Pictures as occasions.

Norma Desmond · December 3, 2015

I don't find loneliness to be harsh and loud, though I can empathize with it feeling that way to you, Phil.

I think there is enough similarity among loneliness (or as I also said aloneness), solitude, and shadowy-ness. To expect agreement on a particular adjective would be futile. My emotional responses to photos run within a range and are often not specific, so I can relate to all the adjectives ascribed.

This relates to Alan's OP in that drawing the viewer out, even when it is more directed rather than less, is often to a range of a type of emotional response rather than the desire to elicit this or that very specific emotional reaction.

charleswood · December 3, 2015

I think that Adriano's picture in his post above shows a women whose body language is clearly expressive of an emotion. The emotion is clear enough to me to suggest a story, for example the man gave her some bad news, etc. Some of the other photographs we're considering here are less about strong emotion and more about mood. The adjectives offered to describe the evoked mood are similar despite nuances. So with Adriano's example, the woman and her body language are psychological/symbolic attractors. Emotion seems to work as an attractor by way of dramatization, not without some ambiguity; but less ambiguous overall than mood shots where mood shots normally set the scene.

Alan's photo in the OP for me is metaphorical. The first frame suggests a choice placed before the viewer. That choice will create the second frame in the movie where the choice is between travel by track or by car. Metaphorically, as a viewer we've come to a fork in the road. The car looks off track and ill placed. So I would choose to get on the train at this point in my travels, not trusting the stylized car that is oddly placed in the scene.

Norma Desmond · December 3, 2015

Regarding Adriano's photo, I can't easily get past how the skin looks on their arms and on her face. When I do go beyond that, I see a woman crouching, possibly scratching her forehead. No particular emotion comes to mind. I see her against the backdrop of the drawing of people. For me, the pull of the photo is the dog's connection to me from almost a hidden vantage point yet central, and the way her hand seems gently to caress the dog's face (which it may or may not be doing). The peace signs make me feel nostalgic, for a time when I actually thought it could be attained. Seems a long way off.

Julie H · December 4, 2015

I think photographs are more often felt as 'last frames' rather than 'first.' When looking, I have to (consciously or subconsciously) maneuver myself into position (how do I get 'there' so I'm seeing 'that'?) either through time (see Atget) or position/location (see Phil S's description above, with his other photos), or mood, or angle of view (see the low angle of Imogen's magnolia), or realizing/feeling your own ethnic/cultural point of view vs what's shown, etc. etc.

Is this into-place process a face-bump, as I've described it above, or more like parallel parking, where you back and fill and back and fill (and then, in embarrassment, just go home ... )? Or do you sit primly and refuse to dance? (Can I mix any more metaphors here ... ?)

Norma Desmond · December 4, 2015

I agree with a lot of what you say, Julie, about the viewer looking at pictures. The backing and filling to get into a parking space analogy makes a lot of sense. However, there are times when one has to recognize that the space is too small and no amount of work is going to make one's car fit into it. Being originally from NYC and now living in the tight quarters of San Francisco one comes to realize that some spaces you'll run across are just too darn small. Some photos, too, are just not a good fit.

Norma Desmond · December 4, 2015

If a photo were a still from a movie, I wouldn't split hairs over whether it was the first, last, or middle frame. I may feel that way because I think photos are, generally speaking, so different from frames of movies and that's why they're taken as a separate art form and/or medium in itself. We could probably have a universe of movie stills shown in museums . . . but we, for the most part, don't. I'm sure there have been some exhibitions of those which would be interesting in and of themselves. I think a photo is something quite different from an isolated frame of a movie and am glad that's so.

