civilized ku # 2051 ~ self-expression is a dead end
Friday, January 13, 2012 at 11:58AM ;)
Shed ~ Wilmington, NY flats - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenIn the recent entry, civilized ku # 2047-48, I presented the idea of looking at what you picture to find out what you are thinking. That notion implies that picture making and the subsequent viewing of the pictures you have made can be a process of discovery, not only about one's self but also about the world you picture. It can be an act of learning about what makes you tick and how that ticking influences how you relate to/ see the world's ticking.
That is why I have previously mentioned the desirability of having a sense of curiosity about the world around you. A sense of curiosity which drives a desire to explore and discover. IMO, that driving force can open up a world of picturing possibilities. It can enable you to make pictures, not about self-expressing what you already know, but rather, about things which can add to what you know.
Pictures which have a stamp of your very own curiosity written all over them. Pictures which are about your desire to explore and see rather than a form of narcissistic posturing over "self-expression". Pictures which can take your picture making beyond the tried-and-true safety net of "good" picture making. Pictures which, to paraphrase John Szarkowski, enlarge our sense of what the world is made of and of what photography might be for.
Szarkowski made that statement while giving a lecture about Eugène Atget. Szarkowski, who wrote and spoke at length about Agtet and his work, was a great admirer of Atget's pictures. One of things I remember most, re: Szarkowski's thoughts about Agtet, was from the aforementioned lecture*:
He [Atget] practiced photography not to express what he knew and felt, but to discover what he might know and feel.
and in doing so, is why Szarkowski opined that Agtet ...
... enlarged our sense of what the world was made of and of what photography might be for.
IMO, it's also well worth noting another of Szarkowski's statements about Agtet:
He was little given to experiment in the conventional sense, and less to theorizing. He founded no movement and attracted no circle. He did however make photographs which for purity and intensity of vision have not been bettered ... Atget's work is unique on two levels. He was the maker of a great visual catalog of the fruits of French culture, as it survived in and near Paris in the first quarter of this century. He was in addition a photographer of such authority and originality that his work remains a bench mark against which much of the most sophisticated contemporary photography measures itself. Other photographers had been concerned with describing specific facts (documentation), or with exploiting their individual sensibilities (self-expression). Atget encompassed and transcended both approaches when he set himself the task of understanding and interpreting in visual terms a complex, ancient, and living tradition ... The pictures that he made in the service of this concept are seductively and deceptively simple, wholly poised, reticent, dense with experience, mysterious, and true.
IMO, the only way a picture maker can make pictures which are "seductively and deceptively simple, wholly poised, reticent, dense with experience, mysterious, and true" is to, in the act of picturing, let go of the self you already know and go with the notion that there is much more to learn and know about what the world is made of and what photography might be for.
After which, of course, you look at what you pictured to find out what you are thinking.
*My thanks to Marc over at take-out photo for reminding me of this statement.
Reader Comments (2)
And I thought it was point and click
Thought provoking series of posts (and great quotes).
I think the notion of 'narcissistic posturing over "self-expression"' captures the core of my dislike at ham-fisted photographic techniques. For example, before the shutter-press we have extreme wide angles shot low and after the shutter-press there are excessive HDR and Local Contrast Enhancement.