Monday 28 November 2011

Is this photograph of Tony Blair for real?

'Street Photographers' a new 'magazine'

street photographers
?
“seeing photographs in the flow of the human spirit on the street” RSS
Curated by Roger Prentice

I've just started 'curating' my 'Street Photographers'' magazine at scoop.it

The site logo is a shot of mi from a Brighton street market.

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Zeno Watson [Street Photography] - YouTube

Sadler's Wells Theatre - Turnage / McGregor / Wallinger / OpenEndedGroup - UNDANCE / Twice Through the Heart

WORLD PREMIERE 

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A world premiere by Olivier Award-winning choreographer Wayne McGregor – “one of the most celebrated and sought-after choreographers of his generation” New York Times.

Inspired by American sculptor Richard Serra’s List of Verbs and the work of photographer Eadweard J. Muybridge, UNDANCE is about undoing, unraveling, unwinding… “I thought it would be interesting to enact these action verbs – like To Roll, To Wrap, To Slide – and not know where they are going but just do them and see what comes up – Undo them” Wayne McGregor.

Danced by ten breathtaking performers from Wayne McGregor│Random Dance, with a brand new bluesy, action-filled score by internationally acclaimed composer Mark-Anthony Turnage (Anna Nicole), UNDANCE features a set by Turner prize-winning visual artist Mark Wallinger, costumes by Moritz Junge and lighting by Lucy Carter.

For the first part of the evening, McGregor directs mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly, immersing her in a spectacular 3D environment created by New York digital artists OpenEnded Group – in a new staging of Turnage’s emotional chamber opera Twice Through the Heart.

Both works feature a live orchestra, handpicked by Mark-Anthony Turnage and conducted by Tim Murray.

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COMPASSION TEST - one of the most beautiful, moving photographs I've ever seen.

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Image

The hand to steady the artistry.
The fore-finger and little finger to maximise the stability.
The mouth and eyes set in concentration.
The "I will, I can" in asserting the self against the darkness.
Compassion know thy name.

Has any more beautiful a picture of the human spirit ever been captured?

Retweeted over 24 million times!

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Sunday 27 November 2011

PJ Media » The Logical Extreme of the ‘American System’

in the 1920s by H.L. Mencken in the fourth of his six-part series, Prejudices. In it, he identified the two sides of the great American experiment – our representative democratic republic and the free market capitalist system — as “the conjoined twins.” Each is wonderful and praiseworthy in its own right, but they are locked together in a way which eventually becomes toxic to both.

To read the article click on the kink

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Her fourth Pullitzer Prize - Photo Journalist Carol Guzy | C-SPAN

Q&A with Photo Journalist Carol Guzy

2011 Pulitzer prize winner

Photographer Carol Guzy

Photographer Carol Guzy

Washington, DC
Sunday, May 1, 2011

This weekend on Q&A, our guest is Washington Post photographer Carol Guzy.

Along with two Post colleagues Nikki Kahn and Ricky Carioti, she has just won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. They won for a series of photographs of the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.  This is Carol Guzy’s fourth Pulitzer Prize, the most pulitzers won by a journalist. 
 
In this interview, Guzy shows photos from the Haiti earthquake. She also discusses her past photo journalism projects including the fall of the Berlin Wall; the 1986 mudslide in Colombia; Kosovo and Albania in 1999; 9/11 in New York; and her photo story series of animals left behind after Katrina.
 
Carol Guzy has worked for the Washington Post since 1988. She previously worked as a photographer for The Miami Herald.

Carol Guzy is one of my favourite journalistic photographers.

Click on link to find out more.

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You'll find some great photographers & photography here - The Pulitzer Prizes | Feature Photography

Feature Photography

Finalists have been announced since 1980. Full texts, photographs and cartoons are available for Journalism winners from 1995–2011 only.

NB You will need to Google the individual photographers.

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Wednesday 23 November 2011

Swedish Nature Photographer Exposed as Giant Photoshopping Fraud

Swedish Nature Photographer Exposed as Giant Photoshopping Fraud

How'd Terje Helles win the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency's top prize for 2010? By capturing so many incredible shots of endangered species! And how'd he miraculously find all of these rare animals? On internet stock photography sites

click on link to read the story

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The beautiful Satish Kumar {morning} (1/2) - YouTube

A day with Satish Kumar, in his interview for Earth Pilgrims, part 1/2.

http://www.earthpilgrims.com/

Satish Kumar is an Indian, currently living in England, who has been a Jain monk and a nuclear disarmament advocate, and is the current editor of Resurgence, founder and Director of Programmes of the Schumacher College international centre for ecological studies and of The Small School. His most notable accomplishment is a "peace walk" with a companion to the capitals of four of the nuclear-armed countries - Washington, London, Paris and Moscow, a trip of over 8,000 miles. He insists that reverence for nature should be at the heart of every political and social debate.