AJHingel · December 4, 2015

Phil just a side remark. I will not get involve in this discussion, but your photo resembling that of Atget that you uploaded a couple of days ago is not the same building. The street corner Atget shot is from Rue de Seine and Rue de lEchaudé in the 6’ème arrondissement and looks the same today despite the parked cars. Here it is.<div>

00dcHf-559569584.jpg.e9bbabbdb79a75869cf389d20b3fe82e.jpg

</div>

Julie H · December 5, 2015

I have huge admiration for what Graham has been trying to do in his recent work. I don't think he has succeeded, yet, but I love looking at his attempts. If you've never looked at his stuff, be prepared to at first think the pictures completely baffling, then probably boring. That's not an accident. He wants to stop you from looking 'for' ... 'a photograph of'. I'm not going to try to explain further, beyond a little hint: I think he's trying to show, in photographs, something like the Whitehead-ian 'lure to feeling' (or shimmer of possibility) that is the source/cause of novelty/creativity that is in the air; and in all things and at all times, however mundane. He's looking for something that he feels is there, not something that he's adding to a scene.

Graham has never claimed any such thing (beyond his choice of book titles) -- it would be a little ridiculous if he did -- but that's what I sniff out of what he does say/show in his work. An amazing challenge to take on, whether or not he achieves it.

[Please note that the illustrations to the linked articles are much, much 'fancier' than what you'll find in Graham's books. He goes out of his way to have strictly mundane color and tone in his pictures. Dull by comparison to what most other kinds of photography projects enjoy. As already noted, it's intentional.]

Julie H · December 5, 2015

Wow. That is a fantastic video. I had never seen Graham -- he's just wonderful in it. Thank you!!

charleswood · December 7, 2015

From the Graham video, Graham titled his exhibition of three bodies of work as The Whiteness of the Whale. He says he was drawing from Melville, bringing Melville's Moby Dick into the conversation. "My interest in that book [Moby Dick] and that title [The Whiteness of the Whale] obviously came initially from American Night, these white, blinding white pictures, driving across American, through this obsessive, monomaniacal pursuit of something." Graham also states in the video that the title for his three part exhibition "...refers to being in the belly of the beast, the whiteness of the whale, and that's the kind of perfect metaphor for traveling and being in America now."

The three bodies of work are American Night, A Shimmer of Possibility, and The Present where American Night seems the series most thematically related to the exhibition's title. Also Graham says the three parts are explorations of light, time, and focus, respectively. Aperture, time, and focus where focus mimics awareness or consciousness.

With aperture he explores "...how photography can mimic a state of mind, a state of consciousness of the world." Almost whited out in American Night, images of the poor and dispossessed represent our psychological blindness to them, their invisibility. So in American Night he explores what we do see along with that which we don't see very well.

With shutter, with time Graham in A Shimmer of Possibility records vignettes in an attempt to move away from classic spotlight vision to embrace floodlight awareness where an event arrives, folds around the viewer, and departs. Which comes back to the OP's quote: “Every photo is the first frame of a movie. — Wim Wenders.” In his presentation of separate aspects of an event he again is examining 'noticing', attempting with his camera to mimic how our attention is captured by an unfolding event, an event with a beginning and an end, Graham recording a sequence having a first frame and a last frame.

As to those events, as to his subject matter in Shimmer, Graham observes "Our lives are made up of the humdrum and the quotidian. And if one is seeking to touch upon that, the quality that makes people's lives, you have to deal with this great ocean of life, of everyday life around you and respecting it and giving it value and not dismissing it. And Shimmer in some ways struggles to articulate that, that unspoken ocean of commonplace existence."

The Present is life as it comes at you, Graham says in the interview. And there he in part revisits the theme of seeing, of blindness, of what one is prepared to see and notice in life in the same sense as in American Night.

So on the one hand he photographs our nation in various states of denial about its social conditions. Shimmer is a title he hopes is positive, as in life shimmers with possibility, the glow of being alive, having a meal at a bus stop, where life glows with opportunity and wonder. I'm sympathetic to his saying something positive. However it is structurally skewed opportunity and unconsciousness that make up much of the ocean of commonplace existence that is life here.

alan_zinn · December 8, 2015

Fred G.

“That's why a dialogue isn't really like two monologues. The photographer "owes" it to his viewers to let the work go once he shares it, and viewers "owe" it to the photographer to allow the photographer's work (and through that work, the photographer) to play a role and have a say.”

