To every thing there is a season

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>Lex, the problem to me is not that particolar digression, even though the formatting made it such that appeared to be aimed squarely at me; being singled out I found it less flippant and more condescending. But OK, no harm done and I could get over myself just fine.<br>

If it wasn't for the ongoing posts full of near-relevant factoids and overly long quotes which are almost maybe related to whatever was written in the OP. And for the fact that those quotes and little facts in no way respond to the thoughts and ideas offered to others. At best, they seem some sort of evidence or clarification to the thought already expressed.... while nobody needed clarifications or evidence to accept the statement made.<br>

I rather won't give up conversation because there is merit in it, but a conversation takes two, it takes interaction. Listen and reply. And that's not what's happening, and not for the first time.</p>

<p>While I know I post way too much on the forums here (oh how one wishes I could shut up), it's postings like these where I spend a certain effort, and a good deal of time. I do so because usually I get back a lot from the conversation. But to see that effort completely ignored by the person who asked for it, is just draining out the will to contribute. And that is a serious pity, because this forum is of serious added value for p.net (small as it has become).</p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>"In fifty years, everything that is in your photographs will be dead, gone, or changed beyond all recognition.<br>

Do you take this into consideration when crafting your pictures?"</p>

<p>Mankind, back in time.... by the cave and campfire, have always told stories. By, words or Art they have always been there.</p>

<p>A photograph tells a story.</p>

<p>A story will always be told.</p><div></div>

[Allen Herbert]

<p> </p><div></div>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>A little photograph, slipped into a wallet/purse.</p>

<p>A universe of memories.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>In the movie <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminator">The Terminator</a></em>, 'Kyle' comes back from the future to save 'Sarah,' who is (to be) the mother of the man, 'John' who will, in that future, save mankind from the machines. He does this because a 'terminator,' one of the machines, has (also) been sent back to the present to kill Sarah -- in order to prevent 'John' from saving mankind.</p>

<p>To find Sarah, Kyle has a photograph. In effect, the future survival of our species depends on this one picture. What is it that a photograph does that words or a drawing would not do? I think it serves as a guarantee. This person was here. That 'guarantee' is a quality that belongs to the photograph, not to the maker of the picture.</p>

<p>At the end of the movie, when a pregnant Sarah is escaping into the desert, she stops "at a gas station, a boy takes a photograph of her which she purchases ... " That's the picture that Kyle will use. Suppose she hadn't gotten that picture? From the future, Kyle's perception would have been ungrounded, center-less. He'd be looking for someone somewhere, vague and undetermined. A photograph says, "This one!" It's not the content or the composition but the dirt, the random stuff, whatever is behind, under, before, always-already-there that constitutes the guarantee that belongs to a photograph. Samuel Beckett once said of photography that it is a "stain on the silence" (and I don't think he meant that in a nice way). Yes. Stain is a good word for what a photograph, on its own, independent of its maker, does. It is its own watermark.</p>

<p>So that's true of all photographs. What makes some last and others not? Szarkowski said this of photography: "In this peculiar art, form and subject are defined simultaneously. ... Indeed they are probably the same thing. Or, if they are different, one might say that a photographer's subject is not its starting point but its destination." Other arts start in the airiness of the imagination and the artist, if he wishes, can struggle to bring that vision to earth.</p>

<p>Photography starts on earth; it may, if the photographer wishes and works at it, be made to go airborne. Taking Szarkowski's word, 'destination,' and working from it; if I am on a train, I get off at destinations because ... ? they are interesting, attractive, composed as welcoming, embracing, receptive; arranged to accept, invite, engage me. This in contrast to all the space that was *not* a destination; that I whizzed by without stopping. It takes work (talent, creativity, etc.) to compose a destination. But please note that what caused it to be chosen as such was always already extant before the destination-maker did his/her thing.</p>

