Transcendence and Transformation

Norma Desmond · May 28, 2010

"They seem intimately affectionate from their pose. Are they good friends, relatives, lovers?" --Luis

Luis, your first sentence is what I've been talking about, the suggestiveness of visual narrative. Using things like pose to evoke intimate affection. That combined with other suggestive descriptions you might make of other things going on in the photo is the narrative I'm talking about. It's also what Szarkowski addressed in the quote Don provided. "They seem intimately affectionate from their pose." NARRATIVE. Your second sentence asks the kinds of questions that are more detail oriented and specific which often are not answered by a photograph, though cues could possibly be given, in some situations, that would help answer them. For instance, if a photographer wanted to be more narrative and convey that they were lovers, he could highlight the matching rings they might be wearing to tell that story. There would always be the chance that they were two strangers who were looking affectionately at each other and happened to be wearing the same ring. That would be the real-life story, and whether the real-life story maps with the story in the photograph is an entirely different question from whether there is a narrative IN the photograph. I'm not always looking at narratives that match reality. I'm looking at photographic narratives. The photograph as distinguished from the photographed.

inoneeye · May 28, 2010

Pheww! can someone open a window. Hi Julie. Good food for thought, all. Barthes and I have crossed paths before. I as photographer and amateur thinker, he as an impressive thinker non-photographer. Barthes: "... the Real knows only distances, the Symbolic knows only masks; the image alone (the image-repertoire) is close." Great stand alone thought that leaves me wanting. As a viewer unconcerned with how the image was conceived, captured, constructed or presented I agree that only the image comes close. As photographer That is my goal. But as a photographer, ..... well you know where this is headed.

luis_g · May 28, 2010

Damn, I'm feeling a whole lotta love in here...

Fred vented in my direction: " I'd feel stifled and lost were I mired and steeped in history and the proven thoughts of others while lacking the imagination and creativity to take my own risks and put my own thinking and photographs on the line."

[if I was quagmired, lacking in imagination and creativity, and paralyzed by fear I would too.]

...then reduced my next post to: "Wow, impressive googling, Luis. ;))))"

Julie - "Phooey, Luis. I fart in your general direction."

Geez, Julie, here I thought it was the oil spill! :-)

I do not think the visual is beyond the verbal. The visual and the verbal are inextricably related. We constantly transduce from one to the other in communicating with others (and I mean this in general, not just in photography or art). It is part and parcel of being human. While never equal, their relative power is never on one side for very long.

Julie - "In your phone-camera examples, whether or not I know exact names, dates and places, I believe I (a stranger) see a *particular type* of person, date and place."

Yes, we confabulate a narrative from the few identifiable picture elements. Savvy photographers aiming for a more controlled/specific transmission understand this, even intuitively, and they provide the visual equivalent of viral RNA to assist the viewer in generating a desired narrative. In a way, this is far suoerior to an intrinsic narrative, in that each viewer fabricates his/her own bespoke narrative for the image within themselves, transcending the heavy stamp of authorship so many photographers seem to be concerned with,

Julie: "... There is tons of fantastic narrative-ish (damn you Luis) art photography

Narrative-ish? I love it & am so honored. :-)

luis_g · May 28, 2010

Fred - " "They seem intimately affectionate from their pose. Are they good friends, relatives, lovers?" --Luis Luis, your first sentence is what I've been talking about, the suggestiveness of visual narrative. Using things like pose to evoke intimate affection. "

I understand what you are saying, and while this might seem like absurd thin-slicing, my take on this is that 1) I did not pose them. They posed themselves. So your assumption is already creating a different alternate fictional microverse within your skull. The photograph (and this takes us back to Winogrand) is simply showing how they looked at the time. Describing.

In this case, there are emotional cues as well. Even if I hadn't taken it, I'd guess that they knew the photographer. In this case, they did.

We confabulate the narrative, and this is not a bad or lesser thing. It makes the viewer more of a proactive partner in crime, and each photograph transcend its own forensic literality as well as the generic experience.

