Exaggeration and Authenticity

Julie H · February 26, 2011

So, John, how many commas are there in Ulysses?

fate_faith_change_chains · February 26, 2011

<a href="http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/ulysses/commas.html">Too many</a>.

jtk · February 26, 2011

Julie, I think there's a difference between Ulysses and posts on these threads. Don't you? Have you had trouble with Ulysses? I certainly have...it takes a lot of commitment.

One great thing about books is that you can read them anywhere and take plenty of time. Bad writing online often neglects that kind of difference.

Are you and Phylo suggesting that big books are too much to deal with?

jtk · February 26, 2011

Perhaps individual photographs are inherently exaggerations, moments pretending to summarize larger truths?

I'll bet someone could assemble a photo essay that would correspond to this writing (shared as well in NY Times 2/24). But unless it involved quite a few photos I suspect it would wildly distort the heart of the written story...would inherently exaggerate. Avedon made a good stab at this in "Nothing Personal"...which included his photo essay on a mental hospital. Avedon was, like most other great photographers, a concise writer.

http://www.bookbrowse.com/excerpts/index.cfm/book_number/2526/page_number/1/index.cfm?fuseaction=printable&book_number=2526

Wouter Willemse · February 26, 2011

Darn, I finally had my thoughts a bit sorted again on the subject, and sufficient time to enter the debate, turns out the thread has degraded into this semi-usual.... well, whatever this is.

Doesn't the combination of authentic and exeggeration have a lot to do with the artist using them? I find some people can be authentic and exeggerated, and they loose authenticity when trying to act normal. So, to go back to this thread start: actual accuracy in order to be more accurate in your photographic portrayal of something, isn't this where the accurateness is the artist's vision - which may be exeggerated, understated or anything else based on the ideas the artist holds?

I actually was more thinking in movies, but over-the-top violent movies like Sin City, Starship Troopers and Robocop actually have their message in the exeggeration. Remove the overdone violence and imagery, and they'd become less authentic.

Photographically, more a question... would one count the exeggerated perspective and sense of size often the result of using wide (or ultra wide) angle lenses too, within the scope of this discussion?

It may be me, but it seems for many the style of photography at the moment: wide angles, high saturation. In many situations, I find it not authentic. Not because it 'warps' the normal view we'd have on the subject would we see it ourselves, but more because the exeggerated perspective does not add anything (nor the added colours, the proverbial "pop"). It does not alter the story with that extra bit.

I think, more than many other 'concepts', exeggeration must communicate its own reason to exist (and understatements too), else they fail as a tool. I relate them mostly to irony, sarcasm... And, maybe a stretch, but I think if you can only use these tools proper if you are authentic in your vision.

Norma Desmond · February 26, 2011

Wouter, yes, I can relate to your examples of the movies. Is it similar to what I was saying about photographing drag queens, who can be by nature exaggerated?

I do think the use of lens to exaggerate falls within this discussion. I agree with you, there's good and bad exaggeration. It's a tool that can be used well or poorly, be used in a cliché manner or a trendy manner or be used in a more individual way.

I understand what you're saying about exaggeration communicating its own reason to exist, but I'd add to that. Exaggeration (like blur, high contrast, grain, etc.) works when it integrates into the photo. In other words, it somehow relates with the subject matter, the perspective, the tone of voice of the photo, etc. Though it sometimes does "communicat[e] its own reason," sometimes it doesn't need to make itself that clear. It may simply work in the photo without hinting at why. And sometimes, exaggeration will not be evident to the viewer (only the photographer will know he exaggerated). So, in some cases it is meant to communicate something other than itself and not attract attention to itself or even be noticed.

Which brings me back to your point about accurateness being the artist's vision. Yes, on one level, sure. But, I find there are times when I aim to achieve a more universal accurateness when it's not so much about my own personal vision. So, for instance, today I went to a rally in support of the Union workers in Wisconsin. Were I planning to try to get a couple published (and I really wasn't but I still carried that thought with me almost as practice for an actual assignment), I might have wanted to maintain a kind of accuracy that would not only be true to my vision and perspective but that I felt others there would really relate to as well. My goal might not have been to put a new or personal twist on anything but rather to have others who were there nod their heads in agreement. Kind of like, oh yes, I saw that, too.