<p>It's always going to be a guessing game to figure where people will want to go, whether places, people or ideas, in the future. But I think pictures that assume rather than build destination into their structure are unlikely to make much sense once temporally local context has been forgotten.</p>

<p>Walter Benjamin said of Eugene Atget's photographs that they all appeared uncannily like 'the scene of a crime.' <em>Something happened here</em>. The photograph guarantees the 'here'; Atget finds the 'crime.'</p>

<p>[ironically, Atget did not seem to expect or care that/whether his pictures would endure. He just beavered away at what he loved and knew best how to do. He is revered by many, many modern photographers from all over the style spectrum; for example Walker Evans, Ansel Adams, and Lee Friedlander.]</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>We all take pictures of the present so we can look back in the future to live it all over again. That's the magic of photography. The ability to freeze a moment in time. In the future when we're old, though, and look at our pictures, we realize that time itself is but a moment.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>"We all take pictures of the present so we can look back in the future to live it all over again."</em></p>

<p>One of the reasons I like hearing how things work for others is not so I can find out how similar we all are but because I can embrace the differences. Thanks for the insights into how things work for you, Alan. It rounds out the discussion nicely.</p>

<p>Me, I take family snaps mostly to connect and share with my family in the present and I don't sense these photos have much future. Since I usually send slideshows of family events and rarely print them, I doubt I or other family members will do much looking back at those. They won't be found in a shoe box when I'm cleaning out the closet in years to come.</p>

<p>As for my other photos, they are as much about <em>what they will come to mean</em> in the future and are often very much divorced from the context of the moment in which they were shot, a moment and context I will likely have forgotten in 10 years even if still looking at the photo. They will be what they will be and will have little to do with having frozen a moment in time or with my reliving anything. A lot of them just don't feel like mementos to me. A lot of my photos and some of the best photos I've seen of others, famous and not famous, seem disconnected from the actual moment of shooting and are more about the picture and a vision forward than what the camera was aimed at and <em>when</em> it was aimed. . . . What does timelessness suggest, especially from the standpoint of looking back from the future?</p>

<p>Of course, I never know and maybe I'll be limited, in my old age, to nostalgia and to connecting with the past. I hope not. Though I'll always have fondness for things and moments gone by. And yet I hope to keep moving on and I hope for my pictures to evolve into other things and not merely stay representationally and statically connected to my own or to their past.</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>I'm not sure I believe you. You have posted wonderful photos of your father, shown and described with affection and love. Also, why does it have to be an either/or proposition? Why can't we look back with nostalgia as well as forward with hope regardless of our age? </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>"I'm not sure I believe you."</em> --Alan</p>

<p>That's your prerogative.</p>

<p>As I said, <em>"Me, I take family snaps <strong>mostly</strong> to connect and share with my family in the present . . ."</em> I added bold this time for emphasis. The two photos I have of my father you're referring to weren't taken at a family event and weren't shared with my family via slide shows. They're part of my permanent collection.</p>

<p><em>"Also, why does it have to be an either/or proposition?"</em> --Alan</p>

<p>It doesn't, which I was hoping to make clear when I said <em>"As for my other photos, they are <strong>as much about</strong> what they will come to mean in the future."</em> [Again, I added emphasis this time for clarity.] When I said that my photos are <em>as much about</em> what they will come to mean in the future, I was building on or adding to what you had already said about photos being a matter of reliving the past.</p>

<p>I probably should have qualified the following statement by starting with <strong>"Some of them"</strong> instead of simply saying <em>"<strong>They</strong> will be what they will be and will have little to do with having frozen a moment in time or with my reliving anything."</em> I meant <strong>some</strong> of my photos, not all of them. I thought the "mostly" in the previous sentence would carry through but it would have been better to repeat it.</p>