Visit his homepage at http://www.resurgence.org/

Interview by John Craig (aka Echan Deravy) of http://www.japanthropologist.com/

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What is Google Chrome OS? - YouTube

Tuesday 22 November 2011

Wonderful site of street photographs by Robert M Johnson

Robert M Johnson
Massachusetts, USA
American Street Photographer From The Classic 70's Period. 

Image

Go HERE o see a wonderful site of photographs by Robert M Johnson

See also Flickr

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How to kick-start funding for a movie about street photography - you to can be invoved

Eugene Richards - The Compassionate Eye - YouTube

Introduction to Street Photography with Eric Kim - YouTube

Elliott Erwitt - photography, reality & truth & bicycle horns

ROBERT FRANK - YouTube

Joel Meyerowitz 1981 Street Photography Program - YouTube

Joel Meyerowitz - demonstrates the essentials of Street Photography - YouTube

He's one of the main guys that inspire me.

"Photography is made up out of light and yet it is invisible. Only the camera makes it visible." - Joel Meyerowitz

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Free Royalty Free Music for your YouTube Videos

Friday 18 November 2011

UK - Check out some stuff re the unmissable 'The Killing' - series II starts this Sat - two episodes - tell your friends

Tell your friends.......

Series 2 of this genius series starts this Saturday on BBC 4 at 9pm.  Great article in this week's Radio Times - handy hints for newcomers in the RT.  

Sofie Grabol  is wonderful - read her astonishing entry into acting in the RT.  

If you get really serious you can even go on a 'Killing Tour of Copenhagen!

You will suffer severe separation pains when the series ends, but the good news is that Series III is on its way!  

The Killing II
Copenhagen cop: Sofie Gråbøl as Sarah Lund in the second series of The Killing. Photograph: BBC/DR

Søren Sveistrup heaves open a heavy wooden door and steps into a deserted Copenhagen police headquarters. Austere grey corridors give way to tatty interrogation rooms and lockers that have seen better days; in the main office huge bookcases are lined with files, 

desks littered with paperwork and laptops. Shadows congregate in every corner.


Which is just the way Sveistrup likes it. The writer of The Killing believes a thriller should look murky round the edges and what isn't achieved via the Danish weather – currently cold, windy and desperately trying to drizzle – is suggested by the authentic and surprisingly 

large set. We stroll about, pausing to chat in the meeting room, and loitering by Sarah Lund's desk........... Guardian write up by Vicki Frost HERE  

HERE is a glimpse of how seriously people took the first series - my comment is at the bottom.

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William Eggleston - great article by Chris Klug

Yesterday I had one of the most moving experiences, photographically-speaking, that I’ve had in a while. I was in Chicago on business for the day. The meeting ended at 3pm, so I had a little time before I had to head back to the airport. I knew I was close by the Art Institute, so I went online to see what photography exhibit they had up. It turned out it was a show by William Eggleston entitled ‘Democratic Camera,’ so I quickly walked over to the Institute and took in the show.

For those of you not familiar with his work,

Click on link to read Chris Klug's article

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Louis Daguerre: Google Doodle photography innovator's earliest surviving image - mirror.co.uk

Louis Jacques Daguerre's first surviving daguerreotype image, of a collection of plaster casts on a window ledge (Pic: Getty)

Louis Jacques Daguerre's first surviving daguerreotype image, of a collection of plaster casts on a window ledge (Pic: Getty)

Louis Daguerre, whose 224th birthday is celebrated today with a Google Doodle, was the inventor of the first commercially successful form of photography.

Advertisement >>

The French physicist devised the daguerreotype, the process for transferring photographs onto silver-coated copper plates – although according to writer Robert Leggat, his discovery was made by accident.

Click on link to read article

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"Street Lights" - Street Photography by Eric Kim - YouTube

101 Things I Have Learned about Street Photography — Eric Kim's Street Photography

101 Things I Have Learned from Street Photography

1. Don’t worry about the camera so much, just take the damn photo.
2. Ditch the zoom lens and screw on some primes
3. Carry your camera gear in a messenger bag  (it makes your camera & lenses easier to access).
4. Go for the candid look.
5. Go for the shock factor.
6. Smile often.
7. When shooting from the hip, your first 1000 shots will be terrible.
8. Don’t make eye contact with your subjects when trying to be discrete.
9. Imagine that the world is your stage and people are your actors.
10.  Feel free to ask people to take their portraits.

