Illustrating ideas

[inoneeye]

<p> from my own post (julie slippe in while I wasn't looking)<br>

... juxtaposition - as in the response to.<br /> May be mine at the time of creation &/or carried to the viewing experience.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Josh, thanks. I think it took my posing the question more generally and reading many of the answers in order to focus a little more on what I was really wanting to ask and think about.</p>

<p>I appreciate your mentioning the language of photography, which I try to be more and more in touch with as well. I do think the photographic language I use, as a tool, is a way of exerting some control.</p>

<p>I recently had some insights into just how a slight rotation of an image (which I would prefer to have skewed in the camera, but I'm not adept yet at that) could change the whole tone of an image. When I rotated it slightly counter-clockwise (back), the subject felt more like a staged subject, a bit more static and a bit more theatrical. When I rotated it slightly clockwise (forward), it had a more dynamic feel, a little more edge, and even less of a theatrical feel, less presented. This had something to do with overall composition, and the effect it had on some of the geometric lines, etc. The rotation also affected my own relationship as viewer to the subject. The subject's face looked more and more down the more I rotated forward. The expression became more and more internal with that forward rotation. A subject's expression -- I've always known -- is not limited to what's on their face. It has a lot to do with how I shoot it. But learning it firsthand and seeing it in action like this, it becomes something I know more intimately and not just as an abstract concept but as an accessible tool.</p>

<p>Realizing that I missed an opportunity in camera and seeing the difference of effect in the finished photo taught me a lot and should make me much more aware of how I may tilt and skew the camera in the future. What's interesting is that I lean toward the theatrical, so the original angle of shooting was probably better suited to my general leanings and may even come a bit from force of habit. (It's always a balance between feeling that a way of shooting comes naturally and feeling like I might simply be in a comfortable habit.)</p>

<p>In this case, I remember thinking at the time that my subject was giving me a more internal expression and was allowing himself to be photographed in more private moments, so I was making an effort to be at least a little less stagy in my approach. Having this tool now to use should help me get more of what I want to out of a moment and even an overall shoot.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>[i wrote this while Julie was posting, so some of it responds as well to what she noticed. Thanks, Julie.]</p>

<p> </p>

[luis_g]

<p><strong>Fred - "</strong>Folks, I really didn't have an agenda with this post. "</p>

<p>I don't think you did. It is a question addressing the conveyance of ideas through photographs, and it is a good one. Photographs can do this, and often do when photographers had no intention of doing so or clue that it was happening. It's one of the myriad paths before us, part and parcel of what any medium (and practitioner) can do.</p>

<p>How do we embody or embed an idea in an image? In some ways, it can be similar to doing so literarily. You can be direct about it, as in the examples that Dan and Alan provided, or drift towards (visual) poetics. And there is more than embodying one idea. Many works of art do that with multiples, where a basic one serves as a point of departure for others, and so forth (what I meant by the 'scaffold'), or a few that interact and generate a spectrum. Other photographs do not so much embody an idea, but have the coding in it to elicit it from or help generate it in the viewer.Like a virus, it's using the cultural coding of the subject to generate the ideas.</p>

<p> </p>

[jtk]

<p>I like Josh Dunham Wood's notion of "spice." Impatient, I Googled with his name and "photos" which may or may not have put his thoughts in context. I'd like to see his (rather than Google's) visual presentation of them.</p>

<p>I also like Luis's notion of "scaffold," which can be something intentionally built (as by a deliberative photographer) as readily as "found" . Need not be Luis's own photos..maybe he can offer some links.. Clearly he writes with more precision and overall skill than 3/4 of us, but pictures are worth thousands of words, especially on a purportedly visual website.</p>

[inoneeye]

<p>I know what you are saying Fred. Very nuts and bolts. Comfort zone <em>can </em>be a detriment. But as your example points out paying close attention to your nuts and bolts most often leads to deeper territory for me. and reaching beyond comfort is a choice that frequently opens more possibilities.</p>

<p>Julie, Fred.? i feel I have missed something. I took you Fred to be asking about us shooting an idea a concept as <em>The subject</em> of the image. not that 'everything / image starts (or presents in post) with an idea ... and then we shoot or edit. Of course we put our foot out front to go somewhere stimulated by an idea. Maybe we are going to shoot 'the homeless'. I took this to thread to be asking about shooting the experience or feeling of not getting a good nights sleep. That is why I see it as conceptual. not just the idea/motivation for shooting any given image.<br /> Maybe your example of 'jazz' skewed my reading. or maybe I need further explanation of how there is no difference between an idea as subject and using an idea to create.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Josh, I'll let Fred respond to your questions (and will be listening closely to your discussion).</p>

<p>Luis, when I read, above, the bit starting, "I also like Luis's ... " I am envisioning that 12-hooked, impact-cratering, tidal-wave generating K-mart lure. Idea >> image. Amazingly effective.</p>

[luis_g]

<p><strong>Julile - "</strong>Luis, when I read, above, the bit starting, "I also like Luis's ... " I am envisioning that 12-hooked, impact-cratering, tidal-wave generating K-mart lure. Idea >> image. Amazingly effective."</p>

