Photography: Seeing and what else?

[Supriyo]

<p>Fred,<br /> Most of the food photos that I was referring to don't trigger direct appetite in me (although some do, specially when I am in need for food, but that's different). What I feel is a range of emotions from sensuality (a fire roasted pizza) to tranquility (vanilla icecream) not directly connected to taste, although I think the knowledge that these are food (as you correctly pointed out) and the associated gustatory memories plays a role in my feelings.</p>

<p>You brought an interesting example (it had not come to my mind) of Weston's pepper which is an abstract representation of a food item, completely erasing the sense of food in it. I agree, most of the food photos very much represent their 'foodness'.</p>

<p>Although I don't think about taste when I look at the pepper photo (I don't feel I am looking at anything edible), I still think about the smooth cool touch of a pepper and that probably compliments my visual perception about the image. So it looks like, how I see the subject matter will decide what extra-visionary senses are triggered.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Think Julia Child (don't worry; I'll kill her off in a minute). Pots, pans, stoves, spoons, knives, spices, herbs, flour, sugar, raw meat, vegetables, do this, do that, blah, blah, blah. Then she stops.</p>

<p>Takes a spoon, dips it in the simmering pot and puts just the tip of the spoon in her mouth. Closes her eyes. There is total silence for one, two, three, four seconds.</p>

<p>"Needs more salt."</p>

<p>Two things: <em>what was in the mouth was all that mattered</em>, but <em>she knew that it needed more salt</em> (nodding to Wouter).</p>

<p>But we're not interested in following recipes to get a known dish. For that, go to any reputable stock photography site: they do every simple emotion to a T. (tossing Julia out the window)</p>

<p>What many of us are after is not simple, not found by formula or recipe. Which is why I don't think that either 'projection' or 'empathy' are right -- they go the familiar, the known, the recognizable, not the unformulated deliveries of the senses. When you look through your shoot proofs, the multiple shots, putting the spoon in your mouth with each shot, how do you know that it 'needs more salt'?</p>

<p>Don't ask me. Best I can say is that something, some place, somehow, has rung you like a bell, and you're looking for a picture that does it again. And I think everybody who has posted to this thread knows what I'm talking about.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>On Mapplethorpe, going off topic for a minute because I get a kick out of him; he wanted his flowers to be a suggestive and not-nice. But he also, and even especially wanted them to be Beautiful with a big B. At the time he was making the pictures, all the hot, with-it contemporary photographers took beauty to be a joke, a lie, something to be parodied or sneered at. So naturally, Robert went directly to Beauty with a big B, and not only Beauty, but FLOWERS, for god's sake!! What could be more of a Beauty cliché? I love this guy.</p>

<p> </p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>I didn't say either empathy or projection is right. I said the author of your quote ought to consider the difference between them.</p>

<p>Got it! There's no formula, except for mimicking Julia Child.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>A photo may, indeed, be after the known and recognizable as opposed to the unformulated delivery of the senses. It depends on the photo and what its doing. Getting rung like a bell is <em>a</em> way, not <em>the</em> way. You forgot to kill Julia off.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>I don't see that kind of beauty in Mapplethorpe. I see a cold physicality, a masculine and calculated shapeliness. His flowers have no "scent" at all. Mapplethorpe is a good counterexample to that unformulated delivery of the senses you were talking about. His flowers seem so deliberate, intentional. They look to me like he knew just what he was after and went for it. </p>