Polish

luis_g · February 13, 2011

[There are things I don't want to know. Or need to. I revel in the ecstasies of knowing as much as the next person, but life is limited. It's always this or that.]

___________________

"Guerrero’s picture, distributed around the world by Reuters, was subject to much scrutiny and was the subject of much discussion prior to publication because in the lower left corner of the picture’s foreground is a body part that medical experts identified as a femur.

In Western media, such issues are historically handled as taste concerns —"

____________________

If everything is taste, then, like the ether of earlier physics, it loses not just meaning, but usefulness. It is true that it has its charms. It's democratic. We all have it, as does every viewer. Even my cat, Bill, when fed something not to his taste, goes to great theatrical lengths to express his being offended by making the bury-the-(unpolished) turd in the litter motions 360 degrees around the bowl. Taste puts us all on the same plane. On which the ignorant and the illiterate are basically the same as the expert, experienced, reasonable, learned, etc. They just have different tastes. It's a simulation of an equitable and egalitarian connection where there is, at best, a tenuous one. It also levels everything it's applied to.

In Western culture, at one time baiting bears, gladiators going at it, public humiliation, torture, drawing and quartering and burning at the stake were considered tasteful.

____________________________

"We don't need another hero We don't need to know the way home All we want is life beyond the thunderdome"

--- Thunderdome

____________________

Taste is also consensual. It can tell us what art is and isn't. What some might think utterly tasteless is tasteful and award-winning in some circles.

http://www.pinkcoyote.net/creativegrooming.html

____________________

Taste has, like the buds in our tongues, an organic-sensory basis, it has a few parameters, and tells us when something is comestible, rotten, or perhaps poisonous. In terms of other choices it helps us greatly with the approach/avoid paradigm. When someone disagrees with us, we can point a finger and say "He has no taste", or just a huffy "how tasteless!".

_____________________________

"the creation of objects out of snow must be tasteful and should reflect the academic mission of the College."

Ripon College's tasteful snow art policy (seriously) after the scandal caused by...

"A large nude woman was created - her genitalia were even dyed red via Kool-aid," says De War. "The students who created the work stated that they believed it to be art, and while I can accept that to some degree, the work was not done with true artistic intent..."

[Then there was the sculpture of Lincoln made to look like a giant penis. Tasteless.]

______________________

Taste basically offends or pleases individuals. While that is of value, it has its limits. It may be all there is for someone, but is that all there is for everyone?

(Speaking of 'polish', Andreas Gursky's work came to mind...)

Norma Desmond · February 13, 2011

"I have a taste for experts" is pushing it too far. As Luis has said, it makes "taste" meaningless. Now we can simply substitute taste for anything and everything human. I have a taste for breathing?

Yes, I do know that artists can be experts. I was thinking of them: the photographers, painters, and architects who I've learned from over the years. The passing down of their knowledge to me is NOT their passing along of taste. Knowledge is something else. So is craft. Wouter approached the idea of craft in talking about a photo being technically superb. That Ansel Adams was an expert in the darkroom is not a matter of taste, whether you like what he did or not. If you don't think Adams knew what he was doing in the darkroom, you're wrong. You can learn that you're wrong. Yes. Very anti-democratic. (Thanks, Luis.) Very totalitarian. Fred, the dictator.

The artist expert doesn't necessarily rely on the field of knowledge. So I'm an expert, and some kind of an expert even on my own photo of Mark. Yet, I'm confident in saying there's a lot "about" it I don't "know." That's probably because I'm an expert* in photography. So I know the shortcomings of aboutness and knowledge.

*I'm really not an expert. I probably won't ever be. But I'm expert enough for the present discussion.

The viewer can look to me for imagery, signs, signifiers, symbols, ability to use my technique in an integrated way, etc. He cannot and should not look to me for the kinds of answers that could answer many of the questions or statements in the comments on my photo of Mark. Sure, he can ask if I put that orange there or if it just happened to be there and I may or may not answer that.

Sure, there might be some kind of stuff to know "about" the picture of Mark. Fred had never met Mark, Mark was not there to be photographed but agreed to a quick one before he left for the day, Fred likes redheads, Fred likes guys with their shirts off, this is a Victorian from the late 1800s. But, what does the orange represent? Is it a story about the lady of the house being in love with Mark? Is Mark seducing me, you? Puh-lease. Those questions are not about knowledge and they're not for me to answer.

