Cultural Style in Photography?

Julie H · December 20, 2011

Wouter, to whatever degree your culture makes you do what you do and affects how you see what you perceive, your culture, nevertheless, is not *in* your pictures. The stuff in your pictures didn't happen because of you. It was available; you are, if alert, hard-working, fast, talented, skilled, etc. able to "get it," even (particularly) to choose which part or way in which it is "gotten" but it's there with or without you and your culture is not *in* any resulting pictures. Your culturally inflected perception of what's *in* the picture is not what is actually *in* the picture. Okay?

You might be able to argue that what's *not* in your pictures is *not* there because of your cultural influences; the imaginary is all yours.

Norma Desmond · December 20, 2011

The idea that things are in the picture or not in the picture is a remnant of a subjective/objective (in the mind / in the world) dualism. It's not a good vocabulary with which to look at humans, reality, or pictures. Reality isn't either in here (in the mind) or out there (in the world). What a picture has to offer isn't either in the picture itself literally or outside the picture in the minds of the viewers. What I take Wouter to be saying, or at least the way I see it, is that culture is an inescapable context. It is a determinism of a kind. It has great influence. It influences both the making and the viewing of photographs. Where exactly it's located is not the point and rather becomes a dualistic distraction. It's a realist/idealist debate brought needlessly into esthetics and photography. Cultural influence is not a location.

We don't have good language for discussing these questions. So, when the OP says we can see evidence of culture "within" the works of art, we can understand that as evidence of culture influencing works of art (in the making, the seeing, the styling, the symbolism, etc.). We don't have to worry where it is. It is.

We can, at various levels, overcome our cultural influences. But they are a part of us (not to be confused with being inside us). And this overcoming of biological or cultural influence really has to be contextualized further. It is never a blank slate. It can't complete its mission. It's a striving.

In any case, the interesting claim here, IMO, is why photos would be any different in this regard than any other medium or art form. Photography, though it has so many overlaps with painting, sculpture, music, does have its unique qualities and does have a certain kind of link with the world it photographs. I'm not seeing how that link would make photos less culturally determined, but I'm open to hearing some reasoning why that might be so. It would be an interesting line of thought to pursue.

Julie H · December 20, 2011

Here is my view (one that is deeply felt notwithstanding my irreverant description):

The manually created arts necessarily pass through a "digestive" process that can't avoid cultural influence. Photography, on the contrary, is not digested. It's raw.

To me, the paradox of everything in a photograph not being what it is is what makes a (good) photo so delicious.

A tree is never a "tree."

A mountain is never a "mountain."

A dog, a cat, a man, a woman is never "dog," "cat," "man," "woman."

Middle aged gay men are not "middle aged gay men."

The label is simultaneously defining and completely irrelevant; the picture is meatily, sweatily, wrinkledly, unavoidably not a cultural construct.

To me, a photograph wears culture like a rhinoceros wears a tutu. There is joy in all that exploding Lycra.

None of which devalues the photographer, in my opinion. It is an extraordinary thing to be able to put your body at the service of the world and say, "teach me!" -- along with the exquisite nimbleness required as already described in my previous post to Wouter.

Norma Desmond · December 20, 2011

Julie, thanks. I just think it's a very different way of seeing. I am not able, nor would I want, to view photos so abstractly. While I recognize that a picture of a mountain is not a mountain, I want to recognize the link between the two. And while I recognize that there are many abstract qualities -- light, shape, form, dimension, focus, composition, depth, etc. -- to a picture of a middle aged gay man, there is significance in my recognition of what I'm seeing beyond just the abstract elements on the page. Yes, there is abstraction and transcendence in all photographs and all art. But, I do believe transcendence has a ground and it's in the interplay between the transcending qualities, the photograph-ness and the ground that my appreciation of photos takes place. I can't extricate and don't want to extricate myself from any part of what I see as a circle or a counterpoint.