Each viewer has his own private version. It's fantastic. IMO

Norma Desmond · May 28, 2010

Luis, I didn't think you did pose them. I assumed you found them that way. But I wasn't clear in the way I phrased it and when I wrote that I was thinking more generally that a photographer (like me) could use pose a certain narrative way. In your case, I meant that the pose as photographed evoked intimate affection. Whether posed or found is often immaterial to me. Others are much more concerned that posing is artificial and doesn't meet the holy grail standard of "candid." Me, not so much. (I'm certainly not suggesting that you think that way. I've just encountered it a lot on PN.)

If you provide me a standard narrative, details, beginning, middle, and end, in written form, I will bring myself to the table in reading it and you may get various interpretations from other readers. So I still don't see why the fact that different viewers will get a different narrative is something you consider unique to photographs in making them non-narrative. When you say, in this hypothetical written narrative, "she dressed in a sexy way for the occasion," the more conservative type may visualize a little cleavage and knee. I may visualize a mini-skirt and lace stockings. And what if, god forbid, I read you as sarcastic and someone else takes you literally, so I envision a turtle-neck while the other guy imagines a strapless evening gown. (Note how often sarcasm is missed in the narratives we write in this forum.) Narratives have all levels of detail and information, some more suggestive and some less. They all rely on outside influences like viewer or reader disposition, background, and culture. Isn't what you're fine slicing better seen as a continuum than an either/or?

Your notion of narration seems to be associated with literal truth. What was or is really happening. That seems to me why you were concerned with whether or not I misspoke when you thought I was saying that part of the narrative was that you posed them. Again, that part is the matching reality part. And, again, we seem to dance back and forth between the photograph and the photographed, or the photograph and what actually took place at the time of shooting. Again, I'm concerned, most often, with the narrative of the photographed pose itself, not with who posed whom or did not.

The whether-it's-in-your-head-or-not stuff is the old debate between realism and idealism and that one's been done to death. I wouldn't want to take these discussions in the direction of those well-trodden metaphysical minefields.

Julie H · May 28, 2010

Luis, you said:

"We confabulate the narrative, and this is not a bad or lesser thing. It makes the viewer more of a proactive partner in crime, and each photograph transcend its own forensic literality as well as the generic experience."

</blockquote>

Well, duh! You've never heard "Confabulato ergo sum" by Mr. a la Carte? (See also Mr. Phylo, above.)

I'll also point out that this works both ways. From the verbal, we confabulate the (narrative-ish) image. For example, I have a confabulated Luis who is sometimes very woolly but at other times, quite hairless. (Also, there is the matter of my fart -- which I assure you was chaste and smelled like roses.)

luis_g · May 28, 2010

Fred, I understand you better now, I think. From reading theory, I do expect to get a different reading even from a short, explicit-sounding text. Hell, even a telegram.

I do not consider it unique to photography that different viewers will get a different narrative. God knows I'm familiar with the idea in several media. It's still fascinating to me. You're still implying that the narrative(s) is intrinsic, and I still disagree. It's more than an old philosophical argument in my opinion ( a position, or POV) and certainly one that I do not want to debate in any form, specially as to which is "better", or more real.

Julie, Phylo and others, myself included, have already made it clear which side of that equation we are on, [it's safe to assume Fred is waxing and waning in and out of existence on both sides, or doing the crane position on the equal sign] and it's not so much that it makes one right or wrong, but it tints and influences the way one sees and does things.

How one views that determines whether the photographer imagines s/he is encoding a whole narrative in an image, or a first-generation set of cues or attractants around which the viewer confabulates/accretes his own narrative. I think it makes a difference, but acknowledge that it may be completely different for Fred and others.

My notion of narration is associated with literal truth primarily in the sense of speaking of transcendence, and about narratives, in a very similar way to this:

Fred - " The only way I can relate to the capture of an essence or an essential side of someone is to transform the visual, even by visual means, into something that goes beyond the visible or penetrates beyond what is being literally seen."

"Beyond what is literally seen". Exactly.

Sarcasm among the PN Wool Gatherers? Perish the thought.

______________________________________

Julie came back in rare form: "Well, duh! You've never heard "Confabulato ergo sum" by Mr. a la Carte? (See also Mr. Phylo, above.)"

