Doubt

antoniobassiphotography · September 1, 2010

After all this... I would like to go back to an old post by Fred.

Plato demanded essences. His entire philosophy depended not on each chair but on the IDEA of chairness, the ESSENCE of what it is to be a chair. [...] Their is no essence of a chair. There is its context and our perspective on it.

</blockquote>

And

Again, many have embraced (think they'd be dead without embracing) doubt. The idea of doubt as put forth over and over again here suggests an embraced incompleteness. And then comes the search for the essence of things. What could be more complete and less doubtful than such an essence?

</blockquote>

Plato talks about essence of things but he doesn't say it's the same for everybody. He acknowledges the fact that there is indeed an essence but doesn't define one immutable essence that is the same for everybody. As I wrote on my bio, he believed in the eternal ideal form, of which every object is just a poor copy. This form can change in time but it will still be there. There was a period of time in which many photographers have photographed benches (even today that costume continues). Other times they have photographed blind people. Were those just trends or were they after some "essence"?

You are a philosopher and it's difficult to talk to a philosopher ;-) We are incomplete beings, or we would live forever. Our nature of incompleteness influences everything we do. That doesn't mean that we are condemned, simply that we must deal with it. Some of us deal with it better and get closer to completeness more than others.

Norma Desmond · September 1, 2010

Antonio--

My photographing relies on my senses, particularly vision, through which I may pierce the surface. It's important for me to be in touch with the surface when photographing. I have somehow to translate what I KNOW about something (the subject matter of what I'm shooting, its history, its context, its smell, its sounds, etc.) into something visual and then it may or may not go beyond that for both me and the viewer.

Feeling that I KNOW something's essence and capturing it in a photo are two different things. As I said above, there has been a lot of talk about cities: their history, culture, smells, sounds, ambience. If I want to capture something essential about them, I have to find it on or bring it to the surface so I can photograph it. With a photograph, it is through seeing that I know. So I don't photograph essences. I photograph facial expressions, colors, light, texture, (and other things) and I do it with focus, blur, grain, perspective, and framing (and other things). For me, the question is not what to photograph and it's not a matter of listing all the things I know about something or someone, it's how to visualize something in such a way as to be expressive of what can be felt.

I think photographs have their own essence aside from the essence that the subject matter may have . . . though the two may be closely related. As we've said in other places, the photograph is NOT the photographed. It is something new. Plato thought that visual art was a MERE copy, a MERE representation, and he did not like copies. I think he looked at visual art wrongly. I hope it's not too philosophical to ask: when you make a picture of a chair (or city) are you making a chair (city) or are you making a photograph? The easiest way for me to approach it is to consider what parts of the photograph are NOT the chair or the city or the person who is its subject. Working with that tension will perhaps wind up connecting the photograph and its subject in essential ways.

A photograph has the moment to work with. Honoring the visual and the moment, photographically speaking, seems the best way for me to seek out what is here being called essence. The way I try to imbue a photograph with what I feel lying beneath the surface is to pay particular attention to what's on the surface and to various and intriguing* ways of looking at that. _____________________________________ *The parts of the photograph that are not the chair or the city or the person and approaching the intrigue of the subject matter, I think bring us back to some aspects of DOUBT and how it can be relevant to making photographs.

luis_g · September 1, 2010

Anders, I'm curious as to what exactly it is that is being recorded which you call "Essence". I trust you know I am not negating it in any way, just trying to understand you (and Arthur). What is it you think you are recognizing. How much of that is within you, and how much is in the subject. I suspect that a lot of it is one's Weltanschuung projected through a particular context.

Is it that everything has essence, but you can't always see it, so in those instances, you do not photograph? Or do some things, like Brussels, simply not have an essence?

There's plenty of art, literature, music, etc. that is critical of its own culture and class, so, I would disagree with you on the idea that the affirmation of class and identity is "obvious" to all creative expressions, unless rejection, protest, repudiation and criticism are also affirmation, the case for which can be made, but also dissolves the meaning of the word. And art (not so with reportage) is usually made to sell to a (financial) higher class than that of the artist making it, wouldn't you say? Most artists I have known and read about tend to be poorer than their patrons.

However, I did not say that photographs could be understood or appreciated only by viewers of the same class as the person who created them, at least within certain limits. Anders seems to have come close to agreeing with this:

"Whether that sharing is delimited to same class and shared identity (Western, European, American) might be the case, but the ultimate aim of any photographer must be to go far beyond class border lines."

