charleswood

<p>Intimate means, closely acquainted, familiar, close. That meaning is in contrast to "barely know the person". Opposite of barely knowing a person, being casually acquainted, we know them intimately. Ordinarily to know someone intimately is a positive thing, though if we don't like someone we might say we don't like them because we know them "intimately", an indirect way of saying the person is unreliable, tedious, etc.</p> <p>That's why intimate also means private and personal. An intimate picture isn't of a person smiling, not to me, it isn't a picture of two people sitting next to each other. We don't know as viewers what's going on just from proximity and any story we attach will do. For me there has to be something in the picture that makes it personal about the person or person's pictured, not that I might feel personable about them from their picture.</p> <p>If we feel intimate toward a picture of someone smiling and don't know why they are smiling? I mean, we know they are smiling because their picture is being taken. What else? What else? Part of the reason a picture of a family member doesn't look intimate to us is because in those pictures we know the person too well to think of the capture as of the person <em>we</em> know.</p> <p>Right now my dog is having a barking dream. I know him intimately, I know why he is barking. He wants a thing and can't get it, it's a frustrated bark.</p> <p>Some of the pictures I take frustrate me. I know what I want and can't get it. The intimacy I knew was in the moment is unrecognizable.</p> <p>Here's an example. I know what this coyote is feeling, I know it precisely. The precision isn't quite in the photo. The story just isn't there in one single frame. I was sitting at my look out point with a friend. We waited for the nightly return of the coyote who would pass under us, we on a bridge. The coyote knew we were there and wouldn't pass under the bridge. My friend and I were keeping her from meeting up with her youngsters, she wouldn't take the risk of passing under so closely even though she was taking a risk in not going to her youngsters. My friend got tired of waiting and left. The coyote made a mistake. She thought we had <em>both</em> left. When my shutter clicked she stopped. She knew she had made a mistake and that the silly man had accomplished a "gotcha". But her routine isn't just a hobby to her. It's life, it's growth, it's danger, it's keeping family private and protected. We all know the "look into the distance" of an exasperated parent that we have childishly bothered with some unwanted prank when the parent is seriously busy. With our infantilism they are exasperated and pause before giving us "the look". Yeah, you got me. I couldn't believe the coyote was messaging me in such a parental way. The thing is, she knew I was old enough not to do such a silly thing, to play a gottcha on her. That she wouldn't just run away on hearing the shutter? I wasn't a danger. But I was an unnecessary annoyance, unnecessary because she is all about necessity at her age. Stared into the distance long enough for it to seem like forever. Just long enough to make me feel some shame. I did. From a parent bothered in this way, we know they are going to turn their head to look at us and the suspense makes us wonder if all they are going to do to us is look. It's edgy. The thing is, in the picture she looks like she is looking at something when she isn't. A different story is suggested, a false one. All she was doing was delaying her look at me, she accenting the look she will give me. Boy did she! But I don't think the picture shows it without me writing the story.</p> <p> </p><div></div>