WAHAHAHAHAHA...nice howler, Julie.

Julie - "I'll also point out that this works both ways. From the verbal, we confabulate the (narrative-ish) image."

Geez... to use your word, duh. Didn't you read this in my post? "We constantly transduce from one to the other in communicating with others". That was clearly a commutative statement. However, it could have used one less "other". Anything that leads to this is good:

"For example, I have a confabulated Luis who is sometimes very woolly but at other times, quite hairless."

Lights off, lights on. Hey, I shed the coat in summer.

and...

JH -(Also, there is the matter of my fart -- which I assure you was chaste and smelled like roses.)"

A chaste fart? Are you trying to turn Lannie loose in this thread????

__________________________________________

Personal Note: When I was little, I went to a private (Catholic, of course) school. There was a tall fence around the entire property, but along the huge playgrounds, outside the fence, there were clean-cut, somewhat desperate-looking gaunt men wearing straw hats, selling all kinds of things, like baseball cards, marbles, small toys, pocket knives, nudie magazines, firecrackers, etc. to us (who had more money than sense) through that fence.

One of the things they sold were small brown glass vials of what I now realize must have been mostly methane. It was labeled L'eau de Peau (not exactly Chanel No 5). I bought about half a dozen from a smiling, grateful salesman, and put them in my pocket. All my schoolmates gave me a healthy distance, I noticed. I'm sure it will come as a shock to all here that I was somewhat spoiled (rotten) as a child. When I got home, I ripped off my school uniform, and, as always, threw the pants across my room. Elena, my maid, came in, and accidentally stepped on the pants, breaking all the vials except for one.

It smelled like a herd of buffalo had sharted in unison. We closed the door, and opened all the windows before runnning out of the house. The entire house smelled like sh*t for days, and my room for over a week. The parents were not pleased, but my Mom kept the last vial to show her friends, who smiled naughty little-girl smiles as they rolled the vial between their thumbs and forefingers, my Mom's hands like a safety net, nervously cupped below...

inoneeye · May 28, 2010

"... there is the matter of my fart -- which I assure you was chaste and smelled like roses." Rosy fart, wow. I couldn't tell from my minds eye but that was not what I imagined when I suggested opening the window. My experience has prepared me for the worst all farts are rancid.

Fred "Narratives have all levels of detail and information, some more suggestive and some less." I see in that my responsibility as a visual communicator. To record or craft the bits of information as representations to present to my perspective viewer.

As a photographer I am presenting a representation a symbol. The photograph is physical but the image/representation is a symbol. To accomplish this I use the literal and transform it to a symbolic medium. I can choose to remain detached in hopes of recording the literal but will always have to confront my idea that the image cannot ever be pure reality. I most often prefer to consider symbology as a tool to create my images. And it does not distract me from my goal like it seems to distract Barthes.. I do want to transcend the literal even when I try hard to be literal. That is why reverse engineering 'transcendence' stimulated me. Landscape work (in general) for example. I fail as a landscape photographer (in my eyes) primarily because I cannottransform/transcend the literal to my satisfaction.

Norma Desmond · May 28, 2010

Luis, nice descriptive narrative there! Very visual toward the end.

" . . . whether the photographer imagines s/he is encoding a whole narrative in an image, or a first-generation set of cues or attractants around which the viewer confabulates . . . " --Luis

Again, too black and white and either/or for me. I don't imagine photographers (or myself) encoding a whole narrative in an image, and what narrative exists still acts as cues of attractants for confabulation. (Is that a gay word, or what?)!

"You're still implying that the narrative(s) is intrinsic . . . " --Luis

Not me. Narratives, symbols, interpretations, meaning . . . none of that stuff is intrinsic. Nowhere. Not in photographs. Not in motion pictures. Not in books. It belongs to the shared communicative efforts of a variety of groups of people. It doesn't take something intrinsic to enable communication. It just takes knowing how to use and being able to understand various languages and language games. All I'm saying is that I participate in various language communities or communities of understanding. So it allows me to speak and be understood*. Part of being understood is knowing that those understanding me will be on their own trips to whatever extent. Part of being understood is the likelihood of at least partially being misunderstood. But part of being understood is utilizing a language which has the ability to bridge at least some gaps.