</blockquote>

Yes, yes, yes!

First thing in a critique, negative space gets cropped off! Dreamy, atmospheric things give us hints there may be alternative “takes” of an image.

I am reading about the 20th C. philosopher Heidegger (Being and Time) now to understand Borges. Slogging through it thus far has entwined these two contemporaries with some of my musings on photography.

Heidegger makes a distinction between observing and caring. Just observing doesn’t reflect who you are in an existential sense. You may care, as in “ have an interest”, but do not attach importance to it.. I think art reflects our interests in and our depth of care.

I have tried to make a case for the “waiting images” concept: Images comprised of things I care about await me.

An endless “atlas” of waiting images gets us back to Borges and the dialog with the book. A bad outcome for this idea is that too many words await . Too many images wait for the viewers (who get it) in the photographer’s renderings of cared about things. Collaborative images await in that sense. Also, found photographs await artists.

Borges throughout his work played with the endless permutation of any reality. He expanded small bits of writing and contracted entire volumes to short stories and poetry thereby establishing a dialog.

Adriano F

“I rarely modify elements of the image (may say never) with Photoshop or something, but I change a lot the light with plugins to achieve what my imagination sees on a image.”

</blockquote>

You have just described me! Digital is like a second, whole photographic life granted to analog photographers.

Julie H.

“That displacement, that full-stop, that oh! that happens when/because it won't fit, won't play, won't cooperate with my efforts to use it (and also, thereby, to leave it) are what, for me, make a really good picture.”

</blockquote>

We both must be thinking of something like a found object - a perfect sea shell. Yours hold everything it needs to be complete. End-of-story.”

All the world IS a stage. Street and urban photographs are inescapable dialogs with the viewer. I actively look for character-driven images. Although, in the same way puns are said to be ” the lowest kind of humor”goofy looking expression, gestures and juxtaposed figures can amount to ” cheap shots” .

Post-exposure “creative aids” further the misrepresentation. “Film Noir III with a dash of TX grain please.”

Phil S. “Kerouacian”

Ha! Say that out-loud - and

Robert Frankian -and- Ginsburgian .

Zen-like pictures are not possible but offer a Cageian challenge. No doubt there have been numerous blank wall attempts to un-photograph.

Phil S., Julie H.

I’m sure everyone is thinking about Duane Michaels now! He couldn’t wait around for an image.

From Wiki: First in Michael’s “… series of photos as in his 1970 book Sequences. Second, he handwrote text near his photographs, thereby giving information that the image itself could not convey.

alan_zinn · December 8, 2015

Julie H.

Whitehead-ian 'lure to feeling' (or shimmer of possibility) that is the source/cause of novelty/creativity that is in the air; and in all things and at all times, however mundane. He's looking for something that he feels is there, not something that he's adding to a scene.

</blockquote>

Yes! and expressed so well - off I go to read Whitehead. AZ

</blockquote>

alan_zinn · December 8, 2015

<a name="00dbpD"></a><a href="/photodb/user?user_id=6173649">Alan Klein</a>, Nov 29, 2015; 11:38 p.m.

We tend to see more in our photos than viewers see.

</blockquote>

That is fer darn sure!

AZ

Julie H · December 8, 2015

[Narrative to OP. Alan Zinn, upon sitting in <a href="http://www.ignant.de/2013/10/18/nostalgic-artistry-by-gabriel-orozco/">Orozco's Citroen</a>, finds himself similarly excavated/slimmed. Absconds with the car, repaints it to avoid detection. Ends up lost in the desert (having your middle removed with do that). In his Orozco-ized, slimmed down conformation, Alan finds all kinds of middle-free meaning in postings to this thread. Sort of like Oreo cookies with the middles all gone.]

Norma Desmond · December 8, 2015

Alan, to me the important thing about caring is not that it shows or tells me who I am but that it allows me to adopt the perspective of the photographer who made the photo I care for or about.

