Is There Beauty in Vulnerability?

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Everyone fled the "b" word. It's usually used meaninglessly and often avoids more coherent discussions about photos and accessible ideas. Only when we moved vulnerability away from the attempt to link it to beauty did we actually engage vulnerability in some real way.</p>

<p>The "deep water" of beauty is often a shroud, concealing what's real and what's there.</p>

<p>Your mother looks much more beautiful than the more sexually vibrant woman Charles photographed.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Fred, I know that you cited (or alluded to) "Ode on a Grecian Urn," but, in spite of the oft-quoted equation of truth and beauty in that poem, I have always felt that the definitive treatment of beauty in Keats is somehow embedded in the complexity of his "Ode on Melancholy."</p>

<p>The poem is about melancholy or depression, yes, but it is also about the ephemeral nature of beauty--and <em>it is above all about Keats' angst where his love and desire for Fanny Brawne in the face of his imminent death were concerned</em>. I think that it is not only one of the greatest works of literature in the English language, but also a possible source of enlightenment as to how our feelings and desires affect our aesthetic judgments.</p>

<p><strong>THAT IS, IMAGINE THIS BEAUTIFUL POEM WITHOUT KEATS' FRUSTRATED DESIRE (BUT STILL SEXUAL <em>DESIRE</em>) FOR FANNY BRAWNE!</strong></p>

<p>The last two of the three stanzas are awesome to me. I cannot imagine the depth of feeling that went into his evaluation of Fanny Brawne's "beauty" as well as into his comments below about "beauty" in the last two stanzas:</p>

<p>No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist<br /> Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;<br /> Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissed<br /> By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;<br /> Make not your rosary of yew-berries,<br /> Nor let the beetle nor the death-moth be<br /> Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl<br /> A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;<br /> For shade to shade will come too drowsily,<br /> And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.<br /> <br /> But when the melancholy fit shall fall<br /> Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,<br /> That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,<br /> And hides the green hill in an April shroud;<br /> Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,<br /> Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,<br /> Or on the wealth of globed peonies;<br /> Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,<br /> Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,<br /> And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.<br /> <br /> She dwells with Beauty -- Beauty that must die;<br /> And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips<br /> Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,<br /> Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips;<br /> Ay, in the very temple of delight<br /> Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine,<br /> Though seen of none save him whose strenuous<br /> tongue<br /> Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;<br /> His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,<br /> And be among her cloudy trophies hung.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>Your mother looks much more beautiful than the more sexually vibrant woman Charles photographed.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Fred, I think that we are simply using "beauty" in a variety of ways in this entire thread (and in everyday life). We seem to want one universal definition, but there are not only connotations and connotations of "beauty," but myriad meanings in use of the same word--but you know all that. . . .</p>

<p>That does not mean that I can begin to catalog those usages or to sort all this out. This is way over my head--the toughest concept I can imagine tackling on a photo site. I am brought to a new question:</p>

<p><strong>What is beauty, that I might find it (and photograph it)?</strong></p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>The "deep water" of beauty is often a shroud. . . .</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>A burial shroud, in Keats' case? What killed him, tuberculosis, or the perceived hopelessness of his situation? He had lost a mother and a brother to TB, as I recall, but there were even then those who survived longer than Keats. I would even aver that it was his very intensity that killed him (<em>i.e</em>., that weakened him and hastened his death. (Intensity has more than once nearly killed<em> me</em>.)</p>

<p><em>Da capo:</em></p>

<blockquote>

<p>The "deep water" of beauty is often a shroud. . . .</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Fred, what a remarkably beautiful phrase! You should have been a poet--but we know that Plato would have been disappointed in your career choice, in your selection of an "inferior" undertaking.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>If someone were genuinely to photograph or call upon (or write a poem about or while under the influence of) their lust or desire, as Keats did and, as I imagine Stieglitz did, I'd be intrigued and it would have the makings of something worthwhile.</p>

<p>Someone simply photographing the object of their desire or lust and expecting that to express or communicate desire or beauty is likely missing the point.</p>

<p>.</p>

<blockquote>

<p><strong>What is beauty, that I might find it (and photograph it)?</strong></p>

</blockquote>

<p>It's more than the object. Show me the desire and passion. (Show it to me with light, texture, perspective, composition,<br /> tonality . . .)</p>

