Gravity of the center

[Norma Desmond]

<p>The compositional centers that intrigue me here are the sick girl's head on the pillow and the visitor's head bisected by the pillow edge, that same pillow edge bisecting the picture horizontally. The visitor's hand, gestural in a most effective sense, is a center of action and connection between the two, yet almost vanishing against the white pillow or blending into it. The sick girl, centered on the pillow, seems much more relaxed (resigned?) and placid. The visitor, bowing her head with concern, bisected as she is at the edge of the pillow, bears a suggestion of agitation or at least something other than or in addition to acceptance.<br /> <br /> As for snap shots, I don't see them as miles away from other types of photos or art. They are a very influential part of photographic vernacular and are never that far from the core of more intentionally artistic photo making, IMO.</p>

<p>I saw an exhibit of snap shots at the Met a couple of weeks ago that were culled from someone's visits to flea markets and antique stores, put together in most amazing groupings, one of which was a group where all subjects were obviously centered and another a group where all subjects were mistakenly (presumably) cut off in camera by an edge of the frame. Looking at these photos attentively, I would defy anyone to denounce as less than art any one of them. Individually, in many cases, and as a group intentionally edited more certainly, they were quite brilliant and would be fine inspiration for any aspiring or more experienced photographer.</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>Grouping of images, even ones of lesser intrinsic value (and whatever that may be defined as...), is an art in itself I think, where the overall exceeds its individual parts; and often the person doing the grouping is not the original snapshooter. Taking the images individually is often less convincing. What some snapshots do that makes them more "noticeable" is simply providing eclectic content (skewed lines of subject positions, stark tonalities or contrasts, dramatic subjects, etc., without art components).</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>"....are never that far from the core of more intentionally artistic photo making..."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Such forms of snapshots or photos have invaded the North American consciousness and aesthetic over the past decade or so, from the spontaneous casual iphone photo to an Eggleston print, and that is for me far from the level of art that is possible in the best hands. That may sound as snobbish or as precious as that of a classical musician contrasting Berg or Schoenberg to Metallica in a manner that much diminishes the latter, yet often that is a form of critique that is not without considerable reason. Art is often judged today using non-art criteria, or at least in a manner that avoids any critical judgement other than "wow, that is impressive".</p>

<p>Snapshooters using the center of the frame to house their subject are almost always not even beginning to understand the concepts of the center and its power in forming the overall image.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Arthur, interestingly, we were on our way to an Eggleston exhibit in the museum and discovered the snap shot exhibit on the way there. The Eggleston was an amazing show. As good as any other art I've seen and I was definitely thankful to have seen the prints.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>As I see it, the emotional <strong>center</strong> of many snapshots is the photographer's gut-level connection to and/or adoration of the subject matter, a loose kind of familiarity/intimacy . . . as well as a non-self conscious desire to document, that any photographer might aspire to.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>What moved me about Eggleston's photos was his uncanny ability to eek out a photo from a variety of scenes, almost as a magician would, in addition to an unrivaled sense of color and its relationship to content, composition, and emotion. The exhibit was like an adventure in discovery. I experienced a sort of transcending of subject in favor of vision itself. I would not be inclined to compare it to Monet's paintings or DaVinci's. His work stands on its own and fulfills a very different aesthetic role than more classical works of art, at no higher or lower level.</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>I guess one is best to see the originals of Eggleston to sense their effect, and I think without the influence of written exhibition texts (These are useful I think, only after viewing or before a second viewing, like critiques of a musical performance). While I am not a great fan of Eggleston (perhaps because I have not seen the originals), which is also how I feel about Gertsky, I do see the value of his approach, and some of his images also use well the dynamic of the center.</p>

[luis_g]

<p><strong>Arthur - "</strong>Such forms of snapshots or photos have invaded the North American consciousness and aesthetic over the past decade or so, from the spontaneous casual iphone photo to an Eggleston print, and that is for me far from the level of art that is possible in the best hands. That may sound as snobbish or as precious as that of a classical musician contrasting Berg or Schoenberg to Metallica in a manner that much diminishes the latter, yet often that is a form of critique that is not without considerable reason. Art is often judged today using non-art criteria, or at least in a manner that avoids any critical judgement other than "wow, that is impressive"."</p>