Nel Noddings, though she's talking about caring more from the standpoint of morality than art, makes a couple of suggestive points:

"I care for someone if I feel a stir of desire or inclination toward him. I care for someone if I have regard for his views or interests."

"This position or attitude of caring activates a complex structure of memories, feelings, and capacities. Further, the process of moral decision making that is founded on caring requires a process of concretization rather than one of abstraction."

</blockquote>

To that end, the concrete discussion of how negative space affects a viewer is significant in terms of how and why a photo communicates a certain way or allows for a caring response.

Caring involves healthy respect for and confidence in oneself but also, importantly, involves getting past oneself.

charleswood · December 8, 2015

I don't think Graham is encouraging his viewer to have some kind of spacey, fantasy relationship to his subjects. The artistic conversation he is trying to have with his viewers is in part his own dialog with Melville's Moby Dick. He doesn't make characters of his subjects. Instead he with his trilogy authentically confronts the weight of the quotidian and of social inequality, not from fantasy or the privilege of some fruitless, neurotic special vision.

charleswood · December 8, 2015

" I think art reflects our interests in and our depth of care."

Alan I tried to bring this discussion back to reality because I do care. That you would ignore my substantive remarks says to me that you don't much care about anything other than your odd take on things.

So much for hanging with a group that allows itself to self-censor. My swan song.

Julie H · December 9, 2015

Alan and Fred, 'care' just seems to me to be a much too domesticated word for art.

It's sine qua non, but just as a description of the bare ground floor. Art begins in the wilderness where care leaves off.

And I have to, again, complain about the word 'dialog.' I don't think it's ever a dialog. Think of a special food, lovingly prepared and offered/proffered via spoon to someone's mouth. The care is in the gift, the giving, with all its connotations; but what touches the tongue of the other, is out of bounds of the giver. You each can never know what that experience is. You can and do, electrically, if it's a powerful experience, live in the possibility of a shared state, but I don't think that's a dialogue. More of a side-by-side than a face-to-face.

Norma Desmond · December 9, 2015

Another way to "draw the viewer out" is by supplying a transformed or at least ambiguous context. Photography, in putting a frame around a scene, will often isolate it from its more complete context in the world, providing a very different photographic context. Now, some photos will try to capture that original context as much as possible in an attempt to communicate "what it was really like." Here, the photographer may be trying to convey specific information even while, perhaps, drawing the viewer out emotionally by putting them in touch with something they witnessed. Some photos, on the other hand, by creating a more puzzling context—through framing especially, or by leaving things out that would give more clues as to the "reality" of the witnessed situation—will result in the viewer guessing at or fantasizing about bits of information that might help them "understand" what was "actually" going on. Because photography has this interesting relationship to the real world, a viewer's mind can become as if challenged to a ping pong match with that world. "What's really going on here?" We can think of some of the different ways a photojournalist might shoot a scene from ways a surrealist might shoot that same scene. Of course, some scenes will be so surreal in themselves that it might be tough to tell the difference. For me, the act of framing (which is simultaneously a leaving out as well) is a key to what the photo will elicit in terms of viewer participation.

Julie H · December 9, 2015

Random response to the bit in Fred's above "putting them in touch." Godfrey Reggio's quote pops to mind:

... It's not about text; it's about texture.

</blockquote>

And (I think this is too tangential, but I'll put it here because I'm chewing on it at the moment ... ) Baltz said of Eggleston's photos, paraphrasing -- 'they are inviting on their surface, but ice cold at their heart.' How such an affect is 'done' to Baltz by a photo. It's almost like a sickness in the sense of something alien working from/on the inside.

Norma Desmond · December 9, 2015

Julie, !!!!

Texture is one of my babies.

Below is a slightly-altered reproduction of a post of mine from a thread long ago and it relates to the two kinds of touch, one being what we feel with our finger (when it's against fabric or steel) and one being the more metaphorical "to be in touch with."