Julie H · December 20, 2011

Where did abstraction come from? I am trying to go in exactly the opposite direction; things are exactly *not* abstract. They explode cultural attempts at abstract containment.

Norma Desmond · December 20, 2011

I thought you were saying you don't see a picture of a gay man as having anything to do with a gay man. That, to me, is abstracting out important information (important, to me) in the recognition and gestalt of what I'm looking at.

luis_g · December 20, 2011

Julie - "The manually created arts necessarily pass through a "digestive" process that can't avoid cultural influence. Photography, on the contrary, is not digested. It's raw."

I see plenty of digestion, to use Julie's term, in photography. In art, all the digestion does not lie in the neuromusculature involved in the hand-eye-media involvement. Nor does mechanical representation of extant scenes/objects free you from it. The decisions before and after releasing the shutter (if you still have one) run through an acculturated being. Call it skin, but you while you can disguise it, you can't get out of it because it is you. From first-hand experience I can tell you that acquiring another culture does not eclipse the prior one. It's still there.

Julie - "To me, the paradox of everything in a photograph not being what it is is what makes a (good) photo so delicious.

A tree is never a "tree." A mountain is never a "mountain." A dog, a cat, a man, a woman is never "dog," "cat," "man," "woman." Middle aged gay men are not "middle aged gay men."

Oh, you mean like Magritte's This is not a pipe?

http://www.friendsofart.net/static/images/art3/rene-magritte-this-is-not-a-pipe.jpg

Wait a minute....that's a painting.

I think by now most people grasp that a photograph is a representation of something, not the thing in itself, although it seems that suspending disbelief is easier than at the movies. Realistic painting went through this hundreds of years earlier. Read Vassari's Lives on how real birds tried to perch on parts of one of Leonardo's murals.

While Fred's photographs are not middle aged gay men, they depict them. We know somewhere there was a referent, and the images are indexed to it. To cut that tie takes us into abstraction (or CGI!).

Wouter Willemse · December 20, 2011

Julie, while your second last post sure makes the previous posts much clearer and easier to understand, I too must say it's not a way I see photos. In fact, I do not see photography as that much different from manually created arts. I think this well explains our different takes on the subject.

If my questioning sounded harsh, then please know that it was only because it just did not connect at all to the way I perceive photos and the creation of them.

luis_g · December 20, 2011

At one time this was more pronounced, as in the time of August Sander and Atget. The former did the main of his work in a relatively concise area of Germany, south of where he lived. He bicycled to his locations. Atget took the train to get around. Both of these men photographed mainly in their home countries and turf, with subjects that spoke the same language, shared nationality, ethnicity, probably genetics, diet and culture.

Looking at their work, IMO, they're too individuated for the defining characteristic to be culture, but both of these guys were not mainstream in their culture or their time.

AJHingel · December 20, 2011

Luis, you don't need to be "mainstream in your culture' to be representative of a specific cultural context. Abstract expressionism did nothing mainstream in "American culture" in the 1950s, however you can accept it defined (aren't I diplomatic there?). It was exactly in contradiction with, or at least "beyond", what the artists involved saw as "mainstream". And yet, abstract expressionism can only be understood in relationship to that mainstream cultural context. "Culture" is always present in its confirmation, contradiction and further development. "Putting culture aside" seems to me to be nonsensical, whether we speak about an artistic form of expression or the work of an individual artist.

luis_g · December 20, 2011

That's true. Don't be too diplomatic, Anders, I'll think you've been kidnapped by aliens. I hope you understand that at no point was I saying culture should be put aside.