<p>Anonymous means unnamed, and authors sometimes use a pen name to write more intimately. A name ties us to time and place and names link us to social contexts that may inhibit the full disclosure that anonymity can provide. We might say some things about ourselves to a total stranger that we wouldn't say to someone we knew.</p> <p>So photography could be a good medium of self-expression by a subject in a photograph because no one knows who they are, no one knows who it is that is being so honest in a photograph. We are anonymous in a crowd, the viewers of a photograph <em>are</em> the crowd and we might be more willing to be more revealing in front of a camera than anywhere else. Sometimes being in a crowd is the best place to let it all hang out. Sometimes letting it all hang out just happens, like in a who's afraid of Virginia Woolf type scourging at a restaurant. That's a photo that would create a sense of intimacy, familiarity, that it's all in public is just part of <em>that</em> ritual.</p> <p>So I don't see any contradiction. In a sense theater is an anonymous portrayal of the far reaches of everything inside of us accomplished by a ruse about identity. No one knows at which point the actor is or isn't acting, maybe not even the actor. If someone is sharing something about themselves it is usually something with which we are intimately familiar anyway.</p> <p>Photography is an art form that has an element of theater and so like in theater we as viewers would try and sort it all out. Do we really know where we begin and end, what is mine, what is yours, ours, a name itself just a convenient fiction.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Julie - "Can you look at <a href="https://unrealnature.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/henderson_leroy_childatfune.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><strong>THIS PHOTO</strong></a> and see 'a little kid who has lost his father'? Or must that view be smushed under the freight of 'African American boy in America'? If you respond with a chipper, PC, "Both!,", I'll say, bulls***. They're duck/rabbit -- the latter consumes the former and that consuming one is a monster where the other is a mouse. [<em>image is</em> Untitled<em> by Leroy Henderson, ca. 1989-1991</em>]"</p> <p>Let me reconstruct those questions into several. Can you look at this photo and see it solely as ‘a little kid who has lost his father’? Does the freight associated with the term ‘African American’ interfere with our natural propensity to empathize with the grieving subject in purely human terms? Does the volume level of that freight interference rise to the level of drowning out the universal that is human grief and loss? Is that volume loud enough that it is as a monster consuming a purely sympathetic/empathetic view (the mouse)?</p> <p>Does anyone's mention of gender/race/nationality always come off as something that is just PC, 'PC' speaking warranting anything from dismissiveness to castigation from the listner? Not always. There are also times when mention of gender/race/nationality turns into a negotiation for a 'PC pass card'. In a negotiation for a pass card, the discussion is still all about the listener and not much about 'the other' who is speaking.</p> <p>When the pass card isn't issued, then the refusal of a pass card becomes an injury to the asker that warrants anything from dismissiveness to castigation. Further discussion just gets shut down by the listener. Who in the dominant group hasn't said "Honestly, I just don't even <em>notice</em> that you're [non-dominant group member]?" A non-dominant group member thinks or says in reply: "You don't notice? That's funny, because I sure notice what <em>I</em> am - I <em>have</em> to." The grieving African American boy notices. We may not, we may say we don't: he doesn't have that luxury of not seeing. Seeing ethnicity: he <em>has</em> to. Just as instinctively as we in the dominant group don't see our own ethnicity, or gender, as significant factors in our 'personality'. We don't <em>have</em> to. We are barely even conscious of it.</p> <p> </p>

<p>From Julie's quote of DeCarava "The problem comes because their figures remind me so much of the real life experience of blacks in their need to put themselves in an awkward position before the man, for the man; to demean themselves in order to survive, to get along. In a way, these figures seem to epitomize that reality. And yet there is something in the figures not about that; something in the figures that is very creative, that is very real and very black in the finest sense of the word. So there is this duality, this ambiguity in the photograph that I find very hard to live with."</p> <p>Of which Julie writes "And it scares me to think that he's shooting with these hesitations limiting his response."</p> <p>DeCarava didn't write that he photographed with hesitation, didn't write that he limited his response. He describes how the picture he took conveyed to him both content that was deeply troubling to him, and deeply inspirational, that he photographed a duality. He didn't hesitate to photograph duality, he didn't limit himself to picturing only something nice, he didn't flinch and not take a photograph that spoke directly of men who in their attitude endured and prevailed despite a plethora of horrid conditions that we are all too familiar with. He didn't hesitate to show us a deep injury so difficult to contemplate, he didn't hesitate or limit himself in communicating to us with words exactly what the injury was and about how in their injury's expression he found something magnificent there. DeCarava has given us to contemplate what we have lost because of injury and we've lost nothing from DeCarava at all. We've only been enriched by his unhesitating ability to communicate both with a photograph and with words.</p> <p>There was more to see in that photo than "...a fantastic evocation of the feel of dancing" and we can't un-ring the bell once we've seen it. </p> <p> </p>