<p>Maybe don't look to find it. Look to create it.</p>

<p>Creation can be the process and fulfillment of some sort of longing and desire, not just the object of it. It's how the subject is approached and photographed, not just that it is found or that it is photographed.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>The beauty of Keats's truth is that he was truthful about his desire. No one thinks he resorted to reducing beauty to truth. That was a beginning for him. He then told his truth, which he told beautifully. Photographs can limit themselves to showing beauty. They can also tell truths about it. Reducing beauty to wholesomeness is like calling beauty truth and leaving it at that. Looking at the desire and allowing the reality of unwholesomeness to work its way through would be an attempt at truth, and would probably be much more beautiful . . . and make a better photograph.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>Maybe don't look to find it. Look to create it.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>I would write fiction if only I could. (Goodness knows I have tried.) Alas, I do not know how to create beauty using photography. My photography is, at best, "pedestrian." It is my lot in life to be pretty good in a lot of things, great in none of them.</p>

<p>I think that I must be a professional dilettante.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[clgriffin]

<p>I get the feeling that Fred likes a bit of manipulation in all things--art, photo or argument.<br>

I spent 30 years photographing reality, with professional requirements to keep it that way. I've come late to Photoshop and still avoid using most of its tools. Not among my digital images are the photographs of three elderly relatives, each having a multitude of wrinkles. These were women who were important to me when I was a child and in many ways they represent beauty to me as much as any dewy teenage model.</p>

<p>As Lannie says of his wife, my wife has grown more beautiful to me over the years, even as she complains that she has lost her looks. Since we can put more words into this than imagery:</p>

<p><strong>THE GARDEN SPIRIT</strong><br /><br />She began her transformation slowly<br />Always willowy <br />her arms and legs <br />she covered in earth colors<br />wearing an old hat with wide brim<br /><br />In the heat of tropical days<br />she worked her wild garden religiously<br />planting here and feeding there<br />and watering without regard to local laws<br />her seedlings and shrubbery more precious<br />than mere legalities<br />Over time her movements slowed<br />as her garden grew to sustain itself<br />in the heat and the droughts<br />and the occasional torrential downpour<br /><br />One day a rain came <br />and she did not retreat indoors<br />She turned her face to the rain<br />and felt it imbue her being<br /><br />Night came and she rested her hands<br />on the rich soil<br />digging into the ground <br />with her fingers<br /><br />She kicked away her sandals<br />and spread her toes in the sweet mulch<br />Through the long warm night<br />she drew from the strength of the earth<br />and broke the shell of flesh<br />Days passed and no one came looking for her<br />Eventually a neighbor saw the profusion<br />of growth in the garden and came to admire<br />the wild and flowery tangle that nature<br />and hard work had built<br /><br />In the heart of the garden was a curious shrub<br />longlimbed with multiple root systems <br />and varigated blooms of unusual beauty<br />An old hat lay near the main trunk<br />and shreds of clothing all about<br />but no woman <br />not bone or nail or tooth<br />only an exotic shrub with deep roots</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Charles, I don't know what Photoshop has to do with creating a photo. Certainly it is one tool among many. Photos are created through perspective, composition, use of light, texture, and a host of other very "real" things.</p>

<p>Please don't make this conversation about manipulation. That's a very tired subject.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Charles, what a remarkable poem. Is that yours. (At least they are not likely to delete that.)</p>

<p>Fred, when we create we manipulate. Can we create beauty with photo manipulation? Well, some can, but I stay pretty close to the ground because of (1) limited PS skills and (2) personal preferences (with some exceptions).</p>

<p>The thing about vulnerability, openness, is that we do not get it thorugh Photoshop, although we can manipulate other variables, including the envionment in which the photo is made.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[clgriffin]

<p>Ah, yes. The original path to subjective representation. I probably should have put a paragraph break in there before I mentioned Photoshop, which is both a blessing and a curse.</p>

<p>Of course a photographer, whether working in film or digitally, presuming enough knowledge and experience, can use all those factors to create an image. I recall doing staged shakes of the developing film so that the developer would completely exhaust its chemical reaction against the emulsion before the next shake, thus giving a defined "edge" to the grain--all to gain an illusive texture in the final print.</p>

<p>Among your photos, Fred, is a very well done black and white flower that was originally a color image, if I read the comments correctly. I'm sorry if my bringing up manipulation is tiring to you--after all, I'm just getting engaged in the conversation and it is simply stimulating to me.</p>