<p>Past decade? Eggleston burst upon the scene in 1976. By 1980, he was the rage. Yes, Athur, it sounds really snobby/precious, and I disagree. It seems that, like so many here, you want hard and fast qualifiers to define and establish a hierarchy within the at world. Rules (your rules), ways to score points, goals... in other words, turn art into a game. Art will not be enslaved. History shows that it always finds a way to Houdini itself out of cages, gilded or leaden. <br>

<br />BTW, the same disdain Arthur has for phone pics is identical to that which was initially felt for Leicas. Toys! Not for <em>serious photography. </em></p>

<p>Unwittingly, Arthur has made a great point: The center is <em>political. </em></p>

<p>Once a duffer realizes snappers default to the center, they fall into (what is hopefully only a phase) I call <em>horrocentricity, </em>wherein they avoid the center as they would an STD, the result being years, if not a lifetime, of pics with bizarre, stilted compositions. <br>

<br /><br /></p>

 

[aplumpton]

<p>Luis,<br /> This is not a sparring contest at all, simply personal views (at least I hope so, as that is better in a forum than mouthing second hand information) on photography and its approaches.<br /> <br /> "Past decade"<br /> I actually said past decade or so. But if you want to insist on 1980 that is fine, it is no big deal.<br /> <br /> "It seems that, like so many here, you want hard and fast qualifiers to define and establish a hierarchy within the at world. Rules (your rules), ways to score points, goals... in other words, turn art into a game. Art will not be enslaved."</p>

<p>That is really quite an extrapolation from what I was saying.</p>

<p>What rules?</p>

<p>Scoring points?</p>

<p>Come on, Luis, I am certainly not talking about rules, only aesthetics and the forms of composition that can have a more profound visual meaning than a simple family or friend snapshot made without any thought other than that of recording a scene of some personal value to the photyographer.</p>

<p>"Art will not be enslaved" I prefer to think instead rather that "the viewer will not be enslaved."</p>

<p>Some more gullible viewers, and occasionally I can admit to falling into that trap, may be carried off by the critiques or the words of those who dictate that so and so is a great artist or has a sublime style or content. "Yes, yes, yes, of course, how come we haven't seen it, but now I canaccept it because someone said so?"</p>

<p>Enslaved? Art? Or sometimes the viewer?</p>

<p>"the same disdain Arthur has for phone pics"</p>

<p>Again Luis, your imagination has no bounds. While the multitude of photos made with Leicas, flagship Nikons and phones may not be memorable. I see no reason why you should refer to phone pics in particular.</p>

<p>"Once a duffer realizes snappers default to the center, they fall into (what is hopefully only a phase) I call <em>horrocentricity, </em>wherein they avoid the center as they would an STD, the result being years, if not a lifetime, of pics with bizarre, stilted compositions."<br /> <br /> As you mentioned previously in this thread that you are not particularly fond of the use of the center in photography, are you speaking of your own viewpoint here?</p>

<p>After reading your aggressive reply above I can only center on one thought: That having an intelligent conversation about the pros and cons of the power of the center (to use Arnheim's phrase) in photography and art is difficult as it seems only to avoid the subject and to adopt polarized opinions, off-center in terms of the subject, creating only the "game" you apparently want to eschew.</p>

[luis_g]

<p>Arthur, you favor more official and rigid approaches than I (and others here) do. There's nothing intrinsically right/wrong or good/bad about that. I simply expressed my own feelings about those ideas. Yes, we disagree on this. <br>

I have not dodged discussing the center, and eagerly await further discussion. I neither favor nor disdain the center -- or any particular section of the image field, though I do use the center deliberately at times I can't say the same about the corners or thirds. <br>

If you read your art history, you will realize that art <em>is </em>enslaved. Everything from Mannerism to Modernism goes from breaking with it predecessors and/or rebelliousness to becoming more established, accreting the hobbling formulaic armor of rigidity, officialdom public and state recognized, then lingering (like its predecessor) long after all life has drained from it. Some people find this "stabilization" reassuring, particularly if it fits their mindset, but I dread it, although I realize that the King must grow old and fat before being killed by his long overdue successor.</p>

