Ut pictura poesis

joseph_krause · November 3, 2012

The Roman writer Horace in his Ars Poetica used the analogy "ut pictura poesis" that is, "as in imagery so in poetry". A looser modern rendering would probably say that a picture tells a thousand words. I sense that Horace and his descendants thought of a balance between words, imagery and the external world. Not a particular advocate of Horace, I have several times thought of his famous analogy in photographic terms. Because it seems rather pertinent if you ask, as did Gisele Freund several decades ago, "What does photography say?"

In today's world visual media, and particularly photography, seem to validate Susan Sontag's notion of aesthetic consumerism, where we have all become image-junkies, longing for a beauty that always eschews us. On the other hand, Roland Barthes wants us to believe in his book Camera Lucida, that "photography evades us" and cannot tell any story.

Given our constant exposure to photography's political, journalistic and marketing purposes, is there any room left for creative photography to speak its own language?

AlanKlein · November 3, 2012

Given our constant exposure to photography's political, journalistic and marketing purposes, is there any room left for creative photography to speak its own language?

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Sure. While it's true that we are inundated with pictures that may deaden the senses, the eye never fills by what it can see nor the ear by what it can hear. Everyone who posts their pictures on PN, Flickr or other similar sites hope to catch, no create, that special something that is both poetic and artistic. Something that speaks to the soul.

Norma Desmond · November 4, 2012

<<<is there any room left for creative photography to speak its own language?>>>

I don't think it speaks its own language. (If it did, how could anyone understand it?) It speaks, IMO, a shared language. It is shared with those Flickr images, Madison Ave. images, snapshots, family vacations, etc. It also shares its language with great poetry, theater, painting, and other art. It shares its language with philosophy and history. It is part scientific language, part aesthetic language, part technical, part emotional. Photographer and viewer can and may have to be multi-lingual in order to fully appreciate the power of the creative photo. We don't necessarily shut out the other languages. We incorporate them. Perhaps creative photography is more of a dialect.

Yes, it's possible even given the constant exposure. Photography is about focus (which includes non-focus). There will always be external noise (which may not always be so external and may sometimes be directly incorporated . . . leading to such things as a snapshot aesthetic in creative photography, for example). This is why museums and galleries are still significant places. They remain relatively quiet (with exceptions, of course) and they can help isolate and present the work. They allow us to step away from the Internet and what sometimes can feel like a barrage. [Museums and galleries are not the only places this can be accomplished, of course.]

Julie H · November 4, 2012

OP: "is there any room left for creative photography to speak its own language?"

LOL!! That's like some guy standing at Woodstock and asking "Where's the music? ... And what's that awful noise I'm hearing?"

Given that policital, commercial, journalistic, marketing photography is outnumbered about a billion-to-one by ... "us," and we billion-to-ones sure *seem* to know what we want to do while we're doing it all those billions and billions of times, I'd say the political, commercial, journalistic, marketing people are the one's who don't have "any room left." (And the complaints about "amateurs" doing their job for peanuts that turn up in our forums point in that direction, not the reverse ...)

steve_mareno1 · November 5, 2012

There's room in all mediums for people to express themselves, provided there's anyone w/ any talent to express anything. I just think, and I'm not being sarcastic, that people have gotten so stupid, that 99% of people wouldn't recognize art if it bit them. The people involved in the arts today are crummy artists, and they do crummy work for a crummy audience. The apple don't fall far from the tree with this stuff. It all feeds off itself.

I like the idea of visual art relating to literature. Good point, as good art is poetry, not prose. Art doesn't tell a story, but like a poem, it just is.

Norma Desmond · November 5, 2012

<<<good art is poetry, not prose. Art doesn't tell a story>>>

It's a unique perspective that says Charles Dickens wasn't an artist. Great storyteller he.

<<<I'm not being sarcastic, that people have gotten so stupid, that 99% of people wouldn't recognize art if it bit them. The people involved in the arts today are crummy artists, and they do crummy work for a crummy audience.>>>

This doesn't seem sarcastic but it does seem cynical. Broad brush.

alan_zinn · November 7, 2012

I believe that, at their best, pictures, as in poetry, get between words -- another way to say that they are like the unspoken words of a poem. I have pushed for the idea that people are more visual now due to the mass appeal of making images. This supports the ancient thousand words worth meme. They snap away impulsively (hand waving), feeling more than actively supporting their textual or verbal expression. The general expressiveness skills improve and allow more content.

