Stranger (symbols)

[Uhooru]

Barry... To your post above, I'd also include Avedon's In the American West series, his four year road trip through western states photographing people from under-the-surface walks of life, bringing to light a non-Hollywood "west" not known to many east of the Mississippi.

 

He took a lot of criticism from many feeling he was trying to (re)define the west, on his terms, and out of his realm being a New Yorker. Though I have his book of American West portraits, one I like equally was authored by his assistant and photographer, Laura Wilson. In her book she documented his behind the scenes process of engagement and photographing of subjects from state to state as a kind of chronological road trip. It's one of my most valued photography books, and pretty much got me stoked on hitting up strangers on the street for conversation and portraits.

Thanks Brad, I'm going to Have to get it. and probably find a copy of the work itself, I always resonated to his portraits.

[Uhooru]

Julie said "Barry, I don't feel at all disconnected from Arbus's people, nor do I feel that she and they are disconnected. I don't see a refusal to connect between the people in her work. They may or may not be crazy about each other, but they're definitely interacting, to my eye."

 

Totally agree. That was a big part of Arbus' work was to try to connect with those subjects. But to the mainstream viewers she was bringing these people to, they were "strange". As photographers we can appreciate her ability to connect with folks that many would never dare approach because of their perceived strangeness. And considering the context of when she was working, this was very daring and hadn't really been done much in that day.

[Norma Desmond]

I have the control in the end, but I can't do it alone, you have a lot to say, which by that I mean the way you look, the way you confront the camera, and all the experience with trusting or not trusting, you have a certain amount of control, but in the end I can tear the pictures up, I can choose the smiling one or the serious one ... or I can exaggerate something through the printing. It's lending yourself to artists."

Avedon is being refreshingly honest.

 

So is Arbus when she says:

I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do—that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse."

Neither seems to be kidding themselves. Their self-awareness, especially as it touches their own imperfect qualities, probably plays a part in the genuineness of their photos and the kind of frankness their photos picture.

[Brad_]

What Avedon said quoted in the post above pretty much goes without saying, and is not particularly revelatory, or being "refreshingly honest." Arbus expressed a personal feeling that is similarly not surprising, being just one of many one can feel in such close and intimate encounters with another person where trust and awareness are needed to create strong and revealing portraits.

[Norma Desmond]

I see them both as being refreshingly honest. I understand you don't. Reasonable disagreement. Had I thought it went without saying, I wouldn't have said anything.

 

In any case, I didn't take them to be talking about "close," "intimate," "trust," or "awareness." Avedon's point was about exaggeration (and manipulation, IMO) and Arbus's was about her own perceived perversion. Maybe revelatory, maybe not. Maybe depends on who's listening.

[Brad_]

I understand you don't.

 

I do find them to be honest. Just not refreshingly or surprisingly so.

 

In any case, I didn't take them to be talking about "close," "intimate," "trust," or "awareness."

 

And I didn't take them to be talking about those aspects, either.

 

Avedon's point was about exaggeration (and manipulation, IMO) a

 

I agree. And for most, it goes without saying that in the end the photographer has the ability to exaggerate and manipulate what was captured. I don't think many photographers would be surprised about that.

 

Maybe revelatory, maybe not. Maybe depends on who's listening.

 

And certainly depends on the life experiences and awareness of the person listening.

Edited August 10, 2017 by Brad_

[Julie H]

Thanks, Brad.

 

***

 

Changing direction a little, I want to talk about two ways that people make other people into 'stranger' — by choosing to see those other people as "not like them."

 

Hero-worshippers see celebrities, whether movie stars, athletes, or politicians, as 'stranger' in the sense that those celebrities are not "like them." Celebrities are way "up there." It's almost the definition of a celebrity.

 

Bigots, or snobs, or anybody who poses him or herself as superior to some other "kind" of person chooses and promotes a self-definition that makes some other group or kind of people not the same kind of person as they are. They choose to see those other people as grossly, clearly, inferior to themselves. That other kind of person is way "down there." Not like them. Strangers.

