Norma Desmond

<p>If that's necessarily the case with our photos (they're worth less when I'm dead, because I'm dead) I hate to think what that means about our children. </p>

<p><em>"Still, in the conversation mode, guess I reserve the right to challenge (in my mind or on computer) an opinion that wanders away from my sense of history or facts as I understand them."</em></p> <p>Gerry, point taken. And well made. And I appreciate Charles addressing his perception of intellectual dishonesty in the photo.</p> <p>Charles, my dad also didn't have much to say about his service in the war. My brother and I are just putting together some of his experiences having found a scrap book he kept while in Europe. Some very disturbing images I won't go into and I'm sure he preferred not bringing into our lives but nevertheless managed to keep all these years. To think of those visions wandering in and out of his head, from a very real and personal view at the age of 18, is frankly quite hard to even imagine and disturbing to say the least to even consider.</p>

<p>Gerry, I don't see this as an evidentiary discussion. It's one where opinions and thoughts are offered, often coming from gut feelings and reactions, which seems perfectly legitimate. I think many varying opinions have been well articulated, including those I disagree with. I'm not looking to be convinced of another's point of view, necessarily, though it sometimes happens. I'm interested in what has been a lively and diverse conversation and sharing of perspectives and ideas.</p> <p>Consider the frame of mind that sees this, in part, as a glorification of war to be equivalent in understanding though dissimilar in conclusion to your own frame of mind. Me, I don't see the photo as a glorification of war so much as a profound photojournalistic effort and result. It does its job and does it well. What I said from the beginning is that the reactions to it and uses of it have helped make it an icon of what I see as the deplorable militarism the U.S. has pursued since fighting this brave and necessary war. I also feel conflicted and alienated by it, because I think these guys were heroes and I think it depicts their bravery and heroism in victory but I also am mindful that war is not all about heroism, bravery, and victory, thus the conflict within me and the sense of alienation.</p> <p>Good photos often make me feel conflicted and alienated. That can be powerful and I relish it. It's not a put-down of the photo to say it makes me feel that way. In fact, it may be one if its more powerful accomplishments. But I'm not going to sit here from my place in history and simply dwell on the victory and heroism without also feeling and discussing some of the less glorious things an icon of victorious soldiers brings to mind and heart.</p>

<p><em>"Sorry Fred, it isn't at all, and still not true."</em></p> <p>That's strange. If it's not at all clear, how could you know it's not true? I sense it's pretty damn clear and that's likely the problem. But enough of this. I'm going to move on.</p> <p>____________________________________________</p> <p>Eric, by the way, I take Marie to be saying that her own delaying or giving up on her passion has helped see to it that her daughter can follow hers. So, instead of Marie making excuses, she's giving her daughter opportunities . . . in the real world in which some of us live. One man's excuse is one woman's sacrifice. Marie is not being contradictory at all. She's living a real life, which is complicated.</p>

<p>Brad, you actually didn't understand why I felt you were looking down on people, or at least chose not to address it. It wasn't because you admire others. The idealistic admiration you showed for drive and determination was a separate matter. The looking down I was talking about was because you suggested that those who choose not to follow their passion and talk about other choices they've made were making excuses and because you suggested that they chose an easy life instead of the more passionate road. I hope it's more clear now.</p>

<p><em>"nobody here is looking down on them"</em></p> <p>Brad, that's the crux of our disagreement, and the only reason I've been involved in this discussion, because I think you and Eric <em>are</em> looking down on them. Or at least I interpret someone referring to someone else making excuses as looking down on them.</p> <p>This heralding of drive starts to sound idealistic. I'm all for motivation, drive, and commitment, but when it starts to sound like the Nietzschean Ubermensch or some sort of replay of Triumph of the Will, I'm out of here. Since you used the word "pontificate" I'll tell you that some of your own posts (and likely some of mine) fit that bill. You come off, at least to me, as pontificating about those who can do it all. Well, a lot of people, including my own mom, couldn't do it all. She was an artist and gave that up in order to raise a family and spend 60 years of her life helping and nourishing a disabled husband, and my brother and I were never made aware of the extent of that until she died and we saw how much help my dad actually needed. She did a good job of protecting us from some of those hardships. She had regrets about not pursuing her art but she made choices and was, for the most part, content and happy with them. She didn't use her husband and family as excuses. We were reasons and causes, and I'm thankful we were.</p> <p>It's OK to have regrets and to not do it all. It's pretty human. And others calling those excuses, or referring to the path one chooses instead of their artistic passion as the easy life is, in my opinion, pretty condescending and lacking in empathy. As a matter of fact, I'll bet if we looked a little deeper into your friend and Eric's friend, we wouldn't find only the lustrous picture you guys are painting. Human beings tend not to be as sure of themselves and as completely regret-free and successful in following their passions as, say, a Pope might want to make it out to be, because Popes are often in the business of one-dimensionality when it comes to human endeavor and morality. Most of the passionate artists I know, and there are plenty, do have regrets. It's part of what goes into their art and it helps make their art genuine. </p>