Steve M.: There's room in all mediums for people to express themselves… .

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I have trouble with the word "creative". What does it mean? It is culture-bound, and ideologically weighted -- tied too much to "originality." "Expressive" may be the better word. It zips around the "what is art" tedium and Steve's peeves. Digging up another ancient philosopher (Master Eckhart - 10th Century) near as I can remember: "Artists are not special kinds of people. Every person is a special kind of artist." Isn't that special!

Norma Desmond · November 7, 2012

<<<I have trouble with the word "creative". What does it mean?>>>

create: to cause to come into being, as something unique that would not naturally evolve or that is not made by ordinary processes.

to evolve from one's own* thought or imagination, as a work of art or an invention.

<<<tied too much to "originality.">>>

Though it is, in some cases, tied to originality (and should be) it is not always or necessarily tied to originality (as it also should be). It's a perfectly useful, functional, and understandable word which is appropriate to discussions of both photography and art.

______________________________

"one's own" may be a little prejudicial, as I think creativity can be a matter of social evolution of thought and imagination.

Wouter Willemse · November 8, 2012

I much concur with Fred's first reply (the other answers too, actually, but the first one is more at the core of the OP). Sure there is room for creative photography. As there is still room for any creative endeavour. Why would there not be?

I hear a lot of music; some good, a lot of it crap. No matter what, in between is still new excellent creative music. There are still orchestras, live concerts, serious and less serious composers. Music is about as much everywhere as photography, and yet, frequently on the forums here, there is this fear that it is specific to photography. Why?

In Van Gogh's days, there were also more than enough bad painters, and their paintings frequently did find a home, did get exposure. It did not stop van Gogh from creating what he created. I don't think it needs to be very different for a modern artist, really. For those who are capable of creating these original, creative images - why would the countless other images stop them from being able to do what they can do? They express themselves, even if they're not isolated from all the others, the skills is theirs to use.

It may seem harder to "read that visual language", to be able to distinguish the great images in between the vast crowd of lesser ones. But, I use the verb 'seem', as I do not actually believe it is the case. First of all, because quality will always finds its way (using Van Gogh again, it can take a bit longer! *). But a second thing too: meeting more and more photography passionates, I also see that a lot of them (as part of the growth as a photographer) learn to recognise better images easier and read them, and invest time in understanding an image, picking up a message or describing what they experience seeing it. The popularity of photography is not necessarily a bad thing here. In a larger crowd, there are more competent people too.

The problem for an artist might be standing out of the crowd, to reach his audience. As Fred said, museums and galleries continue to play an important part in getting the audience and the art works together, but this is no significant change really with how things were before.

Both skill to create and to consume art, I see really no reason why that would significantly change. Quantity and quality aren't influencing one another here.

__

I just think, and I'm not being sarcastic, that people have gotten so stupid, that 99% of people wouldn't recognize art if it bit them.

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Well, at least one (percent?) is stupid enough to think the rest of all people are very inferior. Enjoy looking down on all those stupid people and crummy artists. It must be lonely there at the top.

h._p. · November 9, 2012

Well, at least one (percent?) is stupid enough to think the rest of all people are very inferior. Enjoy looking down on all those stupid people and crummy artists. It must be lonely there at the top.

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That, at least, is a statement with which I concur.

AlanKlein · November 9, 2012

I think it's more difficult for the amateur to see his work as being artistic. For someone selling his photos, he can always tell himself that he must be creative becasue people are will to pay for them. But the amatuer does not have an easy marker. He wants to be artistic (whatever that is) , but he has to convince himself he is. So he checks with family and friends who tell him his work is "great". Maybe it's true. Or maybe they're lying or just ignorant. So then he posts his work in critique forums or at camera club meetings, hoping to get recognition. A few morsels will do.

I think an interesting related topic would be, why is it important to you that you think your photos are artistic? We all have prideful ego and want our place in the sun. But is that it? Is that all there is about art for the non-professional artist?

h._p. · November 10, 2012

Is that all there is about art for the non-professional artist?

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In my opinion, yes.

Julie H · November 10, 2012

" ... why is it important to you that you think your photos are artistic? ... Is that all there is about art for the non-professional artist?"

