charleswood

<p>And the most amazing paradox that the film maker suggests is that Eric, in building what he thought was to be his island world, was simultaneously building a bridge. And not just any bridge. A huge one. Not so Eric could leave his world; but so that the world, despite Eric's intention, would find a way to him. About that Eric says there are two good reasons to shower twice a day.</p>

<p>The Ox, that video. It's Eric's portrayal of a lifetime. What strikes me about the video is that paradox between anonymity and identity. At the end of his narrative, Eric, by identifying himself, becomes anonymous, becomes indistinguishable from the rest of us, and the world is set to blossom by his anonymity. Is Eric "The Ox?" Or does that moniker refer to the Ox from a Zen tradition, the ten oxherding pictures of the Zen tradition?</p> <blockquote> <p><a href="http://www.innerworkjohnson.blogspot.com/2008/04/ten-oxherding-pictures.html">http://www.innerworkjohnson.blogspot.com/2008/04/ten-oxherding-pictures.html</a> which link doesn't identify the author as either Johnson or Ruhl:</p> <p>"The ten oxherding pictures of the Zen tradition make a wonderful portrayal of a lifetime. In the first, the young man is looking for the ox. In the second, he finds the footprints of the ox. In the third, he sees the ox. In the fourth, he wrestles with the ox. In the fifth, he’s seated upon the ox. In the sixth, he’s riding off with the ox. The seventh is blank. That’s curious. You can make all kinds of things out of that. In the eighth, he’s returning the ox to the field. In the ninth, the ox is in the field and the man is walking away. In the tenth, which is possibly the most beautiful statement I’ve heard in my life, the man, now old, is utterly indistinguishable from anyone else as he walks through the village streets. No one notices him, but the trees all burst into blossom. This is the best definition of enlightenment I’ve found."</p> </blockquote> <p> </p>

<p>One take away for me from this thread is that there are many different ways that people experience intimacy. What is an intimate conversation? What's involved in intimacy? A feeling of connection, non-anonymity, of knowing someone's name? But what's a name? Is identity rooted in our insights? Our experiences, our relationships? Who are our heroes? This guy is one of mine, Eric Hollenbeck.</p> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/78788086">http://vimeo.com/78788086</a></p>

<p>Sure, and we all respond to it favorably, that's why it is used in advertising. Yet reality is more complex where we have faults, but our faults also make us human and approachable. Those complexities of human intimacy are hard to communicate in one shot. I mentioned public humiliation by spousal argument in a restaurant, but we don't take out our cameras to shoot that, do we? A dedicated artist might or might not, who knows?</p>

<p>Well, to me Alan's photo's posted here express sentimentalism. (the excessive expression of feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia in behavior, writing, or speech), whether accomplished by the method of voyeurism or not. That's how soap is sold, or gum, or coke.</p>

<p>Laurie "I take this to suggest that we can't know more about her, not her name nor anything else. She is un-knowable. Just my take."</p> <p>Mine too. That's what "no matter how much time you spend with her you will never get any closer to her" conveys to the listener/reader. It conveys that you won't know the photographic subject, the experience won't and can't be an intimate experience. With the photographic subject, you will have no intimacy. Will you feel intimacy anyway? You will if you are delusional (A delusion is a belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary.) Or if you suspend disbelief until after the show is over. Should I value a delusional experience mediated by a photograph and name it intimacy? Maybe when having the experience of viewing, but not after I'm done. No. I wouldn't give the experience that value. I might name it as entertainment, but not as intimacy. Julie disagrees with Horn's "no intimacy possible" opinion despite that Julie agrees that Laurie's take is more logical: "... at most the above reaction can only be one sided." But Julie names her reaction 'intimacy' anyway, despite agreeing with superior logical evidence to the contrary:</p> <blockquote> <p>Julie [her emphasis]- "I love thinking about the idea of viewer as weather because weather encompasses, surrounds, permeates, but also, is just always there, effecting/affecting, participating, and <em>making</em> what's happening happen in one way instead of another; in short, <em>intrinsically</em> intimate."</p> </blockquote> <p>Later, Julie writes "I feel strongly intimate with Roni Horn's work..."</p> <p>That's taking artistic license with words a little too far for me.</p> <p>In summary, what the photographer did was to create an exhibit in which to view photographs of a woman that had an provocative/erotic edge. The photographer acknowledges that the exhibit encourages a fantasy experience in the viewer.</p> <p>What if I wrote as a man that after having an erotic fantasy from viewing provocative pictures of a woman I felt an intimacy toward that photographed woman?</p> <p> </p>

<p>Lex - " I imagine generations of people scowling through days of chores, dinner conversations consisting of a few words about the day's chores and the next day's proposed chores, met with grunts of acknowledgement, followed by "Well, mornin' comes awful early, reckon I'll get to the bed."</p> <p>Priceless description, you've described that life precisely and it is so familiar because of my summers on 'the farm' back then.</p>