<p>Effective indeed. Caveat piscium. Lovely howler, thank you.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Josh, yes, though the OP opened the door more generally, by using the example of shooting jazz, I was trying to get at whether and how we might shoot an idea, not really how ideas stimulate photos or whether or not we think when making all kinds of photos. I was thinking of conceptual photos or photos that convey, depict, illustrate, or embody, a specific idea we might have. And, as Luis has said, that can be very literal or it can be much more loosely accomplished. Yes, an idea as the subject of the image.</p>

[inoneeye]

<p> thanks Fred I guess the op was as I thought, a challenging question(<em>s)</em>. </p>

<p>Luis "Other photographs do not so much embody an idea, but have the coding in it to elicit it from or help generate it in the viewer." very clearly, insightfully put. Thanks for planting that in my head.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>" ... I am trying to consider but not simply copy nature, ... that I am taking account of both the properties of the material I am using and <em>the idea that I wish to release from that material." </em>[emphasis added]</p>

<p>That's Henry Moore. I think "ideas that I wish to release from that material" puts focus on "material" in a useful way. I have ideas; you can probably understand those ideas. Hindrances to conveyance are both the symbols or embodiments necessary to convey the idea; and the materials used to form those symbols or embodiments, in our case paper and silver, pigment, dye, or pixels.</p>

<p>Later in the same Henry Moore book that I happen to be reading [<em>Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations</em> (2002)] this bit is also related to our topic (and besides it's one of my favorite Moore quotes):</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>"One of the things I would like to think my sculpture has is a force, is a strength, is a life, a vitality from inside it, so that you have a sense that the form is pressing from inside trying to burst or trying to give off the strength from inside itself, rather than having something which is just shaped from outside and stopped. It's as though you have something trying to make itself come to a shape from inside itself. This is, perhaps, what makes me interested in bones as much as in flesh because the bone is the inner structure of all living form. It's the bone that pushes out from inside, as you bend your leg the knee gets tautness over it, it's there that the movement and the energy come from. If you clench a knuckle, you clench a fist, you get in that sense the bones, the knuckles pushing through, giving a force that if you open your hand and just have it relaxed you don't feel. ... "</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It seems to me that the idea embedded in a picture should be like the bones "pushing through."</p>

[AJHingel]

<p>Fred wrote</p>

<blockquote>

<p>There may be a problem relating ideas to photos because photos are often shot and understood literally.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I think this is very right. Viewers in general expect straight photography.<br>

To convey an idea, a message, a way of seeing reality, that goes beyond the obviously seen. I believe there are at least two mainstream approaches around. In most cases photographers would add features to their photos which announces that something else is going on and that what the eye saw (or could have seen if the viewer had been their at the moment of shooting): strong grains, long exposures for example. Examples of "taken distance from reality" by such methods can be easily seen in the street photography forum.<br>

However, other photographers, me among them, would go in the opposite direction and shoot mostly fully straight photography, but choose: just in time scenes, irony, beauty, paradoxes, absurdities of the real world, surrounding us to convey ideas.<br>

Both approaches can be inspired by "ideas", of course and I see no "idea" that exclusively point at one approach than another.</p>

[luis_g]

<p> While I understand and appreciate what Moore is saying, and the value of the idea straining to escape through the surface of the work, I'm not at all sure that's the way ideas "should be like...". I think there's more than one way to do this, all effective.</p>

<p>Personally, I believe it is often -- but not always -- <strong> </strong> counterproductive to push a single idea. Like Erwitt's puns or propagandist work, they become monosemic one-song notes. Once they yield their message, they're done. Most ideas (and work, for that matter) do not "stand on their own", isolated, insulated, as if dropped whole out of the mother ship, they have company, most have a constellation of other ideas around them. This is not confusing, nor does it dilute them, but strengthens them, and provide an associated, if not partially integral, ideological context. This acts as a kind of philosophical lubricant in the sense that the smaller satellite ideas are easier to ingest/accept, and it is they ease the passage of the bigger core idea(s) into the viewers' heads and hearts.</p>

<p> </p>

[luis_g]

<p>OOps, I accidentally erased the word "who" in the last sentence of my above post, between "they" and "ease". Sorry.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<blockquote>

<p>It seems to me that the idea embedded in a picture should be like the bones "pushing through."</p>

</blockquote>

<p><strong>Julie</strong>, Moore's is an interesting take, one almost of revelation. Thanks. I appreciate hearing it.</p>

<p>I do think there are ideas embedded in some pictures, and in some "real-world" scenes, those real-world scenes or objects being the raw materials of photography, comparable to Moore's sculpting material. . . .</p>

<p>. . . And I think there can be ideas given by the photographer <em>to</em> the raw materials as well, so that those raw materials are then shaped around the idea the photographer has, rather than the other way around. Doing that seems to require a certain amount of control exerted by the photographer, if he can and desires to do so. </p>

<p>______________________________</p>

<p><strong>Anders</strong>, I'll have to think about "straight photography" more. It's a salient point. Off the top of my head, straight photographs don't have to be literal. There are straight photographs that pick up a transcendent expression, possibly of a person or group of people but also in the non-literal atmosphere of a place, which can be photographed in a "straight" manner. </p>