*I don't love limiting this to the words "understood" or "understanding" here. Of course, there's more to photographic experiences than understanding, and I know how people can get (not you, Luis) when you dare introduce understanding into the equation and they imagine what a great distraction it must be to the blissful magic of the spontaneous moment that is art (freed from the mundane encumbrance of actual thought, reading, learning, practicing, etc.). [speaking of sarcasm . . .] So perhaps we could talk about shared expression, feeling, even empathy that somehow gets us from A, the photographer, to B, the viewer, in the same way that a novel gets written by a novelist and somehow, miraculously, gets understood by a viewer (even with that viewer's own spins, prejudices, and cultural baggage affecting that understanding).

Julie H · May 28, 2010

[ROFL at Luis, especially the childhood story. And at Josh; there are roses and there are roses ... ]

This is a fragmennt of a Rilke poem that I think applies to Fred and Luis's current exchange:

Aber versuchtest du dies: Hand in der Hand mit zu sein wie im Weinglas der Wein Wein ist. Versuchtest du dies.

[but if you’d try this: to be hand in my hand as in the wineglass the wine is wine If you’d try this.]

</blockquote>

Norma Desmond · May 28, 2010

Josh, sorry we were writing simultaneously. I'm glad you talk about responsibility. I feel it, too. I think it goes hand in hand with freedom and I enjoy that freedom as a photographer. If someone isn't free, we don't usually hold them accountable for their (unfree) actions. You put a gun to my head, you take away most of my choices. (Yes, I can always choose to die, the ultimate!) I like being responsible for the work I do.

I agree with your take on Barthes. The quote about Symbolism (thanks, Julie) and the pages in the book surrounding that quote suggest to me that he's talking about Symbolism as a thinker, even a looker, and not as a user. He uses the word "mask" in that quote symbolically and effortlessly because he's such a good and fluid writer. His use of it didn't seem to distance him from what he was doing.

luis_g · May 28, 2010

Fred - "(Is that a gay word, or what?)!"

Wouldn't that be Conf-aaah-bulation?

________________________________

Julie - "[but if you’d try this: to be hand in my hand as in the wineglass the wine is wine If you’d try this.]"

As usual, I know Fred is like the object in my rear view mirror: "...much closer than it appears".

don_essedi · May 28, 2010

Just now I showed someone a reproduction of a photograph in a book.

"Is that their first shop? In The Strip. They're wearing skates...no only one girl. Just one skate. I thought the other girl was wearing the other. They're sisters...look how they're dressed. Maybe twins.

The "shop" cue was a partial sign in the upper right. The family is still in business (at another location) and is popular. I hadn't noticed they might be sisters and twins. The viewer is the oldest of 6 sisters, so i figure she's got the eye for it and is probably right. Photo was Benkovitz Fish Market (Luke Swank, 1939)

My wife and I went to the opening of Dream Street. Arrived early and stayed late. Early on, before the crowd, a lot of the viewers were families -- mom, dad, grandparents, babies in strollers. They lingered over the photographs, conversing, sometimes with animation. The conversation was in line with the response above. The venue was across the street from Pitt, two blocks down from CMU, an easy walk from several other universities and colleges. Later on a much larger group came in. Besides an occasional murmmer, they were silent, respectful, as if viewing a body in a funeral home.

don_essedi · May 28, 2010

When I'm on walkabout I wonder how these clothes, these hairstyles, these expressions will been seen 50 years from now -- stuff from the turn of the century, antique. I think about what I try to see in old photos, what is obscure in the corners, out of focus, only partly in the frame. I want those things to be clear and visible in my photos. I haven't a clue what to "suggest" to the viewers in 2060. I can only make the photos as "real" for them as I can.

luis_g · May 28, 2010

Don, I've thought about some of these things many times, and concluded that "real" means many things. It is difficult to predict what will be of value in the future, but as a LIFE magazine photographer and mentor told me, after one generation, whatever else a photograph may be, it becomes an historical document and/or artifact.

