civilized ku # 2808 / diptych # 93 ~ for some, it seems like speaking in tongues
Friday, October 3, 2014 at 10:17PM 
leaves on porch ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
flora ~ Main Street / Golf Course • Saratoga, NY - • click to embiggenIn light of the fact that my previous entry, wherein I presented an article from my former writing, was something of a hit, I offer another article for your reading pleasure and contemplation. I will undoubtedly present more of the same since the articles help define my approach to the medium and its apparatus.
Enjoy and, as always, comments and feedback are appreciated.
In the photographic world, the word "field" generally has a single meaning for most, as in, I do most of my shooting in the field, or, these are some of the techniques I use when I am shooting in the field, or, I have a 4×5 field camera. Many are also familiar with the same word when used as, "He is outstanding in his field" (photography), which, of course, is distinctly different from the more agrarian usage, "he is out standing in his field" (of wildflowers, maybe).
Well, I’m not here to discuss any of those usages. I’m interested in dissecting the one that describes, according to Webster, the area visible through the lens of an optical instrument, or, more specifically, that same area/field when it is made visible on the surface of a two-dimensional photographic print. And to drive home an even finer point, the notion of field strategy as an alternative to what most would call composition.
In the "school of photography" that is most commonly practiced by ...ers, there are many commonly accepted and easily visually recognized "rules" of composition - rule of thirds, S curves, focal point/center of interest, leading lines, etc., etc., and etc. If you want to know more about rules, say goodbye to your family and friends and do a "photo composition" search on the google machine. You should get about 1,390,764 (give or take) results. It’s no wonder that many of you are confused about what constitutes "good" composition.
But, one thing that I know for sure about composition is that most of you are confused/bewildered about my techniques and subsequent results. Let me try to explain, not in an attempt to convince that my way is right, or that my photos deserve more "respect", but rather, to inform those who are here to learn that there are other ways of seeing (both in the field and on the print).
The key to the way I see lies in developing an MO that emphasizes an extreme awareness of the primary quality of the final product of my photographic labors - the 2-dimensional photographic print. I do not see the print as a transparent window to the"real world. Nothing about the print is real except the print itself. What lies on the flat-as-a-pancake surface (field) of the print is an image that is a relic or a trace of something that once was, or, as Gary Winogrand stated, "... what something looks like when it is photographed." In photography, that something must make the transition from 3-dimensional reality to a new reality that exists in a 2-dimensional state - the flat surface or visual field of the photographic print.
So, back to that word "field" again. I tend to see the world as a visual "field." I am not sure if this is preternatural or the result of years of photographic seeing. I do think that it has something to do with the way my brain assimilates and integrates what lies in my peripheral vision with what is in my primary field of view. The writer John McPhee described something similar to this about NBA great Bill Bradley (A Sense of Where You Are, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux). Bradley’s extraordinary perception of what was in his peripheral vision, a sense that he deliberately developed, was what caused many of his teammates to sport bloody lips and broken noses that resulted from being the unsuspecting recipients of many an improbable and unexpected pass. As far as I am aware, my vision is normal in all other respects.
What this visual idiosyncrasy seems to make me sensitive to or aware of is relationships - of tones, textures, colors, and shapes somewhat independently of the objects and space that they help describe - and how they create a unified visual "whole" within my field of vision and on the flat, 2-dimensional plane of the photographic print. I "see" the space that objects in my photograph occupy and the spaces between and around them as shapes arranged across a visual field.
As an example, in a scene that contains a red ball and a blue box on a green lawn, I see red juxtaposed with blue and green almost more than I see a ball and a box and grass. I see a circle, a rectangle and a plane of texture almost more than i see a ball, a box and grass. And, I am keenly aware of their relationships to each other and how they integrate into a visual whole. My vision emphasizes holistic visual fields as opposed to discrete individual details within the field. This personal visual phenomenon is also how I see photographic prints.
The result for me (and many others - see the work of Eggleston, Meyerowitz, Shore, et al) is a decided slant towards the creation and appreciation of non-hierarchical "composition" in my photography. To my eye, subject and its visual essence are indivisible. Every tone, texture, color and shape is used for its expressive potential as well as its structural function. In manner similar to Abstract Expressionist painting, the space-shapes and objects in my photographs are like interlocking pieces of a jig-saw puzzle which come together as a continuous visual plane, but unlike that style of painting, my photographs are also like a window through which the observer can recognize familiar notions of navigable space and discernible subject matter.
This deliberate, delicately adjusted, almost invisible equilibrium between form and content (abstraction and reality) creates a visual structure where conspicuous design is not instantaneously apparent. Since the subject matter has not been bullied into exaggerated angles (according to the rules) or supersaturated colors, most find the photographs lacking a "compelling" quality (I often hear on ... that my photographs are "interesting but not "compelling"). Many see the photos as altogether missing an obvious subject and composition. (again, I hear "no strong COI, FP" etc., or, the ever-popular, "I don’t know what this photo is about").
OK, but to my eye, the visual texture or energy of my photographs comes from an optical blend of individual components, delineated with utmost specificity, that are presented in a manner calculated to emphasize the subject’s cumulative, rather than individual, visual appearance.
To put it in a compositional nutshell or my idea of a field strategy, I co-opt visual sections of the 3-dimensional world to function both as representations of recognizable things and as carefully arranged and chromatically co-ordinated 2-dimensional shapes, which come together as a unified, decorative "composition" or "whole" that emphasizes cumulative appearance and impression.
In the field (as in "out in the field") I have found that there is nothing better than a view camera’s ground glass (or its equivalent - the focusing screen of an slr/tlr without a prism or a lcd screen) as an "aid" for developing/implementing a field strategy approach to photography. If you "see" the image on the ground glass/screen in its 2-dimensional aspect, "relationships" become much more obvious and visible than they are through the "real-time" vision of a pentaprism. I find that prism view finders visually transmit 3-dimensional information in a manner that a direct view of a flat ground glass or focusing screen does not. The projected image on a ground glass is already making it’s way to a 2-dimensional representation.
To wit, by looking at the image on a flat plane, I see the scene not as the real thing, but as the photographic transformation of the thing - two very different mental and visual constructs. "Really."
And while we’re on the subject of the formal organization of 2-dimensional space, I would be deficient in my duties as the resident ... "Agent Provocateur" if I didn’t use this opportunity to fire another shot across the bow in the ongoing "home-school" vs "educated" battle for the heart and minds of the photographic public. The formal organization of 2-dimensional space (a formal characteristic that photography shares with painting) is much appreciated and highly regarded quality by the mucho-maligned "Art World" crowd. They are looking for something more subtle and intellectually/emotionally challenging than the standard, by-the-book type of composition. For those of you that feel backed into a corner by this statement, remember, this is just a matter of "taste". And besides, relax, you definitely have the upper hand in the audience-appreciation consolation race.
Reader Comments (1)
Very interesting, Mark. I wish I could collect and express my photographic endeavours so clearly.