Guest or host?

[luis_g]

<p>Dennis, the conciliatory parts of your response are appreciated.</p>

<p> </p>

 

<p><strong>Ps. Dennis Couvillion - </strong>Hey, Brad...I'm back for five minutes and already I'm fighting with somebody!<br>

Seems like old times...LOL."</p>

 

<p> </p>

[don_essedi]

"HCB provides us one element that is missing from most of the other photographic expressions and types - and which lights the fire of some of us photographers - the element of mystery..."

 

It's not "mystery", for me, rather, it is not obvious. The photograph doesn't insist I see it a certain way. I like that in a photo.

[luis_g]

<p><strong>Don - "</strong>It's not "mystery", for me, rather, it is not obvious. The photograph doesn't insist I see it a certain way. I like that in a photo."</p>

<p>I agree.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Dennis Couvillion has said something that is really core to what I'm getting at, even though I'm going to disagree with it. He said, " ... every element is important and has a place.." No, not every element but <em>which</em> elements. Everybody watching HCB's jumping man would have seen the jumping man, but who would have seen all those repeated spikes and arcs and the leaping figure in the poster in the background? But also, who would have known that those matter and the rest doesn't IN THIS CASE?</p>

<p>Monty Python does a skit about an Olympic soccer final between soccer teams of the Greek philosophers and the German philosophers. When the whistle blows to start the game, all the "players" run around more or less randomly, pontificating to the air and paying no attention to each other or to the ball which remains untouched in the center of the field. Ha ha! What a bunch of dummies! Actually, I would suggest that the idiot (oh, that's not nice; let's call him a knucklehead instead) is the observer who sits there staring at the ball. He assumes he knows. He assumes the game is what he already knows, when, in fact, and entirely new and different kind of game is going on here (not to go all serious about anything Monty Python. They eventually get to playing and the Greeks whup the Germans -- but the Germans then convince everybody that it was not real, etc. etc.).</p>

<p>In my host/guest thing, a host knows the game. In knowing the game, he sees the game; he doesn't just watch the ball. (I am not a street shooter; there are no streets -- or even any people --- where I live, but I used to shoot sports and I would suggest that the kinesthetic, internalizing of the game -- so that one shoots when one feels it, not when one sees it because if you see it, it's too late -- might be similar to street?). A street shooter seems to me to be someone who can find a game (there will be infinite games available) and therefore "see" the play and kinesthetically "feel" what matters -- who can see the "field" and who/what the players are -- far beyond the ball and who's handling it at the moment, to return to Dennis's claim.</p>

<p>Another Sheringham quote about the street: "... he ventriloquizes the street’s propositions, becoming the medium of its utterances and the stage for its particular spatial performances. ... a city street, vista, or itinerary is an enigma that prompts interrogation: ‘what are you getting at?’, ‘what are you saying?’"</p>

<p>If I am in a strange country and they're playing some game that I don't know, I would watch for the structure, but/and that structure would, as I am discovering it, allow me to see the game; the parameters, what mattered and what didn't -- there is a process of discovery, of uncovering, of locating the lines of tension, call and response. That's the "guest" thing. It's about finding the game -- whereas the "host" thing is about the (beautiful!) play within the game -- a game that is known and even assumed.</p>

<p>Compare Sally Mann's photographs of children to Archibald's, linked above. [m stephens, if you're still there, I am thinking of her after/during reading your last comment, above.]</p>

<p>To return to our philosophers who aren't kicking the ball, I'll end this too-long post with a segment of a Todd PapaGeorge interview done by John Pilson in Aperture magazine:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p><strong>PapaGeorge</strong>: ... Garry Winogrand ... took it upon himself to try to figure out what photography was, at least as he understood it. That's when I met him, in late 1965, when he was trying to figure this thing out, which was just about the time that he decided to have a little workshop at his house on Sunday nights, where he would look at our pictures (Joel Meyerowitz was part of this group) and mull over what it all meant. His manner, his style of understanding these things, was purely, utterly Soctratic. I'm sure he'd heard of Socrates, but he's certainly never read a word of Plato. He would just ask question after question after question, as if he didn't understand anything. And the fact is, he really felt he didn't understand anything, but -- almost urgently, at least as it seemed to me -- appeared to believe that something might help him understand (and of course I'm speaking about photography) was to clarify for himself what the rest of us meant when we said something about it.</p>

<p><strong>Pilson</strong>: During those evenings, were you there to define a project? Were you only focusing on the structure and quality of individual pictures, or were people talking about their general ambitions?</p>

<p><strong>PapaGeorge</strong>: No. In fact, it was all very abstract, very much like my similar discussions with John Szarkowski. It was never really specific, beyond saying: "That's a good photograph." Garry was embarked on an interrogative process: What is a photograph? What does a photograph have to be? ..."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You could think of a forum thread, especially a PoP forum thread as a street shoot. You can't assume you know the game and even if/when you think you do, it changes, it's fluid. Don't just stare at the ball and assume.</p>