 

I'll do bigots/snobs first. Here is a sample of H.L. Mencken's writing. After listing the ugliest places on earth that he's seen, he goes on:

 

"... But nowhere on this earth, at home or abroad, have I seen anything to compare to the villages that huddle along the line of the Pennsylvania from the Pittsburgh yards to Greensburg. They are incomparable in color, and they are incomparable in design. It is as if some titanic and aberrant genius, uncompromisingly inimical to man, had devoted all the ingenuity of Hell to the making of them. They show grotesqueries of ugliness that, in retrospect, become almost diabolical. One cannot imagine mere human beings concocting such dreadful things, and one can scarcely imagine human beings bearing life in them."

 

"... On certain levels of the human race, indeed, there seems to be a positive libido for the ugly, as on other and less Christian levels there is a libido for the beautiful. It is impossible to put down the wallpaper that defaces the average American home of the lower middle class to mere inadvertence, or to the obscene humor of the manufacturers. Such ghastly designs, it must be obvious, give a genius to a certain type of mind."

 

"... Here is something that the psychologists have so far neglected: the love of ugliness for its own sake, the lust to make the world intolerable. Its habitat is the United States. Out of the melting pot emerges a race which hates beauty s it hates truth."

 

Against the pleasure that the bigot finds in his superior invective, Sir Desmond McCarthy writes this:

"One recognizes the impartial faculty for getting angry. It can produce sneers, tropes, tremendous metaphors; out of it some pages of memorable prose have been written. Such anger is delicious to experience, for it is accompanied by a glowing sense of superiority, and it can be an immense stimulus to composition. But it can only be cultivated at the sacrifice of some spiritual honesty: that is the price which must be paid. Success depends upon rapidly draining into general channels the contents of your private reservoir of resentments, vainglory, thwarted ambitions, wrongs and grudges. Such emotions are ductile. It is particularly easy to make, for instance, a little current of envy turn furiously the mills of righteous indignation. But then the writer must be unconscious of the sources of this energy. Hence the necessity of a certain dishonesty or lack of self-awareness which, whether inborn or acquired, may sooner or later make a fool of the specialist in invective."

 

I doubt anybody can say they haven not witnessed that kind of invective on the internet.

 

Celebrities will be in my next post ...

[Julie H]

.............

 

Richard Avedon, in an essay in his book of Portraits, wrote this:

"In 1975 I had arrived at the point in my career where I was no longer interested in doing portraits of persons of power and accomplishment."

 

So??

 

What's remarkable about that? It's that he doesn't say he isn't interested in doing portraits; it's that he's not interested in doing portraits of celebrities. Celebrities are different. They're not like us.

 

When Avedon showed the picture of Marilyn that he (and many other arty people) thought and think was and is so revealing, I think the general public's reaction was "Duh!" As if he thought we didn't know that 'Marilyn' isn't really a person when she's not being 'Marilyn.' Big Duh! We don't thank him for telling us what we don't want to know.

 

There's a collaboration between photographers, celebrities, and the general public that has many different permutations, but the common ingredient is that we don't want to know that they're like us. We want them to be 'stranger.' Being famous is a glory and a prison [ <<< boohoo! big cliché ... ]

 

....

Edited August 10, 2017 by Julie H

[movingfinger]

If you have any pictures that you think show 'stranger,' or if you can link to any, please post them.

Thinking a bit more about the notion of being a stranger to oneself, I would offer many of the self-portraits of Francesca Woodman, for example:

I'm trying my hand at fashion photography

[Norma Desmond]

There's a collaboration between photographers, celebrities, and the general public that has many different permutations, but the common ingredient is that we don't want to know that they're like us. We want them to be 'stranger.'