If I am an "expert" of any caliber, maybe you will expect that my photos will be decent or maybe you've come to expect certain kinds of things of my work. But you cannot expect knowledge about many of the significant aspects of what I'm doing. My purview is questions as much as answers, possibility more than probability, usually metaphor and not accuracy. I am not the kind of expert who is here to answer your questions.

As I said way above, the joy of photographs is that they can be both so literal and so non-literal. They are about and they also are just are what they are. Maybe some of what a photo is about comes from reading between the lines. And maybe some of what a photo is doesn't. At some point you have to stop reading.

Norma Desmond · February 13, 2011

Hmmm . . . still thinking . . .

To me, it would demean expertise to make it a matter of taste. It would demean craft. Demean significance. It would demean hard-wiring. It would demean cultural and genetic influence. It would demean group consciousness. It would demean at least some concepts of ethics. All of which effect perceptions of art and are not about taste.

How is an expert determined? Not by my taste, or your taste. It may very well be, at least in part, by an agreement of members in the same field. George Dickie's pivotal aesthetic theory suggested that (an unfairly brief summary) art was decided by the institutions of the art world. While I think there are many competing and better theories of art, this one is an important one to go into the mix precisely because it recognizes the importance of expertise, the (in some ways) lack of importance of every single individual's taste who decides to look at a painting or photograph, and the significance of objective in addition to subjective criteria when it comes to art.

Of course, there are those of us who are more inclined to listen to the experts and those of us who are more inclined to be suspicious of or even reject what they say. And there may be some taste involved in which way go on that. But our recognition of expertise is not a matter of taste.

Wouter Willemse · February 13, 2011

Fred, for what it's worth, my remark on taste in selecting experts is what you said in the last paragraph of your 12:03 post. So, not at all intended to minimise expertise, but more the role you allow it to have for yourself.

Norma Desmond · February 13, 2011

"So, not at all intended to minimise expertise, but more the role you allow it to have for yourself."

I understand what you're saying, Wouter. But what this means to me is that expertise as a concept itself is beyond taste. Then, once we understand expertise and who is an expert, we may decide (partially by using taste, partially being influenced by things like culture and genetics) on its role for ourselves. (When I say expertise is beyond taste, I'm not saying it's better than or more important than. I'm saying it's very different from taste. And I'm definitely saying, contrary to Julie, it is NOT taste all the way down.)

Norma Desmond · February 13, 2011

Julie is right, though, we have pretty much hashed this taste stuff out before and I'm not sure how fruitful further discussions will be at this point, though I certainly am open to hearing more ideas if folks want to go there.

Meanwhile, we've got knowledge, aboutness, polish, and specificity of message dangling before our eyes and those may be more ripe for the picking.

Wouter Willemse · February 13, 2011

As with every discussion on this topic so far, I leave more confused than I came ;-) Maybe next time!

Norma Desmond · February 13, 2011

Wouter, I understand! The most important thing for me is that it gets me thinking. Confusion is better than ennui. My discovery has been that Philosophy will only get me so far (to the point of confusion, even anxiety and frustration). My answer to that has been photography. Where I don't have to give a clear answer and can even commit to being ambiguous at times. Making a photograph can be to engage and even confront these things we're talking about without explaining or even trying to resolve them. Or not. In other words, this can all be put to work.

johne37179 · February 13, 2011

Julie: You raise an old issue that I'm not sure will ever be resolved, but is always worth exploring. I think a lot has to do with how you approach photography. Over 50 years ago when I started taking photographs I thought everything was about the camera. (I knew very little about the darkroom.) After majoring in art (along with two science majors), I thought that the camera was of almost no consequence and a pinhole in a box could do just fine. Years later as a working photographer (with some superb instruction from a magical photographer from Yosemite) I thought the darkroom was about 1/3 of of the art, the creative mind 1/3 and the camera 1/3. With the advent of digital photography and the ability to get photons, pixels and ones and zeros to dance together, I'm not sure what the mix is.

I'm kind of back to the days of art school where you create an image and then gather the tools needed to execute that vision. With contemporary high end digital cameras, superb software and powerful CPUs damn near anything and everything is possible -- but sometimes it is still turds all the way to the bottom.

aplumpton · February 13, 2011

Definitions of taste and expert (or expertise) are easy to come by, even in the old shorter OED from our formative times. But like civil laws, they vary in their interpretation and application, and so, like Julie, i'd rather be hesitant to go there. In any case, they are often interpretations that are subjective, circumstantial or with set conditions (much unlike art itself) and generally without unquestioned meaning.