Click on link to read the full list

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Wednesday 16 November 2011

Oh how sad I am to have missed this exhibition of 'Comrades' by Phil Maxwell

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Click on link to see more wonderful work.

Go HERE - http://philmaxwell.co.uk/ - and sign up for his daily photoblog

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All you budding street photographers check out PHIL MAXWELL - he's been doing it for 40+years!

Apparently the world’s first pop-up shopping mall will be assembled within the next month at the former Bishopsgate Goods Yard. The historic site will be renamed ‘Boxpark’ and will house 60 recycled shipping containers, spanning two floors. According to the advertising hype it promises to be “a radical, ground-breaking alternative to the ailing conventional high-street”. What the organisers have failed to realise is that such an alternative existed for years when every Sunday a small army of people would sell a range of clothes and household items. One of my favourite retailers was the woman below.

An 'alternative' shop keeper promotes her stock at the Bishopsgate Goods Yard. London 1998.

An 'alternative' shop keeper promotes her stock at the Bishopsgate Goods Yard. London 1998.

I love his daily pics - you can sign up on his site to get the same yourself.

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Monday 14 November 2011

"Security guards have no right to prevent street photography," says Home Office - British Journal of Photography

"Security guards have no right to prevent street photography," says Home Office

Street Photography Rights

The Home Office and the British Security Industry Association have published a new set of guidelines for security guards confirming that photography in public places is legal and cannot be restricted

Click on link to read article

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Saturday 12 November 2011

Focus on Thomas Leuthard – Street Photographer - great interview on DPS

If you like street photography, you’ve probably heard of Thomas Leuthard. He lives in Switzerland and, although he hasn’t been on the street photography scene for very long, he’s made quite a name for himself in the community worldwide. The guy has got quite an eye! When I see his regular posts on social media, I am always astounded by the number of quality of images he manages to shoot on any given photo walk. There is something very special about his photographs, some will make you smile, others will move you. He does it out of sheer passion for the craft. He loves to roam the streets of large cities worldwide and enjoys sharing his work and knowledge through social media and workshops. His generosity has even led him to publish two fantastic e-books about street photography that are downloadable free of charge! He agreed to answer a few questions for the dPS readers. If you haven’t already done so, I urge you to check out his work by visiting his website  from there you can find all the links to Thomas’ social media world.

1. When did you start doing street photography and why?

It was in May 2009 when I ordered a new Nikon 85mm prime lens and decided to make only street photos with this lens and upload it to a new online profile called 85mm. This was the start of 85mm Street Photography. The lens changed to a wider one over time, but the name remained.

Click on link for interview and more photographs

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Being Stephen Shore | Photography | Agenda | Phaidon

"Part of what a photographer does is make sense of the space around them." Stephen Shore

'Part of what a photographer does is make sense of the space within them" - RP

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AMAZING SPEECH BY WAR VETERAN - YouTube

Tuesday 8 November 2011

Fine art photography as images that connect us to deeper meaning

When is a wildlife photograph 'more than', more than, that is than a good example of the wildlife genre, or category, to which it belongs?  

I take the essence of wildlife photography to be a celebration, a celebration of the beauty and diversity of fauna? That's enough in itself. But when and how might a wildlife photograph become fine art as well?  

My answer is when it connects us, beyond celebrating the creature's intrinsic beauty as a-thing-in-itself, to a wider discourse or conversation.

That is when the photograph connects us, if we have the eyes to see, to one of the great conversations about being human in the world, with others - the 'others' of course means other humans but also other creatures as well. For me a photograph to be fine art has to have the extra dimension that invites us to engage more deeply than in the simple, entirely valid, enjoyment of celebrating the animal, bird insect or fish.

Such conversations are about questions such as 'what is real?', 'how should we be living our lives?', ...................

OK if the so-called fine art photograph has a plus factor, that connects us to these conversations, through what is that connection made? How do we come to feel that we have been taken into one or more of these conversations?

The answer is via some detail or added dimension.

This is a perfectly respectable wildlife photograph of a hippopotamus that might get taken on a 'safari holiday' (Source: WikiPedia);

This I take however to be an outstandingly good fine art photograph

File:Obaysch 1852.jpg

It's a bit over-cropped but the main elements of people, bars, hippo and reflection are all there.