<p>Julie - "Crouch, it seems to me is kicking <em>both</em> the PC police <em>and</em> the Roy DeCaravas of the world in the head, out of pure frustration; he's chaffing against the confines of this limiting, silencing, self-censoring, gag that prevents free expression."</p> <p>Crouch's use of racial epithets was PC and you haven't made a case for his having written anything that could be construed as a kick at PC police.</p> <p>Crouch's comments that included racial epithets weren't a kick at the DeCaravas of the world either. That's because DeCarava commented on African Americans while in contrast, Crouch commented on the behavior of whites around African Americans, saying over and over that in the photographs the whites weren't acting like they thought African Americans lived up to those negative stereotypes. It also wasn't Crouch kicking the PC police when he praised the photographer and his pictures. Can't Crouch just give well deserved praise because he felt grateful and <em>only</em> offer that praise because he felt grateful to have the pictures? Why attribute some veiled motivation to his praise, or veiled motivation to any of his comments? Could it possibly be that he meant exactly what he wrote?</p> <p>Where exactly in the text does Crouch express frustration with the PC police directly, where in the text does he say he is poking fun at gaging censors, feels silenced, gagged, and not free to self express? Where does Crouch give any indication that he isn't just giving his readers an account of his own personal experience while viewing the photographs?</p> <p> </p>

<p>But if "politically correct, paternalistic smarminess" means "my political correctness that can come off to other whites as a sort of paternalistic smarminess towards whites" then sure, here's an African American writer of an article who uses disturbing words that wouldn't be PC when spoken by a white person. That disturbing sort of language can interfere with a fuller appreciation of the pictures. I think that just goes with the territory.</p> <p>The thing is, PC does limit the discussions we can have about race. It's a sort of official directive to only discuss race within the boundaries that PC creates. Fleetwood notes that the official PC story of race is marked by icons accompanied with a mostly white sanctioned liberal narrative that puts the issue of race in the past, limits it to a discussion of whether one has bad attitudes or not, etc. The PC boundaries put discussions of reparations off the table, for example, and the list of what is off the table is long, wide, and deep. The problem is that most anti-pc narratives advocate for a revisionist history and seek to move the discussion back in time instead of forward.</p>

<p>Julie "Now I've got <em>coon</em> and <em>native</em> and <em>Tarzan</em> on my mind and I've lost the ease of just pondering the pictures, letting the pictures do their own work."</p> <p>And you fault Crouch for putting those words in your mind? Who put those words in <em>his</em> mind, and how does he feel about that? That's the crux of it, not that your enjoyment of looking at pictures has been disturbed.</p>

<p>Julie - "Why use words like "coon" and "natives" and "Tarzan"?"</p> <p>(You forgot "exotics".) Those words are examples of racial epithets whose use generally is not politically correct. But you're suggesting Crouch in using racial epithets was doing PC policing of the kind you are against? How is Crouch's use of racial epithets PC policing? I fail to see how Crouch was functioning as a PC cop when he used racial epithets that were not PC. Note I'm not suggesting that Crouch's use of those terms was not politically correct use. What isn't politically correct as I understand that term would be to call other people those things, generally speaking. Therefore Crouch's usage was PC. So was it Crouch's PC usage that came across to you as him doing some PC policing?</p> <p>Consider that you go on to say Crouch's use of racial epithets had the effect of knocking you out of an attitude of "politically correct, paternalistic smarminess" that you would otherwise have adopted when looking at "Harris's "nice" portrayals of his home town."</p> <p>What's the attitude that Crouch knocked you out of, an attitude of smarminess that was paternalistic <em>and</em> politically correct? Is there such a thing as a paternalistic smarminess that is politically correct? Smarminess may be neutral to the political correctness police, but paternalism isn't politically correct as I understand political correctness; unless the word paternalistic is used to describe an attitude that an adult holds toward children, or used to characterize a less than ideal attitude. We just don't praise a paternalistic attitude held by men towards grown women, for example. To have a paternalistic attitude toward other adults isn't viewed as appropriate, whether politically correct or not. Therefore, and it is confusing to me, is it that you had a politically <em>incorrect</em> attitude of paternalism; you were aware of that paternalism as politically <em>incorrect; </em>you encountered Crouch's PC usage of racial epithets and felt you had been policed? Then you wished he hadn't used those terms so you could instead have the pictures work on you more slowly toward the same result?</p> <p>You say that Crouch thought he knew as he wrote that his use of racial epithets would shock white people like you and me out of an attitude. How would he know what attitude that was, there are so many attitudes white people like you and me could have, why write to one that is so hard to conceive of and express?</p>