The subject being polish, I agree that the turning point between rejection of the work in progress and the pursuit of polishing can well be the "fatal flaw" that Julie tentatively put forward, which I think is arguably very important in its implication. At some point, no more polishing of our favourite old brown shoes will be enough to create the desired result. Time to start over.

The trouble is, that we are, as photographers, often so attracted to our own works and (perhaps even worse) our manner of thinking about them, that it is indeed hard to step back and decide if that turning point has been reached, or not, or whether the chosen path of creating an image is really us or what we desire it to be. Rejection in the latter case should take place at an early stage, rather than later. That would seem to me to require some courage and insight (rather, insight and courage), but also is desirably followed by an alternative approach. It may be described as a polishing of the photographer's viewpoint rather than that which is his recently drafted image.

johne37179 · February 13, 2011

Arthur makes a great point. We should be our own greatest critic. If an image is not going to come close to our vision (within the reach of the technology), it ought to be attacked by the delete key. From time to time there is that inspirational accident. Even in those cases there should be some vision of the end product. We can all criticize the vision and whether or not it was worth doing in the first place. If we establish high standards for our own work, we will do less polishing.

Alex_Es · February 13, 2011

Picture of the Week.

Alex_Es · February 13, 2011

Picture of the Week.

luis_g · February 13, 2011

Polishing is neither good nor bad per se. Sure, it can be overdone, under-done, applied to a picture that's unworthy (the quintessential turd), etc. But there's nothing intrinsically right or wrong with polish. On this line of thought I submit Andreas Gursky's work for consideration:

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2001/gursky/

http://nymag.com/arts/art/reviews/31785/

Another photographer who used polish well and often was Gene Smith.

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/smith/smith_wake.html

Unpolished?

Neil Selkirk said she printed her negs dead straight, and her polish was poured into the heart & the human engineering...

http://diane-arbus-photography.com/

This guy's vision was polished, and little else.

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/K/klein/klein_dance.html

Julie H · February 14, 2011

"Polishing is neither good nor bad per se." Absolutely, Luis. As I said in my OP, "I ... no problem with "polishing" -- it's the turd part that bothers me." Thank you for the links to illustrate, too.

John Ellingson's bit, "sometimes it is still turds all the way to the bottom" got me thinking about degrees of turdness. How and where does one find a non-turd? Is there a pure non-turd or only degrees of purity? I started by trying to crudely enumerate the steps of making a picture (arguing and disagreeing with myself throughout ... as usual):

1. see [ideally, something fresh, not imitative, that grabs/holds one's attention for (with or without?) whatever reason.]

2. pre-visualize if you're into that (is this pre-polishing? does this distort or limit one's awareness?)

3. compose; shoot

4. evaluate the proofs or RAW files. Try to remember (match) or don't try to remember (take the image on its own terms).

5. polish

At 1, one, theoretically has infinite possiblities. One could, theoretically choose anything. One must choose. Go this way and not that. Doors close. At/if 2, distortion, intent may be introduced. At 3 many, many more doors are closed (decisions, decisions, decisions ...) Bang, bang, bang. The channel narrows, focus increases until ONE particular patch of the fabric/web is taken and the rest is not. Many closed doors; a few chosen ones left open.

At 5 (polishing) one makes more open those doors which one has (carefully) chosen to keep open; wider, larger, more inviting, more ... open. One may also close off any previously closed doors that are leaking.

I haven't answered my question. Where is the non-turd? I think it's somewhere in an adjective I used in 1, above. "Fresh." I want something fresh, (and I do not mean post-digestive fresh and steaming). Nourishing, and nutritious at a minimum; mind-exploding at a maximum. I want *enough* doors to be open, I want to go somewhere but don't want to be forced; a door or way to a door, not a route to an end.

Where a photographer doesn't know or doesn't have anything in mind when openings and closing are happening -- or knows there's not much there and tries to fake it -- I feel like I'm being conned. Post-digested, used-up, been-there-done-that stuff is being put on my plate.

What a muddled post ... here are a few Famous Photographer quotes that I think sort of echo what I'm saying. Believe it or not, I found the first one after I had mentally sketched out all of the above. I love it when this happens. In this, Joel Meyerowitz, in an interview, is answering the question, "What do you hope for when you say the work teaches you?":

"Well, you hope that by working -- working out, working toward that -- you'll produce an opening, you'll stumble through your senses upon a photograph that's instructive -- a doorway -- something more than just beautiful, or well-made, or a combination of those elements that are photographically interesting -- something that you can't quite handle that possesses you, something simple and visible but filled with mystery and promise -- the mystery of "How did I know to make that?" "

</blockquote>

Here's W. Eugene Smith polishing:

"... I absolutely despise printing. I look at the negative, and I look at the print, I come face to face with all the mistakes I made. In the darkroom it is my problem to overcome the mistakes. I know the print I want, and know I'll probably get it, but it's sheer drudgery."

