je ne regrette rien

It seems not so straightforward to me. Certainly it's about "seeing", but that's absolutely not enough. Because there is a vast gap between what I see and what makes a photograph with some sense. Probably it is not necessary to delve into the complexity of human perception and seeing, and the two-dimensional characteristic of a photograph, as well as the perspective and composition techniques, which can be used to bridge this vast gap. This cute quote of Henri Cartier-Bresson comes to mind. Aligning the eye, the heart and the mind. I see it as harmonising what I see - if I'm capable to see it -, what I feel, and how I translate it into a meaningful picture.

Exactly. My main problem is that I know everything about my photographs and, unfortunately, I never forget the situation, the motion, the motivation. Everytime I see my photograph I know why, how, and even approximately when I made it. Which taints my relationship with them, because it makes me fail getting a distance and watch at them in a detached way. At the moment, finding out what I want to photograph of what I really believe makes sense is so challenging for me that I could not even think of sharing anything about this process.

I'm working hard to find my own 'voice' in photography and it's not like I've arrived at a result. I can share anything about the photographic process, but not how I conceive my photographs. That's the individualistic part if photography.

Cartier-Bresson is THE iconic photographer of the twentieth century. A communist aristocrat (or rather an aristocratic communist?). Mastering the craft (formerly and lately a painter). Mis-understood, mis-interpreted. A genius of his time. I try to deal with it. Photography, as all of the plastic arts, is not subject to the laws of physics. Fortunately. Personally I've come to the conclusion that the less time I spend on social media platforms the better. Sometimes I have the feeling that members just upload the whole of their memory cards (or smartphones). It seems to me that she was just passionate about photography and photographed. Then her life continued and ended. We are born into this world having nothing and we die leaving everything behind. And then, as it happens, somebody finds stuff and has to get rid of it (the warehouse where her boxes were kept) and by pure chance John Maloof ran across it. He was a real-estate agent, with sales skills, and that was his driver. Not really a curator. My personal opinion is that the dispute about her estate was purposefully created by the lawyer. Vivian Maier had some talent on her side, certainly some obsession and the patina of time, the latter being fundamental. Yes. I recall the lawsuit against William Eggleston by Jonathan Sobel, a financier, because the photographer had produced new prints of some of his iconic dye-prints. Overall, my original question stems from my personal belief that photographs should go very much beyond the mere representation of reality. I look for a sense in photographs. Understanding what others think about the sense of photographs helps me assessing my own work better.

My own appreciation a quite subjective criterion: "I see what I know" and I may also add "I see what I feel and I feel what I'm sensitive to". It would be very interesting to define what "poetry" is. Daniel J. Teoli Jr.'s definition is a fascinating one but also very synthetic, there is a lot of room for individual projections. Thank you for signalling the blog, it is worthwhile deepening.

Probably you are right. Only the "hits" resist time and come through to us. Yes and no. I'm attracted by curated work, but I am also aware of some initial selection bias of collections as the ones presented by Magnum, VII, AgenceVU, ParalleloZero, etc. even if it is worth keeping an eye on those of them who do scouting of new talents. Definitely. I have not yet managed to put this in perspective, but shoe-box collections of contemporary pictures will be of value in 20 or 30 years, because they will have the patina of time passing. Think of Vivian Maier and her story. If we imagine her in a present time, her imagery is created out of some naivety and candidness, with quite a few of orginal and attractively funny shots, documenting life in the streets. I think it's nice documentary, some critics are critical of her, I think she's enjoyable. One of the keys is that her photography is not pretentious. Absolutely. However, I suspect that the judgment over quality of certain work is influenced by "other" interests. Commercial ones for example, or praising the established, ignoring their demise (as Martin Parr calls it). Some time ago I've attended the presentation of a book by an amateur, published by a renown house, edited by an established editor, commented-on by a known photography critic, supported by a well-known brand of photo equipment. The job I find absolutely mediocre, lacking breadth and depth. But it served the purpose: an averagely interesting subject, prominent sponsors, an adequate, high-level promotion, targeting a certain market, probably successfully. That is what I'm talking about. It's a challenge. And I long to find those interesting and diverse people you mention here: .