<p><em>"But a tree is a tree pretty much."</em></p> <p>I'm not so sure of that, Alan. I go up to the forests in Northern California and a lot of the trees I've photographed over the years are now things of the past due to fires and logging.</p> <p>As a matter of fact, due to our lack of care for the environment for so many centuries, the phrase "timeless landscape" may now be an oxymoron. I wouldn't count on any landscape remaining the same for long, so if you want a shot of it, I'd go out and get one.</p> <p>Speaking of timeless, IMO, timelessness comes in a photo more from how it's shot (perspective, lighting, composition) than from subject matter, though certain subject matter does seem to lend itself more to timelessness. I wonder if Burtynsky's landscapes are anti-timeless in their expressions.</p> <p>All that being said, I do understand what you're saying in terms of not thinking much about the future and that your planning a landscape shot (when you do) is more about timing and lighting conditions for the photo than about who's going to see the photo or when.</p> <p>I spent about 10 hours yesterday post processing 5 shots I took last week in Central Park. And I realized that, for the most part, I probably think a little more about who's going to see them and under what circumstances and what I want to express with the shots I've chosen to work on at the post processing stage more than at the time when I'm taking them. Sometimes, I'll think about what I'm trying to express in advance of going out and shooting as well.</p>

<p>I've seen it. Her work and she, herself, are very interesting to consider. There are many other things dealt with in the film, which I won't go into since you haven't seen it. It's well worth seeing for many reasons. I didn't think, as a documentary about a photographer, it was filmed in a very visually interesting way and it lacked the qualities many better documentaries have, but the story and the work depicted in it are well worth watching.</p> <p>It was discussed in a thread <a href="/shared/forum-contributions?user_id=2361079">HERE</a>, but much about it is revealed so if you'd prefer to see it without pre-judgement or others' opinions, I'd wait to see it before reading the thread.</p>

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<p>Marie, since we've had a few choice quotes in this thread, I thought I'd add one.<br> <br> <em>"Perhaps women have always been in closer contact with reality than men: it would seem to be the just recompense for being deprived of idealism."</em><br /> --Germaine Greer</p>

<p>And I have much respect for the stay-at-home mom, like my own, who raises her kids and keeps food on the table and tells me she decided to do that instead of pursuing her art or career, also like my mom. Some people would unknowingly then accuse her of making excuses for that choice and they'd be dead wrong. And I have much respect for the single woman who manages a 40-hour-a-week job and takes care of other responsibilities she's taken on. I have respect for friends of mine who've given up photography in order to take care of their health. And I have respect for the people Eric and Brad know. I don't assume any of them make excuses for not doing other things by talking about the choices they've made and some of the constraints on their time and energy. </p>

<p>The judgmental are those that judge as excuses the decisions other people make. That's my point. She should well dismiss and ignore anyone who would judge her decisions to leave and follow her passion. Just as Marie and Marc should dismiss and ignore anyone who would judge as excuses their decisions to work hard at their jobs and prioritize their kids.</p>

<p>No, it wouldn't. It would be a different priority.</p> <p>One hopes she doesn't look back and see her photographic drive and commitment as an excuse for leaving her husband and job and regret the whole thing. It wouldn't surprise me if some people in her life who are in the business of judging her will judge her just that way, as making photography the excuse. That would most likely be as wrong as accusing her of making excuses if she stayed with her husband and job. If something turns out to be a mistake, it's a mistake. If things don't work out, they don't work out. I find it better not to beat myself up about things and not to see my life and the lives of others as only either a series of successes or excuses. Life and decision-making are too complicated for that.</p>

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<p>You actually mentioned that in another thread and I've been wanting to respond to it but kind of let it go and then got busy and forgot about it. I think subject matter can be a very important drive for many. I certainly noticed people's animation in that thread you're talking about. It was, IMO, an accurate observation. I must admit to being a little more cynical about it than you. My take is that it's much easier to discuss family shots, because it's mostly an uncritical discussion. It's kind of what the Internet is often about. A Facebook kind of animation and chatting about family, friends, new babies, cute kitties, what happened at the water cooler. I am often disappointed that that kind of discussion seems to garner more attention and animation than more serious discussions about other kinds of photos, as you mention, landscapes, still lifes, journalism, etc. I've come to think it's just a matter that people prefer entertainment and ease and comfort to more serious and harder material, more in-depth understanding of things, and more possible difficulty and tension than ease.</p>