Do you find yourself (whether conscious of it at the time or not) bouncing back and forth between a more personal perspective and a more objective or universal perspective?

Wouter Willemse · February 26, 2011

Fred, good points. Certainly agree on the integration, indeed.

I can understand your point on trying to achieve a more universal accurateness. But, would you use exeggaration in those shots? Thinking out loud...Would I try to find original or unexpected viewpoints or angles? Search a exeggarated viewpoint with a extreme choice of lens? I'd be hesitant, if it had to appeal wider. For example, a wide-angle shot of a rallying person or group, taken from a low angle. It would give the protesters a more heroic stature, make themlarger than life, probably - but in that, wouldn't it loose some of its universal appeal? It would transmit my view loud and clear. Isolate a face in the crowd with a specific expression... or would that loose the context of the size of the rally? Would the facial expression reveal my view (since it won't be a random chosen one)?

I guess the standard journalistic-ethical question to ask - are we reporting, or interpreting? How biassed do you let yourself be? In my view, understatement and exeggaration only fit in if you accept you are in a way biassed. I've never done any work like this, so I sure have no answers, just some thoughts. And possibly I stick too much to an example here.

Me myself, I do not really run into the choice between personal or more universal. My normal choice of subjects does not really call for it, nor do I have the intent to be published to a wider audience. My photos are really just what I saw, so in that sense very personal. If there is a more universal appeal in them, it's a pure accident ;-)

Norma Desmond · February 26, 2011

"would you use exeggaration in those shots?"

I might. I did take one shot from quite a ways back wanting the crowd to seem a bit small compared to the great City Hall in front of us. Indeed, it was a small crowd for a San Francisco protest, and I imagine many were a little disappointed by that. So I think this kind of exaggeration might provide that kind of "accuracy."

When I shoot at such events, I usually do isolate faces in the crowd. Mostly because I am so inclined toward faces. But also, I find the occasional face-in-the-crowd portrait a nice punctuation mark to the bigger picture. As a matter of fact, I think a few isolated faces helps the larger-context shots achieve an appropriate sense of scale. Many who go to these kinds of rallies do take them personally and are personally moved by them, so I think these close-ups can provide a nice sense of empathy.

I'm one who believes that every photograph has a bias, and this is all a matter of degree.

I guess in at least some of my portraits, I do switch back and forth between the personal and the more universal, when I want to try take into account the subject's view of himself and perhaps others' view of him. Sometimes I don't care at all, but there are certainly occasions when I want the subject to be recognizable and, even more strongly sometimes, readily familiar, to those who know him.

aplumpton · February 26, 2011

Do exaggeration and authenticity have to reside on the same continuous line between a possible end point of exaggeration = folly-wildness-overstatement and that of authenticity = sincerity-reality-purity of approach and statement? I know the use of these sub-terms are arguable, but in considering whether there exists or not a line that connects exaggeration and authenticity I am not sure that we need to think of them as being interconnected.

I am inclined to think of exaggeration as being a circle, a part only of which interacts with a part of the circle containing the property or qualities or actions of authenticity, but which can overlap some other circles of "personal photographic aim" or "surrealistic portrayal" or "the photographer's view of the meaning of his surroundings", or other.

In addition to its interactions with other things than authenticity, exaggeration can perhaps exist simply for its own sake, independent of these other circles of interaction or influence. It can perhaps also be instructive and revealing (more authentic than authentic!), such as the Cubist's use and addition of various tri-dimensionally sourced planes of view, to add to the simple plane confronting the initial axis between painter and subject, or the surrealist's re-composing of his subject matter.