<p>Thanks for asking and allowing me to explain better.</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>No problem Fred. Glad we understand each other better. One other thing I often find interesting. When people including me post family and friend shots, their dogs, pets, etc. we all seem more animated about discussing them then when we post our landscape and other shots. There seems to me more pride and love that comes through.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>You actually mentioned that in another thread and I've been wanting to respond to it but kind of let it go and then got busy and forgot about it. I think subject matter can be a very important drive for many. I certainly noticed people's animation in that thread you're talking about. It was, IMO, an accurate observation. I must admit to being a little more cynical about it than you. My take is that it's much easier to discuss family shots, because it's mostly an uncritical discussion. It's kind of what the Internet is often about. A Facebook kind of animation and chatting about family, friends, new babies, cute kitties, what happened at the water cooler. I am often disappointed that that kind of discussion seems to garner more attention and animation than more serious discussions about other kinds of photos, as you mention, landscapes, still lifes, journalism, etc. I've come to think it's just a matter that people prefer entertainment and ease and comfort to more serious and harder material, more in-depth understanding of things, and more possible difficulty and tension than ease.</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>Nothing wrong with lightening up the discussion, though. This isn't a PhD course. Smile. You have a cute dog. :)</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Alan, I think people get the most animated when looking at silly or funny or lucky shots (LOLcats ... ). Such pictures have the nutritional value and lifespan of a soap bubble, but they do lighten up one's day.</p>

<p>However, luck is interesting to think about with reference to the OP.</p>

<p>Luck, which is an ingredient, large or small, of every photo, is by definition not within the control or intent of the photographer (answering my OP question of whether one has the future in mind when making one's own pictures). Therefore, that part of the image (which is strongly related to its indexicality) "belongs" to the picture, not the picture's maker. I think it is *because* it doesn't "belong" to the photographer that it serves to help validate or guarantee the nature of the picture's content to future generations.</p>

<p>For example, this well-known picture by Jacob Riis [ <strong><a href="http://www.masters-of-photography.com/R/riis/riis_plank_for_bed_full.html">LINK</a></strong> ] taken in 1890 is described thus by Szarkowski:</p>

<p>.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"... Riis did not intend to include the hand in the upper right (not the hand of fate, but that of his assistant, who has just lighted the flash powder). It would strain credibility to believe that he anticipated the forms created by the shadows cast by the flash, or that he considered the amorphous plastic patch to be a part of his picture, or even that he visualized the powerful and mysterious graphic force of the dark plank, standing like a nameless monument beside the almost spent human life.</p>

<p>"Suffice it to say that Riis did not, through pride, reject chance: he knew the habits and the habitat of photographer's luck, and he did his best to make himself available to its gifts." — <em>John Szarkowski</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>.</p>

<p>While luck at the time of the taking is out of the photographer's control, there is nothing lucky about the fact that the photographer, upon looking at the proof sheet, chose and printed and promoted that particular frame (and, on the other hand, did not choose, print and promote how many thousands of others). Which brings me back to the OP; in doing that choosing, how much, if any, does he/she do so with the future in mind?</p>

[AlanKlein]

I don't think about the future. When I see a

landscape scene that pleases my eyes, I try to

capture it. There may be some planning as to time of day and when best to capture it. But that's it.

 

 

 

On the other hand, when traveling on vacation or shooting an affair I do think about having pictures that will

make a slide show more effective by including

beginning endings and filler shots that will tell a

complete story.

[Julie H]

<p>Alan, I do that too with landscapes but I wonder if that's because (assuming they're "natural" landscapes) I assume, without thinking about it, that they're timeless. If you can remember instances where you took picture of -scapes that were in a state of change, can you recollect any awareness of get-this-before-it's-gone, and if so, for whom were you "getting" it?</p>

<p>I so rarely shoot anything other than "raw" nature that it's hard for me to think of many times like that, but I'm thinking there was a for-the-future-looking-back feel to it.</p>

<p>But, then, on the other hand, I can turn back and wonder for whom I do those "eternal" landscapes. That gets to "beauty" and then to "art" and I'm not sure we want to go there (okay, okay, I live there ... LOL).</p>

[AlanKlein]

Getting timely shots of family and friends before

they grow up or die make more sense. But a tree

is a tree pretty much.