Perhaps the most important thing is to be honest, and be oneself.

The world has changed. The number of photographs floating in the world is exponentially larger than in 1939.

One book that made a lasting impression on me was "Inventing the Middle Ages". It addresses how people looked back at the Middle Ages through time, and it is supremely interesting, with regard to your concerns.

In closing, the sense of responsibility in your concerns, though not identical, reminds me of Garry Winogrand's ca. 1963 Guggenheim application:

" I look at the pictures I have done up to now, and they make me feel that who we are and how we feel and what is to become of us just doesn't matter. Our aspirations and successes have been cheap and petty. I read the newspapers, the columnists, some books, I look at some magazines [our press]. They all deal in illusions and fantasies. I can only conclude that we have lost ourselves, and that the bomb may finish the job permanently, and it just doesn't matter, we have not loved life. . . I cannot accept my conclusions, and so I must continue this photographic investigation further and deeper. This is my project."

We are all like amnesiac emissaries from the future, whether we realize it or not.

fate_faith_change_chains · May 28, 2010

The world has changed. The number of photographs floating in the world is exponentially larger than in 1939.

</blockquote>

The only thing unchanged is change itself. The world and "stuff " in it, rendered online rather than experienced off-line, it has become transcendent, less tactile ? Transcendence not being a more here - or a beyond - but a lesser perhaps, something thinner. I like Winogrand's notion about illusions and fantasies, games. I want a project too, investigating that *this world is not enough*. The camera used as an alibi, to at least give it a try, even though it knows that this world is all there is.

don_essedi · May 28, 2010

" The world has changed. The number of photographs floating in the world is exponentially larger than in 1939."

That may be. It doesn't matter to me. I've been looking for other photographers locally doing this kind of work. including on the internet, for anyone shooting street here -- just in general, no need to have a sense of the history of photography here (which is rather immense considering). I find some, but only doing so, apparently, while on vacation in New York, Tokyo, Rome, San Francisco. So maybe out of those billions of images online there aren't many relevant to my work. I'd be pleased if there were others these days. The only photographers I see on the street here are students from the Art Institute. That's something, at least. I keep looking.

I looked at my own photos taken at Benkovitz' a few years ago and I see what I missed. I was still thinking about good photos, suggestive ones, universal, transcendent and transforming (I almost wrote 'transubstantiated') -- with the result that you wouldn't know it was Benkovitz' Fish Market unless I told you so. I'll have to go back and reshoot.

luis_g · May 29, 2010

Don - "... I wonder how these clothes, these hairstyles, these expressions will been seen 50 years from now -- stuff from the turn of the century, antique. I think about what I try to see in old photos, what is obscure in the corners, out of focus, only partly in the frame. I want those things to be clear and visible in my photos. I haven't a clue what to "suggest" to the viewers in 2060. I can only make the photos as "real" for them as I can."

When I read that, I thought of two contemporary, well-known photographers, and one dead guy who tackled these issues close to, or more than five decades ago.

Lee Friedlander's Factory Valleys and At Work...

http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/4aa/4aa501.htm

http://www.schaden.com/book/FriLeeFac01307.html

In At Work, LF does transcend the environment/context of the workers to focus very tightly on the workers themselves, their clothing, hair, expression at labor, the space they work in, but not who they are working for. In Factory Valleys, LF weighs a lot of elements of the landscape equally, transcending and transforming the forensic view, without losing sight of it.

Another photographer who has managed to make images that document things that Don mentions with good, suggestive, universal, transcendent and transformative photos is Bill Eggleston. And he often focuses on "clothes, hairstyles, expressions" as well...

http://daltonrooney.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/eggleston_woman_on_swing.jpg

http://friends.whitedactyl.com/twilight/media/041128/eggleston_woman_on_curb.jpg

http://www.spd.org/images/blogs/Eggleston_beehive_thumb_w_580.png

http://keef.tv/images/uploads/Eggleston_Guide.jpg

http://lotusphotography.org/blog/imgs/blog/redhead.jpg

http://dariushimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/eggleston_3.jpg

And then there's Atget.