<p>Steve - "I think perhaps some of our differences in thinking have to do with semantics."</p> <p>Right. And when we're trying to sort through the meanings of our words, we must stop to define them.</p> <p>Steve - "Unlike Julie, for me, connection means something more like a <em>sharing</em>, or <em>understanding</em>, which would be more like intimacy."</p> <p>And instead of going to the dictionary, Steve, you instead tell us how you use the word, what your definition is. When I go to the dictionary and look up the word connection and I look at the synonyms for the word connection I find these:</p> <p><a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/affinity">affinity</a>, <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/association">association</a>, <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bearing">bearing</a>, <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kinship">kinship</a>, <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liaison">liaison</a>, <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/linkage">linkage</a>, <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/relation">relation</a>, <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/relationship">relationship</a></p> <p>I don't see 'sharing', 'understanding' in that quick list of synonyms. So unless you use words according to their definitions in the dictionary, you have little chance of being understood, and it's presumptuous to think that anyone wants to sort through the particulars of how you misuse words. Or how anyone else misuses them. For example:</p> <p>Julie - "For me, "intimate" is specifically not about connection; in fact, it's the opposite."</p> <p>Ok. "Intimate" is not about connection. Intimate is about the opposite of connection. The opposite of connection is disconnection. So intimacy is about disconnection. That statement is so obviously untrue I hesitate to read more. Yet I do.</p> <p>Next Julie writes: "A connection acknowledges, accentuates the location of, and then tries to deal with, difference."</p> <p>I thought that a connection established a relation between two or more things, thought that because that's how the dictionary defines the word connection. For example, without a common ancestor, two people don't share a family connection, a kinship relationship. A connection doesn't acknowledge, accentuate, or try and deal with "no relation". A connection <em>is</em> a relation between otherwise unconnected things. So if we find a family connection between John and Bill, the fact that a relation exists doesn't mean that John and Bill aren't still different people. It just means they are in the same field of family origin. John and Bill didn't merge their identities by being kin, didn't lose their identities by having something in common. A connection is just a fact, and a family connection doesn't acknowledge, accentuate or try to deal with no relation. It's up to John and Bill to deal with the fact of their now established family connection. The connection doesn't 'deal' with anything. A connection just describes the nature of the relation. What we make of that relation is something else.</p> <p>"Two violins playing in harmony are not connected;..."</p> <p>They are disconnected then.</p> <p>"...they are intimate."</p> <p>Intimate describes a connection and you just wrote that two violins aren't connected. Intimate describes a relation, but you just wrote that there is no relation between two violins, that the two violins aren't attached by any connection, are not connected, are disconnected. "...they are intimate." If they are, then they are connected because intimate is an adjective describing a type of connection.</p> <p>So yeah, when we stick to dictionary definitions of words we can resolve 'semantic' issues down to what is nonsense and what is not.</p> <p> </p>

<p>One take away for me from all our descriptions here of how we react and respond to photographs, and in making photographs if making them is what we do: we are reporting to others what it is we <em>commune</em> with.</p>

<p>Fred wrote of his "Homage To Dijkstra", emphasis added by me:</p> <blockquote> <p>The way Andy held herself and what we read in her face and posture <em>are Andy being Andy being photographed on a public beach</em> and all that went with that for Andy on that day.</p> </blockquote> <p>I've emphasized Fred's description of what that photo is of. Andy being "Andy" being photographed as I read it. I can precisely write what I see, Fred's words almost completely describing what I see. Precisely, what I see is: Andy knowing that he is being "<em>Andy being Andy being photographed on a public beach</em>". And that for me is where a humanizing kind of humor creeps into the other humorous aspects in the scene, the heels, for example. It adds one more layer of meaning to Andy's participation in this form of theater. As layered as Andy's self-presentation is, that additional layer I suggested adds a little more to the message: in all those layers combined it's Andy saying "This <em>is</em> me, all these layers are me." At some point it isn't Andy being anything other than Andy anymore. At some point for me, Andy from the photograph becomes real. It is theater, but it is also a kind of bas-relief of Andy awareness, photographer awareness, and viewer awareness. The device through which this is done is in Fred having used a Dijkstra photo booth, that is, an ironic frame, a new interpretation of Dijkstra's idea. (I'm not sure ironic is the right word. Nor is satire.)</p> <p>Is my description/reading of that picture more true to life than Fred's description which for me misses one additional layer of meaning? I don't know. Fred's description, not mine, may be completely true to life. Is my additional layer to Andy's self-knowing valid, or have I created a story, created my own make believe?</p> <p> </p>