Why is it important to the "non-professional" dresser takes time to dress in a particular way? Why is it important to the "non-professional" cook that he/she cooks in a particular way? Why is it important to the "non-professional" stylist that his/her hair be done in a particular way? Why is it important to all those Pee-Wee football/baseball/basketball players that they play in a particular way? Why is it important to the "non-professional" gardener that his yard is done in some particular way? And his/her house, his/her car? Why is it important that the "non-professional" dancer, singer, hummer does his/her thing in some particular way? Why is it important to the "non-professional" dead person that his funeral be done in some particular way? Why is it important to the "non-professional" pundit that he post in some particular way in photography forums?

On viewing an exhibition of children's drawings, Picasso confessed to Herbert Read: 'When I was the age of these children I could draw like Raphael. It took me many years to learn how to draw like these children.'

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Norma Desmond · November 10, 2012

<<<why is it important to you that you think your photos are artistic?>>>

Because I want to share something of substance and emotion with my subjects and viewers.

"Artist" is one of those terms that people either elevate too highly (thinking they must be gods) or put down too swiftly (thinking that someone referring to themselves as an artist is merely prideful, and using "prideful" in a quasi-biblical/sinful/I'm-about-to-judge-you way).

It's important to me to be confident in who I am and what I'm doing, and to at least try to achieve certain goals that I have for myself while discovering new goals along the way. Once I began to feel that my photos possessed a certain kind of vitality, I felt comfortable talking about them as art and about myself as an artist. Being an artist is also about a mindset and approach. It's about the how and the why . . . and the what. Allowing oneself to be and feel like an artist can allow for a kind of transformation to take place. It also puts one in touch with a dialogue that has taken place over centuries. One becomes part of something bigger than themselves and their own times. The transformation usually takes place through the work, rather than through the wanting of it.

Having said that, there are many ways to be an artist. What I've said is my own.

Art is not just about ego. That misses the point. It is about being willing to expose one's ego* for what it is and doing that through the making of something.

*Rather than "ego" (which often carries too much baggage) I'd probably just say "self" (which also carries baggage but it's not quite as tinged).

alan_zinn · November 10, 2012

Fred,

"Creative" in a narrow sense does only mean "to make". It is used most often, however, to suggest some new and original expression. I make a hole in the ground - I don't create a hole.

Yes, I can make many things. I can give them contemplative depth, inventive nuance, and evoke unexpected meaning. I can do it only for the pleasure and satisfaction of expressing myself. Or, I can seek originality. Perhaps I've stepped on the OP's, "own language" theme. But we are seeing it diffused here by a confusion about commercial, personal, and artistic language possibilities. We have predictably gotten into the Art tail-chase. I see the word "originality", perhaps wrongly, as subtext. I have learned that originality is a false and disruptive state of mind. It is tainted with individualistic, un-cooperative, competitive, intellectual property and such issues that have to do with commerce and nothing to do with artistic expression.

sjmurray · November 10, 2012

Roland Barthes wants us to believe in his book Camera Lucida, that "photography evades us" and cannot tell any story.

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Photography tells the story of the viewer. A person looking at a photograph is like a person looking at a Rorschach test. They will interpret it very personally, seeing things in it that the photographer likely did not anticipate. Some images stimulate a wider audience.

On being creative, I think humans are creative by nature. We invent, fix things, solve problems, figure stuff out, and, at the end of the day, maybe express this creativity through music, writing, dancing, cooking, or drawing (or photography) because it just feels good in our soul. How much of this expression is "Art" or just "art" is a matter of opinion. We're all artists in some sense.

Norma Desmond · November 10, 2012

Alan, I think of art as a collaboration, with subjects (human and non-human), with viewers, with other artists, with art history, and with culture . . . and other things I have probably not mentioned. Originality can be overrated. Influence is vital, both as an input and an output. Expressiveness to an audience requires some amount of non-originality to be understood and even to be felt. We share to much and inherit too much ever to be fully original.

Norma Desmond · November 11, 2012

<<<Photography tells the story of the viewer. A person looking at a photograph is like a person looking at a Rorschach test. They will interpret it very personally, seeing things in it that the photographer likely did not anticipate.>>>

Certainly, there's nothing to disagree with here, but I would also emphasize (and probably more so) the flip side of this. Which is that I also think photos will appeal to a common denominator quite often and the emotions and stories that get shared through them can be as much if not more significant and quantifiable than the personal or individual sense people often seem to stress.

I had my first show yesterday, and I can attest to, and wasn't surprised by both the personal and different "interpretations" or responses to certain photos and also to some of the palpably repeated and shared emotional responses. I got a sense of more being shared than being individualistic and for some reason that seemed very nice to me.

