timelessness’, as a suggested constituent element in photography, isn’t altogether free of ambiguity. When I used it myself, it goes without saying that I wasn’t doing so in an absolute sense, making it the equivalent of the concept of ‘eternity’, conceived as the absence of time. That understanding of ‘timelessness’ can never be applied to any human activity, which is always characterised by succession – one thing after another – and never by the <em>simultaneous</em> possession of all that has been, is, and will be. When we come to any human activity, and hence to photography, our past is only present to us in the form of memory; our future is only present to us in the form of imagination; and our very present itself consists in ceasing to be in the very instant it comes into being. It’s the age-old conundrum that bewildered Augustine among others. In that sense, our photography is inescapably temporal and not eternal.</p>

<p>In speaking of the ‘timeless’ character that, I would contend, can be part of the process of photography, I wasn’t referring either to a limitless span of time extending indefinitely into the future: time unending. I would be naïve to think that any of our personal creations, whatever their possible artistic merit, will survive the inexorable erosion of time.<br>

<br />For me, ‘timelessness’, for want of a better word, is a way of expressing the <em>value</em> that our human intentionality projects onto what we do and onto the works we create. It can have an aesthetic character, an ethical or even religious one, or it can simply be the adding of some significance that I wish to embody enduringly in what I do. The common denominator lies in the transcending of the instant. That can be as true of photography, I think, as of any other human activity and helps to give it wings.</p>

[MathewDH]

<p>Hi PJ,<br>

I like the eloquence of your writing style. My prior posting was somewhat incoherent. I was struggling with the words and ideas that were passing in my head. As well integrating prior thoughts I have had that photos of passed people and structures are like ghosts. A recorded memory of things long gone and largely without identification to place them in our archive of humanity. There is a quality of our human memory that is lost or discarded as time passes. It may be that we do not need some of our past to survive. Though it would be great as it helps us percieve our existance on our species timeline.</p>

<p> Timeless to me would represent a quality that most people could identify with. Generally though it seems to represent a beauty or goodness inherent to the subject. And it is a shared perception between peoples and generations. However I do feel that it can also represent that which could also be seen as ugly or evil, which also has a timeless quality. A yin/yang view of Timeless. Should the term Timeless in art of any form be thought of as an enduring unspoken truth? Something akin to an emotional perception, and not a rational defined idea. This way Timeless exists outside of the manufactured or the materials used. But people percieve beauty differently and Timeless would have to be an abstract with a fluctuation of concious perception.</p>

<p> Another point to you original posting I found interesting - that of the duality of the creative spirit. You find a satisfaction to yourself in the artistic creation of photography. The good half of the duality is you endevor to be your best and improve on your abilities and being the master of your art. Thus you are defining what is - quality, in your efforts. The flip side to the duality is the lesser approach of mediocrity, or just good enough to get by. Never improving. It is the condemnation by yourself you abhor, not of others. So it is yourself, mind and spirit that endevors to be the best at what you do. It is not futile to be good at what you like to do, and that which brings your creative spirit - happiness.</p>

<p> It would be nice to think that some our efforts in photography will survive us and be appreciated by other generations. If it happens, then our efforts were not in vain or futile. Just the achievements of our minds and souls, which we leave behind to say we once were part of this mortal coil.</p>

<p>CHEERS...Mathew</p><div></div>