At 7:55 -0600 16/1/03, Bill Pearce wrote:
>When I repeated my oft mentioned story about what photographers talk about,
>I didn't include the many disclaimers, having felt that I had given them
>enough so people already knew I wasn't making another statement from on
>high, something we usually reserve for talk about politics, guns, or SUV's.
>
>The descriptions have some truth, and we should think about them some. but
>to say that light has nothing to do with is is (absolute statement) just
>plain wrong. Without light, we wouldn't have content, meaning, or
>expression. It is light that forms our photos, and by that I don't mean
>exposure, I mean things like form and shape. Without light, everything else
>is lost.
>
>This could get ugly.
>
Why is that? Can't we discuss the philosphy of photography (and art),
disagree, even argue cases, without taking it personally, attacking each
other, and considering the the matter "ugly"?
We have to be careful not to call each other's theses "absolute", and we
have to be careful not to think that because someone speaks their mind
fully and openly they are disparaging the views of others.
In the first case, we have to quote correctly when we disagree.
I did not say that light has nothing to do with "it" (whatever the "it" is,
presumably the making of great pictures, since I was talking about what
great photographers talk about, especially when teaching.
What I said was that great photographers don't talk about light (craft and
artifice), they talk about the intangibles of philosophic meaning and what
they saw and meant (if they talk about anything at all, other than tall
tales about how their Leicas stopped a bullet).
Let's examine the question some more. I say ideas and content come first
and without them pictures are pedestrian and mundane, even if the
photographer is a fine craftsman and uses the art of lighting brilliantly.
To say that "without light everything is lost" and that light comes first
is to place craft above meaning. Of course light comes first in
photography: but so does it in all things that we do, because without it we
would be groping in the dark.
But I think that someone like Cartier-Bresson would argue that choice of
moment -- which is a cognitive recognition of the embodiment in the scene
of our philosophic response to life, be it a truth or surreal -- is
paramount over any technique or artifice such as light.
I've seen heaps of pictures, hundreds per day, perhaps thousands per day,
all my life. I don't recall any of them because of their light, not even
Moonrise Over Hernandez. (I don't think Adams saw light as paramount over
the shape of the land and its meaning; light was a craft means to the end
of his expression. He _felt_ the land spiritually and recognized its
meaning intellectually before he considered the light. And I don't think he
talked much about light when he was talking about photographic purpose and
meaning. He was a great craftsman, and talked about light as a means to an
end, not an end in itself.
Many photographers make the light more important than the meaning. Many
photographers see only the light and see their pictures only in the way of
received wisdom as to their craft and artifice: "I just liked the way the
light and shade looked". Many of these photographers either don't recognize
the meaning in their pictures, or make pictures without any meaning.
Then their are the commercial photographers who use light as a gimmick and
trademark: Karsh -- another photographer who is famous, but whose pictures
are not great -- comes to mind. Let's do a thought experiment: think of
Galen Rowell, anyone who admired his work and thinks he was a great
photographer, and tell me about just five, or even just one, of his
pictures that you _remember_, and can describe in words -- _without_
looking at any of his books you might have, or calendars, or the Web. Now
tell me _why_ any of those pictures that you can remember (I'm betting only
someone who's studied his work and has lots of it can remember _any_ of his
pictures) is _great_.
Now think of any of photography's really great figures and see how many of
their pictures you can remember, pioneer, Modernist or even post-Modernist.
I'll be you can remember a whole lot more of them than you can of Galen
Rowell's, however interesting and evocative of the natural world his
pictures were.
Great photographs _transcend_ time and place and subject and craft, and
take on a life of their own as objects of art, not just as representations
of the real world around us and our response to it. (Even some
post-Modernist photography does this -- think of Lewis Baltz -- though most
of it is an intellectual wasteland of nihilism.)
Now what is the meaning of this argument over content versus craft as the
first and most important consideration of photography?
Just this: too many people spend too much time talking about artifice in
relation to their pictures and too little time thinking about the world,
their reaction to it, and how they might express that reaction by the
primary tool of the photographer, the -_selection_ of something that has
meaning, and the fixing of that meaning into _content_ by the expression of
an idea. The _recognition_ of something for what it is, and saying
something about it by the creation of _content_.
All else, I still maintain, is secondary.
Thanks for the warm discussion. I look forward to interesting responses,
not any ugliness.
--
Cheers from Godzone,
Michael Kopp
Wellington, New Zealand
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|