By the time Cartier-Bresson made his famous pictures (when he was a youth, he openly claimed to have been working after Atget!) his years in Africa differentiated him from those of his socio-economic class and that is obvious in his pictures. He's no Lartigue, for example. He becomes and sees as a communist -- and a Buddhist. He spoke more like a Surrealist hunting guide than the scion of a wealthy French family:

"Hunters, after all, aren't cooks."

"...long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box."

On the word essence, being well-acquainted with HCB's writing, there's no disagreement, specially when he made comments like: "Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes."

But I am not sure he's talking about the same thing Anders is. HCB framed this in this context: "the significance of an event.", and/or situation.

The masses can still read his pictures for many reasons. First and foremost, because they were created for mass consumption in the mass media of his day, newspapers and magazines, not for elites.

Anders - " Well, if it is so, why should this not be a project accessible for all of us photographers when we shoot places in the beginning of the 21th century?"

Anders, I've never disagreed with the above, and I think if the concept acts as an attractant & motivates photographers to produce work, that's great.

I'm still thinking of poor, soulless, essence-less Brussels. I was there only as a young child, and it didn't leave any lasting memories. Hmm. Good thing their Tourist Office or Chamber of Commerce doesn't read PN.

antoniobassiphotography · September 1, 2010

Fred

did you see the latest comment I left on your portfolio? Do you relate to those words? It's interesting to me to see if I got certain aspects right or not. By the way, I like how you have organized your folio.

Norma Desmond · September 1, 2010

Yes, Antonio. I did and I appreciate your comment and very much appreciate your spending time looking at my photos in order to get something out of them. I'm not sure what you mean in your post above when you say "It's interesting to me to see if I got certain aspects right or not." Nothing you said in your comment on the portfolio strikes me as something you'd get right or not. As far as my photos, when people interpret what they think a subject of mine must be like or may be thinking or feeling, I rarely think of such comments in terms of right or wrong. I think of them in terms of what the viewer may have felt and what the photograph, and not necessarily what the subject of the photograph, stimulates. I think of photographs much more in terms of metaphor than accuracy, which is why doubt can play such a significant role. Perhaps an expression leaves some doubt and a representation doesn't.

AJHingel · September 1, 2010

Fred, it is always fairly limited what can be discussed in some seriousness here in a forum where the ping-pong is the rule. I agree with much what you write above - and yet I would in many cases formulate it differently to underline nuances of agreements.

Let me just respond to one of your first formulations cited below not necessarily in the right order

Fred wrote

"With a photograph, it is through seeing that I know. So I don't photograph essences"

"it's how to visualize something in such a way as to be expressive of what can be felt"

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For me, if we discuss this subject matter here it is because it is through seeing that we in photography approach "essence". How do we visualize in photography what is felt and how do we communicate this to the viewer. We are not looking for "knowing" what essence is (we are back to John's definition question which is a dead-end) but for seeing in order to provoke specific feelings (good or bad) representing what we call "essence".

The relationship between what is felt and what can be seen is the core element of our discussion - as far as I understand it.

When we have been through a longer exchange on the specific historical features of a city like Paris is was mainly to illustrate the case of the role of knowledge for "seeing" the city - but that discussion did not help us advancing in terms of approaching "essence".

On class affinities you are fully right on the case of Cartier-Bresson, but to explain his approach to photography I would believe that you have to start by his background and the lifelong economic security that it ensured. Class would always be somewhere if you wish to understand his photography. <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/images/cms/12641w_marcelduchamp_bridestrippedbare.jpg">Marcel Duchamp</a> is another with the same type of class background (his father was "notaire") with the same relation to Communism as so many other creative artist and co-started both the Dada movement and the surrealist movement. The relationship between class deserve a specific thread in my view.

Concerning Brussels even the Belgians would rather forget about it in the present negotiation on a new Government - so why not us here on PN. The city is for the moment the tumbling block put in place by the Flemish Community. It will take long time before Brussels recovers some of the attraction the city had through centuries.

Norma Desmond · September 1, 2010

Anders, I agree with your assessment of the discussion of cities.

I didn't discuss class affinities or Cartier-Bresson.