Of course humans and photographers can come up with new conceptual subjects and new and innovative conceptions to present visually. What I’m saying is that this seems to require a lot of creative energy, much more nowadays when, believe it or not, millions of photographs are produced every minute. Look at a photographer I’ve studied a lot (among others): Henri Cartier-Bresson. His experience is kind of irripetibile. He certainly had talent and also business skills, but as important, he was instrumental in exploring the world in an era of post-war transformation. People were eager to know how the world was developing, travelling was certainly available to a restricted segment of the population and Cartier-Bresson met this demand for knowledge and information about a radically changing world. With the means that were available at the time. And he quit photography around 1974. Certainly an innovator of his time, it makes no sense to emulate him nowadays, because people’s demands are different, information channels are different, mobility and accessibility are different (think of Google StreetView). When he quit photography he, smart as he was, was certainly aware that he had contributed with what he could. The success of Davide Monteleone is due to his choice of then-transforming Soviet Union and Russia and the need to document the human condition during this transformation. And there are endless examples. All outstanding photographers are precursors in their own way, besides their (self-)communication skills. All has been photographed by now. Creating something new, presenting it in a new way is certainly possible, requires talent and work, a lot of work. And as far as I can see it is quite rare.

In her first chapter "On photography", Susan Sontag says When I say everything I mean the conceptual thing, the conceptual subject. That's where I start from. Of course the "real" can be reshaped, transformed, transsubstantiated. I wouldn't compare photography with painting to begin with, because, even if they share the art of composition, the painter has intrinsically more control over the objects she places on her canvas than the photographer, who must make many more efforts and deploy many more abilities to find and arrange the objects to conceive and realise the image he has in mind. I think of two particular photos by Jeff Wall: A Sudden Gust of Wind and Dead Troops Talk. They are both about the real, depict the real, but we know that they are unreal. Absolutely yes! That's the puncture, the sting, the imperceptible, which distinguishes the repetition from the new. This includes the these distinguish the same representation of the same subject from a mere repetition. I have recently seen a perfect re-envisioning of Weston's Tina Modotti sixty-four years later: Hugues Erre. Both sting.

Innovative creators are able to conceive the journeys I mentioned and present them. That's not only craft, it's also talent. I've seen stories about the same subject, one conveying feeling and sentiment, the other appearing more distanced and cold. Although the subject in both cases was emotional in the same way. And then there is the viewer. Photographs are about connections: the photographer's with the subject, and her capability to transmit this with the means selected. The combinations of such means are fundamentally infinite. the photographer's with the viewer the photograph's connection with the universal body of photographic work, in what is it innovative, in what repetitive (subject, combination, form, tools, techniques, etc) the viewer's knowledge. One important Italian designer, artist, creator, author, Bruno Munari, said "Everyone sees what they know". The viewer becomes an active part of the connection and is responsible for their understanding of what they see and what is shown. the stance "if I like it or I don't" is just not enough. It's too subjective. The conclusions I draw for myself are: I don't know enough. Not enough about history of photography, not enough about its developments and complexity. Not about the combination of techniques and how they contribute to a visual message. I may know a bit about photographs and photographers, mostly due to the photographs I've seen, but that's it. Photographs can be analysed and assessed, but then there is something instinctive about them, which leads to the conclusion about whether they make sense or not. The little I know leads me to think that most of the photography I am exposed to adds very little to the sense of the global corpus of images. In other terms, everything has already been photographed - conceptually - and in most cases so much better by the original authors than the epigones popping up all the time. It's not about photographers, it's about their photographs. This is not a congruent set: an author may produce one outstanding piece of work and then fade away in repetitions. That is why I focus on photographic work and not on photographers. I'm driven towards photographs, it is interesting that @samstevens does not use social media and I may go that way as well: as far as I see, they are not suitable for my purpose. I need to look for curated work and not waste my time with randomly posted pictures. Hopefully I will be able to transfer all this into my own photography, which, at the moment, looks a bit complicated I must say.

