Norma Desmond

<p>I haven't read anything about Bodine that doesn't talk about his introduction of darkroom techniques and a variety of creative elements into his photos. It seems to matter a great deal. And well it should. It's part of the art, every bit as much as brushstrokes are part of a painting.</p> <p>For me, it's not that his methodology doesn't matter or is immaterial. It matters because it's so well done, so craftily applied, so thoughtfully appropriate to the content of this photo and of his photos generally speaking. It is a material consideration (pun intended) both worth noting and discussing.</p> <p>That Bodine used these techniques well and came up with textured and meaningful photos, not to mention ones that are visually rich and intriguing to look at, doesn't justify the use of manipulation when it's bad, ham-fisted, or lacking in visual rationale. It doesn't become a justification for pushing a slider bar in Photoshop to the limits. The justification for doing any manipulation of a photo, whether by choosing a certain film, panning the lens, underexposing, or going wild in the darkroom or Photoshop, is the integrity of the photo, having something to say or show and doing it in some compelling way.</p> <p>What it provides to this scene is a sense of depth and a rich textural presence. This is an especially well-chosen device considering the hovering and dominant shapes of the nuns under their umbrellas and considering that weather itself can be so thick and atmospheric. Its sophisticated, nuanced, tactical, and skillful use here shouldn't give any comfort to those who use Photoshop or certain films and darkroom techniques to create hideous train wrecks.</p> <p>The photo is layered. I can feel the stark blackness of the nun's clothing beneath the weather which softens it. They are the rock solid forms amidst a scene much more alive with density and movement. That kind of visual tension and contrast tends to capture my imagination.</p>

<p>If you want to do it, you should do it.</p> <p>If you want to avoid it, you should avoid it.</p> <p>Would all depend on what you're doing and why you're doing it.</p> <p>IMO, it takes more than selective focus to make something look romantic and significant.</p>

<p>Pnina, I have no further advice for you. It will be up to the technicians or administrators to help you. I gave it my best shot but have no other suggestions. </p> <p>As to why the photo you uploaded was deleted, again, I'm not an administrator but I have read the terms of agreement of PN, which we are reminded about often in the forums. We may only upload photos that are our own or that belong to other PN members that we've worked on in order to help them. We may link to other photos but we may not upload them. It is a standing rule, applies to everyone, and is enforced consistently.</p>

<p>Pnina, you also continued to post about your PN problem, so I simply wondered if you'd taken the 30 seconds necessary to see if you'd blocked yourself. It may or may not be a solution for you. I thought it was important to you, since you continued to ask for assistance. I was just trying to help. In no way does that minimize what you're facing at home. I won't offer any more suggestions and won't address the issue again. Good luck with PN and, more importantly, I wish you peace!</p>

<p>Pnina, ave you checked to see if you've blocked yourself?</p>

<p>It varies from photo to photo in terms of specifics, but generally speaking, I'm satisfied with a photo when I see commitment in it, to a vision, an emotion, a style, an idea, a narrative, a perspective . . . Interestingly, along with that satisfaction is often some healthy dissatisfaction, meaning that I will often recognize how I can take it further next time and what did not quite work for me this time. So I'm satisfied if I've learned something and if I've gained insights into how I can progress from here. As JDM suggests, there's satisfaction if I feel I've achieved my goals. And there's also great satisfaction in achieving things that are complete surprises or even accidents. Sometimes, my intentions are really only the beginning and then some combination—of luck/karma/being there/I don't know what /experience adding up to things I wasn't necessarily conscious of—takes over. I usually like to see an organic and authentic combination of what the subject of my photo has to offer and what I bring to the table. If I feel my photos are a harmonious or contrapuntal and even sometimes discordant collaboration among subject, photo, and Fred, any of those can be very satisfying.</p>

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Created in 1913 by Harold Van Buren Magonigle and Attilio Piccirilli. 59th Street Columbus Circle, NYC.<div></div>

<p>Pnina, I have no other solution. If you've checked, as I suggested, to make sure you haven't accidentally blocked yourself, that was the only thing I could think of.</p>