<p>Yes, many approaches can be <em>inspired by</em> ideas. To me, that's somewhat different from conveying or illustrating an idea the photographer has.</p>

<p>Just in time scenes, paradoxes, and absurdities of the real world are things the world presents to us or that we go out to find in the world and those ideas may often already be embedded (as Moore noted) in the materials. I'm not sure (?) what role the photographer's ideas themselves play in that embedding itself, though the photographer's ideas may certainly inspire him to shoot them.</p>

<p>Where do you think, for example, many of Erwitt's photos (the ironic juxtapositions, the pun-like ones) fall?</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>[sorry for some repetition, Luis posted while I was writing.]</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<blockquote>

<p>Most ideas (and work, for that matter) do not "stand on their own", isolated, insulated, as if dropped whole out of the mother ship, they have company, most have a constellation of other ideas around them. This is not confusing, nor does it dilute them, but strengthens them, and provide an associated, if not partially integral, ideological context. --Luis</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes! </p>

<p>Often, the challenges and the photographic language used, accumulated, and<em> learned</em> to express an idea or a "constellation of ideas" will lead to the next one . . . or two.</p>

<p>When this kind of association occurs (whether tight and/or loose, literal and/or not, narrative and/or visual) a coherent body of work may develop.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>The tide comes in. The tide goes out. It leaves behind that semi-sorted line of debris and perfectly sorted gradient of sized sands. There's communication in the content of that line and that gradient.</p>

<p>[Trying to bone the fish for Luis.]</p>

[AJHingel]

<blockquote>

<p>(What) do you think, for example, (of) many of Erwitt's photos (the ironic juxtapositions, the pun-like ones) fall?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Not much Fred if I should comment on the<a href="http://arretsurlemonde.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/elliot_erwitt2.jpg"> one</a> you linked up to. It has been used by others with great success. Surely, if you have to make a living out it, it is one way forward, but for me it is without great interest, apart from the first smile.<br /> In my eyes <a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_I3fy-J3k9ZU/S__UL_aJszI/AAAAAAAAAwk/WC-kWz-fUG0/s1600/paris-1989.jpg">this</a> of Erwitt is a master shot (aesthetics), like <a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_IyB_zbaP4Ps/TStyonmfObI/AAAAAAAAAjo/gpRnFv4795Y/s1600/ElliotErwitt-Peacemarch-full.jpg">the peacemarch</a>, <a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_RqfBGKMcFsw/TMdX5plqmBI/AAAAAAAAACw/0Q85zjSE-_Q/s1600/Erwitt_DogLegs_NYC1974_3mb.jpg">the dog legs</a>, <a href="http://www.analisisfotografia.uji.es/root/analisis/imagejem/0188.jpg">this</a> and <a href="http://www.janicza.com/bravo/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/erwitt_elliott_650_1986.jpg">this</a>, together with many others of his that go beyond the simple and easy jokes.</p>

[luis_g]

<p><strong>Julie - "</strong>The tide comes in. The tide goes out. It leaves behind that semi-sorted line of debris and perfectly sorted gradient of sized sands. There's communication in the content of that line and that gradient.</p>

 

<p>[Trying to bone the fish for Luis.]" </p>

<p>Whoa....Lunar Yoda-speak, no less. Did you know the finer sands come from the reef fish munching on the live corals and pooping the remains? More communications.</p>

 

[thomas_k.]

<p>Simple ideas can be communicated succesfully through photographs - advertisment and documentary photographers are doing it daily, I'm surprised it was not brought up in this discussion yet. </p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>Tom. Very true. And you can add political photos that propogandize all kinds of things. Who to vote for? Support war or not? Support all kinds of proposed legislation. </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Thomas and Alan, thanks for those additions.</p>

<p>I'm thinking . . . is there a difference between communicating an idea with a photo and illustrating or embodying one in a photo? </p>

[AJHingel]

<p>Alan and Thomes, you are very right but mostly advertising and documentary photography as well as party political photos are used together with words that go further than a simple titles.<br>

Having in memory the fierce discussions we have had in this very forum on the virtues of a photo that speaks for itself, we seem to be playing another ballgame mostly.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Luis, how about I push you off a very tall building (dusting her hands off with a satisfied smile; I bet he's not having ideas about coral poop <em>now</em>!). Image as "push" or trigger. Or, you know that story, <em>The Pit and the Pendulum</em>? Except in this case, it's not Brad, it's Luis. Image as a space "conducive to" or "in which" ideas *will* be generated. [looking at my watch] Luis, I think you have about an hour to respond before you become a sushi advertisement and/or torture documentary.</p>

<p>Advertisements and documentary -- you've, ironically, picked out two areas that would most like NOT to be about ideas. Advertisers try very very hard to bypass ideas altoghter and appeal directly to hormones and gonads, while documentarians aspire to pure objectivity (at least prior to Rouch et al). Not saying either of them succeeds, just saying, they are straining away from ideas (for example, see my James Agee quote in an earlier post to this thread).</p>