<p>Julie - "...consider how hard it is for African-Americans to build a cultural portrayal that gets beyond stereotyping..."</p> <p>It's that hard because African Americans aren't the one's building the cultural portrayal.</p>

<p>Julie - "The trouble is, that in doing so, in <em>needing</em> to do so, he's blotted out my ability not to see the pictures <em>in those terms</em>."</p> <p>Then imagine instead that you are an African American and that those words almost blotted out your ability to see yourself and your people in your <em>own</em> terms.</p>

<p>Julie - "Why does Stanley Crouch, when describing photos by Teenie Harris, feel the need to write as follows:..."</p> <p>Here's my take. If Stanley thought that in that past all whites acted from pejoratives, here are pictures that show that not all whites in the past acted from pejoratives. He felt the need to correct himself for having had a previous misperception about all whites in the past. In Teenie's pictures Stanely is seeing some pretty normal human interaction in the past when of that past he previously may have thought those normal human interactions between whites and blacks just weren't possible because of how "those people" [whites] were. So he may have had the experience of pictures confronting his own stereotypes of whites and felt the need to write about that experience. Because thought of himself that he had it dead wrong, and wouldn't have known that about himself if he hadn't seen those pictures.</p>

<p>Steve, quote fragment - "but in certain genres of photography I tend toward appreciating things that are a bit amorphous."</p> <p>That makes sense. If I take the time I do get something from just perceiving your photo, for example, hence my comment about the waves in it. Most of the time my extraverted feeling function wants to put a value on something [makes like or dislike statement with supportable reasons - feeling function is a rational function] and just be done with it. I just can't take much 'amorphous', that's just the way I am. What I do notice is that not everybody is like me in that regard.</p> <p> </p>

<p><a href="http://personalitycafe.com/myers-briggs-forum/121893-true-difference-judger-vs-perceiver.html">http://personalitycafe.com/myers-briggs-forum/121893-true-difference-judger-vs-perceiver.html</a></p> <p> </p> <blockquote> <p>Judgers deal with their outside world first, so they can deal with their inside world. Perceivers deal with their inside world first so they can then deal with their outside world. <br /><br /> Example: J's clean a room in order to feel good, P's clean the room when they feel like it. <br /><br /> Thus J's move their decision making (Feeling or Thinking) to the forefront, before they deal with the perception of information, and a P would deal with the perception of the information before making a judgement on it.</p> </blockquote> <p>I don't spend a lot of time on the perception of information. That's why I rush to judgment. But the judgments stand on their own terms, are either good ones or bad ones on their own merit despite the personality that formed them.</p>

<p>Finally, Finally I have some closure and I can chuck this thread right out my hole.</p>

<p>Brad, I had said early on that my remarks on the street photography presented in this thread were my remarks as a viewer, were not the remarks of a photographer.</p> <p>One thing I am getting out of all these varied contributions is a better sense of how I personally take in information. How I personally take in information does seem to account for my quick judgments about that information. Let's say I am like a pocket gopher. I handle information like a pocket gopher handles little rocks that fall into its hole. If I can't find a place for it, out it goes. Here I am: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTB93hwF22o">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTB93hwF22o</a> . I've got a wonderful world down there under the ground and if you want me take in information there had better be a reason, intent. Otherwise it's just another piece of information I have no reason to clutter my already full world with. When I said crass, all of it, that was the snap judgment of the pocket gopher who just wanted to unclutter his hole of something there wasn't any reason (intent) to have down in there. Does it make sense to blame a pocket gopher for being a pocket gopher not wanting more rocks? That's what I am.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Barry, Steve: It's up to me? I'm starting to see I don't do all that well with open endedness. Well, that wave is kinda pretty Steve.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Not art? Fair enough. Thanks for correcting me. </p> <p>What is Maier then? An artist, a documentarian? Does deciding if she was an artist depend what critics find in her intention?</p>