<p>[Luis, thank you for being a gracious gentleman in your last posts -- and for Dennis for contributing to the thread.]</p>

[dennis_couvillion]

<p>Julie, I am in agreement with your observation <em>"...not every element but which elements" </em>are important. Allow me to try to explain how I view Cartier-Bresson's photographs and why I believe they remain enduringly interesting. But, first. let me state that I have no formal education in fine arts, wouldn't know half the terms used here, and rely mostly on an intuitive compositional sense.</p>

<p>You touched on the repeating spikes and arcs in HCB's photo. Repeating shapes and patterns re-occur throughout HCB's works, sometimes as important guides and other times as just interesting backdrop that highlight more important elements. The question is how much of that was intentional. Did HCB purposely play clever visual tricks; was his artistic sense so developed that he saw these things at a subconscious level; or was he just lucky? I doubt that the latter is the best explanation.</p>

<p>I am no HCB but look at a photo I took several months ago and which I've attached as an example. What I saw before I pressed the shutter button was a man in a sea of rectangles...even the chair backs are roughly rectangular. What particularly caught my eye was how the dark, upper right portion of the frame on the wall is broken into three sections. Now look to the dark section in the extreme upper right hand of the entire image and see how it looks similar to the three segments in the frame, except inverted. The man's head is framed inside of a rectangle. What does it all mean? Not a whole lot, except that it provides a visually interesting backdrop to a curiosly vague image. Is the man naked? Are there other people around? Someone else said that he likes photographs that don't force an interpretation on you. Bingo...a photograph should allow the viewer to let his imagination run wild. At least in my opinion it should. But what keeps the viewer coming back to look are the visual "tricks" that make the photo interesting to look at.</p>

<p>I have a friend who is a succesful songwriter...very creative, but couldn't draw if his life depended on it and wouldn't know which end of a camera to look into. But he has a good eye. One day, after I had introduced him to some of my stuff, he said<em> "I get it...it's all about the angles." </em>Then he proceed to explain how he saw in some of my photos repeating angles, shapes, patterns...how if you played connect the dots with main elements it created a shape that was repeated elsewhere in the photo, etc. I wanted to hug the guy because much of what he saw I also did...but other people hadn't.</p>

<p>It surprises me to get together with another photographer and point out an interesting occurence in his/her image that he/she seemed to have missed. Once, before a show by a very accomplished photographer, I pointed out to her how in one of her photos the reflection in a glass window looked like a continuation of the adjacent horizon, even though on close examination the structures were completely different. Her response was <em>"Huh...!"</em> as though she was unaware of it. Did she not see that when she took the shot? My guess is that she did see it, but it was on a more subconscious level.</p>

<p>And that is where I see Cartier-Bresson's genius. His pictures are a virtual circus of interesting visual "tricks" (for lack of a better descriptive term) that keep your eyes glued. In my opinion, it's what makes you keep going back to look at his photos. And the more you look at a photograph the more meaning you should derive from it. And, again, a photo should allow the viewer to use his imagination and create his own narrative. In common parlance <em>"Cartier Bresson was a freakin' genius!" </em> I love him...</p><div></div>

[dennis_couvillion]

<p>Julie, one more thing, briefly...</p>

<p>You said: <em>"...where I live, but I used to shoot sports and I would suggest that the kinesthetic, internalizing of the game -- so that one shoots when one feels it, not when one sees it because if you see it, it's too late -- might be similar to street?"</em><br>

<em> </em><br>

Interesting that you mention that because I have done a considerable amount of sports photgraphy over the years and I often compare the required skill set there to street photography...and the most imporatant skill is being able to anticipate the action. That comes only by knowing (internalizing?) "the game" whether in sports or on the street. The technical skills are also similar...shooting quickly, for example. (The first time I used an auto focus camera in sports photography I thought it was cheating.) But the key is having an understanding, or even an intuitive sense, of where the action will be.</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>I find it quite amusing how "mystery" and "not obvious" (or add the words "enigmatic" or "as yet unseen") are considered to be either opposites or not the same. Given that we all see images in our own personal ways (not inate but inate plus cultural experience) it is obvious to me that mystery is in fact a not obvious characteristic of something and varies with each person. </p>

<p>We might want to recall that words and sentences (thoughts) accomplish things on very different levels and concerning oneself unduly with words (a familiar PofP situation) often misses the point of thoughts. I won't even start to discuss how poorly written sentences obfuscate possible meanings. That's another but important subject. But "word" games rather than "thought" games are one very evident reason why discussions on PofP do not reach as high a level as their contributors may be capable of. Of course, when the members are more or less unknown to each other, as here, some feel that there is nothing to lose by playing the part of philosophical cowboys and digital divas.</p>

