ku # 582 ~ Spring has sprung # 16
Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at 09:39AM 
The Flume • click to embiggenIn his essay, In Our Image, Wright Morris opines that:
Photographs of time past, of lost time recovered, speak most poignantly if the photographer is missing. The blurred figures characteristic of long time exposures is appropriate .... [T]hese photographs clarify, beyond argument or apology, what is uniquely and intrinsically photographic. The visible captured. Time arrested. Through a slit in time's veil we see what has vanished. An unearthly, mind-boggling sensation: commonplace yet fabulous. The photograph is paramount. The photographer subordinate.
The photograph is paramount. The photographer subordinate.
In support of his idea, Morris goes on to mention John Szarkowski's notion that the photographer's vision is convincing to the degree that the photographer hides his hand. After which he (Morris) continues with:
There will be no end of making pictures, some with hands concealed, some with hands revealed, and some without hands, but we should make the distinction, while it is still clear, between photographs that mirror the subject, and images that reveal the photographer. One is intrinsically photographic, the other is not.
One is intrinsically photographic, the other is not.
On one hand, I tend to sorta-kinda agree with Morris & Szarkowski regarding the notion of The photograph is paramount. The photographer subordinate. Or to put it another way, it's about the pictures, stupid.
On the the other hand, I tend to rather strongly disagree with Morris regarding the notion of One is intrinsically photographic, the other is not. I mean, hell, if one is using a camera and if the resultant picture looks like a photograph / quacks like a photograph / walks like a photograph, then, in my book, it is a photograph.
That said, the question I have regarding the above premise is simply this - if a making a picture is all about expressing one's self, doesn't every pictures so motivated in its making tell us something about the hand of the maker?
Is it even possible to make a good picture without revealing anything about the hand of the maker?
Reader Comments (4)
The picture may be more or less about the photographer, but the very act of choosing that photography has at its core tells us something about the photographer.
While I agree that the picture is the only artifact subject to judgment (or what matters). I disagree with the possibility to astray from the photographer. Eventually the photographer will try to hide himself in choosing a "culturally" neutral viewpoint (a vantage point as Szarkowski calls it) but even in such case he/she is in. Linear perspective requires a view point whatever it is. In this sense the picture is always about the photographer (whoever he/she is or its aims are).
A digital camera is still a camera, that produces images/photographs and today Mark #16, is a super picture. I really like it.
Unless the photographer holds the camera backwards, we shouldn't see said photog in the final print. The only way I can know who took the picture is if I believe the credits that accompany the print. And even then it's just a name until I meet the person incarnate.