<p>I agree that viewers are likewise enslaved, and mostly for the same reasons, mainly rigidity/officialdom. </p>

<p><strong>Arthur - "Such forms of snapshots or photos have invaded the North American consciousness and aesthetic over the past decade or so, from the spontaneous casual iphone</strong><em> photo</em><br>

I agree with you that it did sound snobbish and precious, and it still does on a 2nd reading. </p>

<p>I'm not saying you do not have the right to your expressing your thoughts, Arthur. I appreciate them enough to read and respond. This thread, like all of them, veers away from the center and returns to it or fades away. </p>

<p><strong> </strong><br>

<strong> </strong></p>

 

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>"I am certainly not talking about rules, only aesthetics and the forms of composition that can have a more profound visual meaning than a simple family or friend snapshot made without any thought other than that of recording a scene of some personal value to the photographer."</em></p>

<p>Arthur, while I divert specifically from the subject of the compositional center for a minute, I just want to let you know where I'm coming from and why I think snapshots are important and of interest and inspiration to me.</p>

<p>You've touched on it yourself: <em>"personal value to the photographer."</em></p>

<p>For me, that's where it starts: composing a shot (intentionally or intuitively or likely with some combination of the two) to help visually articulate one's personal vision or values.</p>

<p>What I'm saying is this . . . as I look through family and even a lot of vacation snaps of friends and when I go to flea markets and antique stores, I often see the love, personality, affection, and unfettered connections to people, places, and things that I think are the raw materials for so much art, even if they don't result in art in these family albums and such. When I look through consciously composed and considered photos here on PN, I am generally much less moved because, to me, a lot of them read as if they are experimentations with sharp lenses or with focus or with holding the camera a myriad of ways rather than something emanating from the personal values (the core) of the photographer shooting them. </p>

<p>What I'm suggesting is that many photographers who are genuinely and sincerely trying to create art are concentrating on the "aesthetics" to the exclusion of the personal values, and that is what I can learn and be inspired by from looking at snapshots.</p>

<p>I'd put it this way: it is the personal values that provide a more profound visual meaning, not the composition. The composition is the vehicle through which those personal values can be expressed. Composition, in itself, is not usually (IMO) profound. It tends to be more of a means. I want to feel the feeling behind it, the personal vision and values, the love, adoration, hate, fear, questioning. I look at pages and pages of traditionally "good" compositions each day on PN and the Internet. I see many a good graphical senses of how to make a photo. But they are often empty to me, just because they lack any inkling of what's personally valuable (other than graphics and good composition and good picture-making) to the photographer. Whereas what's personally valuable and meaningful to snapshooters is rarely missing from their snapshots.</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>Luis, I agree about the history of art and the (often welcome and invigorating) changes brought about by its successive movements, which often reacted to preceding "straightjackets." The Impressionists (or even their precursors like Turner and others) reacted against the earlier formal styles. However, their works can be analysed and supported with aesthetic and compositional criteria, amongst other criteria. The same when the Fauvists purposely sought more distorted chromatic relationships to convey a different "message", emotion or aesthetic, they too provided an analyst (-viewer) with rational criteria, as did the Cubists, Dadoists, Surrealists and others.</p>

<p>I was visiting a Toronto gallery when a disruption occurred at the neighbouring Art Gallery of Ontario. A student of the OCAD (art college) greatly overate at breakfast, appeared in front of a classical painting and induced his vomiting on it. This was perhaps an extreme reaction to art from before. Changes are important to art. As a technical person, my life has been strewn with all sorts of research projects most of which have aimed at doing something different and hopefully better than what existed before. Standard rules were to be broken, but broken in a way that can be rationally explained and appreciated.</p>

<p>Where I have trouble in the world of art and photography is that many of the icons that we hear about, and see the works of in albeit second hand printed or screen copies, and have also read the often obfuscated critiques of, provide images that are difficult to equate with their often huge price tags (see the recent forum post on the multimillion or billion dollar photos of some current heros of photography) and which are often critiqued in the most irrational, obfuscated, or least well supported manner. I love experimentation and freedom, it is in my training, but not devoid of some way to justify the value of the results.</p>