<p>I'm not so much an artist, but I am a photographer. I capture moments more than I create images. I stalk reality more than I engage in fantasies. Sometimes I get results that show or illustrate feelings, emotions, truths--whatever--but it is both luck and the perception of the beholder that translates to these values. Which differ among each of us.</p>

[clgriffin]

<blockquote>

<p>Charles, what a remarkable poem. Is that yours. (At least they are not likely to delete that.)</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes, I'm very versatile.</p>

<p>I figure I'll be gone before her and I wrote that for her, since I expect she will one day expire while working in her garden.</p>

 

[Norma Desmond]

<blockquote>

<p>Can we create beauty with photo manipulation?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>We can create beauty in how we see and how we frame what we see and how we photograph what we frame and how we process what we photograph and how we present what we process. Whether we call it creation or manipulation or some combination of each is immaterial to me. It's just steps. </p>

<p>Lannie asked a valid question about how to access photographic beauty and now we're deciding whether manipulation is the same thing or a part of creation. </p>

[john_macpherson]

<p>Manipulation can only deal with what is already there. If 'beauty' is absent no amount of fiddling can make it appear.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>John, I'm not so sure.</p>

<p>Sometimes a photo is beautiful even when the original subject or scene was not. That is a case of beauty being absent until someone saw something a certain way and did something about it by taking a picture of it.</p>

<p>Painters fiddle with paints in order to make beautiful things. Sculptors fiddle with marble in order to make beautiful things. A photographer can fiddle with his raw materials (the world) by taking a picture of it or he can fiddle with his capture in post processing in order to make a beautiful thing.</p>

<p>Beauty is not always simply found. It can be <em>realized</em>.</p>

<p>Some things are already beautiful and some things are made beautiful, in all kinds of ways.</p>

<p>Photographic beauty is often in the photographer's vision, not in the world he photographs. The realization of that vision often includes whatever manipulation might already be built into that vision.</p>

[john_macpherson]

<p>If it appears Fred, then it was already there!</p>

[john_macpherson]

<p>ps meant to say - I was referring only to manipulating already-taken photographs with my original comment.</p>

<p>I fully take your point about sculpture, painting etc.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>My point is that the original capture can be not beautiful and the manipulated (I prefer post processed) photo can be.</p>

<p>No, the beauty may not have been in the original scene. And it may not have been in the original capture. It took the photographer doing a good job of post processing to turn that capture into something beautiful. Unless only cameras, and not people, get to make something beautiful.</p>

[clgriffin]

<p>Fred, you should be aware of Jerry Uelsmann. Before Photoshop, he was the wizard of surrealist photography. In fact, he continues his darkroom alchemy (his own word for his technique) to date.</p>

<p>Of course, his has been a subset within the field--something not everyone could do.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>I find myself wondering if post-processing can promote a greater sense (or appearance) of vulnerability on the part of the subject of the photo, and, if so, wondering whether or not that can also promote a greater sense of beauty in the photograph.</p>

<p>We would need photos to show that, and I know of none to link to. The best example I have might be of the shot of Luke made at his grandmother's birthday party:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/10231891</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/10232031</p>

<p>Then again, I am not sure that the more heavily processed black-and-white version actually does create a greater appearance of vulnerability. That was not the point of the processing, of course, but it might have inadvertently created a different mood--or an appearance of greater vulnerability. He actually looks more inquisitive than vulnerable to me.</p>

<p>Sorry for another "grand-kid" shot, guys. It is all that I can think of at the moment.</p>

<p>Can anyone think of a shot where the processing has promoted a greater sense (or appearance) of vulnerability?</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Speaking of Uelsmann, Charles, I rather like this one--surreal as usual, but with a vague sense of something dark and foreboding to me--but maybe that is just about me. Whether that leads to a greater sense of vulnerability for the figures in the photo is another question:</p>

<p>http://masters-of-photography.com/U/uelsmann/uelsmann_small_woods_full.html</p>

<p>What does one make of the missing reflection for the central figure?</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[AJHingel]