I'll give one example. Without overhearing each other, I would say at least 10 people used the word "vulnerable" in reacting to this photo. That made perfect sense to me. Certainly, everyone also reacted individually and personally to that sense of vulnerability they were moved by. But I think there is something worth noting in the part of the response among a lot of people that was shared. In that sense, I think it tells much more than just the story of the viewer. It tells the story of the subject of the photo, of the photo itself, of the photographer, of a cultural way of seeing, of shared symbols and signs, and very much so of modes of expression.

I noticed that when a small group of people were discussing a photo like this and each was striking on that chord of vulnerability, there was a really positive energy and vibe brought forth through the commonness of experience, the sharing of something sort of through the photo. That seemed to greatly affect the energy in the room. What I was feeling, and what some others expressed to me, was that there was a very good energy permeating the people, many of whom were friends, family, and acquaintances, but which seemed also very much related to and in sync with the photos. I prefer not to separate too much the photo from the viewer. To me, it's not about the viewer's response or the viewer's story. It's about a relationship, and one that is between the viewer and the photo but also one that is among viewers in more than an individual way.

There will, of course, be viewers who will not see vulnerability here and that's not a problem for me and I understand it and wouldn't expect everyone to see it that way. But that doesn't change the significant kind of what I'll term group empathy in regards to many, many photos.<div></div>

alan_zinn · November 11, 2012

Fred: We share to much and inherit too much ever to be fully original.

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I think that many of us on this forum have similar feelings. Wherever our personal photographic and art boundaries lie there are commonalties. The idea of maintaining a certain media integrity for photography within those bounds is an intriguing challenge for us in both practice and theory.

Being centered and serine comes easier for some. Others need to be anxious and angry. Both types make the best stuff! The kind of artists I most admire are the ones who can go with a thought or whim and just let it happen and be right in the moment with its creation. Some do it with virtuoso skill and practice and others do it with reckless abandon. I have to fight off a personal inclination towards being too clever or novel. I blame it on the mid-20th C. era in U.S. that shaped my youth. Mad Men meets Birth of the Cool, meets the Beats.<div></div>

sjmurray · November 11, 2012

I agree with you fully Fred. You expanded on my idea about the individual's response. By "stimulating a wider audience" I was implying what you were saying about sharing a common response and I agree very much with your statement, which was so well said:

It tells the story of the subject of the photo, of the photo itself, of the photographer, of a cultural way of seeing, of shared symbols and signs, and very much so of modes of expression.

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It really cool that you had your exhibition and got to experience the responses. I'm envious!

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aplumpton · November 14, 2012

Fred, if there is any vulnerability detectable in the photo of Will it does not appear to me to be in the usual sense we give to that word and which often presupposes some challenge to the person due to his or her apparent state or condition or to some external factors at play. If he is vulnerable, it appears to me to be to the photographer, to a transparent relationship of the two and to his (vulnerable) wilingness to express himself simply and without any apparent attempt of acting. The eye and mouth expressions seem to reveal the person and/or the relationship with the photographer, open, even relaxed and content, and hiding little. If that is vulnerability, and not some characteristic that resides within the person but instead his making himself vulnerable to the oftimes analytical presence of a lens, then it is a good thing it exists and operates, and that it allows the photographer to create good portraits like this one.

Norma Desmond · November 15, 2012

Since the OP mentioned "the language of photography", Arthur's comments can be looked at in that light.

What we may see of emotion in a photo can exist on many planes. We might see a particular expression on the face of a subject of the photo. We might pick up an emotion in the interplay between photographer and subject, or photographer and photo. Emotion might lie in or emotional response might be stimulated by color, by focus, by perspective or distance. It may be in the meeting of the capture and the creation, of the already existing and the made that some of our responses lie. What I'm saying is that characteristics may lie all over the place and emotions have many places in which and many reasons for which to make themselves felt.

The "language of photography" may often be like many conversations taking place at once. We are sitting in a restaurant participating in the one at our table, overhearing others distinctly at tables nearby, being aware of ambient ones all over the room that provide a bit of white noise, seeing some without hearing them, hearing some without seeing them.