<p>Luis, in regard to the text in bold, my point was not that I disdain iphone of photos like those I make from my mini ipad. Such spontaneous photos can also be made with $8000 Nikons or Leicas or even $30,000 Hasselblads, but I think that our collective critical abilities are sometimes "dumbed down" by the fact that such images, thanks to technology, are easy to make and succeed technically (do you remember bracketing slide or even negative film exposures to hope that one might be technically OK, despite the subject? Arduous and often "come by chance").</p>

<p>When I see some of my partner's images on her tablet, well exposed and chromatically near perfect, I wonder what I am doing with more expensive equipment and several years of practice. She also has a really good eye forte unusual, even if her horizons are not level. So, the physical beauty of such images, does that tend to wow us more than an image that hits the mark artistically and emotionally and goes unrecognized by many viewers? The billions of photos made more or less spontaneously, are they produced by those with an appreciation of art and its structures or art and its ability to awaken the aesthetic instincts of a viewer? The photographers, and there are many more now, no doubt have an influence on the future of art and what that means. Maybe they will choose art at a price that fits their values. Therein also lies part of my questioning of the way photography and the viewing public may be going, and whether we are able to overlook the niceties of the technology and the well exposed image and to dig a bit deeper in our appreciations. If that is a snobbish intention, so be it.</p>

<p>All this is off-center, but I guess it is related to the preceding comments about snapshots and the spontaneous use of center by many.<br /> <br>

Addendum: Fred, just saw your post, but have to do other things at present, but your are right about personal interpretation value and its equal importance to aesthetics. It is in fact a part of our "aesthetic about life" I think. </p>

 

[Norma Desmond]

<p>On Eggleston.</p>

<p>For me, the prints didn't sell me on his photos. They enriched my experience of them. Mostly by their enveloping me in person and by the colors seeming more powerful and having better relationships to each other than they do in books or on screen. But much of the power the photos have to offer was already present for me from what I'd seen in books and online. I already discussed in a post above what some of those things are.</p>

<p>I never read critical acclaims about Eggleston. I look at a lot of photos and always have but I've read little about photography. It's a blessing and also a failing of mine.</p>

<p>At the Eggleston exhibit, my brother and I commented on how the exhibition text didn't really say much or capture what was meaningful to us about the show. They were in no way a factor influencing my appreciation of his work.</p>

<p>Eggleston's work looks easy or simple because it is so RIGHT THERE, so PRESENT, and so UNEXCEPTIONAL in formality of approach and precision of so-called aesthetic characteristics. But that's part of what makes it EXCEPTIONAL to me. And I defy those who think it's easy to create it themselves without it feeling like a merely empty or hollow mimicry. If I see it merely as an elevation to art status of the mundane, I miss it entirely. And that's what others have tried to do and why they've failed, in my eyes.</p>

<p>Eggleston is not merely making art out of the mundane. I leave it to you, Arthur, on further investigation (whether through his actual prints or through books or online images) to determine what may be there, if anything, that you haven't experienced. That's not a challenge, but rather an invitation. I have no investment in whether you like or appreciate him. But I do have an emotional investment in his not being dismissed, especially on the basis of what his photos may command from art collectors in terms of a monetary price or what gratuitous ramblings may be written by art critics or salespeople about his photos. [Price and art-world acclaim is not a good reason to like someone's work and is also not a good reason to dismiss someone's work.]</p>

<p>That Eggleston's photos may not be seen as holding up to traditional aesthetic scrutiny or established principles of art will also be true of a lot of groundbreaking ways of seeing. Sometimes a revolutionary approach will work. Sometimes it will just be experimental garbage, nothing more than flouting tradition. In Eggleston's case, I think it worked and don't even know that it was intended as revolutionary, having not read much about him. It comes across to me as more benignly intended. I don't approach his work as I do Monet's and don't look for the enriching value of his prints in the same way I might look for enrichment in the prints of Weston or Adams. The prints move me for very different reasons.</p>

<p>What I find in Eggleston is an intensity of vision and visualization itself. It's as if he strips a lot away in favor of allowing himself an unobscured view. When I look at his photos, I feel like I'm seeing with or through his mind's eye. That kind of accompaniment invites my empathetic self along for the ride and even helps create a kind of empathy in me. It's as if he sees what's not apparently there through digesting so thoroughly what is so apparently there but often easy not to isolate, notice, or attend to.</p>