Considering actors, it's not just we, the audience, who want them to be "stranger."* They have elected a life, a big part of which is becoming a stranger in adopting the role of a character. Of course, they learn to both be that stranger and make that stranger familiar. And the best among them utilize their authentic selves to become their characters. In wanting them to be "stranger" we may actually also be wanting them to be themselves. Selves are not one-dimensional and not only hidden inner beings. Selves manifest in the roles we adopt and the lives we choose. If Judy Garland and Clark Gable are stars, why would seeing them as such be seeing them as a stranger? It's just as real as shooting Casals with his cello or a local teacher in her classroom.

 

*The concept of "stranger," while interesting, is not a good context in which to see all human interaction or photographic relationship. "Stranger" may have limited usage and application and not every relationship of photographic note benefits from being seen in that context.

[Norman 202]

But her photos of these people weren't about alienation to me. She connected quite well

Barry, what makes you think Arbus connected with her subjects. Other than the photos is there evidence she connected, ie did she write about them somewhere, correspond with them, interview them?

[Norman 202]

The reason i ask is because of what Phil said about Arbus' photos being 'self portraits' due to her state of mind.

[Uhooru]

Barry, what makes you think Arbus connected with her subjects. Other than the photos is there evidence she connected, ie did she write about them somewhere, correspond with them, interview them?

According to the two books I've read about Arbus one being the un-official, un-sanctioned biography and the other being the awesome large tome put out by her daughter, that Arbus herself talked extensively about her relations with many of her subjects. Arbus talked about the frustration of the lack of connection she was able to generate with the patients at the sanitarium she photographed at. It seems to me it was quite well known.

 

That doesn't negate what Phil was talking about though. She's a fascinating person, you should read the some of the great books exploring her life.

Edited August 11, 2017 by Uhooru

[Norma Desmond]

What I've read about Diane Arbus is, indeed, interesting. The photos, exhibits, and books of imagery I've seen are even more so. Whether she connected with her subjects is less important to me than what I see in her photos, which I wouldn't describe as connection, and I think that's why she was so special and also why so many people had a problem with her work. I see fascination. And I think there are positive and negative sides to fascination, and I accept that and think it makes her work all the more important and all the more deep.

'The very process of posing requires a person to step out of himself as if he were an object,'' she liked to say. ''He is no longer a self but he is still trying to look like the self he imagines himself to be. It's impossible to get out of your skin and into somebody else's and that's what photography is all about.''—Arbus

". . . as if he were an object." That's what I see in her work. A lot of objectification. Brilliant, honest objectification. Whether and how she connected to her subjects, I think her photos show a very unusual kind of distance. A kind of intentionally close distance. I think her camera confronts her subjects and I think she was unflinching in doing that. That's what I find so challenging and rewarding about her work and what I suspect puts many people off about her work.

[Norman 202]

Whether she connected with her subjects is less important to me than what I see in her photos, which I wouldn't describe as connection

Fred, don't you think that lack of connection and the objectification of her subjects leaves her open to being accused of exploitation?

[Uhooru]

Actually, she was accused of exploitation. But when you read about her, regardless if it was or wasn't exploitive, and she certainly had an agenda for her photos, there isn't about a lack of connection, though, we may be mis-using that word. You will see that a big part of her projects was basically "seducing" subjects to let her take their picture. She used to talk to people she was wanting to photograph and ask them to take her home with them, or to "tell her a secret". Its easy to say, and may well be true that she wasn't really interested in that word, "connecting" with her subjects. But she did want to learn something of them and I believe she certainly wanted them to feel they knew her enough to drop their "mask", i.e. that front in their mind they want to present to the world. She was known to be almost vicious and un-mercifil with the camera and how she got people to let her take pictures. Read Warhol's starlets Viva's comments or Germain Greer's comments about a photo session with Diane Arbus.

