Transcendence and Transformation

[don_essedi]

<p>"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 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."</p>

<p>I have no disagreement with what you wrote. I used a "simple template" to illustrate a difference, but it is the way I encounter the problem or how I conceptualize it. We would have to be doing the same kind of photography -- in that case understanding our differing approaches could be beneficial to either of us or both.</p>

<p>"I find more possibilities for suggestiveness in open or empty spaces or spaces filled but where my eye can wander."</p>

<p>The use of empty spaces in the urban...ecosystem, habitat -- I haven't explored that much. Mostly I'm confronted with spaces that are more like a plenum than empty. Empty spaces or 'eye-wandering' spaces so far have been confined to "urban landscape" photos. I want to photograph people doing things in their 'habitat', in context. There's not a lot of that going on in more the open spaces. So, what I have to do is see the 'plenum' as a photograph; form and content; make coherent something that did not come together nor was it put together to be coherent photographically. This is a point where I disagree with GW when he says all of his photos might be posed and there's no way for the viewer to tell. He's talking about the main subjects of his photos. Nobody can build a real New York street in their studio.</p>

 

[don_essedi]

<p>"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."</p>

<p>Fred, the response I recorded to Swank's Benkovitz photo is an example of that. The partial sign, the skate, the clothes...the viewer was creating a story out of what those things in the photo suggested to her. I'm interested in the city, the idea of the city, city life, the polis, the things that happen in cities, how people are in cities, the organism of the city. I happen to live in this one so this is the one I photograph. There is a history of such photography here, personal, official, unofficial. My choice to see my photos of the city in the flow of history which implies a future and future viewers -- and future photographers. Change, history, narrative, time is more than suggested by the larger context. It is made concrete, real.</p>

<p>Much of the city that was photographed by Swank, Smith and many others no longer exists. The mills are gone; the light is different. Time, change, narrative, history...in that flow I'm ok with being a minor part of it.</p>

 

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>i say <em>hydrogen sulfide</em> to all of you makes, but to Julie I only offer <em>n-butyl mercapta</em>n.</p>

<p>Try to stay downwind, in any case.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p> </p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Uh, "males," not "makes." Very low concentrations, in any case, are all that I wish on any of you.</p>

<p>This thread has transcended the usual criteria of literary excellence. It has become positively ethereal, chaste even, whatever that means.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[luis_g]

<p><strong>Lannie - "</strong>Uh, "males," not "makes.""</p>

<p> Hmmm... I know it was a typo, Lannie, but still, kinda Freudian. (See, Julie, Lannie has materialized in here, commenting on the <em>chaste floral </em>farts, just as I predicted). A rose may be a rose is a rose (ad nauseam in this case), but not when it comes to that.</p>

<p>As to the meaning of "ethereal", ask Fred. He knows, and can transcend and transform it, too. :)</p>

<p> </p>

[je ne regrette rien]

<blockquote>

<p ><a href="../photodb/user?user_id=6027759">Don Essedi</a> , May 28, 2010; 09:08 p.m.<br>

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

That may be. It doesn't matter to me.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It does matter to me.<br>

Until the internet era, and more in general, the digital era, most of the photographer put cheap film into their point-and-shoot cameras, had them developed in minilabs and stuck them into family albums. The diffusion was limited to the family and relatives.<br>

Now, everybody produces digital images and can post them on public websites, achieving a diffusion potential mitigated only by the core aspect we face today: information overflow.<br>

Photography and photo diffusion exposes many more photographers to the potential transformation and transcendence of images.<br>

Do they succeed?</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><strong>Don</strong>, I wasn't thinking of urban landscapes. I sensed that's not the kind of work you do. I meant photographic open and empty spaces, not urban ones. We encounter a couple of kids painting graffiti on a street, kissing in an alleyway, or in the middle of a drug deal on the corner (or something less dramatic). Getting close enough to focus just on the protagonists produces one kind of shot. Including a bit of the blank wall, with some cracked paint texture and a glow of uninterrupted sunlight has a different effect. Including the harsh light coming right from the glass of the street lamp way down the alleyway with all that darkness between the kissers and the light captures ambient atmosphere and provides the space I'm talking about. [This is not something I'm really trying to get you to "agree" with. At this point, it's just interesting and eye-opening to share war stories.]</p>

<p><em>"</em><em>This is a point where I disagree with GW when he says all of his photos might be posed and there's no way for the viewer to tell. He's talking about the main subjects of his photos. Nobody can build a real New York street in their studio."</em> <strong>--Don</strong></p>