AJHingel · December 21, 2011

Luis, you might be right, the kidnapping happens regularly here around. I kind of get used to it.

luis_g · December 21, 2011

I was wondering if we could get a little more specific about this topic. There are books about photography from the "New York School", lots of blogs from various cultures, etc. In the US, Southern Photographers distinguish themselves, as do Midwestern ones, and the West Coast has had several prominent periods.

alan_zinn · December 21, 2011

The majority of pictures we see are advertisements and news that are filtered through culture by their sponsors. On the one hand the producer of the image has to be aware of what's current and stylistically successful in a global market. On the other is that the sponsor has to shape the image to suite a specific audience. Passing through an ethnic community, for example, the billboards change not only in language but in other more subtle ways to reflect culture. No doubt everybody has thumbed through a regional version of People or Vogue.

Looking away from commercial images, contemporary art reflects culture in the same way. An artist's culture is unfiltered to a larger extent by commercial interests and likely even magnified by personal identity issues. Photography offers limitless opportunities to reflect cultural differences in even more subtle ways. Choice of subject matter is an obvious one. What is expressed as a curiously interesting or metaphorical proposition to one photographer might be a subject of bitter outrage to another from a culture with a more intimate experience of social distress. Different standpoints allow different degrees of abstraction. <div></div>

aplumpton · December 21, 2011

Photography in advertisements, as Alan mentions, is dependent upon culture of the region addressed (rather than a simple consciously homogenised global statement that misses its mark in different cultures), and I think much like that of photography used in political messages. As an example I know well as someone straddling the two cultures, the difference in a political message from the same source to Canadians in French and English Canada is often noticeable, as are the images used to support it (political hate images during campaigns work to a large degree in the west, but are dismissed as a communication in Quebec and some other regions; What interests someone in the deep south or agrucultural midwest of the US are culturally often different than those in the so-called "foundry" (northeastern) industrialised states; The rural Frenchman from Languedoc-Roussillon has not so much culturally in common with the animal herder of Wales or Yorkshire although their agricultural ways of life are ostensibly similar). Luis' point about photographic approaches in different regions being different may be worth persuing, but I wonder how many of those movements or styles are more predicated upon the tendencies and particular experience of its leader or leaders of those styles or movements rather than a linkage to a specific regional cultural imperative.

Interesting shot, Alan, although your Culture Drive has the not so Albuquerque-local symbol of the international yellow arches.

don_essedi · December 21, 2011

Some years ago on photo.net this question was discussed. I did some image searches of things visited by millions of tourists from around the world. The searches included a country code limiter (for example 'site:*.cn', 'site:*.es', etc). I couldn't see any cultural differences expressed in the images. A camera has no culure, no ethnicity.

But what of photos that express something 'cultural'? These appear to be consciously constructed by the photographer according to their concept of an 'ethnos', that is, they are ideological constructs, rather than a natural expression. "the essential condition of the holder of a traditional faith is the he should not know he is a traditionalist." (al Ghazali)

stephen_hipperson · December 21, 2011

"Photography offers limitless opportunities to reflect cultural differences in even more subtle ways. Choice of subject matter is an obvious one." - if I as a western european took 100 pictures of, er.. mongolian leather work, they would show cultural specifics of mongolian people's work, not my cultural 'properties' as the photographer.

However, if I then moved to taking photographs of mongolian landscapes, some cultural style may become evident (I'd have to have a rock on the foreground with front to back focus, gradiated sky, and long shutter speed to make sure the water was blurred?). This may differ to another culture's view on landscape, e.g. selective focussing, white sky, ... can't think what else. Of course this a nonsense, there are no outlets for cultural variations. (I don't include digital art manipulation here).

Personally, I don't think photography is capable of providing a mechanism for defining cultural style in an artistic sense, not of itself anyway. Style will exist, of course, we all strive to develop our own, and perhaps hope to be recognised by it, but I don't think it is cultural.

(As an aside, to my mind there's no way that the US and Europe can be compared in some kind of equivalence discussion. A single European country and the US maybe. Europe has individual soverign states, own laws, economics, political systems and languages).

Does anyone have examples of cultural styles developing in photography? ie that I would be able to 'assign' a particular picture to a cultural style without knowing the photographer?