While I am not saying that transcendence and transformation must be universally applied, or specifically used by Don, it seems some people can produce extraordinary documentary work that does not exclude either T&T, nor many of the things Don is concerned about.

PS. I Googled, and there are surprisingly few documentarians in Pittsburgh, and probably fewer, if any, working exactly in Don's way, which seems to be from the sounds of it, ultra-straight, near-forensic. There are also few pictures of the Benkovitz' Fish Market. I checked Flickr. There were only two...it must be one of the least photographed things on earth.

Don's well-honed thoughts on documentary photography and its role re: the future would make a good thread theme in and of themselves.

Norma Desmond · May 29, 2010

". . . it seems some people can produce extraordinary documentary work that does not exclude . . . T&T [transcendence & transformation] . . ." --Luis

Building off this:

"I was still thinking about good photos, suggestive ones, universal, transcendent and transforming . . . -- with the result that you wouldn't know it was Benkovitz' Fish Market unless I told you so." --Don

Given that you're now thinking this way, and assuming what you posed (that perhaps some transcendence must take place in photographs), it sounds like you might reach a good balance for yourself between controlling the suggestiveness and transcendence and allowing the Market itself to come through and be clear.

"I haven't a clue what to 'suggest' to the viewers in 2060. I can only make the photos as 'real' for them as I can." --Don

I wonder if captivation, at least to some extent, is one of the things that takes documentary out of the category of forensics. It sounds like you are considering your future viewer in all this. I wonder if some bit of suggestibility will get them to look with a more interested eye at the sights and people you document. Not enough to make them go off into some mysterious ozone of wonder but enough to catch their imaginations to the point where they will at least give these photos a meaningful look.

Another thought I have, though it sounds like you'll employ a different method, is that there does seem to be documentary value, even looking back from 2010 to the depression era, in getting the perspective of photographers, filmmakers, and cinematographers on the very things they were documenting. Some photographs and films from that era actually seem to document fairly consistent reactions to the times (also reflecting their viewers' general reactions to things in many instances), reactions of people who could craft their lasting impressions of those times. (Many of those reactions are suggestive, not in a way that predicts what will be suggestive to future generations but in a way that allows future generations to at least some extent to empathize with parts of the past.) It seems there would be a significant documentary role in itself for the documentary piece not only to show clearly what was happening but at the same time to reflect a genuine timely reaction to those events. Is the reaction we might feel from people making these documentaries necessarily that much less significant to our understanding and relationship to those times than are the documented events and sights themselves? I think that reaction becomes more telling and a little more genuine when we look at a bunch of those photographs and films from a bunch of different filmmakers and start gleaning common threads from their perspectives on things. Their suggestibility and approach, what reaction I may perceive in their work, especially through a body of work, for me, supply valuable information and are part of the document.

aplumpton · May 29, 2010

"My presentation of a subject as photographer and my response and reaction to a subject as viewer is wrapped up in the picture I present or see" (Fred)

For me, what Fred says here is the key to transformation, transcendence, transmutation and perhaps fantasy. Presenting a photo of a subject in a neutral and non-subjective way (if that indeed is possible), or as close to that as possible, is not really what drives me. What does, however, is my interpretation of the scene, and often what the scene can do for me (in helping, or inspiring, me - ) in my quest to express something personal. Transformation or transcendence is what happens when I can deconstruct nature (or an object, or even a perceived personality) and reconstruct it in some poetic (for me ideal) or at least interesting manner.

inoneeye · May 29, 2010

presentation and transcendence -less tactile. another interesting opened door Phylo. lesser, beyond or sideways are all interesting worthy of thought, thanks for making me think.

Once again Don's different than my approach has stimulated me. At the core of what motivates me to photograph or create any art work has been a desire to transcend. Even to transcend my time and existence. Sometimes to escape but more often in an attempt to explore humanity. At my core is a piece of me that wants to live on the work I leave behind. I don't expend much energy on that but it is there. It (desire to transcend my limits?) does influence where I point my camera and how I post process. Differing from my take on Don's goal, I lean to a more timeless quality or characteristic in my work. Not ignored but unbound by time and place. In that way perhaps I am stepping back or away from the elements, or the combination of elements that identify it with timeframe. I most often find myself transforming the timeframe and reaching for a human component(s) that allows for expansion and focus of thought.