[Julie H]

<p>It "makes more sense" to ... whom?</p>

<p>Not to me (speaking as if we were strangers). In other words, to most people, your family and friends are also "a tree pretty much." What the future would find in your photographs is probably all the things that you and I overlook (the costume, the interaction, the furniture, the health and wealth, and ... ?).</p>

<p>I'm just thinking out loud. These aren't intended as any kind of "point" or conclusion.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>"But a tree is a tree pretty much."</em></p>

<p>I'm not so sure of that, Alan. I go up to the forests in Northern California and a lot of the trees I've photographed over the years are now things of the past due to fires and logging.</p>

<p>As a matter of fact, due to our lack of care for the environment for so many centuries, the phrase "timeless landscape" may now be an oxymoron. I wouldn't count on any landscape remaining the same for long, so if you want a shot of it, I'd go out and get one.</p>

<p>Speaking of timeless, IMO, timelessness comes in a photo more from how it's shot (perspective, lighting, composition) than from subject matter, though certain subject matter does seem to lend itself more to timelessness. I wonder if Burtynsky's landscapes are anti-timeless in their expressions.</p>

<p>All that being said, I do understand what you're saying in terms of not thinking much about the future and that your planning a landscape shot (when you do) is more about timing and lighting conditions for the photo than about who's going to see the photo or when.</p>

<p>I spent about 10 hours yesterday post processing 5 shots I took last week in Central Park. And I realized that, for the most part, I probably think a little more about who's going to see them and under what circumstances and what I want to express with the shots I've chosen to work on at the post processing stage more than at the time when I'm taking them. Sometimes, I'll think about what I'm trying to express in advance of going out and shooting as well.</p>

[AlanKlein]

Julie in keeping with your Ecclesiastes OP, it's all

vanity. When I'm dead, well I'm dead. My photos

will be worth less than that. Where they will count

is NOW. That's why I urge people to give away their

photos now to friends and family. They'll love you

for it and you will feel great about it too. There's the

added benefit that they just might keep your photo

framed on their wall outlasting your demise. It's all

good.

[Norma Desmond]

<p>If that's necessarily the case with our photos (they're worth less when I'm dead, because I'm dead) I hate to think what that means about our children. </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>By the way, while I think the message people get out of Ecclesiastes (and which may well be there . . . the Bible is full of unfortunate messages) is debatable at best, there are alternative interpretations to the word "vanity" now being considered.</p>

<p><em>[To get the point of Ecclesiastes, we have to ignore the usual translations of several key words or phrases. The Hebrew hebel has been translated as "vanity" (NASB, KJV, ESV, ASV) or "meaningless" (NIV, New Living Translation). The Message gets much closer by translating the word as "smoke." The word means "vapor" (Proverbs 21:6) or "breath" (Job 7:16; Psalm 39:5, 11; 62:9, 94:11; 144:4; Isaiah 57:13). In describing human life as vapor or breath, Solomon emphasizes that life is brief and beyond our control. Life is vapor because the world goes on unchanged in spite of all our frantic activities (1:3-11); because things slip through our fingers when we try to grasp them and through our minds when we try to understand them; because nothing lasts, yet everything stays the same; because it ends in death (2:16), and we have no control over the future (2:18-19).]</em></p>

<p>We give up control to God at our peril. All this seems like a power grab by institutional religion. We control you. You have no control yourself. So, we can either have vanity or mind control and authoritarianism coming through our priests and rabbis whose main interest is their control over our thoughts, morals, actions and a good deal of our money. No wonder our lives are ultimately deemed to be or to feel worthless when we give up so much independence and freedom of thought and being.</p>

<p>I'd rather take photos.</p><div></div>

[David_Cavan]