I do think all subjects, people, and cities have what you are calling an essence, unless "essence" just boils down to "I like it." Even ennui and mediocrity can be compellingly photographed. It again comes down to the difference between the photograph and what is being photographed. I don't generally like to be bored. But a photograph that expresses boredom in a compelling way and makes me, perhaps, empathetic with such boredom, can be very moving. Were I to meet a person who I thought had no soul,* I'd probably very much want to photograph him, or her. I think the photograph of a person who has "no soul" could have a lot of soul. ________________________________ *"No soul" is just an expression. I think if anyone has a soul, everyone does, just as I think if any city has an essence, every city has one, even if its essence is to be bland). When I talk of a person who has "no soul", it could mean they are bland or seem to have no heart or are seemingly empty of life, and it sometimes mean they seem to have no moral fiber.

AJHingel · September 1, 2010

Luis I agree that

What is it you think you are recognizing. How much of that is within you, and how much is in the subject. I suspect that a lot of it is one's Weltanschuung projected through a particular context.

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But as mentioned earlier, I believe, maybe wrongly, that such inner selfs, are shared between people to a certain degree. If it was only me and my "photographer gone wild" imagination and too strong feelings, it would only be of interest to me. It would be my problem only.

Your comments on class background are related to what Fred wrote and I think I answered above. Class - or whatever term you want to put on our backgrounds in terms of culture, wealth and security or in other terms - is in my eyes essential for understanding creative activities of also photographers.

I agree with you on the specific context of the photography of Cartier-Bresson:

"the significance of an event.", and/or situation.

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but they are not that different from what I try to describe. I have a passion concerning what I call "street-theatre". Situations and positioning of people in an urban setting that communicate social acts or non-acts in a cultural and physical context. My Hong Kong folder have many examples of such photos and they show, again in my eyes, something about the "essence" of that city.

"Hunters, after all, aren't cooks."

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I strongly disagree with you Luis. I consider myself as both - although not at the same time!

AJHingel · September 1, 2010

Fred

Were I to meet a person who I thought had no soul,* I'd probably very much want to photograph him, or her. I think the photograph of a person who has "no soul" could have a lot of soul.

</blockquote>

You are probably right on this and I would immediately translate into photographing cities. However, I come back to my observation that I simply cannot shoot scenes I don't see, in cities I don't feel - translated into that they do not have a soul or essence for me. Brussels might be a city where several of us share such feelings or lack of the same. I'm sure you could mention a couple of cities in the US with the same characteristics as you surely can think of people of that quality.

luis_g · September 1, 2010

Anders -

"Hunters, after all, aren't cooks."

I strongly disagree with you Luis. I consider myself as both - although not at the same time!"

[There's been a lot of confusion lately with attributing quotes. John did it, I did it with Arthur and Anders, now Anders is doing it with Fred and I and also with HCB & I. Must be a cosmic ripple...]

Anders, a small correction: That was a Cartier-Bresson quote. I didn't say it, only quoted him to illustrate that he spoke like a Surrealist Hunting Guide (and btw, I love to hunt and cook).

AJHingel · September 1, 2010

Confusion ! Maybe one day we should just sit down around a table with some wine and if you wish some bottles of beer and at least that type of confusion will be off the table in seconds.

Actually it is not that important who wrote what and who didn't as we are discussing the subjects and not the writers.

Julie H · September 2, 2010

To Pavlov's dogs, the sound of a bell meant food. It didn't mean food was coming or that there was food nearby, it *meant* food. They heard the bell; they salivated. Dogs that were not so conditioned by Pavlov did not "hear" food when they heard a bell. They just heard ... a ding-a-ling-ding.

It's not unusual to claim that acquired associations are often, maybe always, necessarily a part of visual representation. They are local to the person or groups of people that are conditioned in some particular way or degree.

Anders is "hearing" Paris; I'm just hearing a bell. I will assuredly have various responses to the literal content that I perceive in his pictures, but if I have no conditioning to "Paris" then I won't salivate when I hear his "bell." (Is that the most mixed metaphorish thing ever?) The issue here might be to whether we are confusing or not remembering to properly separate, in our thinking, the primary prompt (the food) from the secondary prompt (the bell). That we are forgetting that the affect (the sound of the bell) which is in the picture is not the thing itself which is not, literally, in the picture and with which some of us may have no association with the primary prompt.

Norma Desmond · September 2, 2010

Julie, yes. That's why I think an essence (the way it's being used here) is something greater than Paris rather than something contained in or by Paris. Essence has a sense of universality that might be read even by someone who's never visited Paris. A postcard is a reminder. But a photograph of the essence of Paris is beyond literal (even if it is literal at some level). I keep coming back to metaphor.