But for instance, for the circus freaks she photographed, she certainly got to know many of them very well over a period of time. Some of that, I would speculate, was just to gain entry to that world so she could find subjects to photograph. But still, these were people she knew and fairly well indeed. Whether that informs her photography? I think it must to some degree. her approach was unique and her photos are unique.

Edited August 11, 2017 by Uhooru

[Norma Desmond]

Fred, don't you think that lack of connection and the objectification of her subjects leaves her open to being accused of exploitation?

Yes, it does leave her open and she has been accused of it. I think part of the challenge of her work is dealing with that. I see it as objectification but not exploitation. Exploitation, to me, would mean her deriving some sort of personal or emotional benefit off of the objectification. For instance, I think a lot of photos of homeless people (NOT ALL) are exploitive because they not only objectify other humans but the photos pray upon an emotional pathos that will be derived with very little emotional involvement put into the endeavor. A lot of the stuff I'm talking about comes across as shooting fish in a barrel. I think Arbus's photos show dedication (the opposite of shooting fish in a barrel) without necessarily showing connection. I think because they don't derive that kind of emotional pathos and don't seem to be attempting to derive that kind of emotional pathos they don't, to me, come across as exploitive. She doesn't seem to be looking for either a sympathetic or an empathetic reaction. That's what I mean by fascination. Kind of a more neutral sense of wonder and interest, a kind of irresistible attention without pointing toward a result or resolution.

 

________________________________________________

 

Barry, I read you as talking about what you know of her and her methods and not what you see in her photos. Your last post is all about her getting to know her subjects and what you've read about her relating to the people she shot and not about what you're seeing in the photos themselves. When I talk of disconnection, I'm talking about what I see in her photos, despite what I may know of how she worked. I'm not saying you should see her photos as I do and I'm not even sure how you see her photos. It's just that you haven't actually talked about them. Do you see the connection in the photos themselves? Isn't it possible she connected with these people but either chose to or just unconsciously managed to shoot them without portraying or wanting to portray or even being able to portray that connection?

[Uhooru]

“If you scrutinize reality closely enough, if in some way you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic.” ― Diane Arbus

and

“The camera is cruel, so I try to be as good as I can to make things even.” – Diane Arbus

and

There are an awful lot of people in the world and it's going to be terribly hard to photograph all of them... It was my teacher Lisette Model who finally made it clear to me that the more specific you are, the more general it will be. - Diane Arbus

 

I think her photographs reflect her intense fascination for the subjects.her curiosity, her passion to confront her own fears and explore things she hadn't seen before. Her exploitation, if that's what people wanted to call it, was using her personality to gain entrance to people's lives and then exploit the relationships for her own professional gain by displaying the photos. But in a way, every documentary photographer does that to some extent. But no, I don't think her photos are based on pity or even empathy. In fact, I beleve she didn't really think actual empathy was possible to some extent when she claimed it was impossible to get under another's skin and that experiencing one's own trauma doesn't necessarily allow you to understand another's.

[Julie H]

...........

I think her photographs reflect her intense fascination for the subjects.

 

I think that what she was doing was kind of the inverse of what Phil asked me about earlier in this thread:

 

Julie, do you have a favorite character from a book you've ever read? What does the character look like in your mind.

 

I think Arbus was starting with the given "look like" and finding the "book": finding the story of her subjects by falling into their story. Being there. Letting the teeth of their ongoing life/place gear into hers.

 

In that sense, as Phil also pointed out, her pictures are self-portraits.

..........

[Julie H]

..............

The issue I see with what Jung found, and, as I said in the OP, is that in making a photograph (as opposed to a painting or drawing), you are in an photo-interaction and you wait until it "makes sense." It's very unusual for someone to see themselves (photographically) as they are not, to see themselves as 'stranger.' It's kind of like trying to see the back of your head: you know it's there, but you can't see it (directly). When photographing somebody else, I think you know the game, and how to play it, as does everybody else. If somebody is not playing, if they are 'stranger,' then I think that most photographers will wait and watch until the person "makes sense" i.e. is not strange.