<p>I'm chiming into this discussion late, but it's been fascinating to scan through. I'm sure that photos are important in different ways to different families, and whether they survive is largely dependent on the passion of one or two people along the way. In our family we've expanded the overall "library" to 10's of thousands, and because I care, and one of my cousins cares, we've been able to keep a well-organized, searchable approach that allows anyone to go back in the 1800's to get photos of an individual or family grouping. But we've also kept the photos of trees and rocks that mattered to various people along the way, and those are apparently important to some other individuals in so far as they show what was important to that photographer. We've published a couple of books using the photos, and all in all we have more of a sense of family than we had before the digital age as a result. </p>

<p>But it does come back to someone caring enough to make the effort - in our case thousands of photos that were on their way to the usual fate have been preserved, and are used. Will that last into the next generation? Maybe, maybe not. Not my problem - someone else will have to decide if they care enough to make this a family tradition.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>David's post, and several of those before it, has made me notice an interesting variation on my OP assumption -- which was that we are crafting our pictures either (to some, however small, subconscious degree) <em>for</em> the future (viewer), or we're not thinking about them at all.</p>

<p>This new variation to those two from the OP is that we are crafting our pictures <em>against</em> the future. I'm thinking about this after reading an essay by Marvin Heiferman about Lee Friedlander's book <em>The American Monument</em>. In it, he points out that "At births, parties, proms, graduations, weddings, and family events, we monumentalize ourselves." He feels that the photograph has become the modern-day monument. The Iwo Jima monument is a slavish imitation of a photograph; the Vietnam War memorial has "no images: no saddened goddesses, no valiant fighters, no eternal flames ..." Photographs do what monuments used to do.</p>

<p>Family photos can be thought of as micro-monuments. A way of claiming our own right to say what we are; an attempt not to allow the future to forget or formulate "us" to their own preferences. It's a way of saying/showing that <em>this</em> is what we are/were, <em>this</em> is what we did, <em>this</em> is how we did it. Think of what monuments are: again, Heiferman: "Monuments are the loci of our communities, literally and figuratively." If the family is the nuclear community, then photographs are its monuments. In this sense, we are photographing <em>against</em> future forgetting or re-interpretation of ourselves. We are setting in stone our own interpretation.</p>

<p>"While we can observe that monuments communicate values, ascribe importance, and preserve our past, it is clearer that our shared symbolic language is photographic. It is photography that gives shape to our goals. It is photography that we respect. It is photography that trains us for the future. It is through the most complicated medium of the twentieth century that we commemorate ourselves and will be known to those who come after us. Just how complete a picture that will be, only time will tell." — <em>Heiferman</em></p>

<p>******************</p>

<p>One last sentiment that I think is very relevant to this thread in general. This one comes from the well-known current photographer Peter Turner. He says: "Whether lover or murderer, our photograph cannot tell us, but it still rescues that of all moments from the passage of time. It gains an identity divorced from the real sequence of life. It is in this respect that <strong>I see them as contributors to, rather than records of, our culture</strong>. At most because they can alter the ways in which we view our world and at least because we preserve and discuss them." [<em>emphasis added by me</em>] When we photograph, we are not offering a transparent, passive conveyance of some other time; we are <em>making</em> an artifact; we are <em>adding</em> to the cultural whole (and by that choice, <em>leaving out</em> much, much, much more).</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>"contributors to, rather than records of"</em></p>

<p>For me, it would be <strong><em>"contributors to, in addition to records</em></strong><em><strong> of</strong>"</em></p>

<p>So rarely are these either/or situations. It's where so many art theorists, academicians, philosophers and other thinkers go awry.</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>Julie: Much of it has to do with ego and pride. We seek acclaim and purpose for our life. We try to leave something of ourselves. We look for<em> "our place in the sun."</em> But it's like the early morning fog that burns off in the sun by mid-morning. Much of it is illusion like the grain on film or dpi on a print. By itself it has little value. It's only when you do something with it that you can effect the universe.</p>