<p>nm</p>

<blockquote> <p><em>"The artist must yield himself to his own inspiration... I should compose with utter confidence a subject that set my musical blood going, even though it were condemned by all other artists as anti-musical. Stupid criticism and still more stupid praise."</em> —Giuseppe Verdi</p> </blockquote> <p>Charles, I included Verdi's last sentence not to say your criticism or any criticism of Cage is stupid but rather to agree with Verdi that sometimes art is simply beyond the care and imposition of criticism or competition. Sometimes it's just a matter of non-judgmentally and non-competitively appreciating each moment as it comes to us, which I actually think is akin to what Cage was getting at, which was an invitation to experience and a kind of meditation on negative space, as it were.</p> <p>Some of the most significant art is art which will not hold meaning over centuries. Art may often occupy only a fleeting moment. And I'm glad there exists such art both as support and as an alternative to the more lasting works and the more iconic works. It may, indeed, not be remembered, but it will have had some ripple effect, which is all it needs to have, IMO.</p> <p><em>Traviata</em> may hold more meaning than many other artworks, including <em>4'33"</em>. I wouldn't be moved to make that assessment here but I do assess things as more or less meaningful at times. Likewise, certain brushstrokes in a painting are dominant and certain colors are. Yet, when I step back and view the painting as a whole or view art history as a whole, each stroke and each artwork seems equally important in fulfilling its unique role even if not when compared to other things.</p> <p><em>4'33"</em> may not be as significant as <em>Traviata</em> in the overall scheme of things. (The way I'd frame it is that it may well be as significant, it's just not as filled with masterly technique and it's more single-minded.) Whatever else it is or isn't, it claims a moment in the ongoing dialogue that is art.</p> <p>_________________________________________</p> <p>Dead end? IMO, no.</p>

<p>Cage turned his own and the listener's attention to silence in ways that hadn't been done. Yes, composers and savvy listeners were very much in tune with using silence and pauses. I doubt most listeners noticed it or gave it a thought though, of course, they were experiencing it in all kinds of music. Verdi's <em>Traviata</em> is a masterpiece for so many reasons, not least of which are the several abrupt and poignant pauses throughout the Opera when he puts a halt to a melody in midstream. A recent production I saw had the chorus make a very obvious grand sigh during a couple of those pauses, almost as if the conductor couldn't deal with those gaps and had to fill them in with his own punctuation marks, a misstep in my opinion though still an attempt at creatively doing a little something different with the piece. Silences between musical notes is different from what Cage was turning our attention to, which was a kind of meditation on ambient sound and a sense of the space which a background of timed silence can create.</p> <p>Concept-based art has been significant in moving our understanding of art and our experience of the world itself forward. The artistic skill involved in Cage's conceptualizing a timed musical piece that instruments don't play or that Duchamp utilized in finding a urinal and having the guts to place it in a museum isn't a matter of the kind of handiwork we might typically think of as "artistic skill" but is a matter of breakout thoughtfulness and an imaginative nudging to the context, history, and purview of art and to our relationship to what's in the world and how we experience it, which is artistic skill of a different sort.</p>

<p>Thanks, Brad. That's a good reminder that we all work so differently and are looking for different things out of photography. I tend to be more focused on putting together a body of work and on the actual photos themselves and what can be expressed via the photos. While I get a lot out of the experiences I have photographing others, I'm in it more for the photos and what I get out of making them and what they can offer to those who look at them . . . seeing the photos and sharing them with others. But I have to remember to leave room for other photographers working very differently and prioritizing different things. As I said, I am grappling with my take on Winogrand. Much is unresolved for me and I'm simply working it out, which is why these discussions and hearing what others such as yourself have to say can be so helpful. I'm not terribly sure yet of my reactions to Wonogrand and many other photographers.</p> <p>I've learned both to respect Szarkowski and also to question some of his takes on things and I was skeptical about some of his claims and I appreciate your providing some insight that gives me more to think about in terms of what he said about Winogrand's unprocessed film.</p> <p>I'm not going to get into projecting whether Winogrand would chuckle at someone characterizing how he worked in an attempt to genuinely consider why he made certain choices.</p> <p>As to Winogrand's famous quote, good point. Like you, I'm often skeptical of quotes by famous people. They can as often be purposefully misleading or flip as they can be insightful. If it were an isolated quote, I might be more skeptical. But it seems to fit in not only with a lot else that he said but also with the way he shot, as I perceive it, so I'm not too prepared to see it as a means to get a rise out of people and generally lean toward taking it more at face value, though there could easily be a bit of both at play.</p>

