Photography is....

[h_j7]

<p>...simply put, AMAZING!<br />I will be 44 years old this coming November. I have only been "in to" photography for the past few years and I still have a loooong way to go. I am currently working as an IT contractor in Afghanistan. I am from Houston, Texas.<br />The reason for my opening statement is that I realized that photography can open up the rest of the world to us all. As I sit here browsing through the images on this site and others I can't help but imagine what it must be like to be standing in Paris or Rome or WHEREVER some of these images were taken. We get to see peoples kids, thier dogs, cats, what they ate, what beer they drink, and who they love. We get to see some of the most artistic expressions ever captured digitally or on film. We also see some of the most rudimentary images of peoples feet, bad hair days, and everything in between!<br />Photography can capture peoples emotions for the whole world to see. It can make us remember things we had thought we had forgotten. In an instant it can bring us to a specifc point in time. Whether that point was yesterday or 20 years ago, photography can do that! I catch myself looking through these images and then realize how small we really are in the grand scheme of things.<br />To me, anyway, that is what photography is.</p>

[tholte]

<p>Well said HJ!</p>

[Julie H]

<p>HJ said, "We get to see peoples kids, thier dogs, cats, what they ate, what beer they drink, and who they love."</p>

<p>No you don't. Not in a photograph.</p>

<p>HJ said "We also see some of the most rudimentary images of peoples feet, bad hair days, and everything in between!"</p>

<p>No you don't. Not in a photograph you don't.</p>

<p>If, instead of the camera, someone had invented a body teleporter that would put you (your eyes) wherever you wanted to be whenever you wanted to be there, then HJ's statements would be true. But we don't have a body teleporter (dern it!). We have the camera and what the camera does is make possible the creation of the technologically mediated excreta of somebody else's intent-to-make-a-picture. The labyrinthine detour that occurs due to the insertion of that "<em>somebody else</em>" ... makes all the difference. What of the 99.9999999999999% of stuff that's not included in what is generated in your post-labyrinthine little bitty square of pixels or pigments or dyes or silvers, etc.?</p>

[h_j7]

<p>So, Julie, what you're saying is that if someone snaps a photo of...let's say...thier wife/husband/significant someone...then posts it on this site, that we are NOT seeing an image of someone that person loves?<br>

I could care less about a "teleporter" or some other Star Trek gizmo that would allow me to to physically be wherever and whenever I wanted to. The moment in time/space when the shutter is released to capture an image that "somebody else" deems is worthy of being photographed is what I am referring to. Whether that person is standing on some Himalayan mountaintop or in the bathroom of thier 250 sq ft flat. They allow us a tiny glimpse into thier world.<br>

So, YES, in a photograph, you see ALL of those things and then some!</p>

[jgalyon]

<p>This is the "<strong><em>CASUAL</em></strong> photo conversation forum"...in case anyone has gotten lost... (smile, smile, wink, wink)</p>

[alan_zinn]

<p><br />That photographs are <em>thought</em> to be as HJ says makes them amazing indeed. I call it the photographic mystique. My every photograph has this at its heart I hope. Rather than dismiss his thoughts outright it may be more worthwhile to discuss those universal aspects we ascribe to images. "technologically mediated excreta" really now! What if we do read into them? Or some might say the images read back to us. The unknown photographer , sent via their image, a glimpse of their world view not illuminated by light but about their more complex thoughts and feelings. Likewise, photos read back our own memories. </p>

[Julie H]

<p>John Galyon said, "This is the "<strong><em>CASUAL</em></strong> photo conversation forum"... "</p>

<p>Indeed it is. This was originally posted to the Philosophy of Photography forum and it is there that I responded to it. But now that it's gone casual, I agree with everything the OP said. Winky woo.</p>

[john_bellenis]

<p>I actually agree with a lot of HJ says - it is fun to have these mementos of moments in our past (incomplete as they surely are), they offer clues about how we lived, what we liked, and give us an opportunity to revisit our past in a way - they are definitely more reliable than our memories, that's for sure...</p>

<p>Not wanting to hijack the thread, but one thing has struck me over the years, looking at my own and other people's family pictures and videos... When we have kids, we tend to be so fascinated and absorbed by their every breath that we videotape them and photograph them endlessly. Often I see videos that last five minutes or more, or whole albums of stills, solely devoted to the little objects of our affections. </p>

<p>While doing this we tend to not videotape and shoot ourselves, our friends and the surroundings enough. We can be so focused on our babies and toddlers we just don't realize that when looking at those images in ten or twenty years time, how much we would have loved to have seen more images of ourselves and our friends at that time. I have looked at videos concentrating on my own babies with an old friend making a brief appearance on the periphery and that was the most interesting moment of the video! </p>