<p>Poorly written "rant", maybe, but an attempt at thoughts rather than words. </p>

[m_stephens]

<p>Julie Heyward,<br>

Oh yes, I am still here. I had to look for the Sally Mann photographs. Quite different in meaning from the Archibald photographs, even if there was an occasional glancing stylistic similarity. The Mann photos would have me thinking host right off. She is clearly directing and posing and staging and forming the photos in her own vision. Of course I don't know that. That's the feel they relay back to me.</p>

[luis_g]

<p>In 1928, HCB goes into one of the best painting teachers' studio in Paris at the time, that of the painter Lhote, and learns about composition there. His 'tricks', are nothing more than the painter's tropes of the day expanded and in photography. HCB also knew and dialogued with a great number of top-notch artists at least well into the '50s. Not coincidentally, Helen Levitt once admitted that she was unaware of the importance of composition until a meeting with HCB in 1935. She followed his advice and began making trips to the Met and to the galleries then on 57th St. (From Maria Hambourg). Later friendship with Walker Evans provided more insights, one of her best friends put on a Surrealist show which she must have seen and heard about in process. Levitt was also a member of The Photo League. She worked as a film editor, and for some very famous directors. She was hardly a naif.</p>

<p>Like all knowledge, it only becomes truly useful in the poetic sense, when integrated, which is when it becomes "intuitive". In other words, I do not think HCB (or Levitt) carried on an internal dialogue with themselves while photographing. OTOH, some very famous photographers have done just that at least some of the time (including Friedlander, who was overheard by Raghubir Singh talking to himself). Their conciousness, like ours, was affected by what they had learned (and no, I do not mean learned rote, like the multiplication tables).</p>

<p>Thanks for the snippet of Papageorge on Winogrand. Think of Todd Papageorge, Meyerowitz, Winogrand with Eggleston present for long periods at a time. John Szarkowski mentoring and playing the role of art-sonist. Most people are unaware of the amount of theorizing that went on, and not just with those five. A lot of well-meaning people see what superficially appears to be purely reflexive photography due to the speed involved, and assume there was little else behind it simply because it isn't <em>obvious</em> to them.</p>

<p>In the case of GW and JS they were addressing something in parallel to what lead to Sontag's essay that was discussed at length here a while back, but from the front lines. Their antidote turned out to be very similar to hers. <em> </em></p>

<p>One giant difference between shooting sports and SP (and I briefly shot sports) is that with the former, it is a <em>game, with rules, direction, goal posts, lines delineating the field, etc. </em>Once you know the game, even though the timing is very difficult to learn, it's not so hard to anticipate what the probable events are or where they are likely to take place, though there are plenty of surprises. For those SPers engaged in re-enacting or a continuation of classic ca. 1950's work, it is a lot closer to a game.</p>

<p>SP, at some levels, is a whole different thing in those regards (and others). An unbelievably larger number of unspecified variables are involved.</p>

<p>__________________________________________</p>

<p>Arthur, interesting gender assignments to the Philosophical and the Digital. To me, "mystery" implies there's an awareness there's something there that's an unknown (and please, no re-barfing of Rumsfeld's known unknowns!). If something is not obvious, and you're unaware of it, it's only ignorance, not mystery. And we are all ignorant at some level, I know.</p>

<p>To function well here I think one has to turn the sensitivity settings close to "numb", and learn to hopscotch among the ruins and mines. Um, there was no Rubicon to cross on the way here. :-)</p>

<p> </p>

[dennis_couvillion]

<p>Luis, let me give a simple example of what I meant by "anticipation" in street shooting. If, hypothetically, I see an attractive woman walking on the sidewalk and thirty feet ahead I notice a creepy, repulsive man standing in a doorway then I am anticipating some interesting visual exchange between them and I am moving into position to get a shot. </p>

<p>I think there is some degree of predictability in human behavior which, in the photographic sense, creates some reliable "rules". If I see a mother and child I know the kid is likely going to do something that will irritate the mother. So, the predictability is similar to shooting sports in that regard. However, the danger is when predictable human behavior is reduced photographically to cliche'.</p>

[luis_g]

<p>Dennis, I understand. If you read back in this very thread, Don Essedi and I had a few exchanges about anticipation/predictability in human behavior. I think you'll find the three of us are in fairly close agreement. I understand the analog with sports well, was touching on what I see as its limits.</p>

[don_essedi]

"I find it quite amusing how "mystery" and "not obvious" (or add the words "enigmatic" or "as yet unseen") are considered to be either opposites or not the same."