Simple exaggerations, like apparent distortions produced by very wide or very long lenses (foreshortening) are tools of course, but very rudimentary ones I believe, and the exagerrations that consume my own interest and albeit limted abilities (I am not putting myself down here, but simply recognising the considerable challenge that the art presents) are those that only the mind can conceive and apply in the treatment of subject matter and which skirts around such apparent impediments as authenticity (except of the artist to himself, of course), déjà vu, and overstatements, and settles on some form of unique, subtle and arresting two dimensional communication to the viewer.

Norma Desmond · February 26, 2011

Yes, Arthur, thanks. I think we've been discussing all along a variety of types of exaggeration and uses of it, including the use of lenses and perspective to exaggerate but also including more conceptual aspects such as in Wouter's example of violence or the previous examples of drag queenery.

I'm a little unsure of what you mean by "those that only the mind can conceive and apply in treatment of subject matter."

I understand that you might be considering the more conceptual (?) forms of exaggeration here (as opposed to more technically-oriented exaggerations such as lens distortions), violence being only one example of course. But you've still got to make a photograph, so something's got to be shown. Something more has to be done than the mind conceiving it. It will get applied visually.

So, for example, Tarantino's street violence in Reservoir Dogs or Spielberg's horrors of war in the opening of Saving Private Ryan are conceived but then made visceral and tangible in their visual realizations. We see the violence up close and personal and that happens because they each effectively use cinematic technique.

I'm also not sure about your use of the word "impediment." Is there an impediment if I get the sense that this is how horrible the invasion must have been, even as I'm lost in the arresting (but clearly not subtle) two-dimensional film before me?

jtk · February 26, 2011

Wouter, for what it's worth I know that "wide angles, high saturation" have been the vogue among camera enthusiasts (not necessarily distinct from "photographers") ever since SLRs first came along. That's one reason folks loved Kodachrome...if they didn't want exaggeration they'd have shot Ektachrome instead.

aplumpton · February 26, 2011

Fred, thank you for your comments. I think you answered the question about my comment of the mind conceiving exaggerations contrary to the simple effect of using, say, a long focus or telephoto lens to cause exaggerated foreshortening of space, in front of and beyond the subject. Exaggeration in the simple optical exaggeration sense is often done and quite often done without any aim but the physical exaggeration in itself. That is what I was referring to as a simple exaggeration, as it often carries no meaning other than the physical one, a graphical one.

When the optical exaggeration is combined with a thought, with an intention of the photographer to use that exaggeration to say something else, as for example in the communication of some exaggerated aspect of a portrait subject, such as exaggerated frontal features induced by a wide angle lens, and it is not just a study of the optical effect vis-à-vis the face, but rather a comment on the person, or the context of the portrait event, it is something more related to the thought process of the artist and/or possibly some exaggerated or revealing aspect (either/or or both) of the subject himself.

Violence is sometimes exaggeration, but often simply an event consistent with the subject, whence it is not an exaggeration. A field study in a southern by a forensic anthropologist has some 100 or so bodies of former live humans exposed to the atmosphere. The objective is to study the process of decay that ensues after death, with its 4 phases of transformation, including one in which the bodies become inflated with the gases of bacterial decay occurring mainly in the intestines of the body through the cellular breakdown to gases by the intestinal bacteria. Photographs document the various phases of this research study. Are they exaggerations? No, definitely not. The camera is recording simply what is there, albeit perhaps with the optical exaggeratioins of the lens in use.

What I am trying to say by this is that exaggeration is an artistic tool that allows the photographer or artist to "mount on stilts", so to overreach normal descriptive visual communication, to emphasize some aspect of his mentally produce perceived/created/conceptually-produced message. As in all true art, it is an approach without limits.

I am thinking about your response regarding impediments and also whether I missed a bit of clarity in using it in the particular context. Will get back on that tonight, or tomorrow, depending upon the charge state of my human battery. It starts to run down around 9PM.

jtk · February 26, 2011

Phylo, I'm sorry I lumped your response with Julie's. I hadn't clicked your link, which went to an amusing observation about Joyce's Ulysses...which suffered from printers' inventions and (perhaps) far too many revisions.