Doubt implies a negative. I am NOT certain. There is something missing, I know NOT what it is. To capture the essence of Paris, sure, it helps to know the history, the dates, the people, the wars, the monuments and what they represent, the culture, etc. But it may be in the combination of what Paris specifically is and what it is NOT so uniquely that its essence lies. If we can bring into play both the specifics of Paris with the universals that transcend Paris, I think we approach this essence that's being talked about. To communicate what Paris is, one may have to get specific about what Paris is but one might also have to address what is NOT unique about it, something that transcends Paris and that it participates in but is not unique to it.

luis_g · September 2, 2010

Julie - Well-said. My fat cat craves these treats that I call "Kitty Crack". I just noticed while slipping him a few that the bag says: "Just shake the bag and they'll come running". I do and he does.

_______________________________

I do not doubt that I am missing a lot of things, and often. What I photograph is relational, an interaction between what is before -- and behind -- the camera. A representation of a sometimes (but not always) momentary system in perpendicular time. No matter how much we may rail against auteurship, we can only photograph (or conceive of) our own Paris (which will have many things in common with that of others, of course, but will not be exactly the same).

I still harbor the same reservations about the notion of capturing "the essence" that I voiced earlier about that becoming a goal -- and a game.

AJHingel · September 2, 2010

Julie

To Pavlov's dogs, the sound of a bell meant food. It didn't mean food was coming or that there was food nearby, it *meant* food. They heard the bell; they salivated. Dogs that were not so conditioned by Pavlov did not "hear" food when they heard a bell. They just heard ... a ding-a-ling-ding.

</blockquote>

This reference, which is easy to make, is not helping us finding the answer to our question, unless you can inform us, and the dog in question, what is the ding-a-ling-ding in Paris that makes the photographer (me) shoot in that place and not in others. No, I think Fred is right

Essence has a sense of universality that might be read even by someone who's never visited Paris. A postcard is a reminder. But a photograph of the essence of Paris is beyond literal (even if it is literal at some level)

</blockquote>

I agree that essence is probably beyond literal, but if I use photography it is because I believe that certain features of the city, or any other city (with a "soul") is denouncing the place and would make reference to the city for anyone that has passed by. Many cities have such physical or social proxies to their specific - dare I say "essence" ? A simple and even simplistic example would be the water running every morning in the gutters of all streets of the city - another Haussmann innovation from the 1860s (see photo below).

Luis

No matter how much we may rail against auteurship, we can only photograph (or conceive of) our own Paris (which will have many things in common with that of others, of course, but will not be exactly the same

</blockquote>

As mentioned earlier, Luis, if you were right, I would not bother anybody with contributions to this discussion. It is only of interest if we believe that some of this "universal" quality of a place can be perceived by all with their eyes and spirits open to perceive it.

I think actually that this discussion might advance better if we stop discussing a specific city or place. Paris is too marked by postcards and history for it to be a good example for our discussion in my view. Is it not the case that also certain cities and places in the US are experienced by photographers in the same way I experience Paris (or Hong Kong, Rome, Tokyo)?<div></div>

AJHingel · September 2, 2010

<a href="../photo/11534252">A special gift to Julie</a> from Anders

Norma Desmond · September 2, 2010

The temptation is to photograph the Golden Gate Bridge in the fog, because that is so quintessentially San Francisco. That often makes pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge postcard-like. A more personal story of the Golden Gate Bridge could capture it's uniqueness, it's uniqueness for the photographer, and transcend that uniqueness when viewers are moved by the universality of the feelings being expressed. The particular, the Golden Gate Bridge, is then imbued with personal but also universal emotional content. The Golden Gate Bridge in the fog, on the other hand, is simply the collision of two universals, and universal clichés at that.

The risk of emphasizing "essence," I think, is the risk of distance, of that universality of recognition that avoids the particular and the personal. It's a risk of objectifying a city much like we've discussed objectifying people. When we shoot a homeless person as "homeless" instead of as individual, we often objectify that person. When we shoot a city as "the essence of the city," I think we often objectify the city as well. When it is honored and felt as the city of the photographer, the photograph can possess an individuality that can capture the intimate as well as the universal nature of a so-called essence.

It is often the bigger picture that misses the mark. Photographing "homelessness" often objectifies the individual being photographed. Photographing "San Francisco" often objectifies the city and winds up actually missing the essential. San Francisco is to me a city of liberation, somewhat symbolized by the freewheeling days of the 60s. (Of course, to others, that liberation was the beginning of the demise of the city they knew and loved.) Were I to photograph the Golden Gate Bridge, I'd use it to capture or I would somehow imbue the photograph with that sense of liberation. And I would do it with something personally meaningful and visually personal that I felt might also transcend its personal relationship to me.

luis_g · September 2, 2010

never mind...