<p>Nice. Here, you're approaching a difference between "posed" and "staged" which we've touched on before. Here's Winogrand doing something I've addressed on and off throughout the thread: concerning himself with the reality of the situation vs. the photographic image (the latter which Josh appropriately suggests is symbolic . . . <em>"the image cannot ever be pure reality"</em>).</p>

<p>Pose (which can be a directed form of gesture) can be transcendent, an acknowledgment of just what Josh is talking about. Perhaps someone or something posed is less "real" because it's not shown just as it was found. It may still be genuine and can transcend the reality of a situation thereby harmonizing with the transcendent/symbolic nature of the image to begin with. I might use pose and staging to emphasize the photograph over the photographed. Pose is one of the ways I can begin to transform/transcend the reality of a situation. I often work with a balance between "focused" and obvious posing on the one hand and what happens spontaneously on the other. I am also in touch with both the reality that suggests the pose and my own vision that will utilize it. Sometimes by making a pose that much more obvious, I actually find I accept the pose (as viewer) not trying to mimic reality but as a transcendence, much like the whole idea of a photograph (which is not the photographed) can be. Non-directed posing happens as well. People strike poses even when they're being candid. Watch people smoking on a street corner sometime. They often look like they've been coached by a Hollywood director. Watch lovers kissing in a park. Some of these candid posings, when photographed, are cliché and some achieve a sense of timelessness. There is also significance in the photographic look of the non-posed, of course.</p>

[don_essedi]

<p>"Now, everybody produces digital images and can post them on public websites, achieving a diffusion potential mitigated only by the core aspect we face today: information overflow.<br /> Photography and photo diffusion exposes many more photographers to the potential transformation and transcendence of images.<br /> Do they succeed?"</p>

<p>And maybe an EMP happens and wipes them all out. Then it starts again and a billion images are uploaded a day. Maybe a new technology comes along and we will beam our images into peoples' brains.</p>

<p>Maybe you care about photography itself, like GW seems to in his Guggenheim application. I don't care about photography itself. I'm not in the business. Maybe that's the difference between those who care about the Sagan-effect ("billyuns and billyuns") and those like me who don't. Doesn't matter to me whether a billion images are uploaded today or only 10 thousand or none. I don't get why I have been informed of this twice now. I'm in the business of website development. I read the stats with my morning coffee. I'm not uninformed.</p>

<p> </p>

[luis_g]

<p> <strong>Don - "</strong>I don't get why I have been informed of this twice now"</p>

<p>In my case, here's why: It is not because I thought Don was unaware of this, but because I expected to find a large number of pictures, documentary and otherwise, of Benkovitz's. As I reported, that turned out not to be the case.</p>

<p> </p>

[je ne regrette rien]

<blockquote>

<p>Maybe you care about photography itself,</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I'm not "in the business" but I do care, mainly about my own photography.</p>

<p>The amounts of "available" photos for viewing interests me only insofar that there is a general lack of criticism and selfcriticism, which has a bearing on what is being showed. And its quality.</p>

<p>What is being showed is interesting for me insofar I can view and "understand" other photos to help me improve my own photography. I "use" it.</p>

<p>Numbers (in this case of photos) interests me only insofar there is an enormous increase in "fog", which obliges me to see thousands of low-quality photos to spot a good one.</p>

<p>I had thought that we were reasoning about aesthetics here, not on the number of hits on a website.</p>

[luis_g]

<p>double post.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><strong>Don</strong>, we were writing simultaneously in our two posts above, on different subjects.</p>

[Julie H]

<p><strong>Don</strong>,</p>

<p>What is your opinion of W. Eugene Smith's <em>Labyrinthian Walk</em> layout? Link to the first two spreads:<br>

<a href="http://unrealnature.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/wesmith_labyrinthianwalk.jpg">http://unrealnature.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/wesmith_labyrinthianwalk.jpg</a><br>

Of the opening flame-in-goggles picture WES wrote:<br>

"I needed a picture of man submerged underneath industry, but not lost."<br>

Of the other pictures in that first spread he wrote:<br>

"... ROTC headless-heads lost in the cherry blossoms -- we go on heedlessly -- training for peace in pursuit of love -- this is a contradiction."<br>

Of the second spread:<br>

"amplification of humanity in this -- hands touching -- the theme of love from a new approach -- man and his livelihood -- Smoky city -- moon in the city night -- dream of clearing smoke -- a contradiction -- stairways -- more disclosure of the feeling of the city."</p>