<p>Beaches series of Rineke Dijkstra:</p> <p><a href="http://broadstrokes.org/2010/08/16/from-the-vault-rineke-dijkstra/">http://broadstrokes.org/2010/08/16/from-the-vault-rineke-dijkstra/</a></p> <blockquote> <p>Giving minimal direction to her sitters, Dijkstra relinquishes her role as director of the scene—producing a photographic situation in which the subjects must reveal themselves or a version of themselves to the camera lens.</p> </blockquote> <p> </p>

<p>Here is another of Steve's pictures of the young woman, Whitney <a href="/photo/11254710">http://www.photo.net/photo/11254710</a></p> <p>Now I feel from having two pictures that from the first one I didn't know Whitney at all.</p> <p>So yes there is a hint of the person in the photo by Steve. It intimates, delicately suggests. Hint, intimate, announce. That is a lovely type of photography. Part of its appeal is its delicacy.</p> <p>It's just that to me there isn't enough of a suggestion of who the person in private is, not enough information in the photo to reassure me that I am not just projecting. Did I make an accurate connection or did I not?</p> <p>In real life, in my coyote picture example, is my story about the inner world of the coyote just my own story, or did I really see into the coyote? Was I just projecting? Even when face to face, we often don't know. It's hard to separate our own projections from the reality of the other person.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Brad - "I love photographing people and looking at the photographs others have made."</p> <p>Cool.</p>

<p>Good choice. At the time, "Afghan Girl" was a photo of an unnamed subject. Perfect. Is there more there than eyes, an expression, her posture? Were her eyes, expression, and posture enough, or is there more there than eyes, expression, and posture? Is there more there that would get me out of my head and make me care?</p> <p>It's on the cover of National Geographic. It has a title. It has an agenda. It places the girl in relation to what isn't in the picture, world affairs. She is specifically used to represent young girls in her country. There is much there to make me look and care besides eyes, expression, posture.</p> <p>I have a heart. Here its expressed. It works for me. It was taken with intent to express emotion. Does it? If not, why can't you see it? Possibly because I'm not very good at speaking with a visual language?<br> <a href="/photo/14270713">http://www.photo.net/photo/14270713</a></p>

<p>Julie - "Also, as Jeff Spirer has noted, W. Eugene Smith was not only not an "anonymous" photographer,..."</p> <p>Smith wasn't an "anonymous" photographer because we know his name.</p> <p>Julie continued: "..., he was even beyond Mark in his approach in that he had a very strong agenda which he was pushing in his photo essays."</p> <p>Julie, was the fact that Smith indeed pushed an agenda with photo essays lessen your enjoyment of his photos? Does just the fact that Smith had an agenda create a noise for you that is so loud that it get's in the way of how you <em>prefer</em> to evaluate his work? In other words, your objection isn't to Smith's agenda. Whatever Smith's agenda was, it stands or falls on its own merits if I understand you correctly. Is it the mere fact that he had any agenda that gets in the way of how you prefer to assess this or that particular photo of his? Too much agenda coloring for your taste? Does it just make you explode sometimes when someone does that?</p> <p> </p>

<p>Steve Murray - "To me, anyone looking at a photo I took of one of my family members or friends, is anonymous: They don’t know this person."</p> <p>Here's a second dictionary definition for anonymous: having no outstanding, individual, or unusual features; unremarkable or impersonal.</p> <p>With the word anonymous, what is unknown isn't the person, what is unknown is their name. Alternatively, anonymous means unremarkable or impersonal, having no features that stand out from the features of anyone else, nothing individually identifying.</p> <p>Posed photos can look unnatural compared to candid shots. We like photos that look more natural. But there are a lot of photos of people who look natural and are still anonymous: even though they are un-posed or natural looking. Even so they still can have no features that stand out from the features of <em>anyone</em> else that is photographed more naturally than if they were just posed. Even so there may be nothing to identify them individually, identify them more intimately.</p> <p>We all have hands. What do my hands say about me? What could a photographer make my hands say about me? Without my hands being made to say something about the me the photographer knows, they might as well be a picture of your hands.</p> <p>A agree that in your photo Steve, there is a hint of a complex personality. I don't think there is a device in the photo that would clue us into what exactly is hinted at. The O'Keeffe photo uses the hands to hint and to make use of what we know about O'Keeffe to make a more pointed statement. With your shot, we know there is something there, we just don't have a clue as to what it is in the photo. Getting another clue in there may have taken some props and posing.</p> <p> </p>