But I also hope to leave a piece of me, a document for 2060+. Not a name. It's not in the name, I hope to transcend the name. Don, maybe we'll hang together in the future. I enjoy the contrast, it makes for a better story.

Julie H · May 29, 2010

I can't get past Don's "you wouldn't know it was Benkovitz' Fish Market unless I told you so." Who would? Ever? Don himself was not born knowing that "it' was Benkovitz' Fish Market.

And, having been told, where does this "it" begin and end? What is it? Who says so? (I keep thinking of Bill Clinton's "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is.")

The nearest I can get to an answer to my own questions, just trying them out (suspending my disbelief as far as I can), is to sneak up on Benkovitz's Fish Market from the outside. I do believe I could say what is *not* Benkovitz's Fish Market. Therefore, from the many (infinite) number of possible pictures that remain; that *are* Benkovitz's Fish Market [bFM] in the sense that they are not *not* BFM, then presumably any of those would do. Possibly, by doing this in ever stricter rounds, decreasing the perimeter, I could get down to some nugget of BFM that is more not *not* BFM, though I don't believe I could ever get to what BFM *is.*

[i am somewhat making fun, but I am also finding this quite interesting. I do understand that this is not funny to Don, and I hope he will allow me. I find it interesting that in spite of my skepticism, it (what Don describes) seems possible for the disembodied camera (figure that one out ...) but not for the intentionally controlled camera.]

don_essedi · May 29, 2010

Luis, I appreciate that you took time to look up some things I wrote about.

I'm not arguing transcendent vs non-transcendent in which one is good and the other bad. In the Photographness thread I wrote about the lack of the transcendent in a documentary set that needed it. For myself, at least, shooting for the transcendent seems 'right' and the norm. It is what we learned.

A simple template for transcendent/non-transcendent is the transcendent isolates the subject (making it the "main subject"), situating it in a non-obtrusive, non-obstructing, and complementary frame -- removing everything that distracts from the composition of the main subject. The non-transcendent has no "main subject"; what would be the "main subject" is another bit of "content" just as is everything else in the frame. This presents problems for the photographer that are different than those encountered in making a transcendent photo. What might have been avoided, cropped, cloned, blurred, for example, now becomes a problem of form. Rather than, say, attaining pleasing bokeh, one has an information-rich frame that has to be wrangled into a coherent photograph. The information richness likely will be local and specific, rather than general and universal. The set of documentary photos will contain both kinds, but the tendency (at least mine is) is to fall into the well-honed practice of shooting for the transcendent, and so I write "I don't want to take transcendent photos".

Here's a few links you may already be familiar with:

http://www.amazon.com/Witness-Fifties-Pittsburgh-Photographic-Photography/dp/0822941112/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274281688&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/One-Shot-Harris-Photographs-Charles/dp/B0002IA1K4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275168180&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Luke-Swank-Photographer-Howard-Bossen/dp/0822942534/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275168218&sr=1-1

http://www.clpgh.org/exhibit/photog13.html

Norma Desmond · May 29, 2010

"the transcendent isolates the subject (making it the "main subject"), situating it in a non-obtrusive, non-obstructing, and complementary frame -- removing everything that distracts from the composition of the main subject." --Don

I don't usually find this to be the case. As I seek transcendence in my own photos, I tend to include more in the frame. I often find isolated subjects in photos not terribly transcendent. I find more possibilities for suggestiveness in open or empty spaces or spaces filled but where my eye can wander. I tend to find close-ups of subjects, particularly faces, much more grounded and static, staying precisely where they are rather than moving beyond themselves. Obtrusions and distractions, lack of focus, for me, can add that layer of transcendence I'm often seeking.

don_essedi · May 29, 2010

"I can't get past Don's "you wouldn't know it was Benkovitz' Fish Market unless I told you so." Who would?"

Everyone who lives here, probably. Anyone reading this from St Louis? If so, do you know anyone locally who doesn't know what Ted Drewes is?

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Transcendence and Transformation

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