<p><strong>[Luis </strong>wrote: "See, Julie, Lannie has materialized in here, commenting on the <em>chaste floral </em>farts, just as I predicted." Perhaps he as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygostyle">parson's nose</a>?]</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>"Some people consider it to be a sweet and tender delicacy when cooked. . . ." (<em>Wikipedia</em>)</p>

<p>Julie, your taste in food has evolved (or devolved) a good bit since you first spoke of thinking of food when seeing plucked chickens. When I see chickens, I think breasts and thighs--but not everyone thinks alike.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[luis_g]

<p><strong>Julie</strong> made me nearly spit coffee across the table and in my wife's direction, here at the bookstore with: "<strong>[Luis </strong>wrote: "See, Julie, Lannie has materialized in here, commenting on the <em>chaste floral </em>farts, just as I predicted." Perhaps he as a <a rel="nofollow" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygostyle" target="_blank">parson's nose</a>?]"</p>

<p> What a grand metaphorical way of saying he is a pillar of this community!</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Luis, you and Julie both have to be more careful about the directions you aim those things.</p>

<p>For some reason, Julie, this sign I saw on Friday made me think of you:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/11065069&size=lg</p>

<p>The "etc." part could get pretty interesting, I imagine.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p> </p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Of course, Julie, there are other things that remind me of you:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/11060870&size=lg</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[don_essedi]

<p><strong>Fred: </strong>"I wasn't thinking of urban landscapes. I sensed that's not the kind of work you do. I meant photographic open and empty spaces, not urban ones."</p>

<p>I was thinking of the "plenum" -- all the information that is in (or, can be in) the frame. I understand you to be referring to "form", the compositional elements or "photographic spaces". One of my best "good" photos is of two guys in an alley. They may be drug dealing, they may be lovers. To me, they look like they're dancing together, like a minuet. I hear harpsichords and claviers. But what I'm referring to is a plenum of high frequency detail. Photographic space is related to real space because there must be real space in front of the lens.</p>

<p>In nature, in landscape, the detail is already ordered. Growth creates order, water and wind create order, gravity creates order. Nature composes itself for the photographer who then selects a frame for some part of what is before his eyes. Nature as landscape is very photogenic. Cities aren't like that; there's no natural order. Many kinds of intention, purposefullness, are in collision, clashing in spaces, signs, lights, reflections, traffic, construction, people -- doing, intending, all kinds of things whose only relation to what others are doing is they're doing it in the same space. There is lots of narrative underway. I can post an example, if I've been unclear.</p>

<p>One way to deal with it is to find room for photograhic spaces in the frame (by checking out an alley). But what I mean is seeing the photograph in the presenting "clash". I don't mean by tight composition or blurring backgrounds, motion blur, or a creative crop and dodging -- nothing of technique, but in the scene(s) before the lens, itself.</p>

<p>"Perhaps someone or something posed is less "real" because it's not shown just as it was found. It may still be genuine and can transcend the reality of a situation thereby harmonizing with the transcendent/symbolic nature of the image to begin with."</p>

<p>I don't think it matters if this is posed or not</p>

<p>http://www.masters-of-photography.com/W/winogrand/winogrand_worlds_fair_full.html</p>

<p>nor whether my or your alley photo are posed or not. They are all photographs and real. If I posed GW's shot, I'd at least want the girls to be local girls, not models brought in from New York or LA. My wife points out the car window and says "Look! Greenfield girls." And then some more girls and they aren't Greenfield (Greenfield is a neighborhood here) girls even though they live in Greenfield. they're CMU students. There's a difference. It's the specificity of the subject that interests me.</p>

<p> </p>

[don_essedi]

<p>Julie: "What is your opinion of W. Eugene Smith's <em>Labyrinthian Walk</em> layout?</p>

<p>It's journalism.</p>

<p>"WES wrote:"</p>

<p>Here's the problem, Smith had a concept for this project and it wasn't a good fit. The quotations are attempts to fit the subject to the concept. He obsessed over it til he died, I guess.</p>

 

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>"</em><em>I understand you to be referring to 'form', the compositional elements or 'photographic spaces'."</em> <strong>--Don</strong></p>

<p>For me it's a place where form and content can collide. Photographic compositional elements can be very much content to me, depending on how they're used by the photographer. Often, in street photography for example, I'm aware of geometry having very much a formal design role rather than a content role. The photographer sees an interesting spacial or geometrical setup and catches a person walking by that scene. No harmony or counterpoint between the subject and the space. Sometimes (in what I often consider better work) the geometries and spaces photographed seem part of the subject/s and/or the content of the photo.</p>

<p>By the way, have you (do you) discuss this stuff with other documentarians?</p>

