diptych # 104 ~ objectivity / the mystery of personal selection
Wednesday, October 22, 2014 at 09:49AM 
red leaves fences ~ Keeseville, NY - in the Adirondack PARK /Plattsburgh, NY • click to embiggen
The challenge for me has first been to see things as they are ... In a word, I have tried to be objective. What I mean by objectivity is not the objectivity of a machine, but of a sensible human being with the mystery of personal selection at the heart of it. The second challenge has been to impose order onto the things seen and to supply the visual context and the intellectual framework - that to me is the art of photography. - Berenice Abbott
In his book, THE PHOTOGRAPHER'S EYE, John Szarkowski wrote that "the central act of photography (was) the act of choosing and eliminating". That notion seems to me to be rather elementary and obvious - anyone who picks up a camera to make a picture makes a decision regarding who / what / where at which to point it.
However, Szarkowski went on to state that, in choosing and eliminating, there was more to it than just that. To wit, that the act of choosing and eliminating (Bernice Abbott's personal selection) force a concentration on the picture's edge - the line that separates in from out - and on the shapes that are created by it. Which, in so doing, provides the methodology to accomplishing a successful result, re: Abbott's second challenge to impose order onto the things seen.
IMO, and to my eye and sensibilities, therein is the difference between good and no-so-good pictures. Good pictures most often evince a refined and interesting sense of the relationships, interdependence, and tension of 2D shapes (not to mention color and tonality) to be seen within the boundaries imposed by the frame, aka: the edges of a picture.
Without a doubt, when making a picture, the maker must pay as much attention to the frame he/his chooses to create / impose. Although, it is well worth noting that, in my experience, the paying-attention-to is most often an intuitive rather an intellectual exercise. That is to write, either you see or feel it or you don't.
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