 

***

 

Avedon tells a story of going to photograph the, by then completely blind, Jorge Luis Borges and being unable to make a good picture:

 

"The first time I saw him in light, it was my light. I was overwhelmed with feeling and I started to photograph. But the photographs turned out to be emptier than I had hoped. I thought I had somehow been overwhelmed that I had brought nothing of myself to the portrait."

 

"... In some way, it seemed that Borges had no visitors. People who came from the outside could exist for him only if they were made part of his familiar inner world, the world of poets and ancients who were already his true companions. The people in that world knew more, argued better, had more to tell him. The performance permitted no interchange. He had taken his own portrait long before, and I could only photograph that."

 

By contrast, he also describes photographing the painter Frances Bacon. That went perfectly. I'll skip the story and just give one sentence from Avedon:

 

"Without my saying a word, he understood what my portrait was about, what it called for from him, and he still remained true to himself."

 

Note that Avedon says, "what my portrait was about."

...........

[Julie H]

..........

No artist will deliver or present a work as "finished" when it doesn't make sense to them

 

 

That would be why Jung did not claim his things were art?

 

I thought you were in favor of ambiguity in your pictures. Does ambiguity "make sense"?

..........

[Julie H]

..........

Would you agree with:

"... if he is an artist who collides and contends immediately with the raw cognitive-ethical element of a lived life, with the chaos of a lived life (element and chaos from the aesthetic standpoint), ... it is only this collision that ignites the purely artistic spark." —

M.M. Bakhtin

 

... and if so, you would not photograph the moment, the state of, the feeling of that collision but would rather wait until you could "map" that territory?

 

[i think most photographers do wait (and thus no 'stranger'), but you have said that "no artist" would do so.]

..........

[Julie H]

Artists don't make art because they're hoping their art will not make sense to them and to their public.

 

 

Did I say that? I think not.

 

I think it is the spectators, including the artist who made the thing, that enjoy "making sense" out of it, as a finished work. But that's not who or what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the shooter, in the act of seeing. The artist in the collision.

 

...............

[Norma Desmond]

No artist will deliver or present a work as "finished" when it doesn't make sense to them on some deeper level

I think just the opposite is often true. I don't think Beethoven's final piano sonatas made much "sense" to him at all. Many passages show madness, not sense. And I don't think they would have made more sense to him than to his listeners. These pieces are quite baffling. Listen to them after listening to those of his early or middle period. They're on a different plane. Had they made sense, they would lack the intense personal outcrying quality they have, IMO. The same can be said for lots of art.

I said when it doesn't make sense to them on a deeper level.

All you're doing here is changing the definition of "sense" to suit what you want to say. Finding another word would work better. Why use the word "sense" to begin with? Taking it to this deeper level seems to take it out of the realm of sense, so it's not sense anymore. I think emphasizing "sense," at whatever level, is not a great place to go in talking about artists' relationships to their art.

[Norma Desmond]

Phil, you've simply started from the back end. You want a phrase (a secret sauce) for what drives an artist to feel he's finished his work and you've decided the phrase "makes sense" is good, so now you're defining the thing that happens when an artist is finished as "making sense." You're declaring that Beethoven wouldn't have wrote his sonatas if they didn't make sense because you've pre-defined finished art as something that has to make sense. Sounds vaguely familiar from another recent thread! I think it's a bad phrase to use. And I think it's a bad idea to lay all this on one particular phrase, because I think what is behind an artist finishing a work will be a lot of different things for a lot of different artists. Some artists will simply declare it finished, without having any feeling that it's actually finished. They just stop, perhaps because they move onto something else. The notion of "finished" here is even questionable.

there's no reason why something strange can't also appear to make sense.

I agree with this.

 

And, as I said above, putting too much emphasis on strangeness or sense, or any one quality, in trying to cover too many aspects of art, is a mistake.