Category: Uncategorized

Another excerpt from an interview with photographer Jeff Jacobsen in the April 13 issue of Photo District News (PDN):

You defended beauty in photographs earlier  [in the interview].  Are you suggesting that contemporary photography tends to eschew beauty?

I think often it does.  Sometimes beauty has a negative connotation in the photography world, certainly in the photojournalism world, it often is.  And that complexity of form is given this high degree of value.  And sometimes [complex form] really is magnificent.  But sometimes a very simple form – some Andre Kertesz photographs are so formally beautiful but they're very simple.

When it's really, really working in photography, there is a creative relationship between form and content.

 

Marcelo Gleiser, writing on an NPR blog about laughter and health, observes that:

Arthur Koestler, in The Act of Creation, develops the argument that humor and creativity have a lot in common: in a good joke, there is a rupture of the logic, a point where the narrative departs from its natural flow and takes a sharp turn to the unexpected. That's when we laugh. You can't control it, it just happens. If you retrace your steps and explain the joke to someone who didn't get it, it isn't funny anymore.

I think that may be the reason many of us find contemporary works of art less than satisfying: we feel intuitively that if the work needs to be explained, the essence is lost — perhaps it was never there to begin with.

I came across the following quote by composer Jean Sibelius from a 1919 interview and thought the sentiment could apply equally well to any non-verbal creative endeavor: dance, painting, photography…etc.:

If I could express the same thing with words as with music, I would, of course, use a verbal expression.  Music is something autonomous and much richer.  Music begins where the possibilities of language end.  That is why I write music.

Many of the images I capture when I venture out I could not have planned. Even when I do have a certain type of image in mind – think dramatic landscape – it's more likely that I'll return with something I had not envisioned.

If I am receptive to the environment I am passing through, I may be lucky enough to "see" a unique pattern or scene that gently impinges on my consciousness until I respond by framing it in the camera's viewfinder.

Out skiing this past season I paused to catch my breath and this delicate spray of branches just off the trail caught my attention, one of an infinite number of equally captivating vignettes….

 

I don't recall where I encountered this pithy observation, but it echoes an earlier post suggesting that less is more:

"definition of a good photograph: one that is like the definition of a good dream in the sense that pieces have been arranged unconsciously and provide enough form and point of reference for the viewer to find meaning, but enough is left undefined to allow for the viewer's own history, ideas and dreams to find a place."

When I am teaching workshops, I emphasize the importance of the frame, and of using the edges and corners that appear in the viewfinder to help compose the final image.

I've been out skiing a few mornings a week and have been alternating between cameras — carrying either my panoramic camera or a standard format digital camera — which present very different viewfinders in which to compose an image.

Going back and forth between the cameras as I've been doing really brings home how much the viewfinder, and the discipline it imposes, affects the images I come back with.

Curiously, I find the exaggerated horizontal view of the panorama format easier to work with.  Rather than finding the more restricted frame a challenge, it actually allows me to distill the scene more easily into what is important.

It's this challenging process of identifying and then isolating a particular portion of the world — distilling the scene's fundamental essence — that is at the heart of creative landscape photography.

When winter snows blanket a landscape they not only hide detail but, conversely, reveal much that is otherwise invisible when snow is not present.

Henry David Thoreau noted this with respect to the comings and goings of the animals in Walden woods, commenting on the network of tracks criss-crossing the landscape around his cabin.

However it's also true of stationary elements that, without the benefit of a snowy backdrop, would go mostly unnoticed.  I've made a number of images of the dried plants and grasses that remain above the snowy landscape.

These austere elements, framed just so, can yield delicate and surprisingly beautiful patterns against that pristine white backdrop.

 

Out of the bosom of the Air,

Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,

Over the woodlands brown and bare,

Over the harvest-fields forsaken,

Silent, and soft, and slow

Descends the snow.

                    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

The latest issue of Photo District News (PDN) contains a Q&A with Stephen Mayes, Managing Director of the photo agency VII, where he is asked: "Are photojournalism contests still relevant?"

 The question that really begs for an answer – "Is photojournalism itself relevant?" – comes up in Mayes response that photojournalism has become more romantic than functional: "There are certain [visual] codes that recur. What I tend to find is that so much journalism we see is about affirming what we already know…."

 That's been true for some time now, but with the ubiquity of visual images and the increasing sophistication of the audience, one may argue that the genre of photojournalism – a single image or series of images revealing a previously hidden truth – has been exhausted.

 However important images may be to us as we process world events, they no longer have the ability to shock and inform.  Images from the heyday of photojournalism like those of the RFK assassination or the Vietnamese girl burned by napalm and running naked down the street are no longer possible.  Not because horrific events are no longer occurring, but because, by ongoing and frequent exposure to the wider world, we've become naturally desensitized.

When we learn about an event, say the tragic shooting of Representative Giffords in Arizona, we can easily predict the imagery that will follow: medical crews and police behind crime scene tape, shocked and mourning groups of bystanders, shrines created with candles, signs and photos, marchers protesting violence….etc.  We view them and appreciate these images in the same way we enjoy comfort food – for the assurance they provide.

But relevant? Not so much….

 

In the previous post, I quote the art reviewer Roberta Smith classifying the glass artist Dale Chihuly as a "lightweight."

Concidentally, there was a fascinating biopic about Chihuly on channel Thirteen last night – "Fire and Light" – that included appearances by a number of art heavyweights, including the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas Hoving.

Hoving is a fan of Chihuly and, after watching the one-hour special, it was hard not to admire the range and depth of Chihuly's work, the prolific output and his dedication to continually pushing the creative envelope.

Watching him at work, it seems clear that Chihuly is relying moment-to-moment on his unique artistic inner voice to guide the creative process and perhaps that is what Smith finds troubling – the premise of his work does not spring from an intellectual construct.

Well, if Chihuly is a lightweight, I'd consider it a compliment to be included in that category.