<p>Brad, I can relate. It's the same way I judged that many snappers on the street are not street photographers and seem to be participating in a fad. I'm not going to ask you how many of these folks you've encountered or talked to because I trust your instincts and powers of observation and engagement on the street. But, that you or I can say these things anecdotally and in general is something different from saying it in direct response to someone in this thread whose circumstances I don't know. In this thread, the word "Excuse" was used as a direct response to Marie, and that's a very different story from what you're getting at in your last remark.</p>

<p>Brad, I think that was said because there's some truth to it. Just as there's truth to what you say. The drive ethic, as you notice, is important . . . vital. So, IMO, is talent. But there are lots of people who have drive and talent and get great results who don't get admired by the public because they don't get the kind of recognition others get. As you also state, drive and ambition often go beyond the art itself and go into meeting the right people and positioning oneself (or playing the right games) to get ahead or noticed. Some very fine artists have artistic drive but not the other kind to get recognized. So, yes, if one doesn't get ahead in the art world and isn't shown in galleries, there could be any number of reasons that have nothing to do with one's artistic drives or talent. And sometimes it is a matter of that additional luck. Hell, in some cases and some circles, it might have more to do with who you're sleeping with and what you look like.</p> <p><em>" . . . for many that can be driven by excuses . . ."</em></p> <p>My main point here was that I have no way of knowing whether that's the case for Marie or Marc, who are my peers, and yours, most likely laboring under similar responsibilities and at a similar level. I can't tell, and wouldn't care to or try to, whether they are using their jobs as an excuse without having a lot of other information.</p> <p>It often takes a lot more than drive, motivation, excellent results, and a strong artistic work ethic to gain recognition. Sometimes being in the right place at the right time helps, sometimes who you know helps, sometimes personality helps, sometimes good self promotion skills help, sometimes finding a popular niche helps, and sometimes just plain luck helps.</p> <p>Luck can be very important. Some of the greatest photos made have an element of luck (accident) to them. And that takes nothing away from what the photographer did to capture it. It just adds a very special quality to a photo, in some cases, and sometimes to an artistic career.</p>

<p>Eric, I agree, if it's not the top priority, it's not the top priority. But if you choose to prioritize a sick kid or a job over photography that DOESN'T MEAN and SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN TO MEAN that you're using your sick kid or job as an excuse. It just means you've prioritized. Every choice we make to do something entails a passive choice NOT to do something else at the same time. But the choice we make is not an EXCUSE not to do the other thing. It's just a choice. And sometimes, we don't have or feel we have the luxury of choice. We have bills to pay and mouths to feed, and those often aren't choices in the same way other things are choices. They are kind of necessities to survival. In any case, I certainly wouldn't make the judgment that someone who prioritizes one thing over another is using that first thing as an excuse not to do the other unless I had a whole bunch of other information which pointed in that direction.</p>

<p>Marc, sure. But I'll tell you something. I'm a digital photographer and wouldn't be able to complete most of my processing or printing on a lunch hour. I devote a lot of time to each print, often treating them as I would a painting, finessing color, bringing out shadow detail, working with gradation of tone. I put in the time and care necessary to get out of a shot what I want. While I understand that digital makes some stuff easier and more accessible to do, it's not as simple as some of the apps and advertising make it out to be, when you want to develop your own style and relationship of that style to your content. I don't think it's a matter of the particular medium as much as it is the kind of care and nuance you put into what you're doing.</p>

<p>I don't think a 40-hour-a-week job and other commitments is an excuse. For some, it's simply a fact of life. Marie is explaining why she hasn't devoted the time to photography. I haven't understood her to be making excuses, but rather to be explaining her reality. Folks live with very different realities and very different limitations and very different demands on their time and energy. I know plenty of people who would like to spend their time in a certain way and would surely have the drive and skill necessary to do so and for all kinds of reasons, among them priorities, they just cannot. It's not an excuse. It's just how it is for most folks who aren't living the model or ideal of what someone else thinks a photographer's life should be. They are living <em>their</em> life, not Frank's and not Winogrand's and not Eric's.</p> <p>When I was working what was more like a 60-hour a week job, I wanted very much to go to school to get my Masters, but I just didn't have the time or energy to do it the way I knew I wanted to, in a serious and devoted way. So I waited until work eased up and I could accommodate myself as a student. I don't think I was using work as an excuse. I was facing up to reality and making realistic choices. Doing something well and doing something with the kind of devotion one wants takes time and energy, and we don't always have that even if we would like it to be that way.</p> <p>No. The world isn't divided up into only those two things: results or excuses. There are demands. There are unforeseen events. There are commitments. There's struggle. There are kids to feed, parents to care for. And some people, no matter how desperately they want to pursue other things, fulfill various obligations they have and put their own desires and needs on hold.</p>