I think your point of view touches upon a very important point: you go for curated work. Be it in a gallery show, a book, an author's website (I think). Curated work has the enormous advantage to be selected, edited, sequenced. Very important. A key take-away point for me is that you aren't on social media, where the bulk of undifferentiated stuff pops up. Most of the platforms, photo.net included, are not suited to post edited and sequenced work. Platforms, for some strange reason, are about timelines, which is opposite to edited work. Books would be a good choice, but they have one bias, to publish a book one has to be in a certain group of photographers, which is pretty small. My experience is that many younger and very interesting photographers aren't published in books. I guess that that's also due to the different dynamics of photography on this side of the Atlantic. I normally prowl the web to find these.

We is whoever feels addressed by the statement. In fact PN is the farthest thing from what I would call a timeline and still I would say that there are things in-between selfies and documentary projects. As a matter of fact lots of pictures presented seem to be taken at random. The former. If there is a purpose, even if hidden on in development, the cohesive theme of creation will emerge one time or the other. Whatever you prefer, PT. Visible in the sense that it can be captured by a sensor or expose a film. No categorisation intended here, no placement in a basket, and even less acceptance and understanding. Just capturing something visible. The acceptance and understanding part is somewhere else. Connected or disconnected. ;)

I believe that that depends largely on the context. Lange's photo was and is deeply in context, because of the knowledge about the effects of the great depression, because of the title and the caption. The photo says it all. As does Ut's "Napalm girl", for example, but there are innumerable other examples. Eugene Smith's "Country doctor" is the seminal example of a picture story based on multiple images. Reading the background story of Smith's work is fascinating (he's also the author of Minamata), as well as his life "at the edge". My experience is that The stronger the "red thread", the more cohesive the series or the story, but also the single picture. The skills of the photographer are about a) finding this red thread; b) making the story or the series distinct from all the other, similar red threads, also working on the collateral elements; c) figuring out which tools to select from the photographer's toolbox to achieve her goal. A striking majority of photographers just don't care and snap away. Not very interesting in my view. And by no means there are recipes, procedures, and certainly there is no linearity in the process, nor a pre-defined roadmap. I know when a piece of work is strong. It is about working on the approach and setup. Equipment certainly has a role, but probably it is far less important than most think. There is the right tool and the right technique for a given result, but equipment will not make a piece of photographic work strong.

Fair enough, it's a free world, ain't it?

Overall this looks like a nice clean photo. That said, I am somehow uneasy with the placement of the objects in the frame. The green field is perfect. Not all pictures need to be level, but this one in my view does. The composition seems to be centred around the red building but its placement doesn't fully convince me, in relation to the poles and the grey building in the foreground. The truck is the "punctum" (Roland Barthes) of this picture.

We are flooded with images. It is said that the most used camera nowadays is the smartphone and in no time photographs are shared, seen, and rapidly fall into oblivion (try to find again a photograph after you have seen it for a moment and swiped on). We are presented with endless timelines of single photographs, hardly any of them is ever printed, but also not united to others in any way. My expectation of a photographer is that she guides me through a journey, new to me. Showing me an interesting subject and interesting details of this subject. To make me know more, to broaden and deepen what is shown to me, to ask questions. If I see a sequence of randomly taken picture a quickly move on. This does not mean that I believe that the photographic process is a linear one to begin with, not at all. Photography, as was underscored in a thread in the casual conversations, starts with the real. It is necessary to watch the real, capture it, transform it, reassemble it. It can start at random, grow at random, but the journey needs to be visible.

It seems to me that we fundamentally agree on everything, except for the instant of creation. I think that we can live with this. I was thinking that in the very end photographing is in essence, the simplest of creative acts: you get a device (a smartphone, a Leica, anything in-between), point and frame (somehow), press the button, and there we are. Everybody is an artist (pun intended). All considered, and not obvious to all, this simplicity makes photography is a potentially very complex and articulate creative act, where lots of elements come into play. Thanks for clarifying the stance of the OP, who is still qualified as a moderator :confused:.

