civilized ku # 2725 ~ a century (minus a few months) later
Friday, May 16, 2014 at 11:00AM 
fire escape ~ New York, NY • click to embiggen
Steichen / milk bottles ~ New York, NYPursuant to yesterday's entry in which I presented a few excerpts from Susan Sontag's writings, re: the medium and its apparatus, here's another which, IMO, very accurately forecast what transpired in the decades following her writing:
In photography's early decades, photographs were expected to be idealized images. This is still the aim of most amateur photographers, for whom a beautiful photograph is a photograph of something beautiful, like a woman, a sunset. In 1915 Edward Steichen photographed a milk bottle on a tenement fire escape, an early example of of a quite different idea of the beautiful photograph. And since the 1920s, ambitious professionals, those whose work gets into museums, have steadily drifted away from lyrical subjects, consciously exploring plain, tawdry, or even vapid material. In recent decades, photography has succeeded in somewhat revising, for everybody, the definition of what is beautiful and ugly ...
A few points: I don't if the preceding was written before or after the 1975 landmark exhibition, The New Topographics at the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, but it was certainly presented at or very closely to that date. However, that exhibition was the beginning of a ground breaking shift in, as Sontag wrote, "revising .... the definition of what is beautiful and ugly."
I would however, take issue with the idea that it revised it "for everyone". Of course, if by "everyone" Sontag meant (as quoted yesterday) "ambitious professionals, those whose work gets into museums, she was right on the money. I would also include in that everyone, institutional curators and gallery owners/directors. Without a doubt, the New Topographics aesthetic sensibility rules the Fine Art picture making world to this day.
Also without a doubt, my picture making truly follows in a direct line from those early practitioners of the New Topographics genre.
All of that written, what haunts me, re: my work, is the idea Sontag put forth in stating that ".... having an experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it, and participating in a public event comes more and more to be equivalent to looking at it in photographed form ... Today everything exists to end in a photograph."
I picture things on almost daily basis. One might even state, as Sontag wrote, compulsively. Not that I believe there is anything amiss in that endeavor but .... I have to wonder, as I have for quite some time, am I substituting pictures for actual experience?
Certainly, I make pictures because I am stimulated to do so by an actual experience - in Sontag's words, a public event* - which has captured my eye and sensibilities. However, I must admit that after making a picture, I seldom stop in order to smell the roses of that which triggered my picture making activity.
In fact, what I do, more often than not, is savor the finished result of that picturing, the finished image/print, after the fact of its making. One could accurately state that I appreciate, primarily but not completely, the picture more than I did the actual encounter with the pictured referent. And, I do not think that I am alone in this MO.
So, I have a question for all of you out there. Am I alone or do any of you do the same, i.e., appreciate the picture more than the public event that you witnessed and recorded?
ANSWERS PLEASE. After all, this works better as a two-way street of give and take.
*Public event does not mean an event such as a parade, concert, sporting game, or other gathering with a specific activity with a gathering of people. In Sontag's context, a public event simply means anything that can be seen and pictured - trees, water, flowers, cats, dogs, clouds, buildings, et al. Anything that is available to be seen. Like, as an example, the fire escape pictured in this entry.
Reader Comments (7)
No. I often take photographs at public events that I do not enjoy. I have a dislike of parades and processions and there is one in particular in my locale that contains elements that I find offensive but I enjoy taking photos of it. I am after something that I haven't been able to capture but the act of photographing this particular event has led me to a a better understanding of it and, dare I say it, more tolerance of it.
On a more general level I find that I don't indulge in the sort of snapping that leads to posts on Facebook or Instagram (I don't partake in either) or snapping in museums at a famous work or art. I photograph when I want to understand something better. I find it an analytic activity and not a substitute for enjoyment.
I recall reading Sontag as a painful experience. It left me with the feeling that she really did not like photography at all. Her observations went far beyond what I'd describe as reasonable thinking and into something I'd describe as pejorative. I drew far fewer conclusions than she did but what do I know, I'm not a critic. I do know however that the creative aspect of looking, of framing, of making a picture, and later printing it is what does it for me. It's the creative act unrelated to subjective sidebars related to culture. It's the personal and the creative aspect without judgement.
I quite often experience a similar conflict - though more in the past than now. I gradually realised that to make decent pictures I need to be in the right frame of mind and that I can't really switch in and out of it quickly. So I have to either go out with the intention of making photographs or go out for some other purpose - whether it's shopping, work, or time with the family. I might sometimes carry a camera when the primary goal isn't photography but it's more likely that I'll see things and make a note to return than actually manage to make a picture worth saving.
It was Dorothea Lange who said that “The camera is an instrument that teaches people to see without a camera” and it was Diane Arbus who said “I really believe that there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them”. Then in an introduction to a book of Atget's photographs John Szarkowski said “All of us, even the best mannered of us, occasionally point, and it must be true that some of us point to more interesting facts, events, circumstances, and configurations than others.”
I think there are good photographers out there who see things differently from the great mass of people – because they have a camera and taking photographs is what they do. The process of taking good photographs begins with 'seeing' and good photographers see more/better because they use a camera to record what they see (Dorothea Lange) and as John Szarkowski says, point it out to the rest of us. Maybe its just noticing things that generally go unnoticed but, if the photographer is any good, these things will have a value in being pointed out; our eyes will be opened by their seeing – something the rest of us wouldn't see if they weren't photographed (Diane Arbus) and would otherwise have remained hidden.
I think you might be creating a false dichotomy here – either we enjoy the moment or we stop and take a photograph and so miss the experience of the moment. There is much to be enjoyed in life without photographing it and there is much to photograph so that we better understand and appreciate life.
The photograph - absolutely. Once the picture's taken, I'm on my way.
And I'm with Mike C. on Susan Sontag. Reading "On Photography" (well, as much of it as I could stand) was like having root canal work done without benefit of anaesthetic.
>>appreciate the picture more than the public event that you witnessed and recorded?
I guess I just do not think about things that much, but now that you have proposed the question I have to say, I do often like the picture more than the subject. What attracted me to the image is the composition, light, color, curiosity. Often it is because I see something that most other people ignore yet it is pleasing to me. The photo is a way to capture that moment and point-of-view that is permanent.
I became aware of this very conflict quite early in my photographic 'career', and have always deliberately chosen to be without a camera now and then. Sometimes it's nice to just look at things!
Having said that, I've also done the opposite; taken my camera to an event which I expected not to enjoy, just to give me something interesting to do...