<p><em>"I'm not sure I believe you."</em> --Alan</p> <p>That's your prerogative.</p> <p>As I said, <em>"Me, I take family snaps <strong>mostly</strong> to connect and share with my family in the present . . ."</em> I added bold this time for emphasis. The two photos I have of my father you're referring to weren't taken at a family event and weren't shared with my family via slide shows. They're part of my permanent collection.</p> <p><em>"Also, why does it have to be an either/or proposition?"</em> --Alan</p> <p>It doesn't, which I was hoping to make clear when I said <em>"As for my other photos, they are <strong>as much about</strong> what they will come to mean in the future."</em> [Again, I added emphasis this time for clarity.] When I said that my photos are <em>as much about</em> what they will come to mean in the future, I was building on or adding to what you had already said about photos being a matter of reliving the past.</p> <p>I probably should have qualified the following statement by starting with <strong>"Some of them"</strong> instead of simply saying <em>"<strong>They</strong> will be what they will be and will have little to do with having frozen a moment in time or with my reliving anything."</em> I meant <strong>some</strong> of my photos, not all of them. I thought the "mostly" in the previous sentence would carry through but it would have been better to repeat it.</p> <p>Thanks for asking and allowing me to explain better.</p>

<p>Since the Iwo Jima photo was, in fact, turned into a sculpture, this part of the discussion seems to be about the realities and uses and characteristics of the photos as well as their quality. I think it's interesting to note the sculptural quality of any photo, which would often suggest to me how important gesture is as part of a given photo. Many effective sculptures seem gestural to me, in a similar way as dance. Photos that I negatively critique as lifeless or not having energy (including many of my own rejects) often seem to have a lack of significant or telling gesture. It's a quality I think well worth considering when making photos, even of static things. Good photographers can find photographic gestures (especially with light and shadow) when photographing buildings, still lifes, and other non-living things.</p> <p>That being said, I agree with David that the Reichstag shot is less sculptural in nature though interestingly it is still quite gestural, especially if we look at the people and even the way the flag pole hangs over the city. It may just be that it would be trickier to translate into a sculpture but still has rich potential as one. There's a sculpture, for example, at Land's End in San Francisco in memory of the Holocaust. Like the Reichstag photo, it is more of a scene than one particular subject, (though many bodies comprise it, yet the space they occupy is an integral part of the sculpture and it's more about scene than a particular subject, IMO) and probably sculptures are often thought of as a single subject, like the <em>David</em> or Rodin's <em>The Thinker</em>. A good sculptor might take up the challenge to translate the Reichstag photo and use the various gestures against the destroyed buildings to great effect.</p>

<p><em>"We all take pictures of the present so we can look back in the future to live it all over again."</em></p> <p>One of the reasons I like hearing how things work for others is not so I can find out how similar we all are but because I can embrace the differences. Thanks for the insights into how things work for you, Alan. It rounds out the discussion nicely.</p> <p>Me, I take family snaps mostly to connect and share with my family in the present and I don't sense these photos have much future. Since I usually send slideshows of family events and rarely print them, I doubt I or other family members will do much looking back at those. They won't be found in a shoe box when I'm cleaning out the closet in years to come.</p> <p>As for my other photos, they are as much about <em>what they will come to mean</em> in the future and are often very much divorced from the context of the moment in which they were shot, a moment and context I will likely have forgotten in 10 years even if still looking at the photo. They will be what they will be and will have little to do with having frozen a moment in time or with my reliving anything. A lot of them just don't feel like mementos to me. A lot of my photos and some of the best photos I've seen of others, famous and not famous, seem disconnected from the actual moment of shooting and are more about the picture and a vision forward than what the camera was aimed at and <em>when</em> it was aimed. . . . What does timelessness suggest, especially from the standpoint of looking back from the future?</p> <p>Of course, I never know and maybe I'll be limited, in my old age, to nostalgia and to connecting with the past. I hope not. Though I'll always have fondness for things and moments gone by. And yet I hope to keep moving on and I hope for my pictures to evolve into other things and not merely stay representationally and statically connected to my own or to their past.</p>

<p>Jeff, do you really think I'm going to justify myself to you? What number of people would satisfy you? I wonder. Actually, I don't. </p>