 

Arthur, I did not mean to imply 'difference' or 'opposite'. "Not obvious" is my way of saying what I understood you to mean by "mystery".

[aplumpton]

<p>Don, thanks for the clarification. Good photos indeed have more than one layer, and often one or more enigmatic ones or ones that are left to us to discover and interpret as we wish.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Before I start on this Very Long Post, I'd like to repost the OP which is, "In your relationship to the stuff -- people or places -- that's in your photos, do you feel more like a guest or more like a host?" I want to emphasize that I am ONLY interested in YOUR relationship to ... Not the viewer's not the reciprocal relationship of your subject matter, just where you feel yourself to be with regard to what is being photographed. Now, a story as told by documentary film-maker Dai Vaughan:</p>

<p>"A film on which I worked included a female circumcision; and we had covered this, as I recall, with a succession of long-held shots of people waiting outside the hut where the operation was taking place. During the discussion after a rough-cut viewing, three divergent views of this sequence were expressed. One person suggested that, if we were not to see the surgery, we might at least be allowed to hear a scream or two to signal to the viewer the unpleasantness of what was occurring. Someone else remarked that there had in fact been a scream recorded during this event, and that it would be perfectly legitimate for us to lay it over. But someone else again made the point that the scream had been such an exceptional feature of this ceremony that it would be a misrepresentation of the culture to include it. What is significant about these three views is that they reflect three distinct assumptions about the claim documentary stakes upon the world: in the first case, symbolic (a scream stands for pain); in the second, referential (this is what the equipment actually recorded); in the third, generalisatory (to include the atypical is misleading). This question, about the claim of documentaries stake upon the world, is one that confronts us afresh, and in different ways, with every project."</p>

<p>A scream. Consider a visual scream -- or just stay with the heard scream. All of the options described by Vaughan, above, are of "host-ish" relations. The people all felt they knew the "game" that was going on. I don't care that they were different; I only care that EACH felt him- or herself to have understanding of the nature of the scream.</p>

<p>But consider a fourth option; just the experience of a heard or seen scream. What is it like to hear a scream -- without knowing, understanding, just feeling its arrival. What's it like? As opposed to the documentarist interpretive options described above that go "through" the scream almost without stopping. That's what I'm trying to get at with my (contrived) notion of "guest." To be a "guest" is to get a non-understood, wide-open, fully-dilated sense of being flooded by an original experience. Just looking, just seeing, just, for starters, Sheringham's "ground" of "effort, time, and rhythm."</p>

<p>When I photographed sports, my favorite was lacrosse -- because it was so fast that I could get totally immersed in the game and stay in that immersion. But I had never played lacrosse; I didn't know the rules of lacrosse; I didn't really know the tactical moves of the coach and players or any of the "official" stuff associated with lacrosse. By watching, by being there, I built up a game in my mind and that game was what I watched. That was what I knew I'd see before I ever got to the stadium; that was what I anticipated as I was chase-focusing on the action; I had understanding of the "field" -- and IT DOESN'T MATTER that or whether my "game" was like anybody else's -- if/when its structure exists in my mind, I'm in a hosting attitude. I'm not "just" hearing the scream, I'm seeing the wider game.</p>

<p>If you are familiar with baseball, you know that the players grabbing their crotches is not part of the official game, nor is pounding home plate before you take your batting stance; but the catcher twiddling his fingers in his crotch is part of the game, etc., etc. Yet as a viewer, to me, those are part of the game. They're part of the weave; they aren't a scream.</p>

<p>So, isn't a photographer always, instinctively going to be formulating a game, situating himself? Isn't that natural, even necessary to existence? Yes, but that's kind of the point in this whole blooming thread. You can choose to stop it. You can choose to "just" see; to "just" look; to "just" encounter experience.</p>

<p>Taking a deliberate turn back from, out of "gaming," is, in my tentative opinion, a route to one type of very creative photography. See John Coplans querying his own body. See Ralph Meatyard masking his friends -- putting a scream right on their face. Take HCB ... "just" looking, "just" seeing.</p>

 

[don_essedi]

"Before I start on this Very Long Post, I'd like to repost the OP which is, "In your relationship to the stuff -- people or places -- that's in your photos, do you feel more like a guest or more like a host?""

 

I'm like a Lacrosse player taking snaps of his teammates. Am I guest or host? I don't feel like either.

[stephen_hipperson]

<p>"Explorer" - in oh so many ways.</p>

[lightwait]

<p>God.<br>

I often feel like god in relation to the stuff of my images. At other times I feel like a little atom.</p>

<p>Naturally, I think the guest/host metaphor is pure BS. No. It's worse than that. It's a balloon full of a foul gas, covered in so much bullshit you can't even make out the underlying balloon structure.</p>

<p>I can't believe the number of you that responded hook line and sinker. Way to go, Julie.</p>