</blockquote>

And a little Jerry Uelsmann to rub it in:

"When I'm at my worst, I run things through a prescribed ritual. It's like juggling. When I'm at my best, I can develop a very nice relationship with an image as it emerges. I listen to what it's telling me and begin with just the barest of clues to see what might work, what might happen."

</blockquote>

For Luis, because I think he'll like it, back to Meyerowitz:

"I feel Aeolian. I'm a harp: the wind is blowing through me; it's making music, on its own. ... It should just waft through you -- a fragrance -- effortless."

</blockquote>

LOL. As if it were ever that easy. But I like hearing it anyway.

luis_g · February 14, 2011

I did like the Aeolian Meyerowitz, thank you. It sounds easy, but getting to that state may take a little work.

So, we're back to what makes a great picture, complete with 5-step program. Yikes. First, what level are we talking about here? A personal non-turd? Or a global one? Is this about finding the non-turd in the take, or about making one? I disagree that all the polish happens at the end (5), or that nothing precedes step #1...

I don't know if I'd be talking about turds and openings in the same paragraph, but that's just me.

Julie - "Fresh." I want something fresh, (and I do not mean post-digestive fresh and steaming). Nourishing, and nutritious at a minimum; mind-exploding at a maximum. I want *enough* doors to be open, I want to go somewhere but don't want to be forced; a door or way to a door, not a route to an end."

Smells like Modernism and candy. Fresh = New, Mind-exploding = Spectacular. There's lots of other conceptual spaces to be besides those and making turds. Just sayin'.

Norma Desmond · February 14, 2011

Julie, this is wonderful because I can't really relate to any of your last post, either what you say or the quotes. Well, maybe a little Meyerowitz. So, my guess is that it's partly a matter of the words I would choose or the descriptions, or else we're on very different paths, as it should be.

I don't see my own process as a matter of turd acceptance and rejection and as a matter of degrees of purity. I see it as a balance and tension among expressions, ideas, visual elements . . . You and most of these quotes seem to be emphasizing the "good" (non-turd) photo as the goal. That would be very dangerous for me. If my goal is any one thing like freshness, which you emphasize, I get in trouble. There are too many pictures with too many goals. There is no magic bullet. There's no one description with that one secret (or non-secret) ingredient (freshness) that can cover all the photos I make and the way I make them.

As to my process, I often (not always) imagine and think along with the early acts of seeing, and I usually do that in my mind in bed before a shoot. When I know I have a shoot set up with someone, for example, I excite myself with possibilities before the shoot, thinking about the person, location, gestures. That's usually just grist for the mill. Sometimes I will come up with something specific that I'll carry out. More often, I will throw it all into a pot like a stew and add to taste the next day as new visions and situations come. So, I'd definitely want to start with No. pre-1 in a lot of cases (though not always, of course), which would include that time for fantasizing about what's going to happen.

I can see where this battle (it sounds like a battle you're describing) between the turd and the non-turd you're seeking would be either exhausting or a challenge and could be an effective way of working.

As for polish, sometimes the process feels much more like an infecting and a dirtying than a polishing, depending on where I start and where I wind up going. I do a lot of de-sanitizing because of the way my mind and emotions tend to work.

[sorry, Luis, I took quite some time thinking and writing my post and you got in before me and there's a bunch of repetition, but I'll leave it.]

aplumpton · February 14, 2011

Fresh is arguably non-polished. With the exception of a minor amount of dodging and burning in the darkroom to enhance what I perceived (the B&W images), these images were stumbled upon during my perambulations - looking for things that are perhaps unique and fresh to my experience, but, as in these cases, not theatrically or deterministically wrought from the subject matter.

Does that eliminate "polish", or can polish also describe something we do over time to our habit or manner of viewing things, that later allows us to transfer that to our images? It may, but I do also produce a lot of turds that way, which I wouldn't want to submit to any polishing (the presence of fatal flaws).

http://www.photo.net/photo/11472745

http://www.photo.net/photo/10193910

http://www.photo.net/photo/11572199

Norma Desmond · February 14, 2011

Arthur, have you ever seen good acting (theatricality)? Each night the performance is can be fresh. And that's just a baseline, the performance better be a lot more things than fresh.