Oh, and to my mind all photography is abstraction.

I'm grateful for your inputs here, it has given breadth and wider context to my musings.

Norma Desmond · December 21, 2011

Oh, and to my mind all photography is abstraction.

</blockquote>

That may be true. I am aware of the aspect of abstraction that takes place in all good art and photography. The point is, it's not complete abstraction. As Luis said, photography in particular is tied to a referent. Certainly, we note shape, color, design, focus, etc. But if we lose sight of the photo being a photo of Aunt Mary, if indeed it is (or of a middle-aged woman if you don't know Aunt Mary) then we lose a significant part of the photo.

Rarely is it all or nothing.

Which is why I would also reject Don's claim that photos with cultural expressions "are ideological constructs, rather than a natural expression." It's not either/or. It's what aspects of both inter-relate. A "natural" expression has cultural embeds just as a "natural" living thing is genetically formulated.

alan_zinn · December 21, 2011

Regionalism is an interesting distinction of cultural difference. It has a time element, as Luis points out, requiring a sort of dues-paying by the artist. Being an increasingly mobile society it is still hard to let go of your origin and become from an adopted milieu. I remember a humorous occasion when a regional art exhibition was being assembled. Artists who, even though working their whole career in the area and didn't have any regional characteristic to speak of, tried to shoehorn their way in. The same seems to happen with cultural difference. Ethnic or racial proximity in bloodline comes to the fore. Roots! Artistic tastes in the U.S. have been Pier One-ified. Eclecticism is the norm. That is not to deny regionalism. There is an unmistakable urbanism and a sort of nostalgic bucolic-ism that defines us geographically. They both have distinctive sub-divisions - that's an ironic pun! The U.S. is so large that climate zones maintain a durable separateness. Many photographers I know are not content with where they live and need to spend more on airline tickets than equipment. This alone could give someone the impression that cultural difference means less today. Mobility is, for one example, where cultural difference is strongly expressed in social class. A desert sunset or a rocky seascape, a Bedouin or an Inuit have all the same cultural weight. Merely taking a picture of an ethnic person or whatever "other" you find to be an interesting study imprints your class and outlook. It doesn't represent theirs. Cultural expressions by non-natives often miss the whole point - cultural hobbyists at best.

luis_g · December 21, 2011

Doing flyweight research on this question, I was just leafing through a few magazines from different countries, and couldn't help but noticing that French PHOTO has a lot more female nudes than American PHOTO. At least twice as many (somehow I lost count). And they seem to carry less pictures by a lot more photographers by comparison. But that could just be the editors, though they come from the same company, I think.

Yes, Alan. Climactic, geographical, industrial/agricultural and conceptual subdivisions. Being defined by region is equated by many with provincialism. Look at the people at the top of the art world, they're all global. As soon as an artist makes enough money working regionally, he begins to travel widely, slouching towards the global.

don_essedi · December 21, 2011

Fred: "Rarely is it all or nothing.

Which is why I would also reject Don's claim that photos with cultural expressions "are ideological constructs, rather than a natural expression." It's not either/or. It's what aspects of both inter-relate. A "natural" expression has cultural embeds just as a "natural" living thing is genetically formulated.""

Your "cultural expressions" doesn't quite capture what I intended (and failed) by "But what of photos that express something 'cultural...'. Mea culpa. Can photographers be conscious of their cultural expressions in their photographs and remain in al Ghazali's sense -- in themselves, the photographers-- an expression of their culture?

In some of my photographs I can see unintended meanings and expressions. I can own up to them and say, "Yup, that's me.", but I can't see any cultural expressions. They might be obvious, though, to someone else, an outsider familiar with my culture. They have an objectivity or a sensitivity to it, that the person bred in the bone in the culture doesn't have. In al Ghazali's sense, to be conscious of one's culture is to have separated from it -- 'gained objectivity'.

aplumpton · December 21, 2011

A camera has no culure, no ethnicity. But what of photos that express something 'cultural'?

