Subjects that aren't physical objects

[Ricochetrider]

It perhaps fits the title, but if you read my introduction, and without getting into the science of it, a rainbow would be similar to sunrises and sunsets to me, in that it's a named thing we shoot at as opposed to an idea or feeling we're trying to convey through what we shoot at. That's not to say there might not be pictures of rainbows that are more about something other than the rainbow, and if you have one I'd love to see it. What I'm getting at is using the concrete world the camera is pointed at toward a more abstract, internal expression. It's, just for this thread, getting away from subject-as-shown as the hallmark of the photo.

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto (whom I happen to be thinking of a lot lately) recently had a project where he recreated Newton's "prism experiment". Hence, I believe, photos of pure light refracted, IOW, photos of a rainbow, where the rainbow itself is the only subject?

 

"It has been fifteen years since I started recreating Newton’s prism experiment. Every year, as winter comes around, the sunrise comes closer and closer to the frontmost side of the prism. Traveling through the cold winter air, the light is split, then drawn into the dim observation chamber, where it is projected on the white plaster wall at exaggerated size. The profundity of the color gradation is overwhelming. I have the sense that I can see particles of light, and that each of those individual particles is a subtly different color form the next one. Red to yellow, yellow to green, then green to blue — the projected colors contain an infinity of tones and change every moment. I am engulfed in color. Particularly when the colors fade and fuse into darkness, the gradation seems to melt away into pure mystery.

 

I realized that I could capture those fine particles of color within the square frame of a Polaroid photograph. After years of experimentation, I managed to create a color surface that was sufficiently expansive for me to merge into the color. With light as my pigment, I believe I successfully created a new kind of painting.

 

- Hiroshi Sugimoto"

 

Opticks — Hiroshi Sugimoto

Edited December 5, 2020 by Ricochetrider

[Ricochetrider]

Do reflections fit this theme?

 

 

[samstevens]

where the rainbow itself is the only subject?

Or maybe he was saying the feeling of ...

pure mystery

... is

[samstevens]

Do reflections fit this theme?

^ 2 u

[inoneeye]

link

 

“The two creative motives that have been contrasted here are not discrete. Ultimately each of the pictures in this book is part of a single, complex, plastic tradition. Since the early days of that tradition, an interior debate has contested issues parallel to those illustrated here. The prejudices and inclinations expressed by the pictures in this book suggest positions that are familiar from older disputes. [....] The distance between them is to be measured not in terms of the relative force or originality of their work, but in terms of their conceptions of what a photograph is: is it a mirror, reflecting a portrait of the artist who made it, or a window, through which one might better know the world?”

 

In this book I hope to provide a balanced but critically focused view of the art of photography as it has evolved in the United States during the past two decades. I hope, in other words, to be not only just but clear. In those circumstances where there seems a conflict between the two goals, I will try my best to favor clarity, on the grounds that clear error may be more instructive than vague truth. The book is a selection of 127 pictures that seem exemplary of the work of American photographers who have come to public attention during the past twenty years. [...] The pictures included here are arranged in two sections. This arrangement is designed to illustrate a critical thesis which I hope may offer a simple and useful perspective on the bewildering variety of technical, aesthetic, functional, and political philosophies that characterize contemporary photography's colloquium. This thesis suggests that there is a fundamental dichotomy in contemporary photography between those who think of photography as a means of selfexpression and those who think of it as a method of exploration.

 

-- John Szarkowski, 1978

[samstevens]

"It seems to this viewer that the difference between White and Frank relates to the difference between the goal of self-expression and the goal of exploration."

...

It must be emphasized that the distinction proposed here, between realist and romantic (or expressionist) modes of artistic response, is not intended as a method of dividing recent photography into two discrete and unrelated bodies. On the contrary, the model suggested here is that of a continuous axis, the two poles of which might be described by the terms proposed above. No photographer's work could embody with perfect purity either of the two divergent motives; it is the nature of his problem to find a personally satisfactory resolution of the contesting claims of recalcitrant facts and the will to form. Certainly it would be a disservice to Minor White and Robert Frank to suggest that their work is encompassed by, or the embodiment of, an abstract analytical device. Their work makes clear that such a claim would be puerile. A selection of White's work could doubtless be made that would suggest an almost selfless fidelity to topographic documentation, and a strong romantic strain in Frank's work, still evident even in The Americans, inflects and modulates the basic aesthetic strategy of the work, which presents the photographer as a disinterested chance witness. Nevertheless, the basic thrust of the two men's work describes a dichotomy of feeling that has shaped the character of subsequent American photography, and that may serve as a framework for its critical consideration.