@samstevens : I was referring to the first two posts of the original poster tommyfilmist (who seems to have vanished since then) and have the feeling that his concerns were mostly the change in photoprocessing tools and how they affect modern photography. in this respect I mean the references made by the OP. I agree that tools and techniques affect both the act and the result. We would have to ask the critic. I think he referred to the result as presented. Apologies, I should have added "creative act". Of course I'm not thinking in limitative terms. Again, I was just reacting to the orginal poster, who seems to imply that photography is no longer what it used to be because of the use of photoshop and Artificial Intelligence, in respect to what we used to do in the wet darkroom (dodging, burning, cropping, etc.). Yes, and I fully agree. My statement of "an act of today" includes all the experiences, ideas, processes, techniques, etc., which flow into this act of today. In other terms, something that happens in an instant, but definitely not disconnected from history, experience and the ongoing relevant processes.

Yes Sam, but, as I was trying to say, we are talking about different things, to me it seems: I talk about the act of photographing, you talk about the result of photographing. In the OP there were clear references to tools and techniques in photography, which I link to the act of photographing more than to the actual result. The act of photographing, as any human act, is always a result of all the present influences, which flow and merge into the same act. If I may paraphrase a sentence by a photographic expert and curator "if you want to go to California, the importance is to get there, not how you get there (photographically)". Btw, your remark about post-processing is spot-on: the appearance of my photo, including all the adjustments I want to make, are part of my process. Absolutely correct! That does not mean that the in-camera picture does not need to be right to begin with.

Yes, but would you convene that the act of JDMVW photographing is life today, i.e. at the time he was standing in front of the sites he intended to document? The fact that the objects he photographs were of the past in my mind does not make the act of photographing in the very moment it happens an act of the past. He, all photographers, make their photographs now (meaning the very moment when they conceive the photograph), based on present decisions, stimuli and facilities. Time passes, photographs may stay, the subjects may stay or vanish, any action vanishes and can’t be repeated. Somehow, I believe, in the line of what @John Seaman is saying.

That is absolutely correct. Nevertheless, I would also say that photographs are not only physical objects that obviously must pre-exist, they also can portray things that happen. Two come to mind right now: Philip Halsman’s jumping Dalí and Jacques Henri Lartigue’s racing car. These certainly portray pre-existing objects but also actions in the moment in time, which are over and past when the shutter closes. But there are many many others.

This suggests to me a quote by William Eggleston: “people ask me what I photograph. The best answer I can come up with is ‘life today’”. Photography is life, today. It is based on life, today. This includes Documenting the present and the past Creating Manipulating Techniques and craft Commercial relations Political statements The truth The falsehood. In most cases it uses what’s before us, anywhere in the universe. Anybody can think they can do it themselves but I would say that elements, factors and instruments are so manifold and connected in complex ways that achieving it with a meaning and punch is not obvious at all.

Sure, but the object/subject/action photographed, in the widest sense possible, may be created a fraction of a second before or even at the same moment it is photographed.

@samstevens now I realise, it seems to me that we are talking about different things: You think of photographs, I think of the act of photographing. The first is the result, the second is the set-up to obtain the result. They are not equivalent, even though related.

Yes, absolutely. We are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants. I do. I use two cameras that are over 20 years old. I am an absolute supporter of non-linearity. By no means I intended to dismiss the past and the memories, which the photos present us. What I meant was the creation of photography, which I think needs to be forward-looking in its conception of visual communication, precisely for the purpose of documenting and testifying the current for future memory. My point is therefore: I appreciate the great photographers of the past, but I believe that photography today should absolutely avoid photography à la ... [Lange, Cartier-Bresson, Herzog, Weston, Smith, Koudelka, ... you name them].

Photography, in all its aspects, including the ones related to "the little buttons we can push" is a reflection of society, including the documentary part, the hobby part, the professional aspects, and the technological tweaks as well, the craft and art, the tools available. We certainly take account of the works and the authors of the past, but photography is now and what it may be in the future. Nothing excluded. And then we evolve our approach, the way we see, the way we photograph, our craft.