Don, neither does a paintbrush or sculpting tool have a culture (although, like the camera it may have been individuals within a culture that designed it, and that would mean getting into the mind of Monsieur Niepce, or Dageurre or Fox-Talbot, to name only a few pioneers of camera/ conception). The camera is not important in the expression, only the subject matter and the photographer.

How the photographer sees something and transfers that perception to film or sensor is what may or may not be culturally influenced. It simply depends upon the photographer and whether his expression is non culture related or is influenced by his own cultural values. I believe that just as those values differ amongst people, amongst groups, regions or even countries in some cases, those values can influence how he perceives and interprets the subject matter. A "natural expression" is simply that, but it can also be influenced by other parameters of the photographer's approach. The propaganda of World War II and the images out of Stalinist Russia combine cultural and deterministic expressions. In many cases of current photographic art, the subject matter has little to say in how it is going to be represented as a two dimensional visual form. The values of the photographer are not infrequently some part of that expression.

"Knowing thyself" also implies a consciousness as to how others might perceive one's values, an objectivity that is not a universal attribute today in a world continually obsessed with conflict between groups, nations and cultures, including the omnipresent religious one. Therefore, I do not ascribe to the al Ghazali statement, insofar as I can understand his point without having fully read his essays.

AJHingel · December 21, 2011

I was wondering if we could get a little more specific about this topic.

</blockquote>

I would suggest to take Luis by the word and become "concrete. Why not take the time to look at two photos of Japanese photographers like these two: Let's take this <a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UUQz7br37ck/TgeXGS4GsHI/AAAAAAAAEoI/pv4TwNadayM/s1600/eikoh%20hosoe%20%283%29.jpg">here</a> by Eikoh Hosoe of a person (man/woman ?) on a street corner against a wall that seems to an old Japanese city/village/building, half blurres, in movement, in pain? extase ? Half erotic, half morbid. It is one of those photos that call me back since some time. Or let's take this <a href="http://craigmod.com/work/photography/kanda_river_faces/full_face-0x900.jpg">here </a>by Ken Kitona which is a portrait of a woman but could be a man; with a composition that attracts out eye towards the empty bigger black parts of the frame, and a face that is blurred to the extreme and eye starring at the camera, at us.

When I see, and admire, I must admit, photographers like these, I do not only deeply admire the artistic skills, but I'm, as viewer, deeply buried in Japanese culture. I admit, you need to know at least something about Japanese culture through visits to the country, through reading of Japanese litteratur, studying Japanese artistic heritage, seeing regularly Japanese films - to see these two examples of photography, as deeply rooted in a cultural context. They are expressions of culture, apart from from being, surely, expressions of artistic individuals that happen to be Japanese.

However, even if one does not have that background, experience and knowledge about this specific culture, any viewer, and especially experienced photographer in Europe, or the US, must at least admit, that these two photos express something that is clearly different from our native cultural context. You might be able to identify nationals with the same visual language, but it would stay of Japanese cultural influence, for sure.

I could of course take examples of photos of my own but things become rapidly more complicated.

don_essedi · December 21, 2011

Arthur: "Don, neither does a paintbrush or sculpting tool have a culture"

Only if you ignore those all important motor skills of the wielder of that simple tool, and the culture of which the brush is an expression. The technical essence of photography should be kept in mind here. A dslr has no culture, or it is the same culture for everyone.

aplumpton · December 21, 2011

Don, you were referring in part of your post to the camera as such, and not to its wielder, as you say. Technical abilities in photography may well vary from culture to culture (but I think not, or I think it is relatively unimportant, culturally speaking). Where I think culture comes in is more in the mind of the artist or photographer, who works to some degree at least in concert with his social, humanistic, political and individual values, which can be universal or regionally/ethnically cultural (region and ethnicity are but two of the cultural values we may hold, they are not exclusive denominators of that).

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