Has there really been progress in photography? Reflections upon viewing the works of Käsebier, Stieglitz, and Steichen.

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>We develop photos. And photography develops.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>! </p>

<p>I like that, Fred. Yes, we all go back to old files/negatives from time to time. For me, alas, it is not usually so much a matter of bringing a new vision to an old shot, rather simply seeing how inept my earlier processing was. And so I try again. . . . </p>

<p>Invariably, though, a new vision does seem to emerge as I reprocess or redevelop.</p>

<p>"redevelop" </p>

<p>I confess that I like that word, too. We are constantly reinventing ourselves and "the world we see," not to mention our memories and interpretations of those memories. There are clearly a lot of complicated feedback loops in Stieglitz's work. I certainly cannot sort them all out. I cannot sort out my own.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[luis_g]

<p>It is consciousness that was shifting. This is what brought about the revised views of Stieglitz' earlier work. And that earlier work had the seeds of Modernism and the future in it, but Stieglitz was not aware of it when he made them, or for some time afterward. I think this is important, that in spite of all our planning, purposefulness and control, the work is also unfolding and developing on its own, with vectors we may not be consciously aware of until much later -- if ever. Stieglitz wanted photography to be accepted as art on its own terms and for its own strengths, and he sacrificed his own personal fortune to do it, along with bringing in Modernist painters into the US. He had to figuratively and literally create the space and press to make this happen. And it wasn't just A.S., of course. Many others were caught in the same wave, and a few had preceded it, like Atget.</p>

<p>Painting also changed, and in a subtextual way, photography and painting changed at the same time, and in some ways, in parallel, so that painting and photography shifted in synch, though photography was redefined in its own terms and in half a century, it would reign supreme in the art world, with the situation reversed, and painting emulating many of photography's tropes and trends.</p>

<p>Nothing happens in isolation, and sometimes very complicated changes stem from small, insignificant-looking events. In science, we see this when independent researchers make identical discoveries (how many people invented photography?) or come up with very similar theories. It is as if ripples make their way across the field of human consciousness, and art is no exception. We may reinvent the way we see things, but things also reinvent us.</p>

<p> </p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>I am reminded of Unamuno's<em> Niebla</em>, from a very different genre, Luis. The author cannot even control his own character--but Unamuno knew that this was true of all of his works, I believe, not simply the one where the point is made explicit.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>Does time and technology really improve the Artists vision?</p>

<p> Or, is it really about the vision regardless of anything else.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Most of us haven't been talking about "improvement." We've been talking about development and change.</p>

<p>For me, it's about realizing a vision with a set of tools, a craft. The tools and the state of the craft matter. They are inextricable from the vision.</p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>"The tools and the state of the craft matter. They are inextricable from the vision."<br>

<br />A limited thought in my opinion. An Artist does not need tools and craft to create their vision just their mind and imagination. They will use the tools and materials avialable at the time and adapt them to their needs.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>The best photographers I know (or whose work I have seen), and likewise with painters and sculptors, are so intimate with their tools and their craft that, when one looks at their work, they almost feel as if this HAS TO BE a painting or a photograph or a sculpture. It's what actually sets Stieglitz (and some others) apart. Speaking of limits, they were not willing to limit themselves to the kinds of visions painters were having. They wanted to do something <em>uniquely photographic</em>. But, you may see Stieglitz as limited as well, I don't know.</p>

<p>When I make photos, I am not only after a vision. I am after a vision that I can craft photographically. My vision is intimate with my craft. A lot of mediocre photographers (IMO) don't have bad visions, but they don't know how to work with the medium they've chosen and they aren't integrating their vision with the elements and qualities of photographs.</p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>"are so intimate with their tools and their craft that, when one looks at their work, they almost feel as if this HAS TO BE a painting or a photograph or a sculpture."</p>

<p>I'm sure they are intimate with their tools and craft...they enable them to express themselves.</p>

<p>However, I really don't think any Artist with a vision is unable to express themselves unless they certain tools or craft.</p>

<p>Jeez, I wish I could write a poem but I only have a pencil...now if I had an ink pen. Really.</p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>They feel that it has to be a painting or sculpture because that is the medium they have chose. But.. a big but ...if those mediums were not avialable they would find another medium for their talents.</p>

<p>Real talent and vision will always find a way to express itself.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Allen, we're not talking about NEEDING certain tools or WISHING for certain tools. We're talking about using them to express oneself and how different tools develop along with vision.</p>

<p>A pencil and a poem, in this particular regard, is not comparable to a camera and a photo. We don't usually see the original manuscript of poems or hear the pencil along with the recitation of the poem. We do see what the photographer and camera together produced.</p>

<p>Listen, sometime, to <a href="

famous Chaconne for solo violin</a> and then check out<a href="