It was taken in 1852 by Juan, Count of Montizon. The hippo's name is Obaysch (1849 - 1878) and he was the first hippopotamus seen in England since prehistoric times! Obaysch came from Egypt.

To what does the photograph connect us, other than celebrating the fact that this is a very fine hippo, and not a zebra or platypus - and by what means does it make the connection?

For me the details that engage my heart-mind to this photograph are the closed eyes and the line of his mouth. He is imprisoned but he looks sublimely happy, whereas the people if anything look anxious.

From here we can ask who is imprisoned most the people or the animal? The important detail is the bars behind which the people look to be the imprisoned ones? If so how and why and through what?

Supporting this is the point of view of the photographer. His shot is not impeded by bars - he is, to all appearances, inside the world of the hippopotamus.

It takes us to consideration of how animals are treated, and the effects upon us. A deeper more philosophical discourse is that of the nature of freedom and imprisonment and such like.

Let's look at one more example, this time looking at a hawk as opposed to hippopotamuses/hippopotami.

Here is a hawk (notice the use of differential focus)

File:Goshawk dove4.JPG
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It's an immature goshawk. (Source Wikipedia)

But here is a picture of a hawk that engages more deeply;

Image

Photo used by kind permission of Les Bray

With hawks, and other birds of prey, which bits engage our attention? Answer claws and beak. But here 'the eyes have it! The eyes have it for more reasons than one. Birds of prey have an imperious look, and we know they have incredibly good sight compared to us humans. But it is the eyes, and the detail of the eyes, that provide the plus factor, the extra dimension. In the eye we see the blue sky and the outline of what I take to be a line of people - not unlike those leaning on the rail beyond the bars of the hippo's cage - waiting to see what, if anything, happens.

The reflection in the hippo picture leads us to thinking about one of life's great themes; appearance and reality. The reflection here leads us to back to ourselves and to what impact people and the hawk are having on each other

For me the reflection-in-the-eye immediately catapults this photograph to the highest level. Could it be better/ Perhaps if the eye and its reflection were larger so that the line of people were seen a bit more easily and clearly that would be better.

There is another dimension of fine art photography that adds to the ability to derive deeper satisfaction, richer meaning-making, in a work of art and that is its referentiality - it's ability to refer, to connect up to other works and to other ideas within one or more of the great conversations.

Did the photographer here choose to connect the 'who is the real prisoner' idea, and all of the other ways of making rich and deep meaning in his photograph, with the same idea in the Count's photograph? Perhaps not but it doesn't alter the fact that they both contribute to, and are both part of, a range of conversations - if we have the eyes to see. Developing 'eyes to see' is a matter of extending outwards the connections we can see, connections that deepen and enrich meaning-making.

The referring to, the referentiality, of a photograph is not something consciously looked for when much photography has to be done very quickly. It is afterwards we can see that sub-consciously we may have sensed something. The hawk and hippo photos connect up with many other works in various art forms. For me most powerfully they connect up with the poet Ted Hughes animal poems - particularly 'Hawk Roosting' and 'Jaguar'

We are meaning-making animals and fine art photographs, which can be photographs from basic categories but with a 'plus factor', give us far greater opportunities to experience delicious satisfaction. That delicious satisfaction is in two stages; 
 
a) firstly there is the standing in awe of an image - we are united with it, at-one because we identify with it, and we know that ultimately it is pointing back to a mysterious whole, but 

b) after the unity that we feel in the first impact we shift to engagement as having dialogue, we interrogate the image (and ourselves) - and seek to squeeze out the pleasure and satisfaction of the meanings.

These two stages are part of reading and appreciating a photograph. The reading allows us to derive deep meanings - as part of conversations that humans have been having since the time of primeval forests.

Art is about experience + meanings made.

The eyes have it - but so does the beatific smile of the hippo!

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1st draft 9th Nov 2011 - Roger Prentice

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Saturday 5 November 2011

Two outstanding photographic artists

Calum Colvin, at least in his Ossian project, is one of the truly great, innovative, fine art photographers.  

This quotation seems to well suit Calum Colvin

A photograph is a distilled, charmed, disturbing, intense, and ethereal correspondence with the world: a talisman empowered by the ineluctable mystery of the visual. Tom Normand   Source

Calum Colvin

The Ossian project site is HERE

More about Calum Colvin HERE

Various reviews are HERE

Some of Calum Colvin's techniques in Ossian resemble the work of the Chinese artist Liu Bolin

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Friday 4 November 2011

Descending or not descending into hell - two photographs

This photograph 'Valparasio, Chile' by Chilean photographer Sergio Larraain stopped me in my tracks.  