The "language of photography" seems to me often orchestral and sometimes even cacophonous.

aplumpton · November 15, 2012

Perhaps part of that photographic language goes even beyond the limits of our verbal language. The photograph of Will engages in that possibility, as irrespective of how as viewers we may perceive the portrait, it contains much more than may be evident on first sight. It is the sort of image that one goes back to, out of curiosity for the questions of who is Will, and what do the visuals tell us? The variable coloration and texture of his face are intriguing, just as are the expressive eyes and mouth. The photographer has given us a full head portrait that even seems closer than it may have been upon shooting (with a medium or long focal objective). We will likely never know very much about Will, what he thinks, what are his interests or whatever, but the image is successful in that it compels us to think about that and because it opens up lots of questions and thus possibilities, somewhat like Sanders' images of German workers and intelligentsia made in B&W several decades ago. They may appear today to be a bit stilted, but although we are given and shown the vocational or professional identification of the subject, we are nonetheless left with the enigma of the full personality of the subject, albeit with some hints in that direction. I find that fascinating in itself and part of the magic or power of the image.

Other than creative writing about and descriptions of persons, as in the best of Dickens, Joyce or O'Neill (or many other talented writers), the written text can often appear too truncated in description to allow such questioning. The language of photography, when well used as in the present example, goes well beyond that for me.

Julie H · November 16, 2012

In the new Aperture Anthology — The Minor white Years 1952-1976*, essayist John A. Kouwenhoven has an interesting take on the OP's question about "its own language". Note that he's writing this in 1974:

" ... Unwittingly, amateur snapshooters were revolutionizing mankind's way of seeing. We do not yet realize, I think, how fundamentally snapshots altered the way people saw one another and the world around them by reshaping our conceptions of what is real and therefore of what is important. We tend to see only what the pictorial conventions of our time are calculated to show us. From them we learn what is worth looking for and looking at. The extraordinary thing about snapshots is that they teach us to see things not even their makers had noticed or been interested in."

" ... The peculiariaty of snapshot photographs is that the hierarchy of images within its frame is not ordained by the picture maker. Whatever heirarchy of forms appears in the snapshot is ordained by the indiscriminate neutrality of light. Once people began to look at snapshots they had taken, they therefore began to see as significant a great many things whose significance they had never seen before."

" ... The overwhelming majority of all photographic images have been made by people who were content to let the available light determine what was significant.

"The cumulative effect of 130 years of man's participation in the process of running amuck with camera was the discovery that there was an amazing amount of significance, historical and otherwise, in a great many things that no one had ever seen until snapshots began forcing people to see them."

... "What I am saying is simply that because snapshots often revealed impressive significance in things no earlier mode of seeing had enabled man to see, our assumptions about what matters have been profoundly altered."

... "Call it, for want of a better phrase, the democratization of vision." [/end quote]

<hr />

*The just-published book in which this is quote is found, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Aperture-Magazine-Anthology-Minor-1952-1976/dp/1597111961">Aperture Magazine Anthology — The Minor White Years 1952-1976</a> edited by Peter C. Bunnell is really, really good. Very highly recommended if you're interested in the kind of stuff that gets discussed in the Philosophy of Photography forum, or in just thinking about creative photo theory in general. Amazon price is only $26.37. [ <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Aperture-Magazine-Anthology-Minor-1952-1976/dp/1597111961">LINK</a> ]

Norma Desmond · November 16, 2012

Though Julie's quote of Kouwenhoven is provocative and does suggest a significant role for the snapshot, which I always imagined, I don't necessarily agree with its substance, since so many snapshots, perhaps most, do not let the light be a guide. Often the subject is poorly lit and I find myself often saying to myself, when viewing snapshots by friends and family, why didn't they let the light guide them? It seems to me many snapshots are guided more by subject and content than by light. I took a picture of this, here and now, often DESPITE the light rather than guided by it. Thus we often can't even make the subject out well, which was the guiding factor, because the light and shadows were ignored.

Snapshots often use flash, which has nothing to do with "available light", which the author is suggesting is determinative here. A flash is light imposed on a subject by the camera (or the one holding it) in order to get a picture specifically of that subject.

None of this makes the author of the quote Julie has reprinted completely wrong, and I still find the greater point about noticing what snapshots can provide worth considering, but I would come at it from the perspective of the content rather than the light. I would, in at least some cases, put the more conscious photographer in the seat of being guided by the "indiscriminate neutrality of light," a phrase I like a lot. For so many of the great photographers, it's fairly evident that light guided them as much as anything. How often has it been said in all kinds of philosophical, critical, aesthetic, and photographic circle that light is the "subject" of photography.

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