<p>Good points, Arthur. I'd like to add that the choice of which negatives to print is not always up to the person who took the photos. Often a documentarian or photojournalist will submit contact sheets to an editor or someone else and the selection of which ones to use will not be up to the person who did the shooting.</p> <p>Many exhibits and books we see, although the photographer would have originally chosen which photos to work up into prints, are culled by curators and publishers, often actually with very different choices of what will form an exhibit or comprise a book than what the photographer might have chosen himself.</p> <p>Editing (determining which shots to print or use) is a skill in itself. I'd grapple with whether a case can be made that Winogrand's and Vivian Maier's not choosing among so many of their own photos actually is evidence of a shortsightedness or at least an inability to focus and create a coherent expressive body of work. For Maier, it encompassed her entire photographic career. For Winogrand, it seemed more to be his practice later in life. For either photographer, if it was a conscious decision to simply keep photography to the performance aspect of taking the picture, that would be one thing and I'd have no question with that. But I'm not sure that was the case, especially for Winogrand. As a matter of fact, Winogrand's famous line was about wanting to see what something looked like photographed. If that's genuine, then presumably he'd want to see the photograph, which would require its going beyond the stage of the negative. His opting out of that part of the process at a certain point could easily be taken as being somewhat derelict. I take this to be at least part of what Szarkowski was getting at when he said about the multitude of unprocessed Winogrand film, <em>“To expose film is not quite to photograph.”</em></p>

<p>For me, the Parks photo of the little girl [thanks for introducing it, Charles] speaks of dignity.</p> <p>The Parks <em>American Gothic</em> photo is, in great part, about what's been done to people. This newly-introduced photo, to me, is about what can't be taken away from someone (no matter how hard we try). It's got optimism and hope and is a very good companion to the <em>American Gothic</em> photo, which is so dismally real.</p>

<p>The question is not, for me, whether it's any less art. It's simply what I want. If I feel something more for an Arbus shot that was printed by Arbus than an Arbus shot that was printed by someone else, it wouldn't occur to me to say that one was more and one was less art. It would just be about what I bring to the experience and what my preferences are.</p> <p>I think there is a very understandable sense of personhood associated with art, though I do very much appreciate art where the artist can't be identified or the art is the result of a process involving several people at different stages. Art is a very human expression and wanting to identify and empathize with the feelings and expression of an individual or singular artist seems a very reasonable thing to want, though it's obviously not always available.</p> <p>The flip side of that is that there are some very superficial societal tendencies to want to worship people and to make the personality more important than the work itself. Culture loves creating heroes and then idolizing them. We don't only pay more for a print done by Arbus herself, we pay for her signatures on letters, for the fur coat she wore, for the utensils she may have used. Is that art? Meaningless question, of course.</p> <p>If I had to generalize (which isn't always helpful!), I'd probably prefer to have the print made by the photographer over the one made by someone else. I do appreciate the uniquely personal aspects of photography and art. I know there would be exceptions where I might feel I'd got more out of the print someone else made. It would depend on the photo, the print, the photographer, and the particular circumstances. I could see myself going either way.</p>

<p>Pnina, do you mean that on the page of your photo, there is no comment box for you to add a comment in? Or there is a box, but when you try to make a comment and hit confirm, you're getting an error message? Or is it something else? Is it only on your own photo or is on the photos of other members as well? You made a comment on my photo yesterday, so you can still comment some of the time. Is it only on your own that you can't comment? I feel badly for you that you have to work so hard to describe this in English and I know it is not easy, but it's important that you be very clear and detailed, so you can get help with your problem</p> <p>Some people have not been able to comment on their own work because they have accidentally blocked themselves from commenting by hitting the BLOCK button next to one of their own posts. I wonder if that could be the problem. The only way I know to UNBLOCK yourself if you've been blocked by yourself is to go to one of your photo pages and BLOCK someone else (this will only be temporary). When you BLOCK them, you will get a page showing a list of all people you've blocked. If you're on that list, just hit the UNBLOCK link next to your name and you'll be OK. Remember to also UNBLOCK whoever you just BLOCKED.</p> <p>If anyone knows a better to way to access your BLOCKED list, please say so. This method of unblocking and accessing the list seems ridiculous, but it's the only way I've found.</p> <p>If I understand correctly, the photo you referenced in your post above is not a photo of yours and posting it instead of just linking to it is in violation of the terms of the site. I wonder if that might have something to do with the problems you're experiencing.</p>