I've spent a lot of time with a Joycean guru, someone who studies Gabler (per your link) more than the novels themselves. She actually has little interest in the literature, more in the trail of information. She enjoys her scholarly approach, but I think she misses the fundamentals, fails to appreciate the work itself. I think that is comparable to the ridiculously circular writing and self-constricting writing that often goes on here, and is, like Ulysses, infested by commas.

The biggest difference between Ulysses and posts here is obvious. Joyce had something in mind when he wrote...he didn't write thinkin that if he was sufficiently convoluted the results would pass as substantial.

Wouter Willemse · February 27, 2011

Fred, thanks for getting back on the questions I had on the journalism-like work. As said, I don't know how I would approach it. But I think, and I think I also read it in your answer, you cannot leave yourself at home. As you said, every photo is biassed.

Arthur, indeed I brought up the perspective distortions in the context of being used consciously - using the effect of extreme focal lengths to underline your point. While I am not a birder, I do take a fair share of photos of birds when given the chance (those photos are pure relaxing for me, and I'd agree most of the results are awfully standard). For practical reasons, I need a long lens for that. The flattening effect that occurs is more colleteral damage. With wide angles, the same happens at times, though it is more frequent a deliberate choice for me. So, just to be sure, I was meaning the deliberate choices, not the practical.

I tried to bring it in to get a simple practical photographic angle on the subject. Sure there are many other ways one can bring exeggeration or understatements into photography (colour, for sure). Well, others could do that, it's a tall challenge to do so and fairly sure I'm not up to it.

luis_g · February 27, 2011

Wouter - "would you use (sic) exeggaration in those shots?"

Yes, though not routinely. Mostly spatial or gestural exaggeration, sometimes temporal. At demonstrations, besides the documentary aspects, I am very interested in the interpersonal dynamics of the situation, the ways people exchange and express personal energies, and the strange ballet that results.

jtk · February 27, 2011

Arthur's interesting meditation on death and decay reminded me of Louis Malle's "Phantom India." One sequence in this 6hr poetic documentary studies the death of a cow, the decay, insect invasion, and metamorposis of the original beast into other life and organic forms: A message conveyed poetically rather than judgementally (this Vs that, is "exaggeration" OK, is this image "exaggerated") presumably because the point is a perception or idea, therefore application of labels is, as usual, irrelevant.

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Eclipse-Documentaries-R%C3%A9publique-Happiness-Collection/dp/B000MTEFPK">http://www.amazon.com/Eclipse-Documentaries-R%C3%A9publique-Happiness-Collection/dp/B000MTEFPK</a>

When I first viewed that film, cc1970 in a marginal San Francisco theater, many in the mostly-hippie throng were abandoning it because of their difficulty with what seemed disgusting imagery...which became beautiful macrophotography and I know was transformational for some of those that were patient.

"exaggeration" is a label that's of concern to certain kinds of photographers and viewers, and not by others. There may be opportunity in exploration of ideas when one avoides primative labels of that sort. Words aren't ideas, after all, nor are sentences.

luis_g · February 27, 2011

Arthur, I saw a documentary on the forensic human decay project. I can see where one could photograph them in an exaggerated (for example, in the direction of the mawkish) way, but the subjects themselves aren't exaggerated per se, though certainly unusual. As someone who spends a lot of time hiking, hunting and in wilderness, I am used to seeing the process of decay (and consummation by other animals) in dead critters of assorted sizes, but a human is a different thing.

jtk · February 27, 2011

"...a human is a different thing."

Yes, from one particular perspective.

But a decaying human body isn't necessarily a "different thing" to a scientist or Hindu/Buddhist/et al...it is however very much a different thing to a Roman Catholic (for example).

Being "used to seeing"something may be exactly the base from which we sometimes are neither scientific nor philosophic, are instead absolutist.