...

The Americans in fact includes no photographs of lynchings, police brutality, overt crime, or licentious sin; it shows no intimate views of dire poverty, lewd behavior, or official corruption. Such pictures, because they could be considered exotic and local, could have been more easily accepted, and even praised; Frank s pictures showed what was everywhere visible, and seldom noticed."

 

—Szarkowski

 

_____________________________

He seems to have an acute awareness that the dichotomy he's suggesting is not a strict dichotomy at all. His awareness of the overlaps and tensions between the two approaches he's writing about is what stands out to me, almost to the fact where the book could be written from a slightly different vantage point whereby the premise is not to distinguish between the two ways of photographing but rather to note how similar they, in fact, can be.

 

Right! Frank did not go in for spectacle but rather for what's more ordinary but so often missed.

 

"It was in other words not the nominal subject matter of Frank's work that shocked the photography audience but the pictures themselves."

 

Here's the key, here's where it stands side by side with White's work, and here's where it seems to me to relate to this thread.

 

I haven't finished reading through the entirety of the essay yet, so I hope I don't do Szarkowski an injustice by attempting to add to what he's said, at least so far. I think this relates to a photographer's photographing and a viewer viewing with both a literal and an abstract eye. That's a distinction I think is close, supportive, and yet a bit different from his distinction between realism and romanticism (as he uses those terms).

[Nick D.]

[rodeo_joe1]

But Nick, where's the thousand word essay to explain your picture?

[samstevens]

But Nick, where's the thousand word essay to explain your picture?

wtf

[rodeo_joe1]

This arrangement is designed to illustrate a critical thesis which I hope may offer a simple and useful perspective on the bewildering variety of technical, aesthetic, functional, and political philosophies that characterize contemporary photography's colloquium.

wtf?

[samstevens]

wtf?

Read some of your own endless technical gasbag soliloquies before commenting on what others have to say.

[inoneeye]

Challenging read rodeo? Perhaps a bit outside your wheelhouse...? Not my favorite line of the intro to the book but it is a John Szarkowski quote & he is worth reading and consideration anytime. He knew his stuff & was an impressive director of photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art , historian, good photographer and insightful writer and critic. Edited December 13, 2020 by inoneeye

[Nick D.]

[Nick D.]

But Nick, where's the thousand word essay to explain your picture?

I'm engineer, not writer:)

[inoneeye]

Jazz

 

unrequited

 

 

both shots were staged...

Jazz - I often listen to music when I am making photographs, even in the street.

When realized the noticeable influence reflected in many of my photographs I decided to try and create some series of different styles of music as the subject.

unrequited - A long long time ago I was smitten by a woman/friend. We had been friends for a couple years when I tried to take it to a new place. We went horse back riding in the rain the day I let her know how I felt. She was not interested. Soon after I saw my emotional mood emerging in the photos I was making. So I set out to make that my subject. Late one night I passed a 2nd hand store and saw various objects that lent themselves to my intent. The next day when the store was open I went in and arranged a few items in the window for later shooting... wanting to shoot at night. I returned later and shot this through the window.

It's in my metaphoric scrapbook now as horseback riding in the rain. A year+ later we got married.

Edited December 14, 2020 by inoneeye

[samstevens]

So I set out to make that my subject.

It seems there was a spontaneity of emotion that your deliberations then harnessed into photos, in a sense displaying the world’s contents as metaphor.

[samstevens]

Not just the world's contents, but symbolic and expressive uses of graphic light and dark mirroring in jazz and foreground/background consciousness in unrequited ... among other qualities.

 

The things in a photo take us only so far and sometimes distract us from the non-things the things may act as a vehicle for.

[inoneeye]

best of times, worst of times

 

The things in a photo take us only so far and sometimes distract us from the non-things the things may act as a vehicle for.

 

Like a topic sentence in literature. Sometimes it sets the location/subject or sometimes more. Photography as a rich language can be direct or evoke a layered meaning... to record/express the object or a way to express a non physical subject.

But you already have said that in your op. better.

[hjoseph7]

"But I'm wondering if you ever photograph ideas or feelings, using "the world" and the real objects and things in it to portray that idea or emotion".

You got it ! Once you get past the snap-shot phase, or even the documentary phase your camera becomes a pictorial voice that explains things without any words ...

Edited December 16, 2020 by hjoseph7