<p>Since exploiting, objectifying women ordinarily involves a more provocative photo of a woman than Brad's photo of a woman, then to me at least, based on my reaction to the woman in his photo, the words exploit and objectifying may be an overstatement of what I sense is wrong about the picture.</p> <p>Part of the reason I characterize most of Brad's work as crass is because I feel that his subject portrayals are gratuitous. To me it seems that appearance is the only reason behind Brad's subject selection. To be clear, gratuitous means "uncalled for; lacking good reason; unwarranted". The only reason I can find in Brad's subject choices, appearance, lacks good reason, is uncalled for, is unwarranted. Sure that's a value judgment of mine.</p> <p>And that is why I would prefer that his work not be shown as art. His broad body of work doesn't reflect the kind of values I want promulgated in our culture by art. I want more than just appearances in art. We have enough of 'just appearance' in the advertising media that form most of our communications. Often discussions, critiques of art involve discussions of values. So be it.</p> <p>There is an irony that Brad would sit for more than an hour looking at advice from text on a building that was also advice he sooo needed to hear, at least from my view of him. Look deeper than appearance Brad, because to me appearance is all that your work is about ultimately. And that is why I don't view it as art. It is not only shallow, but brash.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Jeff "I don't think any man would view the photo as sexual. "</p> <p>Speaking for myself the woman is the only interesting thing about the picture. The text next, the light, and security camera after that. She isn't pictured in a way that comes off as sexual to me. Consequently I don't think there is enough sexual emphasis in the photo to make the text's counsel relevant to it as a picture of a woman. She isn't pictured attractively enough to warrant the admonition.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Sure Mark, but it is also about making a decision that what we are experiencing is worth recording. And once we decide to share our recording everyone is going to have an opinion about its worth.</p> <p>A curator has to justify their decision before the picture is even shown. A curator can't claim that their decision was, quoting Brad "...an almost instantaneous decision, perhaps subconsciously recognized" and get to keep their job. Because we all recognize that a decision was made and a conscious act resulted from that decision for reasons. A conscious act even includes deciding to take a picture for no particular reason. It matters whether a picture resulted from an involuntary spasm in the index finger or from deliberation.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Jeff provided us with this helpful link: http://zonezero.com/open/157-debunking-the-myth-of-the-decisive-moment</p> <p>It shows contact print sheets for some notable pictures that help us understand the artists selection process.</p> <p>Brad, for your Look Deeper shot, would you be so kind as to post here a collage of the entire sequence of images that led to the shot you selected?</p>

<p>Right, you said that to describe the moment when your intent was formed. Your intent is what caused the muscles in your index finger on the shutter to contract. Seeing something pleasing, you contracted your finger. Intent is the cause, the contraction of your index finger an effect. Therefore, you intended to make a pleasing picture, to save a copy of the frame to memory because you thought it was worth it to save it as a picture because it was a pleasing frame. Right?</p>

<p>Brad thanks for clearing that up. You are correct, I didn't consider the security camera and the light. Now that you point it out I see the picture works without anyone really having to explain it.</p> <p>You wrote: " The elements in the frame came together in a pleasing manner and I made a photograph."</p> <p>OK by me. Your intent, if I understand you correctly, was to make a pleasing photograph. I think you did make a pleasing photograph.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Steve, can you point me to the visual element in what were referring to as Brad's Look Deeper shot, can you point me to the visual element in that picture that suggests it <em>isn't</em> just a beevis and butthead joke? Where's the visual clue that the photo lampoons a type of beevis and butthead joke? </p>

<p>Brad, can you explain to me what Steve said, I mean, it's mocking a beevis and butthead type locker room joke of some kind, if that is what Steve said? You mean you thought you would wait for an attractive woman to walk by so you could snap a mockery of a beevis and butthead locker room joke? Why not a man captured in the same position as a joke about how women do look deeper and don't need to be told? Note you had posted that photo as an example of serendipity. Now you say it was planned?</p> <p>Crass definition: lacking sensitivity, refinement, or intelligence. So as to your latest contribution. There's nothing in it that to me suggests sensitivity, refinement, or intelligence. How could there be, your methodology was to just point the camera and shoot the whole thing taking less than a second? And still you don't offer a explanation of your intention? You gotta be me kidding me?</p> <p>Thanks Jeff, but you're free to discuss any of the photos your posted in this thread, or any other example of a street photograph of yours, not limited to just the one I picked as one of yours I like that as you said isn't an example of street photography.</p>