<p> </p>

[don_essedi]

<p>"Sometimes (in what I often consider better work) the geometries and spaces photographed seem part of the subject/s and/or the content of the photo."</p>

<p>Yes. The flaw I see in what I've been shooting is using form for frame. It's that twitch of the modernist nerve. I see I'm taking 3 or 4 shots of what could be one shot. The shots are framed by the forms. But for one shot, there would be no geometrical framing of subjects, but a content that is organic, dynamic. That means the forms are fluid rather than geometrically fixed. Whether the shot has a form for frame or whether or not there are geometrical compositional elements in the shot, isn't the issue. Privileging them is.</p>

<p>Fred, the past 15 years the photographers I've known have been landscape or nature photographers.</p>

 

[don_essedi]

<p>Luca: "The amounts of "available" photos for viewing interests me only insofar that there is a general lack of criticism and selfcriticism, which has a bearing on what is being showed. And its quality.<br>

What is being showed is interesting for me insofar I can view and "understand" other photos to help me improve my own photography. I "use" it."</p>

<p>My thoughts about these images is the same as about anything else. Their value is the result of effort, work, labor. Photos of no known provenance, without 'historicity' (which includes the photographer's celebrity if any) are landfill. Snapping a pic and putting it on Flickr is not enough of an effort to warrant interest (besides a personal interest) no matter Google archives it on a computer farm in orbit for eternity. This has nothing to do with the quality of the photograph, either. We have a saying "Information that cannot be accessed might as well not exist". So, there will be maybe hundreds of billions of images that will be landfill. No one will miss them. Soon enough, no one will even know they ever were. They don't matter. Socially, culturally they are of no consequence.</p>

<p> </p>

[don_essedi]

<p>"Fred, the past 15 years the photographers I've known have been landscape or nature photographers.</p>

<p>Correction. I know one in Chicago. Our subjects are so different (he doesn't photograph Chicago, for example) that I hadn't thought of him. I know a nature cinematographer who does documentary, but again, it is very different.</p>

<p> </p>

[je ne regrette rien]

<p><strong>Don</strong>,</p>

<blockquote>

<p>My thoughts about these images is the same as about anything else. Their value is the result of effort, work, labor. Photos of no known provenance, without 'historicity' (which includes the photographer's celebrity if any) are landfill.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I guess that our position is exactly the same. Good concept: "landfill".<br /> However,</p>

<ol>

<li>how do we see the effort, work, labour, the historicity of a photo?</li>

<li>how do we distinguish the "good" ones from the landfill?</li>

<li>how do we reconstruct the provenance of a photo?</li>

</ol>

<p>to understand whether there is a visual message in a photo and whether we actually can speak of transcendence?</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>"to understand whether there is a visual message in a photo and whether we actually can speak of transcendence?"</em></p>

<p><strong>Luca</strong>, I appreciate your bringing the topic back to transcendence. Do you think transcendence is achieved through understanding a message? What do you mean by visual message as it relates to transcendence?</p>

<p>For me, transcendence is an act (on the part of the photographer, on the part of the viewer) or like an act. It is a connection to another time and place . . . by the symbolic method Josh has been speaking of. I find transcendence to be more a seeing than an interpreting. I think it has to do with time (and timelessness) and place (and space).</p>

<p>The original meaning of the word "transcendence" was as part of a pair of opposites, the other being "immanence." It had to do with God's being immaterial and completely outside of (beyond) this world as opposed to God's being manifest in the world. Immaterial. Intangible. What are some photographic <em>intangibles</em>? Or, if we can't easily name them, how are they achieved?</p>

<p>Later on in Philosophy, of course, transcendent(al) came to mean <em>the conditions</em> for knowledge. Not knowledge of objects themselves, but the human capacity for relating to objects. This is what I mean when I say it's more about an act than understanding. It's about how we <em>experience</em> objects and space, more the establishment of the <em>possibility</em> of understanding (and possible ways of seeing and being shown) than about the understanding itself. </p>

<p>I associate photographic transcendence with characteristics/qualities of photographs. It's usually the message that will ground me, how the message is visualized/shown/presented/seen that will be transcending. (Some messages themselves may be transcending.)</p>

<p>Also, I think, transcendence just is. By virtue of there being a connection between the real world and the world shown/conveyed/visualized in the photograph, the photograph transcends what it is, the piece of paper or the light emanating from the screen and it transcends what was at the time, the situation at the moment of the snap.</p>

<p>Because the photograph is not the photographed, it is transcendent. In what ways is a photograph not the photographed? What does a photograph add (or subtract) from the photographed?</p>