I am down in southern Nevada again, sitting out the waves of snow that are piling up in Park City this month and over the tail-end of last month as well. The weather here isn’t ideal either, alternating between something approaching glum and, in almost equal measure, other days that are bright and crisp though chilly. It is what it is.
Since my last post I’ve spent some time back in Park City and also in upstate New York. I do miss the big storms of the Utah mountains so I probably will be on the road, or more likely on a plane again, soon. My trip to New York was related to the passing of a close in-law and so, was both quick and sad.
A few additional images have been added toward the end of both the southern nevada, usa and upstate new york, usa pages in my photography galleries.
Past certain ages or certain wisdoms it is very difficult to look with wonder; it is best done when one is a child; after that, and if you are lucky, you will find a bridge of childhood and walk across it.
Truman Capote
In the month or so since my last writing I’ve renewed, just a little bit, my reading on the subject of photography and photographers. I last did a great deal of reading on the subject a couple of decades ago, actually more than that, and limited myself, in retrospect, to the large-format stylists who were the first to emerge with work that represented more than a cool new thing. Back then, with a Linhof Technika in hand, or hands as it were, I was into those environmental landscape styles, and the slightly tedious processes behind them, of folks like Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, and Eliot Porter. Those were, in my opinion, the first set of artists to make wonderful stuff happen with cameras. They were preceded by innovators who I tend not to think of as artists.
You know, you scout the photograph for a while, observing much about when the time would be right to take it. Then you appear with light meter and tripod, view camera, lenses, rectangular plates containing film, a black sheet to put over your head, and a loop to view the upside-down image for focus, composition and exposure, all while your head is under the sheet, and fumbling with dials that are not. It is all good, there still is no more precise way to make a photograph. It was a Utah thing. Oddly enough, in the late 90’s and most of the naughts, Utah was a hotbed of the 4×5 and 8×10 faithful. It was about the landscape. And arguably, there is no better landscape. Although as mentioned above, it was slightly tedious.
Things have changed. Digital cameras, SLR and otherwise, with upwards of 50 mp can accomplish similar results without much of the process and at a fraction of the per-photograph cost. Unfortunately, for me, I spent a fair amount of time waiting for Linhof or others of similar ilk to produce an inexpensive digital back for the giant cameras. They never did. Live and learn.
This time around I touched on what I consider to be the second great wave of artistry involving cameras. These folks appeared at around the same time that Leica and Rolleiflex technology hit the streets, with some emphasis on the streets being their subject-matter. I read, for the first time I think, Susan Sontag’s “On Photography” and a series of essays by David Ulrich, as well as biographies of Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Vivien Maier.
I tossed Maier into the mix because she spent much of her time photographing places where I spent much of my childhood at around the same time. I must admit hoping that somewhere there exists a photograph of me or one of my friends in the stash of 90,000 or whatever negatives and slides she left behind. She also spent some of her time in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s at the same bookstore that my mom frequented and both were friends with the owner. Though I have no idea if they ever met. It would have been some time before Mlle Maier would be discovered and she would not have been recognizable as a celebrity.
Rollies and Leicas changed everything in that they took much of the laborious aspects out of the work and, as importantly emphasized in all of my recent reading, made it possible for the street photographer to flow with his or her camera out and about in the world and open to capture images as they present themselves. In one of her essays Sontag mentions Baudelaire, the French poet, and his concept of “la flaneur”, the societal observer on the march. I had been familiar with the concept but more as the simple art of wandering around Paris without an objective other than seeing whatever happens along the route. A sort of mobile people and/or place watching. Sontag’s reference to it in this new photographic context is, for me, particularly apt. It is exactly what I tend to do. Not just in Paris of course, but wherever I am at the time. I’ve had the habit of walking quite a bit every day for a long time and what better thing to do while walking but grab a camera, or a phone nowadays, and make images. And all the while, I’m feeling the flow. And the flow feels good. An intersection, people walking by, high walls covered with graffiti in Granada Spain, at exactly the right time of day and time of year.
It is good to have had the view camera experience. It provides the intuitive sense of the why of exposure, focus and depth of field, and even judgements about things like composition and cropping come better informed when made on the fly if they once were concepts given considerable forethought.
Another thing mentioned was the photographer’s ability to intuitively speedily and artfully compose, often without looking through the camera. Some, including Cartier-Bresson himself, attribute this to the desire for stealth, but I think it just comes naturally after taking lots and lots of photographs with the same or similar cameras, and observing the results over time. Knowing what will and what will not be in focus given the camera settings and distance and what will and will not be properly exposed given the lighting, natural and otherwise. The camera as a natural extension of the sight of the photographer, of the mind of the photographer. Again, the flow.