Busoni's piano version</a> and see if they don't SOUND and FEEL differently. Bach wrote it for the violin for a reason, and he utilized the unique characteristics of the violin in doing so. In order for it to work on the piano, Busoni couldn't translate it exactly. He had to utilize what a piano has to offer and its character greatly changes. Notice how the violin version is able to utilize the offset string sounds to create a sense of many voices, a kind of echoing, almost musical afterthoughts of a lot of the opening notes, as the bow slides from string to string. The piano version is necessarily more architectural, not as much of a dialogue as the violin version is. Anyone who's ever written for or listened to an orchestra knows the different instruments have different colors and timbres. Composers will utilize oboes and violins creatively because they're musicians, but they will utilize them DIFFERENTLY. </p>

<p>Pens and pencils are different animals from cameras and musical instruments and relate to poetry differently than an oboe relates to music and a camera relates to a photo. REALLY! No, we don't see the camera when we see the photo, but we see its VISUAL effects in the photo. We don't see or hear the effects, in that sense, of a pen or pencil.</p>

<p>Someone working with a polaroid will likely work differently, and therefore his vision might vary, from when he is working with a 4x5 on a tripod. Different lenses will have different attributes and looks. A good photographer will incorporate the usage into his vision.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>"Real talent and vision will always find a way to express itself."</em></p>

<p>That's a red herring. Got nothing to do with what we're talking about. Sure, if I don't have a 4x5, I'll create well with a polaroid. But that doesn't mean that I won't see differently when I have the polaroid in hand. It doesn't mean I won't create differently when I'm in a darkroom in the 1800s vs. post processing on a computer in the 21st century.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Allen, I want to make sure it's clear that I'm not saying that instruments, tools, and craft are the most important aspects of art and I don't mean or want to emphasize them more than a host of other things that go into creative visions. All I'm doing is rejecting your idea that <em>"An Artist [sic] does not need tools and craft to create their vision . . ."</em> I'm simply advocating the significance of the roles of tools and craft in creating and realizing a vision.</p>

[luis_g]

<p>Allen, a work of art is an actualized vision, and the medium and tools used are what bridge the gap from the conceptual to the real -- and determine how it can look. It's a crucial, <em>but not the only</em> link in the process. Sure, you can make perfectly valid work with a disposable camera or chalk on a sidewalk, but the results will be very different. If those means synergize with your vision, that's well and good, but they may not. </p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>"Allen, a work of art is an actualized vision, and the medium and tools used are what bridge the gap from the conceptual to the real -- and determine how it can look. It's a crucial"</p>

<p>Of course you need medium and tools to create your vision. And the sky is blue. However, talent is not dependent on certain types of tools to express itself. Tools, mediums, are just that nothing else...</p>

<p>A final thought from someone who used many types of tools, mediums, to create their Art.<br>

<br /><br /><br>

Leonardo Da Vinci</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<blockquote>

<p>talent is not dependent on certain types of tools to express itself.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>No one has claimed talent is dependent on tools. We're talking about artists using different tools to create different works of art. We're talking about vision (not talent) integrating with tools to do so. We're not talking about dependency. We're actually talking about freedom and choice.</p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>"No one has claimed talent is dependent on tools"</p>

<p>I got the feeling from your post you were. I'm glad we agree.</p>

<p>Talent/vision birds of a feather. We all are capable of some talent and vision nomatter how lowly we think we are.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>We don't agree. I just clarified something and now you understand me. Believe it or not, I actually have no interest in agreeing with you.</p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>Just expressing my thoughts, Fred. Sad they upset you so much .Oh well.</p>

 

[Norma Desmond]

<blockquote>

<p>Sad they upset you so much</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Don't project onto me. It reeks too much of a now-gone old geezer's claims that he made others anxious.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>"We seem to be a bit short on brotherly love around here." <br>

--Butch Cassidy, as recounted in the Newman-Redford movie of 1969</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Look at it this way, Allen. You got a picture of some guy walking on water, and it really doesn't matter if you took it with a disposable, a Leica, or an 8x10 view camera. You got the shot:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/6854963</p>

<p>I'm not about to try to referee the dispute, though. Fred's point is subtle, but I believe that he is on target.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Allen Herbert]

"We seem to be a bit short on brotherly love around here."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not on my part. Actually I'm rather fond of Fred and enjoy his posts. I just offer a different opinion.

 

<p>You got a picture of some guy walking on water, and it really doesn't matter if you took it with a disposable, a Leica, or an 8x10 view camera. You got the shot:</p>

<br />Could not agree more.