<p>I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes it is the more banal and - at the time - seemingly less important things that take on more significance as time goes by. When I am taking family pictures and videos, I now make sure to cover the entire scene, all the people and include the banal details. I now realize that in the future we may well be more interested the peripheral events than the reason we decided to take the camera out in the first place.</p>

<p> </p>

[alan_zinn]

<p>Dang!</p><div></div>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Yes, HJ. Cameras serve an amazing documentary purpose. They also do preserve memories. They are great devices, also, for taking snapshots for the family album. Sometimes, actually often, a pictures of a wife is just a picture of a wife, and the beer or mountaintop in the photo is just what it looks like! Photographers can use cameras to create art as well, in which case the resulting photographs may be more a matter of creativity and imagination than document (though there is much overlap and a lot of area between art and document). I think the flexibility of how cameras can be used and the amazing array of types and purposes of pictures that can result is worth noting. HJ, I appreciate your opening this door.</p>

[starvy]

<p>If only we could persuade the Taliban that photography does not lead to any more idolatry than their existing glorification of saintly lives, photography would be even more useful a tool. Yet there in lies the true definition of photography. It isn't terribly useful. It is reactive. When it wanders around the arena of proactive usually it ends up causing revolutions.</p>

[h_j7]

<p>Agreed! I didn't intend to spark a debate on the artistic, (or lack thereof), value of photography. Just wanted to jot down a few thoughts that occurred to me while digging through the trove of images here and on other sites. I then thought of the LITERALLY millions of photographs that get snapped each day of people, places, and things that we will never see.</p>

<p>I just thought it was interesting and something to ponder. Now, where is my damn teleporter! :-)</p>

[luis_g]

<p><strong>HJ, </strong>at one level, I understand what you're saying about snapshots, and at another, the very valid and real point <strong>JH </strong>made. I have to say that "...the technologically mediated excreta..." was a buttery, tasty riff, bordering on the poetic.<br>

[back to looking at the brass-framed, 3-D picture of the studly blonde Jesus hanging above my desk. I can imagine what it was like to be in the studio where & when it was taken.]</p>

<p> </p>

[the celt 2]

<p>I'll be 59 this month, and in one way or another, I worked worked with, and loved many cameras. From my Brownie Starmite, my dads old Kodak 35, and all the way to MF, 4x5, and even a massive process camera that took up two rooms. Yet photography has never lost its magic, and wonder for me. Being out in the field shooting, or in my make shift studio/kitchen. Or spending hours in my little dank, and damp basement dark room. I'm always happy, and at peace. I hope that you have many more years of the joy of photo. It's been great for me. </p>

[stp]

<p>I would like to add one additional idea to this thread in which many statements have been made with which I wholeheartedly agree. The idea is that this is how photography, as an artistic endeavor, generally differs from other forms of art (painting, sculpture, montages, etc.), in that photography usually (I'm intentionally leaving room for the exceptions, although I don't have any immediately in mind) incorporates the element of a real moment in time and in a more or less realistic way, at least relative to the many other artistic endeavors. When a photograph tends to <strong><em>not</em></strong> display these characteristics is when I believe it begins to enter the new creative endeavor of digital artistry. But perhaps I'm straying too far from the original <em>casual</em> conversation and should just conclude by saying "<em>Photography is</em>" for me a way to more intently experience the natural world; I see and appreciate so much more when I'm walking through the woods with a camera in hand.</p>

[GerrySiegel]

<p>And there is no need either to apologize for what we, sometimes so dismissively, call "snapshots." The casual is important along with the serious and planned. Often less self conscious, warts and all, rough brushstrokes. Often revelatory and prized for the generations to come. Fortunate are we to not have to pose the kids with head restraints/ Thinking of those Civil War soldier tintypes on Ken Burns series.</p>

[KenPapai]

<p><em>We get to see peoples kids, thier dogs, cats...</em></p>

<p>Nicely said HJ. But yes, unfortunately their cats.... :(<br /> Cheers! -KP.</p>

<p>P.S. And in may senses, a good many photographers that post work here are voyeurs AND exhibitionists.</p>

[cyanatic]

<blockquote>

<p>HJ said, "We get to see peoples kids, thier dogs, cats, what they ate, what beer they drink, and who they love."</p>

<p>No you don't. Not in a photograph.</p>

<p>HJ said "We also see some of the most rudimentary images of peoples feet, bad hair days, and everything in between!"</p>