Also attributed to the three photographers, knowing exactly when to take the photo. The fellow jumping over the puddle at Gare St Lazare, Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment. That, to me, is more a matter of serendipity, occasionally informed by good planning. Robert Frank, on Canal Street in New Orleans in 1955, facing one direction and capturing a group of pedestrians, then on turning around, another group, this time on a trolley. Two of the most important photographs of the last century. Snap, snap. Just like that. It’s all about the flow.
From the back cover of the 1968 second edition of “The Americans”:
“It is difficult now to remember how shocking Robert Frank’s book was ten years ago. The pictures took us by ambush then. We knew the America they described, of course, but we knew it as one knows the background hum of a record player, not as a fact to recognize and confront. Nor had we understood that this stratum of our experience was a proper concern for artists.”
John Szarkowski
Much is said of the ability of good photographers to find beauty where others don’t see it and, importantly, to be able to capture it, to frame it in a way where others can see it. The thought-out geometries in Cartier-Bresson compositions. Maier’s New York architectural black and whites. Frank’s balance and symmetry. It can be cliche. Although cliche is, most simply put, a particular style overdone. Cliche can very often be appropriate and is the staple of most professional photography.
So there is that. But great photographers accomplish the same thing on a larger scale. Frank found beauty in an America that most Americans knew well but had not really seen. A quiet sadness and a meanness in America when Americans were most stridently patting themselves on the back. Many hated his work when it was first published but would celebrate it with the passage of time. Beauty found in what is perceived to be ugly at the time, later realized to have been beautiful all along.
This invites comparison with Diane Arbus, the subject of one of Sontag’s essays. I’ve never enjoyed Arbus. Her work appears to be more about showing the contrast between what people perceive themselves to be and what they really are. There is an humiliation and intentional cruelty in that. There is an element of it in the work of Frank and also Maier, but their work appears to be sincere and less contrived.
My sense of what constitutes a good photograph is entirely based on how I feel when I see it. It is absent of formula and is entirely subjective emotional response. The quote I find most pertinent to the concept of beauty in photography comes from literature totally removed from the literature of photography:
“… the soft stone smile of an angel, is touched by that dark miracle of chance which makes new magic in a dusty world.”
Thomas Wolfe
New magic in a dusty world.
As to the question of stealth. With Cartier-Bresson it appears to have been intentional. With Frank it was a matter of comfortably fitting in and not being noticed. With Maier it was audacity, her pressing her way into the right place. Often her subjects look surprised and annoyed. I personally am not much into stealth.
The rules have changed. What is considered acceptable has changed. I remember a section from Jean Genet’s “Our Lady of the Flowers”. Him commenting on the tourists photographing he and other homeless asleep on a Marseille pier. That is always in the back of my mind. To try and not impose oneself on another simply because the other can not resist the imposition. But also to consider the task to be work and not to shy away from it. It is a difficult question. A beautiful woman, young with dark hair and dark eyes, looking downward and distraught, with tears on her cheeks in front of a stone statue inside a Barcelona church. Then realizing that the church was a center where the newly homeless could go to find temporary placement. A photograph not taken.
Another observation. I saw much of my Father in Robert Frank and my Mother in Vivian Maier. They were all of the same generation. My dad had been a photographer in addition to being a writer and was offered work with Life Magazine many years ago. He ended up writing and leaving photography behind. My Mother was also a writer who became a programmer. But probably her favorite possession was a Rollie. When she retired in the 90’s she had planned to start using it again but had trouble finding film for it.
Life was rough for the photographers of that day. Frank fell into the weirdness of the 60’s making movies that never went far and he never recovered. Maier was never recognized but had structured her life as a nanny so that she could take photographs on her days off or with the kids in tow. She died alone and poor. Others died chasing war photographs as a way to keep themselves relevant. Most simply faded away. There were some commercially successful advertising photographers but, for the street photographer, it was a difficult life.
Now with the incredible number of photographs taken and shared daily where even the worst photographer can on that rare occasion get a very good image just as a matter of probability, while the technology gets better and better and artificial intelligence can solve problems before they occur, and a quality camera is in everyone’s pocket all of the time, there are plenty of good pictures of almost anything.
I’ve never thought of photography as a profession. It simply isn’t unless you photograph weddings or other events. It is, however, a skill, and more and more a vital skill as images are now ubiquitous and high quality is expected.
And so, with all of that, I will still spend my best days out in the world, feeling the flow, being fully present. Always looking for the next opportunity to experience something new. A “flaneur” with eyes wide open and spotting, here and there around many corners, the soft stone smile of an angel.