Norma Desmond · February 27, 2011

Arthur, I was thinking about your suggestion that exaggeration doesn't have to be on the same continuous line with authenticity. It doesn't. That is something, however, that was on my mind when composing the OP for this thread so the relationship was important to me. I do think, though, that exaggeration does have to play against something. We can call that something normal, accuracy, authenticity, truth, what have you. But the concept seems to necessitate a baseline from which to exceed. Could we have the concept of exaggeration if we didn't have a more steady or staid concept of whatever's being exaggerated?

I don't agree that the best uses of exaggeration are to say something else or to communicate something about a mentally-produced message. For example, I've taken some pictures in very low light situations at a high ISO and the results have been rather a lot of digital noise. I often find that if I exaggerate that noise rather than, say, trying to clean it up with a filter or plug-in of some sort, I like the visual result I achieve. That has nothing to do with a message I think the noise is sending or anything I am trying to say. It just has to do with it looking right to me, or at least looking the way I want it to look.

Such exaggeration can (doesn't have to) demand a lot of nuance and subtlety. I've seen exaggerated noise that simply looks like a lot of the over-the-top saturation we see in landscapes. I think the nuance can simply be a technical achievement that goes into the overall look of the photo, without bearing its own message.

Norma Desmond · February 27, 2011

[instead of nuance, my last line should read: I think the exaggeration can simply be a technical achievement that goes into the overall look of the photo, without bearing its own message.]

Julie H · February 28, 2011

To expand on the quotes I gave a while back, "Every justified exaggeration is no longer an exaggeration" and " ... thinking is essentially bound up with attempts to go beyond the limits of the thinkable." ...

... since nobody seems to have understood them the way I do ... I would suggest that the latter ("attempts to go beyond the limits...") is essential to all creative fields, from art to science. A picture is a claim (I'm not going to defend that, even though some of you will attack it), particularly a picture that uses exaggeration. A scientist also makes claims. In both cases, the artist or the scientist (and everybody in between) opens up a gap. Between the time of the claim and the time at which it is either justified or not, there is a gap in which it is neither and/or both. That gap is a "What if ...?" question posed with a greater or lesser degree of certainty. The artist or scientist may be sure he/she is onto something, or he/she may just be intuiting a possibility. But please note that whatever the case, the gap is perishable. It will *always* come to an end. It lasts only as long as its claim is in question in the mind of its audience (justified, unjustified or just too boring to bother with).

Exaggeration serves two purposes: first, to make *this* claim grab and hold the attention of somebody (anybody!) -- out of the 99.999999999999999% of claims that are too stupid, too insignificant, too distant, etc. to for anybody to bother paying attention to. Second, it is precisely the exaggeration that makes the gap, the "What if ...?" out of the what's already settled. Exaggeration should grab our attention and make us scream (even if only a very, very, tiny scream).

Examples: you're riding on a roller-coaster for the first time. At many points in that ride, you will seriously question the claim of the roller-coaster manufacturer that you are not going to die. If you ride that same roller-coaster enough times, you will come to acccept their claim -- it will prove justified -- and the gap will close.

Further example: a movie made in the 1990s showing the Twin Towers being flown into by two jets and completely destroyed. Movieland is making a descriptive claim about terrorism and destruction, etc. In the theater, you may have found it "well-done" or not, but once outside the theater, it seems too unlikely. Claim does not seem justified; gap closes. Post 911, news coverage showing what happened; obviously, the gap is also closed but in this case, the claim is fully justified.

Further example: Ansel Adams's landscapes claim (among many other things) a majestic perfection for the Western landscape. Robert Adams's landscapes claim (among many other things) a homely, perfect imperfection for the Western landscape. For me, the exaggerated parts of both photogaphers' work is that which first attracted my attention, but which, now that I've grown used to their work (settled on one side or the other of their claim) that exaggeration seems to me to have retreated into a style that I more or less overlook (sort of like the fuel tanks that the space shuttle jettisons after launch; I wish exaggeration could be left behind or would gracefully ... go away once it has been "used up").

In general, I find that over-the-top exaggeration (exaggerated exaggeration) is the most perishable. Think Hollywood disaster movies. Awesome the first time you see/saw them; silly from a perspective of a few decades escalation in special effects. The gap closes. (However, there are some, that endure, that seem to justify their claim : "Jaws"? You think?). Also, scientific revolutions that seemed incredible during their prove-out and acceptance, but which seem not even surprising today.