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Lannie, to relate some of this to the exploration of development in photography, here's what Szarkowski once wrote:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>“. . . more than any other photographer, André Kertész discovered and demonstrated the aesthetic of the small camera.”</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The aesthetics of a kind of camera? Not only the aesthetics of the mind and imagination of the photographer, but the aesthetics and influence of a type of camera!</p>

<p>Continuing:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"After years of amateur snapshot photography in his native Hungary, Kertész moved to Paris in 1925, then the artistic capital of the world, and began a career as a freelance photographer. It was here that he purchased his first Leica, the new hand-held 35mm camera, and this inspired his interest in the idea of the chance encounter, wandering, observing, and developing an intimate approach to image-making . . ."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The more factual and deliberate style of the big camera gave way, as Kertész integrated his vision with this new smaller and more easily manageable tool, to a more lyrical and ephemeral approach to photographing. (This did not make photography better. It helped add a new characteristic and spirit.)</p>

<p><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bOMDzxsOOVI/Sd5SRcAlQvI/AAAAAAAAAls/3Jn_XjLX7GI/s1600/paris%2Bshop%2B(paris_1928).kertecz.jpg">Kertesz, <em>Lily of the Valley</em>, 1928, Paris</a></p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>"It was here that he purchased his first Leica, the new hand-held 35mm camera, and this inspired his interest in the idea of the chance encounter, wandering, observing, and developing an intimate approach to image-making . . ."</p>

<p> </p>

</blockquote>

<p>Thanks for the quote, Fred. I don't think that there is any doubt that the medium affects the development of the (for lack of a better phrase) "art form." Imagine HCB trying to get the man about to step in a puddle with a view camera.</p>

<p>Even sports, by analogy, has a strong esthetic component. Can one compare handball to tennis, or arena football to the football of the NCAA and the NFL? Well, of course, one can compare them, and there are many points of congruence across both comparisons. Even so, the differences are still very obvious, not only in the sports themselves, but in the appreciation (read "esthetics") of the respective sports. I suppose that one could even do the same thing with bull fighting v. bull riding in rodeos, or carpet golf v. the golf played at the Masters, although I appear to be in danger of going from the sublime to the ridiculous through such comparisons.</p>

<p>The medium we use imposes limits on our expression, in the same way that the sonnet imposes limits that free verse does not. I suspect that we could go on and on in this vein, but at some point one either gets the point or one does not. I do think that it is instructive, however, to see how poets will chose one type of form for certain types of expression. I instantly think of two of my favorites, Keats' Odes, on the one hand, and the rhyming couplets used by Andrew Marvell in his "To His Coy Mistress," on the other. (Then, of course, there is the lowly limerick for conveying humor, surely an esthetic unto itself.)</p>

<p>When I choose a camera and lens(es) before walking out the door, I am limiting myself for the entire outing, but I am also deliberately making a choice which I know will affect not only "getting the shot," but in creating the kind of mood that I want to convey. Technique has its own esthetics. In a fit of pique, I once cropped (through the viewfinder) my ex-wife about four inches above the waist, while getting her best friend from the hips up--in the same frame. My ex-wife was actually the more lovely (and much more petite), but I did not even have to use a wide-angle close-up of her nose to diminish her beauty. She never even knew why she did not "win" the breast-to-breast comparison, although she knew that she hated the way she looked in the shot. (Of such stuff great marriages are made--and let us not forget the esthetics of divorce, Jerry Springer, and welterweight boxing.)</p>

<p>All of this goes double for post processing, in my opinion, not to mention the selection of print media if one decides to print. Consider how Stieglitz <em>et al.</em> chose both the processing and the paper in order to convey or evoke a certain mood. (Wait, now, I think that you told me about that first. . . .)</p>

<p>Did I forget to mention filters, including the almighty polarizer? (Dear Lord, please pass me a club so that I can beat this photo to death. . . .)</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<blockquote>

<p>The medium we use imposes limits on our expression, in the same way that the sonnet imposes limits that free verse does not.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Lannie, I get your point and think we agree, though I'd express it differently. I think various mediums and tools impose a kind of limit which I'd be apt to call physical, for lack of a better word at the moment, rather than expressive. The point is we are NOT limited in our expression. We can use these "physical" limits actually to express ourselves MORE freely. Creativity is, in at least one sense, working with what you have to get anywhere you want. The beauty of a sonnet, the sonata form, haiku, a polaroid is that the imposed external limitations are a <em>means</em> to express, not a deterrant or containment of expression.</p>

<p>And, though we're currently talking about tools and mediums, it's important to remember that these limits apply to moments and situations as well. We may have to find a compromise due to a lighting situation, a fleeting moment that doesn't give us much room to maneuver, an inability to get our desired perspective on a scene due to physical constraints, even a person's unwillingness or inability to look or act in a certain way. When we see the freedom to make something of those situations, the possibilities for expression offered by those limits are limitless for our imaginations or at least for the imaginations of artists.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Thank you, Fred. As you were writing this here, I was writing in a similar vein over on Luis' thread on "Spontaneity." It is amazing how these threads cross-fertilize each other. </p>

<p>I am not saying that I have had precisely the same insights as you have, though. I shall have to let your latest thoughts here rattle around in my brain for a bit before I offer anything worthy of being called a response.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>