<p>In another thread, John Cage's 4'33" was brought up and I was reminded that Cage actually based this musical piece on the white canvases of Rauschenberg. Just as Rauschenberg's canvases are not blank, since they are painted white and also change as the light and shadows in the room and of the viewers change, Cage's piece is not really silent, as the ambient sounds in the room become part of the performance. Here's Cage talking about it, my own bold emphasis added:</p> <blockquote> <p><em>"Actually what pushed me into it was <strong>not guts</strong> but the example of Robert Rauschenberg. His white paintings [...] when I saw those, I said, 'Oh yes, I must. Otherwise I'm lagging, otherwise music is lagging'."</em></p> </blockquote> <p>Influence, homage, dialogue, perhaps even a bit of friendly competitive spirit.</p>

<p>Marc, John Cage's 4'33" is a fascinating case. Thanks for bringing it up. Interestingly, it was created purposefully to be performed. So a musician will ascend to the piano or other instrument(s) and sit there and not play. Also intended is that ambient sounds will fill the space that the music otherwise would. He based 4'33" on the white canvases Rauschenburg had produced, which are really not blank because they are painted white just as Cage's piece is not silent. The white canvases play with light and shadow and how the light and shadow changes just as Cage's piece relies in part on ambient sounds casting their light and shadows, as it were, on the silence.</p> <p>I agree with you that the experience itself of works of art that are completed, enhanced, reconstructed, or performed by other folks is the most important thing and often very moving to experience. I wouldn't say their being aided by other hands is irrelevant. It's important in an art historical context and in understanding that it often takes a whole lot of cooperation to bring us the art experience.</p> <p>This is why I also consider and give credit to the curators and museum and lighting designers who bring us art, as they coordinate the exhibit, decide what to hang next to what, and create the display for us. It's a crucial piece of that all-important experience of art.</p>

<p>Arthur, I was just thinking about some Mozart compositions and compositions of other composers that were completed by other composers after they died. Most people still refer to those as Mozart's but there's a kind of asterisk next to them that we understand to mean they weren't fully realized by Mozart. I'd refer to them as Mozart's while still understanding the importance of the issues surrounding the completion of the pieces. If someone else wants not to credit Mozart with them, I wouldn't get exercised about that either. It would just be different ways of describing the same phenomenon, which we probably both well understand.</p> <p>I wonder if there are cases of famous musicians who purposely saw to it that their compositions were never performed. That would be interesting to know. It's always fascinated me that Beethoven wrote a bunch of stuff late in his life hat he could never hear because he was deaf (though he probably could hear them internally if not with the help of his ears).</p>

<blockquote> <p><em>"Photographers/Artists, do their own thing. For the love of it.</em><br /> <em>Others about turning a coin"</em></p> </blockquote> <p>Mapplethorpe and Warhol were fearless promoters of their own work and both wanted success and recognition. Patti Smith's book <em>Just Kids</em> is a good read to get insights into this and her own somewhat different way of being involved in her art as well as her own musings on what Mapplethorpe did to get his art seen. When an artist thinks he has something significant to say, he may well be driven to get his work out there and recognized.</p> <p>Throughout the history of art, I find many very sensitive and deep artists who were also very good at promoting themselves.</p> <p>But while that's true, it's also true that many people promoting themselves and gaining success are not terribly good artists at all and are much better promoters.</p>

<p>Arthur, thanks for those observations. The issue with the Beethoven Sonata is that, though it is found "complete" as written, I could never <em>hear</em> it if it weren't performed by someone other than Beethoven. So, am I hearing the "Beethoven" Sonata or am I hearing a collaboration of Beethoven and the performer interpreting it? Like you, I have no trouble referring to it as a Beethoven sonata. That includes my understanding that each interpretation of it is different and is something brought to me by the musician playing it. I also have no trouble referring to these as Winogrand's photos, though that also comes with the understanding that someone else chose from among his negatives and printed them. How Beethoven would have played them and how Winogrand would have printed them will always remain a mystery, but won't change the fact that this is Beethoven's piece of music someone is playing and Winogrand's photos someone is printing. We could always say, "But we can trace back in history and get reports on how Beethoven, himself, played his sonatas." But we can't do that with his symphonies, since Beethoven didn't comprise a complete orchestra.</p> <p>We might ask if a piece of music is analogous to a photo in that both are processes that go beyond the original act of writing the composition or taking the photo. And even though performing the music and printing the photos have a great impact on the experience, I don't think they change who's responsible for the most significant part of the process. I've never heard a classical performer try to claim possession or ownership of the piece of music though they do and should take credit for interpreting it. I don't know of any master printers who've taken other than secondary credit for printing the photos other people took.</p> <p>It is interesting to think of our taking the shots as comparable to composing a piece of music and our developing, processing, and printing (even framing and displaying) as the performance. This wouldn't be an original take on the matter but would coordinate with what Adams said about the negative being the score and the print being the performance.</p> <p>No matter who chooses and prints the Winogrand photos, I have a sense of Winogrand's eye and vision just as I do Beethoven's, which remains evident even through the filter of the various very differing performances of his scores.</p>