Please note that I do not think that all pictures are about (as yet) unjustified claims. I do think, however, that exaggeration in pictures is about making and describing a gap between what is accepted and what might be accepted. I think that is what exaggeration is used for and does. Other kinds of pictures may be about downplaying or bridging gaps.

aplumpton · February 28, 2011

I think Julie once observed how hard it is to assimilate and interact with preceding posts and for those of us that are winging in here and moving out again, like a hummingbird seeking nourishment, we are probably in the same situation. The advantage of course is that once briefly consumed we have the opportunity to go back and read the comments when we can.

Julie brings in some strong examples of what is accepted and what might be accepted and the relationship of that to how many times we might re-encounter the same exaggeration (exaggeration as a perishable commodity - that's true). If I understand some of the comments of Fred and Wouter, the technically induced exaggeration can in many cases stand on its own without message.

Fred, I think that one of the spaces that exaggeration might react to, in addition to authenticity, is that defined by natural versus unnatural. Whether something can be deemed authentic or not, or whether the approach of the photographer is authentic or not, it may be that what he is portraying is perceived by the viewer as being natural or not. Even if we don't know the subject we can come away thinking that the image subject is either natural or unnatural. We seem to see an emphasis or an element in the subject that is not contiguous with what we consider to be natural for that subject.

Another element of an image that can effectively suggest exaggeration, and one of my own favourites, is the inclusion of an unessential detail. I have to make one up here.... let's say, the photograph of the weight lifter is shown with dramatic lighting that emphasises his muscles and form and just below the image we find on the floor an old well-used briefcase propped up against which is a copy of a book with the title "The collected poems of Lord Byron" displayed in the image, or the like (For the readers of philosopher John Ralston Saul, it might be his (for me) difficult read entitled "On Equilibrium", somewhat humorously displayed near the aforementioned briefcase).

Perhaps close to what Fred was proposing in his OP, and I am just speculating here, is the possible role of exaggeration as something that contradicts our own artistic values or a specific photographic approach. Those who use perfectly sharp corner-to-corner photography of their subject matter might introduce blur or indistinctness in a part of their image. The contradiction might be more profound than that and counteract whatever values they might have expressed up to that point in their artistic career.

I think that the "unnaturalness" of photography, that often split second bite, is ripe to suggest exaggeration. Think of a photo through clear moving water of a brook. The split second image may show the waves in an arrested and (to the human viewer) in an unnatural representation, with unusual forms of water shapes and light reflection that bear little resemblance to how we see the moving water. Below the surface, a fish has a curious distorted form produced by the surface form of the water. An exaggeration, at least until we are use to it and the exaggeration becomes a perishable as Julie has mentioned.

Luis, John: While the scientifically explored aspect of the decaying bodies in the field is not an exaggeration, I would be amiss to suggest for any of us that images of that would not be an exaggeration of what we normally consider as being natural. The unnatural might become natural, with familiarisation.

Deforming so-called compositional rules, or accepted manners of portraying subject matter in the two dimensional canvas or photograph, is a type of exaggeration that I believe can be quite effective, especially when used sparingly. The Italian painter, Ch...o, was master of the inconguous perspective. Assymetrical imagery and unstable equilibrium of forms can do something similar in photography. It can be purely physical-aesthetic or it might contain a message (like "this is what you apparently see, but this is really what I think, as the creator of this image").

Norma Desmond · February 28, 2011

Thanks, Julie. Your post is helpful in showing that there are different types and usages of exaggeration. Your examples speak to exaggeration that is a goal of the entire photograph or movie or work. The idea or premise of the movie Jaws, for example, is an exaggeration. What you seem to be talking about would mostly apply to some exaggerations of that type.