AJHingel · September 2, 2010

While Julie is playing with my dog, Fred wrote:

The risk of emphasizing "essence," I think, is the risk of distance, of that universality of recognition that avoids the particular and the personal. It's a risk of objectifying a city much like we've discussed objectifying people.

</blockquote>

i think you are right that the concepts of objectism and subjectivism can be useful here. I would however think that the danger is more that the photographer subjectify the place to such a degree that it only communicates to himself - the subject here being the photographer him/herself. On the other hand if he objectifies it as you write the place looses its essence.

I don't think that the risk of emphasizing "essence" is the risk of distance. The risk is greater of being too intimate so that nothing understandable for others comes out of it. Maybe what is at stake is to find the balance between the two more than to go for subjectivism nor objectivism. I

AJHingel · September 2, 2010

Luis, are you in New Mexico too?

luis_g · September 2, 2010

Anders - "Luis, are you in New Mexico too?"

hahahaha....but, seriously...

(At great risk of being tagged as a beer-seeking, unguided cruise missile...)

I have been to New Mexico many times, and come to understand first hand why so many artists, writers, photographers and even Jung ended up there, if only to visit. If passion, vision, and love were rational, New Mexico would be insignificant and forgettable. However, those are not the rules of my universe. Parts of me have stayed in New Mexico, and as long as I live, parts of it will reside in my heart.

Essence? As a sage said: Anything looked at long enough becomes everything.

Dang it, now if I could only learn to work that friggin GPS gizmo so it could guide me to pork rinds...

AJHingel · September 2, 2010

I respect that view. If <a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WsE6M_RjBIY/TEZ2ojKqUrI/AAAAAAAAbgM/C5lQNeQv240/s1600/black_iris+georgia+okeefe.jpg">Georgia O'Keefe</a> ended up there, New Mexico is in the heart of all of us.

Norma Desmond · September 2, 2010

Something significant could be captured in any place and be seen by any viewer, even one who hadn't visited the place. I don't know whether that would be essence or not. Probably not, according to this thread.

New Mexico, Paris, San Francisco . . . special places. So?

We recently had some discussions about photographing with interest even a generically good-looking and perhaps seemingly boring Abercrombie and Fitch type guy or gal. What about those sorts of places? The places a lot of people live in that don't immediately have much flavor or character, places that don't attract tourists, opera companies, baseball teams, maybe not even street gangs or much graffiti. I'll make the claim that there would be things worth photographing and so-called essences worth looking for. It would be a challenge. And it could still be seen and understood to some great degree even by viewers who'd never been there.

There are small, valley towns, up and down the west coast, lazy, probably appearing very inessential and even boring to people who may just stop to get gas and get out, towns that don't have the cachet of San Francisco or Santa Fe. Each of those apparently bland towns has an essence. They would be much like many of the unassuming and non-extraordinary men I've been fortunate enough to get to photograph.

Such things as essence and significance can be hunted for, sought out, discovered, and also created. Anywhere and at any time.

AJHingel · September 2, 2010

I fully agree with you Fred. This is what would be the ultimate objective for all of us. To dig up this very special thing that characterize a place, boring or worth dying for. All places have such essences. At least that could be the working thought (hypothesis) for photographers.

When I write that I know of places where I don't feel a thing and I draw the conclusions that these are places without soul, probably I just admit my incapability of feeling their specificity and quality - their essence. When I feel strongly inspired by places like those I have mentioned it is surely for me a privilege to know and shoot in such places, but they represent maybe only the easy side of photography: to shoot in places that immediately inspire me. Not by chance, they inspire me for other things than photography: reflection, painting, reading, studying, writing, listening to music, creativity at work etc.

This being said, we then have still the key question to answer. How do we learn to feel and see essence also in places that at a first glance are without interest and without "essence"? How do we find essence in places that seem to be without? What is the essence of a dull place? There is indeed hope even for Brussels!

luis_g · September 2, 2010

Anders - "I fully agree with you Fred. This is what would be the ultimate objective for all of us."

I reject the idea of one ultimate objective for all of us. This, in my opinion, trivializes the idea of art (though not that of photography).

I don't believe there are dull subjects, only minds unable to interact with them at that time & place, for whatever reason.

Anders - "There is indeed hope even for Brussels!"

Wonders never cease. :-)

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