Do you think stumbling on something (did you really "just stumble on it" or did it stumble you, or were you predisposed to stumble on this kind of thing) is really that non-determinisitic?

aplumpton · February 14, 2011

What came together in the first image ("....45") other than this "fresh" discovery of something that made my senses become aroused? It was made quite spontaneously as a self portrait and is difficult to say in retrospect what attracted me to the scene (of course, the scene itself was not static as I descended these flights of stairs), but I later related my choice of the centering of the shadow to perhaps emphasise that it was a self portrait, with a central subject (I also appreciate the tension of central placement). The presence of the stairs are symbolic of the future choices in life and the brightness of that hope (or perhaps those stairs already climbed in glory - but not likely in my case), whereas the play of angular shadows and the large grey mass to the right (simple stone railing distorted in apparent size by the 21 mm Yashica lens), also enhanced by the IR film, can be thought of as an eventuality of death (a casket?) or of those things that limit our mobility in life, including our choices. Freshly perceived, but perhaps unconsciously polished in the mind at exposure? Or am I just polishing my perception at a later stage....

aplumpton · February 14, 2011

Fred, we crossed posts. As I mentioned, I think that the stumbling upon something new (an exploration part of photography) doesn't avoid our prior experience and mental pre-dispositions to making images, which are no doubt invoked as we spontaneously react to a fresh perception of subject matter. As someone who also enjoys theatrical or deterministic image-making (the scene to be photographed is but a stage of elements, to which others can be added, subtracted), the process of that can be either accomplished some time before, or, as you mention, can be modified "on the fly", by the actor or the photographer. That, I quite agree, can also be called fresh.

Norma Desmond · February 14, 2011

Arthur, I tend to think of it as a continuum. I don't see this stuff as a dichotomy between, on the one hand, deterministic photos (and I think more discussion would be warranted on why some amount of staging is deterministic -- that's not how I'd describe it) and, on the other hand, non-deterministic or more spontaneous photos. Is there a clear line of distinction? t seems to me that all photos have elements of each and the pendulum just swings around grabbing from each. So much of my "staging" is done in the manner you describe stumbling across things spontaneously. A lot of my "staged" photos are quite spontaneous in their creation. In other words, what you stumble on and shoot, I stumble on and stage and then shoot. The photo of Mark is a good example. That was one of my more stumbled-on experiences. Happened in the course of about 30 seconds. He walked in dressed like that with two oranges (complete stumble). I asked if I could take his picture, asked him to put one orange down on the stand and start peeling the other one, got down on one knee and shot. I neither planned nor thought about why I was asking for these things. They were as spontaneous as quickly setting a shutter speed or an F-stop. I couldn't tell you where determinism ended and spontaneity began.

Because I'm somewhat predisposed to seeing things theatrically, and I like exploring that in photos, this photo probably comes across as much more "determined" than it actually was. As I said in my previous post, some of my photos come with a lot more planning than that, a lot more forethought. I don't know that anyone could tell the difference by looking at them and I don't know that I find either method more determined. I think some of my more planned photos have a much more spontaneous look and feel than the photo of Mark, which was more spontaneously shot. I've taken quick street grabs, only a few of which have made it to my PN portfolio, which are about as spontaneous as they come but which I think show more determinism (more of my proclivities and predispositions) than some of these more staged photos.

Julie H · February 14, 2011

Arthur, I wonder if we're having one of those language issues -- because I don't see fresh as having any particular polarity with polished; it's fresh when it's unpolished and fresh when it's polished. The freshness is in the turd, not the polish.

To all (Luis, Fred, and Arthur) I'm wondering if my previous post left out something of my ponderings so I'll back up a bit. What I was thinking about did start with the "where and when does turdiness get in?" and I started thinking about the light in Meyerowitz's Cape Light pictures. It is ... exquisite. Luscious. Perfect. But, it always seems to me, entirely unreal in the sense that the light doesn't look like that. It's perfect because, by making the light that slightly elevated pastel that permeates everything just enough but never too much, Meyerowitz has, in my opinion, brought the nonvisual into the visual. The colors convey the feel, the scent of Cape light. So I was thinking about when he knew that this was the right thing to do (re polishing); before, during, after and comparing that to the worst kind of polish-failure where you see a photographer pretty much spray painting his picture with random saturation. Can you see what I'm trying to sort out? In Meyerowitz's case, the polish was very integral to the making of the picture which means that polishing can be generative, not just pure (finishing) craft. Geez, I think I'm making this even more confused ...