<p>No you don't. Not in a photograph you don't.</p>

<p>If, instead of the camera, someone had invented a body teleporter that would put you (your eyes) wherever you wanted to be whenever you wanted to be there, then HJ's statements would be true. But we don't have a body teleporter (dern it!). We have the camera and what the camera does is make possible the creation of the technologically mediated excreta of somebody else's intent-to-make-a-picture. The labyrinthine detour that occurs due to the insertion of that "somebody else" ... makes all the difference. What of the 99.9999999999999% of stuff that's not included in what is generated in your post-labyrinthine little bitty square of pixels or pigments or dyes or silvers, etc.?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I was thinking of petitioning that this thread be retransplanted back to the Philosophy of Photography Forum so that I might post an appropriate response to Julie's comments quoted above. However, being in a particularly reckless mood today, I shall hazard posting a response within the confines of the Casual Photo Conversations forum.</p>

<p>Julie, I think you err in interpreting HJ's original post vis a vis a strictly Cartesian modality. If we apply a meta-intuitive deconstruction to the heuristics of his intentions (intentions which we can, in fact, accurately claim to possess via the collective unconscious according to Marinov in his "Concordance to the Application of Jungian Archetypes in Visual Aesthetics"), it becomes clear that the images of "peoples kids..dogs..who they love" are not technologically mediated excreta, nor even two dimensional simulacrums of reality, but are actually temporally fluoresced superreality dopplegangers of the actual "peoples kids...dogs…who they love". They are more real than the original objects and moments that were captured.</p>

<p>It is a discredited orthodoxy which seeks to put into question the "reality" of a photograph by virtue of the "somebody else taking of it", or the "point of view", or "the choice of crop". These are indeed labyrinthine detours, but carefully analyzed they reveal, rather than obscure, the predeterministic strings with which our universe is woven. Reality is neither relative nor absolute, it merely is, in the same koanistic sense that the sound of one hand clapping merely is, or in the same sense that although one must "lead a horse to water", one must physically push asparagus.</p>

<p>I hope this clarifies this issue once and for all. </p>

<p>["...<em>ask yourself if, when someone stumbles upon this exchange four years from now via a Google search, they are going to say 'that was worth my time to read</em>'. Er...not bloody likely. But I've done it anyway.]</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Steve, I'm having asparagus for supper! Dude, admit it, you've got a teleporter.</p>

<p>[Luis, I'm not sure it's a good idea to put butter and excreta that close together.]</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>Steve gets a golf clap. Well played, sir.</p>

[tholte]

<p>"When it wanders around the arena of proactive usually it ends up causing revolutions." Don't quite get this comment.</p>

[gabor_szabo3]

<blockquote>

<p>If, instead of the camera, someone had invented a body teleporter that would put you (your eyes) wherever you wanted to be whenever you wanted to be there, then HJ's statements would be true. But we don't have a body teleporter (dern it!).</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes we do have body teleporters ! They're called phenethylamines, tryiptamines, and other choice indoles. <br />Photography is just one of the great visual artform potentiators that has propelled the human brain forward a few steps on the evloutionary trail. Mass media and the internet has flooded our collective conciousness with exponentially more imagery than was possible a generation ago. For those of us who haven't had their empathy receptors burned out by Prozac, TV, and sheltered childhoods, it's easy to feel all the emotions of the subject AND the camerman when looking at most any photograph. Sadly, too many people have been fooled into thinking we're just bags of skin seperate from our environements and that we're trained to see the <em>differences</em> in everything we look at instead of feeling the samenesses.</p>

[dan_south]

<blockquote>

<p>Don't quite get this comment.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I don't quite get the entire discussion, but it sure sounded profound while it was confusing me. ;-)</p>

[jgalyon]

<p>Dan, I was confused until I read Steve Gubin's post and then it all became crystal clear! ;) </p>

 

[GerrySiegel]

<p> I appreciate words, big fun novel ones. I lately have to look up a bunch I see or hear on line. Like the last one I looked up was <em>supererogation. </em> Yet today I can't remember what it means, so it did not stick deep... I like pictures. Pictures stick, you see. My memory gets charged by images, best word description. (Smells? Not bad, when my smeller works and the ragweed is down. ) Words, ah not so much. <br>

<em>Amazing</em> per HJ, is a good fitting reaction. I still kick from champagne but a great photograph way more... can knock me cold and stays with me, the best part... <br>

I can thumb flip a magazine and whoops, spot that photo, I got to stop and look at it up and down. Words are just words, bread and potatoes and asparagus sans hollandaise. <br>

gs</p>