<p>To add to what Charles has said (thanks so much for that, Charles, it was great to read), let's say we did find out that Parks had no conscious intention to pay homage to Wood and did not title the work that way. I'd still maintain that any viewer would be entitled to see a connection between the two works and allow that connection to affect his way of experiencing both the painting and the photo. Clearly, Wood hadn't seen Parks's photo when he painted <em>American Gothic</em>, and yet having seen Parks's photo, I may never look at Wood's painting the same way again. Art often changes retroactively and takes on different meanings because of what has happened since it was created. That's one reason why it's so alive. As I see it, all sorts of visual references and symbols and signs are out there. We who engage in photography will be influenced, whether consciously and intentionally or not, by what we've seen. And even if we've never seen some things, others will view our works in light of what they've seen and make all sorts of visual and emotional connections to other photos, other artwork, and other things in their visual world. If Parks never intended this photo to be related to the painting of Wood, that wouldn't prevent the painting and the photo from being related. As a matter of fact, there could be something very deep about such an accidental or unintended homage! </p>

<p>Alan, from what I've read, Michelangelo did think of himself as and refer to himself as an artist. This is a fairly well-known quote of his, which I guess doesn't come out and directly refer to himself as an artist but certainly suggests he's including himself among the artists he's talking about. He even has the audacity to speak about "the greatest artist!"</p> <blockquote> <p><em>"</em><em>The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has."</em> —Michelangelo</p> </blockquote> <p>Other people as diverse as Einstein, John Lennon, and Robert Frost have directly referred to themselves as artists.<br /></p> <blockquote> <p><em>"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination."</em> —Einstein<br /></p> </blockquote> <p> </p> <blockquote> <p><em>"My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all."</em> —Lennon<br /></p> </blockquote> <p> </p> <blockquote> <p><em>"The artist in me cries out for design."</em> —Frost<br /></p> </blockquote> <p>Picasso famously said <em>"Good artists copy, great artists steal."</em> I doubt very much he would have made that statement meaning to exclude himself. He also referred to himself often as a painter. How he spoke about himself to his friends and in casual conversation, I don't know.<br> <br> Among quotes of famous artists, I find a lot of them openly discussing what they think art is and what qualities they think artists have. I generally get the sense they're talking from an insider perspective and including themselves.<br> <br> To get back to the original question, though, it was not asking whether I thought Winogrand thought of himself as an artist or referred to himself as one, it was asking whether I thought Winogrand's work was art. And I do. And it was, I thought, more specifically asking if it could be art even if he hadn't seen it through by choosing among his own negatives and printing them. And my answer is "yes" to that, too.<br /><br> </p>

<p><em>"Does she want people to think of her as an artist. Yes, I think she does. Once again, does any of this matter? Not in the least."</em></p> <p>The question arises, though, that if none of it matters, why would anyone go on about her for three paragraphs above? The only way I could try to determine if she were an artist, if I wanted to, would be to see her photos. If I were offered a link to her photos rather than given projections of how she thinks of herself, I could probably get more insight into her work.</p> <p>The words used here to explain why someone might want to consider themselves an artist or have others consider her to be one seem to center around presumptuousness which, as I said, is pretty presumptuous in itself. I could name a bunch of reasons why someone might want others to think of them as artists. One reason is that it could suggest to others that photography may be more than a hobby and not necessarily a paying gig or profession, that it has a particular kind of expressive import to the person taking and showing the photos. That may not make the photos good or better, and it may not be an attempt to do so, but it could give friends and acquaintances an understanding of intent and purpose. There are many other reasons why people would refer to themselves as artists, as a means of providing context for and info about what they're doing.</p> <p>The funny thing is, the claim here has been made that some may refer to themselves as artists in order somehow to elevate themselves. Ironically, it's been shown in this and other threads on PN that one's claiming to be an artist pretty much guarantees one will be seen as "less than" in many eyes for having done so.</p> <p>IMO, at least the Dadaists, in being anti-art, had a well-considered philosophy and their work actually conveyed this sentiment well, so it was organic, meaningful, and felt quite genuine. The tendencies in these threads for people to malign those who refer to themselves as artists often just come across to me as cheap shots, and taking those shots does seem to matter.</p>