I'm again trying to write an 'open appreciation' by pointing to issues and then moving into the sub-conscious and surreal by mentioning associations.  I recognize, of course that other people may have a different set of associations.

After that I have included my photograph 'Two arrows' and my response to that.

The squares, triangles and planes are like an operatic stage-set. They registered (with me) before the two girls because the overall design works powerfully as a whole.  Of course it echoes Cartier-Bresson in the stregth of its geometry.  HCB has a photograph of a girl about to disappear left at the top of a steep set of stone steps in a white Greek village.

One girl is in shadow.

There is even slight ambiguity as to which way she is walking but the fact that she is following another girl, perhaps her older sister,  forces us to accept she is walking away - and most belt bows are tied at the back.  There is a hint that she is left-handed - and, horror of horrors is her arm cut off at the elbow - or is it that her arm is hidden in forward movement.  I recall a photograph of an African boy helping dress his father both of whose arms were amputated by terrorists. 

Are they both carrying square bottles - like many olive oil bottles?  Are they on the way to a shop - or is the liquid refreshment from the heat

The girl in the shadow is about to step into light - glaring light.

The two girls shoulders, hair and very upright stance suggest they may be sisters - with the older one leading.

The girl in the light is similar but different - she might already be a young woman, certainly she is experiencing the world as someone quite a few years older than the smaller girl.

More subconsciously and surreal-ly

Their walk suggests;

ET's approach back to the space ship

The walk of the Midwich cuckoos in the film The Midwich Cuckoos

Even a hint of a Zombie walk - though oppressive heat might explain - walking in a way to stay as cool as possible.

What are they passing through - stages of growing up?

What are they descending into?

The sense of confidence and control in the 'stance that suggests their walk' doesn't give any sense of threat - so it's not a hell of any kind.  

It is very processional, very operatic.  The geometry is perfect. The moment is perfect.  The narrative possibilities obey Francis Bacon's 'The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.'

Sergio Larrain was a  born in 1931.  Amazon still has a book he did of London in 1958/59 with Mike Seaborne.  The picture is to be found on p261 of Phaidon's 'the Photo Book'

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My photograph 'Descending and two arrows'

This photograph 'appeared' when travelling via the metro/underground in Budapest.

As is so often the case in 'Street Photography' I grabbed it unconsciously, like a bear mid-stream to whom the salmon leaps - snap! (Impossible lighting & v modest camera)

I didn't construct it consciously. It was a gift, not something directly worked for. I only saw it afterwards, back home.

If someone else had taken it, and I had looked at it, really looked, I would be stunned! So I will try to 'critique' it as if it was another photographer's work.

One key is the two arrows. Another is that the two men look to be the same person.

Three people. Two worlds.

The man coming down the steps - a clone or alternative version of the beggar-man at the foot of the steps?.

Perhaps they represent two parallel versions of reality as in the 1998 film Sliding Doors - except the two, and their realities, have come together at the particular moment of the photograph.

Perhaps the two are the same person who decades ago when 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood' took the wrong road, except in a parallel reality the other road was also taken. The two versions, the two selves the two roads come together on the steps of the metro in this moment.

One is holding a cup, the other, I think, sun-glasses.

One exudes wretchedness and a hatred of the world that dealt him his deal, a world that won't fill his cup sufficient to displace that hatred? His sound is, "Ssssssssss".

Perhaps his gay/girlie pink bag is the punctum if you view the scene through Barthes-ian spectacles.

One exudes super-relaxed nonchalance. His sound is, " Hi guyyyyyyys, yo, how are y'all". (Yes, yes I know that is a mixture of out-of-dates idioms!)

Presumably he also has a cup - what does it contain? Not the dregs of bitterness.

Two descend from a world of super-brightness.

One huddles on the lower-most step.

In hell?

But which way is hell? What good is it the seduces us? The good deeds of the ordinary people are the sins of saints.

Which one is in hell, or might be tomorrow, following a turn of events?

Might their positions be reversed, if having coincided they take the next step along the journey?

Two arrows point. One points ascendingly, but not like a Zen master. One appears to point descendingly.

Which arrow is to be trusted?

Upwards there is the possibility of super-white teeth. Upwards there is a restaurant that asserts itself.

The woman is mysterious. Did she reject one, and accept the other? Is her own dual two-pathed reality about to come into a single moment? Did she turn back instead of making a choice between two roads.