To Fred's description of his ways of working, I wonder if there is a fundamental difference in what we do (as I think he's suggesting). I can't think about a picture until I'm in it; until it's happening to me. And, now that I think about those happenings, they seem to always be entirely un-literal, nonverbal, even animal-ish in their attraction. Which means, that, by definition, I won't be able to tell you about it. It's just ... an immediate and visceral response to interactions between/among stuff and between/among myself. And you're right that it is a struggle; it's delicate, ephemeral, like getting the perfect radio signal only when you stand in exactly the right spot. To repeat what I said already, I can't do it, can't see it, can't feel it until and I'm in it and only when I'm in it (co-present). All of my composites are made by feel; all of my non-composites are made by feel and further, I think maybe what I go for, what turns me on, is much ... smaller or more localized (?) than what you go for ... maybe? For example, this Meyerowitz description sounds very like the way I respond to things:

"Last year, on the first night I was here, I saw that [blow-up swimming] raft against the side of the building. I caught my breath when I saw it. "Oh, that blue!" I didn't say "Look at the blue raft," I saw pure color. I saw the blueness itself. It was radiant. It had depth. It had everything that I might possibly compress in my whole being about blue. It was only blue that was there. ... "

</blockquote>

Also, if any of you would be interested, I would love to hear your comments on a description of the process of the making of one of Andrew Wyeth's paintings that I have posted on my blog (from last June). It's very detailed, and I'd be very curious to hear where/if his method seems like or unlike your own (admitting that a painter has different options). To me, his process is much more cerebral, much, much longer than mine. I don't do long very well. I do intense. I fear losing it too much to wait that long. I also don't do -- and don't particularly like -- complicated pictures, though his ends up being satisfyingly local, after all. Here is the link to the description. As I said, I'd love to hear your comparative reactions to it:

<a href="http://unrealnature.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/gestation/">http://unrealnature.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/gestation/</a>

Thanks.

Norma Desmond · February 14, 2011

"So I was thinking about when he knew that this was the right thing to do" --Julie

Just a quick reaction to this one thing, which I do think is pivotal for this thread. Meyerowitz knew (or felt) and the guy who did the spray painting you don't like also knew (or felt) and it might have felt as right to the one guy as it did to the other. How we feel about what we do only carries us so far. How it appears is a very different matter.

aplumpton · February 14, 2011

Yes, the dividing line is not always so distinct. The "reverie", "free flight" and "self-portrait no. 2" were also all accomplished within that very brief period, no more than a maximum of 30 seconds. They might look more considered than that, and if so, it may be the reasons I mentioned in regard to preparedness for spontaneous events. Earlier on, I might not have responded with the same freshness of approach, or assurance of what I was responding to, as my experience and approach may not then have allowed it.

There are other images that are definitely planned, both some time before and during the period just before exposure. One of the pleasures of photography is that nothing prevents us from creating a scene, adding or subtracting elements (solid or light) within it. Much successful art is done that way. I know of one painter who is well known in Eastern Canada, who spends the better part of six months on each of his hyperrealistic paintings and have visited museums where his various sketches and considerations are shown as he goes through the various stages before putting paint to canvass. We know that the same is true in most creative exercises (poetry, opera, instrumental music, novels, research papers and other compositions) and each involves a good portion of deterministic creation as well as the spontaneous input. So the question is, why not in photography? We need not be a slave to the fact that the capture of an image on sensor or silver emulsion requires only a split second. A lot of photography seems to ignore the theatrical or deterministic approach

Coming back to the OP, The fresh reaction mentioned by Julie, and which I have shown in some of my own work, is interesting I believe because it is often (but not exclusively) spontaneous and thereby involves less polishing and avoids the issue of over-polishing (unless we accept as I alluded to before that an over-polishing already exists inthe photographer's head, in his manner of approach, and is implemented when he conceives his image. That is possible). The idea that emerges in the manner of a few symbols and forms on two dimensional paper is the pure reaction of the photographer to the subject matter and how it has arranged itself (with the keen eye of the photographer responsible for "stumbling" upon it, in a particular chosen field of view), or how the photographer has spontaneously arranged it (as your spontaneious use of the two oranges and a low view point in a particular direction). The limited degree of determinism or theatre is spontaneous, as opposed to the pre-planned and more lengthy deterministic approach, as for the painter (in the instance Alex Colville) I mentioned.

Sign In

Polish

Recommended Posts

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

Create an account

Sign in