Texture with a capital T relates to the relationship of various elements (not just their textures per se) and qualities or aspects of a photo. Here's the way one of my music books describes musical texture:

. . . a "structure of interwoven fibers." In music, texture refers to the way multiple voices (or instruments) interact in a composition. One may also think of texture as a description of musical hierarchy: which voice is most prominent? Are all the voices equal?

</blockquote>

And from Wikipedia:

In music, texture is the way the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition, thus determining the overall quality of sound of a piece. Texture is often described in regards to the density, or thickness, and range, or width between lowest and highest pitches, in relative terms as well as more specifically distinguished according to the number of voices, or parts, and the relationship between these voices. A piece's texture may be affected by the number and character of parts playing at once, the timbre of the instruments or voices playing these parts and the harmony, tempo, and rhythms used.

</blockquote>

If, in music, the different timbres of instruments and voices helps create texture, in a photo, the different textures of objects helps create this kind of capital-T Texture (but it's about more than just the relationships of textures). Photographs have these interweaving fibers as well, foreground merging into background, hierarchies of objects and tonality, shadow and light that rises and falls, the visual equivalent of melody and supporting rhythms. Wikipedia talks about the overall quality and character. It's the character developed by the relationships of various photographic elements and qualities. The overall texture of a photo fascinates me in every photo I make and view. It's what can keep me busy for hours. It's not terribly narrative in itself, though it can lead to some.

alan_zinn · December 9, 2015

Charles W.

I am sorry I have offended you. Your contributions deserve attention and I have been remiss. I am always surprised and delighted with the number of erudite responses to my topics. I have to race to catch up. With two finger typing and a two-fingered mind, I don’t post them to see myself rattle on. I think good topics provoke volleys of discussion that can’t all be returned by the author. They often send me off to Wiki-land. I have definitely read your comments and their replies and gone on to their reference material. In my defense, I feel I couldn’t have added much.

AZ

charleswood · December 9, 2015

Alan, I apologize for venting my general frustration in your direction.

Julie H · December 10, 2015

Before I get into response to Fred's texture/timbre post, I keep forgetting to mention a project called <a href="https://slought.org/resources/visual_correspondences">Visual Correspondences</a>, where photographers Marcelo Brodsky, Manel Esclusa, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, Martin Parr, and the artist Cassio Vasconcellos (and, other photographers later) -- had a purely visual 'dialogue' via email. Unfortunately I can't seem to find a trove of the pictures they sent online but I'll tell you that the communication is ... fanciful ... at best. Fun, if you like herding cats. Which is why they had so much fun with it. A link to a description is <a href="https://slought.org/resources/visual_correspondences">here</a>.

************

Now, texture/timbre. I think that in photography, the content serves the texture and not the other way around in the same way that the instrument serves the music and not the other way around. That being said, it's ... complicated. As Fred's post repeatedly emphasizes, it's a relationship/hierarchy/interweaving kind of thing.

For example, I love (okay, I'm obsessed by ... ) a piece of music by Simeon Ten Holt called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canto_Ostinato">Canto Ostinato</a> ("Obstinate Song"; LOL). It is composed to allow musicians the freedom to 'build' their own combination. It also can be -- and is -- done in many, many different configurations of instruments; from one to four grand pianos, marimbas with pianos, marimbas alone, synthesizers, organ with piano, organ alone, harps, and so on. Obviously the timbre/texture of such different instruments is different, as well as the way each recording is played as well as the particular choice of 'parts' that each chooses to use. All are the same, yet all are different. For example, the organ-only rendition by Aart Bergwerff is a whale -- majestic, huge but yet buoyant. While the organ-only performance by Toon Hagen is a rhinoceros, powerful, heavy, dangerous. This disparity comes out of the texture, not the content.

This kind of thing is interesting, too, reference earlier discussion of Atget because Abbott printed his stuff. His prints are very different from hers.

Norma Desmond · December 10, 2015

As to content serving texture vs.* texture serving content, I see it as reciprocal rather than either/or. . . . dialogue of texture and content rather than competition or servitude.

*Sometimes the concept behind these two little letters would be better if banned. ;-)

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