Do we willingly descend?

Is hell a state of being, not a place, a state of being that we engender or step out from.

Would hell be the eternal living of the road not taken? A vision of this risk is Hirokazu Koreeda's film 'Afterlife'

Or a meeting with our 'selves', sub-personalities, that each made their own journeys and rattle and jostle our consciousness for space and time.

Are we ascending or descending?

Is the light too bright, as for eyes freed of cataracts?

Will we all realize the full consequences of choices made?

Is redemption in Abe Lincoln's home spun, "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."  Hell or heaven is the state we (choose) to live in?

Who, or what, makes up our heart-mind?

-0-

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Thursday 3 November 2011

Desperately seeking a photographic aesthetic

Image

Like multitudes of others I love photography - doing it and appreciating it.

I have for a long time looked at photographs by great photographers to inspire me into taking better photographs but I'm also looking for a 'photographer's aesthetic'.

By 'an aesthetic' I mean a model that includes the principles and values and perhaps 'tools' that help me to photograph more ably but which also helps in developing capability in reading and evaluating photographs.  

For me it includes truth and goodness as well as beauty.

This short article is the first step towards such a 'photographer's aesthetic'.

It will be successful if it helps me;

a) in the photographs I take
b) the 'reading' of my own and other people's photographs
c) the evaluation of the relative worth of particular photographs

For me it needs to fit in with my model of what it is to be human - which I concluded was 'to care', 'to create' and to be critical' - all in our 'community' web of relationships.

The field is something of a minefield, ranging from very challenging important writing to gobbledygook cum psycho-babble. There is a simple possible aesthetic in a well-known book by John Szarkowski;

The book, of an exhibition, presents 5 concerns in photography. Szarkowski structures his book on

The Thing Itself - this I take to be the object 'out there', at least the thing that stimulated the photographer's attention

The Detail - which part of the object is emphasized

The Frame - what does and doesn't go inside one of the four sides of the frame

Time - not just the duration of the shot but whether the photograph re-presents the passing of time as in a blurring of motion.

The Vantage Point - which I take to be largely the same as PoV - point of View - high angle shot etc.

So with this 5-dimensional model we can read and appreciate any photograph. For example we can ask how interestingly/engagingly/unusually does any photograph use one or more or all of those five dimensions?

Much though I like the book and the essay the five dimensions seem to me to be too limited for my satisfaction.

One suspects that this and similar models come about to answer questions such as; "What is the specific nature of photography?" as well as questions such as "How do we read a photograph?" Perhaps also there is the defensive and doubt-ridden, "But photography is an art - isn't it?"

"If I were going there I wouldn't start from here," said the proverbial yokel. In the case of photography the place not to start from is the technology, or even the technique.

Most of the arts media are about mark-making - even dance is a moving, temporary, mark made in a particular space and context.  The marks as paintings, or photographs, or any other medium, have in the hands of an artist, the ability to create experience, including deep experience - but more like a haiku than a novel.

Photography as a fine art then is simply another way to make marks - marks that are able, more or less, to provide an experience that engages us in one or more of the deeper concerns of life, without excluding the more prosaic and domestic concerns.

The essence of photographic artistry is in the user of the camera, be it a pin-hole camera or a Leica M9. The art is in the artist and her/his response to the world. The art is in engagement in the deeper concerns of being human, in the world with others.

Where does that leave us with Szarkowski's 5-dimension model? The five dimensions are really about the language of the photographic process in the same way that close-up, two-shots, establishing shots etc are all part of the language of film. They help us describe aspects of technique.

We need more to centre the process in being human as opposed to writing and reading technique. The only way for that to work is to recognize and have some familiarity with one or more discourses. The great educational writer Michael Oakeshott I recall said that all true education is a conversation - a conversation that started eons ago.

Why kind of conversation or discourse can we pull together that has a practical benefit for those who like making photographic images as well as reading such images?

We will have to raid the philosophies of the last half-century, without getting trapped in their mazes. We also have to shift from technique to the movement of the spirit, the photographer's and the 'reader's' with the embodied text, the photograph, as the agent for the spirit moves to take place.

Above all we will have to shift from 'outer' concerns' to 'inner' concerns.

-0-

1st draft of first part of this article at 3rd November 2011

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Wednesday 2 November 2011

Pierre Beteille (Monkeyman) - a genius to rank with Cindy Sherman

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I hope some museum has paid him a million dollars for a set of prints!

Go to Flickr for oceans of joy, laughter and astonishment!

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