<p>Lannie, in the "<a href="http://masters-of-photography.com/U/uelsmann/uelsmann_small_woods_full.html">Small woods where I met myself</a>" of Uelsmann, that you link up to above, I'm not sure I find neither beauty, nor vulnerability. I see surrealism. Everything that touches us in emotional or intellectual terms is not necessarily beauty, whatever definition you use for that term. In fact, as far as I see it, the relationship between Beauty and Vulnerability cannot be understood in terms of the-beauty-of-vulnerability as it is mostly discussed above, but rather in terms of the "vulnerability-of-the-viewer-that-makes-it-possible-to-see-beauty".<br /> This latter approach to appreciating beauty is, as far as I have understood - "but I might be wrong"! - that of many philosophers such as Kant: "natural beauty" in "finalities without end", from which one must conclude that all discussion on gender oriented desire and beauty swiftly dies away. According to Kant, beauty provokes "disinterested satisfaction". I would tend to agree with him.</p>

<p>I find however, that the question on how a subject of non-beauty, in conventional terms (a "beautiful woman" with a "harmonious" face) can change into beauty in photography (or painting), by manipulation or simply by framing and light, is interesting. I have uploaded an example, that in my eyes might be of interest. <a href="../photo/14097132">This shot</a> is a shot of a painting of Eugène Carrière ("Tête de fillette au noeud blanc", 1899) painted in a style similar to the <em>pictorialisme </em>of some photographers end of the 19th century<em>. </em>The photo I link to, is however a collage with elements from the Rodin museum in Paris including the infamous sculpture of hands and parts of one of the showrooms and window. The painting is shown on an obscure wall in the museum.</p>

[clgriffin]

<blockquote>

<p>What does one make of the missing reflection for the central figure?<br>

--Lannie</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>It's the only figure in movement, so I suspect Jerry was making a statement about the transitory nature of a body in motion. Now, I laugh--Ha, ha! Because I don't really know. It does make for an interesting bit of negative space-- pun intended.</p>

<p>I thinks Anders took a flight here, since the Uelsmann image was an aside from the main theme. On the other hand, I really liked the referred detail of a woman's face.</p>

[clgriffin]

<p>Another aside here, folks. I know that converting to black and white can create a different mood. It certainly changes the internal dynamics of the image. In the shots below, it emphasizes the dancers. It was also a chance to employ a Photoshop filter, which I rarely do, to enhance a high ISO image.</p>

<p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>. . . "natural beauty" in "finalities without end", from which one must conclude that all discussion on gender oriented desire and beauty swiftly dies away. According to Kant, beauty provokes "disinterested satisfaction". I would tend to agree with him.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I'm not sure what the subject of the sentence above is, Anders, but I always like to read Kant in context, and I don't have the full text of the passage that you cite in front of me. I have to say that I disagree with Kant on so much (glorification of capital punishment, affirmation of the penal law as a "categorical imperative," glorification of retribution in a principle [the Categorical Imperative] that is ostensibly an improvement on the golden rule, etc.) that his attempt to make beauty purely about rationality divorced from feeling leaves me cold. Kant, who spoke so much of logical consistency, was finally inconsistent in his totality, indeed to his very core. I cannot take him too seriously anymore--which is not to say that I am ready to throw in with Hume, the Utilitarians, or his many other enemies. There is yet too much of the stern, austere Prussian in Kant for my blood, and I think that his philosophy suffers as a result.</p>

<p>There is also for me a kind of neutered asexuality in Kant, as in Socrates as relayed to us by Plato--not that Socrates was asexual, simply that he relegated sexuality to the appetitive portion of his tripartite soul, and I am pretty sure that <em>eros</em> is more than that. I am hardly saying that beauty is about lust, but <em>eros</em> is more than lust for me. When I have my own theory of the psyche, I might venture a serious theory about such things. In the meantime, I see no sense in treating surrealism and beauty as mutually exclusive. There can be beauty or ugliness in surrealism--or meaninglessness or meaning or whatever one finds in it. Surrealism by its nature invites the imagination to go whichever way it will, but bringing Kant into a discussion of all that does not help me.</p>

<p>I do find the work by Uelsmann linked to above quite beautiful in a mysterious kind of way. I find only the middle figure to be vulnerable. That figure seems to be lost, having lost touch with something--I'm not sure what, but this is surrealism, and one may read into it what one may. It is fantasy, after all.</p>

<p>You might be right that the sense of vulnerability comes solely from the emotion that is evoked in the viewer, but ultimately that kind of subjectivism simply seems to beg all the important questions raised in this thread.</p>

<p>As for my still non-existent theory of the psyche, I can only say that a coherent theory of the psyche would for me have to link feeling or emotion with rationality, not divorce them from each other.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>