On the other hand, there are exaggerations that are simply made within the overall context of a work. So, for example, one might have to exaggerate the smoothness of their piano playing when using an old upright piano that has lousy action and less over-toning than a baby grand. An actor might have to exaggerate some gestures and vocalizations in a large house to convey the same emotion as smaller gestures would convey in a more intimate theater. None of those are meant to, or have the effect of, getting the audience to scream. As a matter of fact, the audience won't notice them as anything more than gestures or smooth piano playing, which is just what the performers want. In these kinds of cases, exaggeration brings things to a baseline for the audience or viewer and doesn't call attention to itself.

"Think Hollywood disaster movies. Awesome the first time you see/saw them; silly from a perspective of a few decades escalation in special effects."

A lot of this stuff endures, which doesn't mean it's all any good. I can form a cocoon of context around myself when looking at art or watching movies. I don't have to compare the science of the past to the science of today. The science of yesterday can be accepted in context and I can suspend what I know about todays science or mores or morals or behavior. This is similar to my accepting the way 30s and 40s movies treat women where I might not accept such a sensibility from a movie made today.

Take Bette Davis. Good actress. Taken mostly at face value in her day. Baby Jane was always considered an exaggeration and was meant to be. But many of her other performances, because of imitators and comedians for the last decades, are seen as exaggerations by the young-uns who go to the same movies I do. They see Bette Davis the caricature of herself. I don't. I get into the movies. You can always view her movies as camp or not. Or consider 50s melodramatic potboilers. You can view Imitation of Life as an exaggeration or simply put it in context and be moved by what's there. I notice many of the younger people that go to see that movie laugh while many of us older folks are brought to tears. We suspend disbelief. We stay inside the frame instead of looking from the outside in.

"In the theater, you may have found it 'well-done' or not, but once outside the theater, it seems too unlikely."

Back to the old saw about fiction not being fact and about the movie not necessarily fitting into real-world categories such as "likely" or "unlikely" and the photograph not necessarily being about its so-called subject.

Norma Desmond · February 28, 2011

Arthur, I don't think exaggeration is any more prone to diminution upon repetitive viewing than any other aspect of a photograph or film. Film noir, for example, might wear thin if I sit their watching telling myself that this could never really happen or that this is exaggerated. It's the exaggeration that is its breath of life so I sort of accept that as a given. In some ways everything will lose some of its initial impact upon repeated viewings, from exaggeration to many of the subtleties of Impressionism. And in some ways, these things will deepen over time. Knowing something is exaggerated because of repeated viewings doesn't have to effect me any differently from knowing the ending of a movie I may watch and love over and over again.

I appreciate hearing the alternatives you suggest in your post to authenticity as a foil to exaggeration.

aplumpton · February 28, 2011

Fred, I can agree with you there, authenticity is certainly not the only foil. My postulates and examples show that exaggeration is not just related to it, but has a more varied and complex role and use, not on the same axis as authenticity or the lack of authenticity.

In considering the water surface form and fish form rendered by the split second photographic slice we are confirming that the photograph opens up a world not visible to ordinary sight, consequently a potentially exaggerated world confronting the viewer. It's probably the medium's greatest asset, apart from it's rapidity of use.

Creative art and design depends upon exaggeration, something we can call emphasis or focal point design. We make shadow portraits and then cast a thin ray of light on the subject’s eyes? Are we not accentuating something about the subject which is at the same time natural, and unnatural?

The placement of an unessential element in a scene, as a foil for the main subject, as a transitional or transformational statement or perhaps with no specific intent except that it feels right,.... or elsewhere, by arranging compositionally incongruous placements of objects, ....each can lead to an exaggeration of the overall perception and serve a primarily artistic purpose.

Much of our work is an effort at personification, as we find ourselves very interesting and complex or enigmatic. Our ego incites us to communicate that to others (whether we fully recognise that or not). On the other hand, our imperfect ability to communicate it often engenders a perceived exaggeration of our work in the eyes of the viewer. We are lucky if it leaves some impression, though, and very lucky if the impression leads to questions.

Sign In

Exaggeration and Authenticity

Recommended Posts

Link to comment

Share on other sites

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Posted Images

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