[aplumpton]

<blockquote>

<p>"What I find in Eggleston is an intensity of vision and visualization itself. It's as if he strips a lot away in favor of allowing himself an unobscured view."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Interesting point, Fred. That much I have also sensed in Eggleston and one reason why I am challenged (and yes, that is an appropriate word) to try to see more based initially on that perception of his work.</p>

<p>And, oh, there are so many artists and photographers doing interesting things in this world and we can only access easily those who have been recognised by the market, by some professional critiques (including academia) and by some curators. It is difficult to cross borders and discover the work of artists in the many (180, more?) countries around the world, yet knowing how perceptions and education vary among those regions, it is I think a valuable and open exercise to try to tap into them.</p>

<p>Perhaps that would be a good and out of the box type of experience in the future - to visit the photography of South Africa, Indonesia, Kazhikstan, China, Russia, Sweden and Ireland, to name but a few. Munch, a Scandinavian, spent many years being rejected in Europe before finally his work caught the public (and a specific public) eye. How many great photographers are out there and we have yet to meet?</p>

<p>Anyway, I know this thread has deviated from exploring how the center is important as a reference, tool and aesthetic in art and photography, and there too I feel we have only touched the surface. But if it also invites others to see more and below that surface, then I am glad to have raised it.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><a href="http://www.topphotographyfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/william-eggleston18.jpg">THIS</a> is probably an overused example of Eggleston but works well in the context of compositional center. The light bulb (symbolic or mundane, or having some other role or effect, your choice) in the center, but with the strong impact of what's at the edges as well. Counterpoint, not unlike Bach. Passionate red so matter-of-factly a part of a dispassionate scene, the light bulb not aglow, yields a strange kind of passion anyway (???), and seems almost born of that kind of passion.</p>

<p>Maybe the way the centering of the woman works in <a href="http://www.masters-of-photography.com/images/full/eggleston/eggleston_woman_on_swing.jpg">THIS</a> Eggleston photo is that it focuses a particular kind of attention, visually and humanly, on the woman who is in danger of disappearing into her similarly designed and active environment. "No, no, HERE she is. See?" He might be saying or the scene might be telling him.</p>

<p>The center of the frame is often far from the edge. Why do we call things "edgy" when they are edgy? That could help address how the center can be used. And yet, the woman centered on the swing in the second photo, to me, gives it an edge. That's kind of cool.</p>

[luis_g]

<p>There is room in the art world for the irrational. The rational has taken us to places like the bombings of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In art, to dreadful straitjacketed calcified coda, zombified periods. We need Vestals, Maenads, and everything in between to become fully human.<br>

Vomiting on a work is a complex bit of performance art in itself. Or....?</p>

<p>Where I come from in the art world is...well, many places, forwards and backwards in time, from top-rated museums and galleries to boots on the ground, on the front lines at grass-roots level. I do not give a flying duck about prices. The markets are a neighboring bubble universe. Personally, speculators do nothing for me, whether in the art world or buying derivatives. Collectors, artists, critics, lovers of art are far more important.<br>

<br />I have nothing against justification in the arts, but do not think it is required. I had work in a group show last week locally, and while hanging out and talking about my work with viewers (most asked question: "What does it mean") out of the corner of my eye I watched an 5 yr old or so girl intensely observing photographs, approaching and backing off, laughing, giggling, adopting the pose of the figure(s) in the work, almost dancing to it. I'll take a few seconds of that over thousands of lines, critical acclaim, and justification, even my own. I have a deep reverence for the ecstatic experience. </p>

<p>As to the technical, the degree of difficulty or expense has an effect on the outcome, to be sure, but <em>let's not kid ourselves: </em>The artist <em>matters</em>. In photography, I've seen a higher percentage of crappy work from medium and large format photographers than any other kind.<br>

I don't just remember bracketing, but still have a then-expensive and now useless slide duplicator that I used to post process slides, now forlorn, quietly sitting under plastic sheeting in a closet. In my opinion, what Arthur refers to as dumbing down has far more to do with individuals than facile technique. Remember Polaroid?<br>