<p>I understand Marc that your, our, deep feeling evoked by "Tomoko in Her Bath" by W. Eugene Smith wouldn't be diminished if we didn't know her name. And yes it is a posed picture, but both posed and candid photos have subjects that are either named subjects or unnamed subjects. Anonymous means unnamed. Anonymous doesn't mean posed, it doesn't mean un-posed. There isn't a paradox in saying posed intimacy or un-posed intimacy. There may or may not be a paradox in saying 'simultaneously intimate and anonymous'. To determine if there is a paradox or not we have to explore those words by their definitions.</p> <p>The definition of intimacy is complex and nuanced. The definition of anonymous is straight forward: it means unnamed. It doesn't mean unknown subject. Unknown, like intimacy, is a matter of degree. The degree to which we know someone is intimacy. EG, I know so and so. Do you really? I know your name I know more about you than if I didn't. But I don't know everything, and compared to what I do know your name may not be very important. Or it may be.</p> <p>In "Tomoko in Her Bath" we know her name and from that picture's publication we know that her injuries were caused by a community's employer. Government was complicit also. World awareness was done by putting a human face on both victim and victimizer, social action resulted, in part because of international condemnation, in a large part because Japanese leaders had been shamed by that picture. I say shamed in cultural context: generally speaking, in Japan you can endure anything except shame. To state that extremely, you would rather die than experience public humiliation. Public praise is a form of humiliation to that sort of mind set. Taking the last piece of anything on a plate in a meal with others is shameful, so the last piece is endlessly divided and offered to everyone, the last piece is hot potato because if you do take it (and we do unwittingly) it is shameful and you can endure anything except shame. "Tomoko in Her Bath" is a public shaming by the less powerful of the powerful. That's taboo, it just isn't normally done in a society where mutual respect and a degree of obeisance is a sort of social lubricant. To name Tomoko is to name and shame her victimizers and to understand Tomoko fully in a social context, rooted in time and place by her name.</p>

<p>So Horn found a way to invoke in the viewer a false sense of connection to an unnamed woman in a series of photographs. Calls that false connection intimacy. Sounds familiar.</p>

<p>OK, so seeing through your eyes we know to look at the hands, the pose of the hands is a nuanced device. Her name gives us context with her life. And a third element that is a reflection of body and soul regardless of who she is.</p> <p>In one sense her hands are a prop, but the prop is important because it has a special meaning as <em>her</em> hands. Hers are the hands of an artist. Her contributions to art are drawn into the photo by association to her hands, her art touching many and our wonderment at her abilities and her entire being, expressed as body and soul using Fred's language. OK. I think I get that interpretation. O'Keeffe said Stieglitz used his sharp eye to construct what he wanted to say and its plausible that we're within the territory of viewer experience that he intended when he posed and took the picture. He used elements of a visual language to express something like that to us.</p> <p>Still, though illustrative, she is not anonymous, we do know her name. In the bath photo referred to above, we also have a name. My coyote is anonymous, but I missed the shot.</p> <p>I'm still looking for something similar in an anonymous shot. Am I overlooking something already presented? My people at creek shot didn't have it, the people were props with <em>only</em> a sentimental, sappy intent and any body would have done.</p> <p> </p>

<p>OK. I didn't notice the hands because I thought she was an actress; had her confused with Marlene Dietrich. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlene_Dietrich">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlene_Dietrich</a> .</p> <p>Do we generally <em>have</em> to know her name to gain a more intimate insight into her character in that photo? What do we see in the photo if we don't know her name?</p> <p>From the O'Keeffe text quoting her: "Stieglitz had a very sharp eye for what he wanted to say with the camera."</p> <p> </p>

<p>Jeff she isn't anonymous because she is posed. She isn't anonymous because we know her name. </p> <p>From what we glean of her from that photo, she might as well have no name, there isn't anything intimate about her being disclosed by the photo, whether posed or not. We only care about that photo because we know her name.</p>

<p>Todd pick one of those of yours, display it this thread and please tell us in detail where the intimacy is? Because this thread isn't about candid photos and how to take them, it's about intimate and anonymous. I get the anonymous part.</p> <p>Here's how your photos look to me, here's one of mine. <a href="/photo/12767724">http://www.photo.net/photo/12767724</a></p> <p>Do you see anything intimate in it? I don't. It's familiar all right. But unlike the great photographer W. Eugene Smith, I don't give the viewer something more than the familiar to <em>care</em> about.</p>

<p>Laurie wrote "Though I can't give a rational, thought out reason for this, it occurred to me that some of this feeling (for me at least) maybe because we project our own stories on to the anonymous."</p> <p>So subjects like Georgia O'Keeffe in Fred's linked Stieglitz photo draw out projections since there isn't anything personal in the picture. She looks mysterious and we are intrigued, gets the imagination going and that is probably what both Stieglitz and O"Keeffe intended, avoiding intimacy; and because from that photo we still barely know her.</p>

<p>I agree Louis and Smith gave us contexts and reasons (I understate as does Smith's title) for caring about a subject with such an ordinary title. It's a matter of fact title for a scene intended to move the public to action.</p>

<p>Here she is again, she isn't about playing, even with her playful child trying to play underneath her. <a href="/photo/11541251">http://www.photo.net/photo/11541251</a> In part she isn't playful because she has a chronic inner ear infection that has taken a toll on her disposition.</p>