<br />A cursory look through Flickr, Instagram, Tumblr, Photo.net, etc shows a very high percentage of purty, lifeless, pointless, oversaturated, numbingly saccarine dumbass imagery. The question for the artist is that every demiurge faces: How to breathe life into these materials?</p>

<p>It is not always good to compare yourself to others in art. After all, you are who you are, what's yours is one thing, what is not, isn't. There are kids (and geezers) out there that can photograph rings around any of us using meager equipment, with no knowledge of art history, little experience, etc. This is a meritocracy, not based on seniority. Hopefully, what you are doing with your pricey hardware and software is what you want to do.</p>

<p>"If that is a snobbish intention, so be it."<br>

...and as long as you're OK with it...good.</p>

<p>Eggleston was radical in 1976. When he emerged with his and Szarkowski's <em>Guide, </em>there was an incredibly rare moment where almost all critics agreed with the hoi polloi, duffers, etc in unison decrying Eggleston's work as crap. He was too far ahead of his time. Four years later, most critics had done a 180, but the public lagged, and as we can see here, do so to this day. Understand this, I am not talking about <em>whether or not you like his work, but if you have any understanding of it. </em>Historically, he has ties to Degas, Kandinsky, HCB(!), contemporaneously, to Friedlander, Winogrand, Szarkowski, The Factory, and many others. His is an odd combination of a regional solitary genius with ties to the capital of the art world. He broke practically every rule (doing so like a brain surgeon), while living a wildly ecstatic and <em>eccentric</em> life, rubbing shoulders with the demimondaines of his local world and the biggest names in the art world, treating them equally, all along extensively cultivating himself on a multitude of fronts, questioning many of the subtler rules most photographers will never think of, experimenting, and above all, being intensely human.</p>

<p>Speaking of the center, he said when asked why he had put so many of the subjects in the <em>Guide </em>in the center that he had done so after the flag of the Confederacy.</p>

<p>Yesterday it occurred to me while photographing a friend's BMW at a local beach in blinding light and heat, that perhaps one of the reasons people gravitate towards the center as a default is that it imposes a kind of <em>radial symmetry, and is a mirror of the photographer's viewpoint at the center of things? </em>Just a thought-- or two.</p>

<p><em> </em><br>

<em> </em></p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>"he said when asked why he had put so many of the subjects in the</em> Guide<em> in the center that he had done so after the flag of the Confederacy."</em></p>

<p>This reminds me that way too much meaning can be given to artistic gestures. I might assume that an artist centers for this or that reason, and be very wrong. Which, of course, still allows me to respond to that centering.</p>

<p>I was recently asked why I choose color or black and white and under what circumstances I think one would work more effectively for me. While it's photo-specific aesthetic or artistic decision most of the time, sometimes it's because I want to throw a black and white into a series just as a kind of punctuation mark, or maybe it's not an aesthetic decision at all and I've just processed 5 or 6 photos in color and am simply in the mood for something different, with no thought to the particular photo, but just what's up next in the queue when I'm in a certain mood.</p>

<p>The choices I make can be for very meaningful, emotional, and intentionally expressive reasons, they can be consciously or unconsciously made and still have a lot of meaning, or they can be for the simplest and most pedestrian or mundane of reasons, sometimes simply staying at that level, sometimes having a deeper meaning if I want to go there.</p>

<p>So, when a viewer thinks it was incredibly expressive of me to have that person's hand raised and beautifully backlit against the sky, the reason the hand might be raised was because I wanted to emphasize a particular fold in the shirt of the person I was shooting. That doesn't make the gesture less expressive photographically. But it can answer part of the "why" question.</p>

<p>I have come to think that photos and a lot of art are some combination of the mundane, pedestrian, and practical along with the aesthetic, significant, and transcendent. There's a certain delight when I can't tell the difference.</p>

[dan_south]

<p>I have no bias. I'll use the center of the frame when it works. I'll offset when that works better.</p>

<p>How contrived would this photo have looked if I had insisted on de-centering the license plate in blind adherence to the 'suggestion of thirds'?</p>

<div></div>

[dan_south]

<p>On the other hand, I believe that placing this young lady toward the side of the frame was the right approach. Variety adds zest to a portfolio.</p><div></div>