a little thought / (documentary) photography

the reflexion of simonsawsunlight is interesting and I hope all the comment inviting him to stop thinking are just for fun. A thinking guy is not necessarely solitary, a non thinking one doesn't know his lonelyness.

btw the souvenir picture is georgous :)

concerning documentary and photo, I never believe in any objectivity, and I think it is better so, at least subjectivity can't claim being a factual truth
 
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I guess I started my engine too fast :D

well you know, it is always a bit hard to separate 2nd degree and 1srt in a text written in a foreign language :D
 
retnull said:
Simon, check out Vilém Flusser's "Towards a Philosophy of Photography" (1983). Really brilliant. Flusser has a unique account of the history of the relation of text and image, and an explanation for the special significance that seems to adhere to images. (He does not mention rangefinders, unfortunately.)
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thank you, I'll check it out when I finally made it through that book about photographical metaphores, the 'street photography now' book, the summer/spring 2010 issue of 8 magazine and the autumn 2010 issue of 'private'. that metaphores thingy is heavy stuff, I tell you, I cannot digest more than a couple of pages at once! oh and yes, basically I'm supposed to study stuff, so I should read some of that too. gah. :eek:


JSU said:
Do yourself (and many others here) a favor and don't start quoting Sontag.
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I haven't read Sontag, but I could quote 'family guy' or a movie called 'lesbian vampire killers'.
 
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I never understood Sontag, what she was saying, what she wanted to say, and what the heck she was on about.


I enjoy reading Weegee, in his book The Naked City... Its like having a conversation with an old friend who can articulate your feelings like no one else.
 
It might be heresy or something, but I always thought of Sontag's "On Photography" as being related to metaphysical poetry. Very cleverly produced, but utterly devoid of content. And yes, I do have a copy of the Sontag book - even after my sister (a senior-lecturer in this sort of thing) warned me not to, and even worse I read it 2 1/2 times trying to find the clarity I'd previously missed.

This is more applicable to Planet Earth, imho.
 
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Oh, but photography DOES have a grammar: film, light, dark, viewfinder dimensions, shutter speeds, apertures, focal length ...
And every photographer is an editor as well as a writer. The "writer" has to make decisions that go into a composition: what to leave in, what to leave out, what to accentuate, what not to accentuate. The "editor" does the post-shot processing and ultimately decides whether a photo is to be displayed.
If I had to choose a written form with which to favorably compare photography, it would be poetry ...
 
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Roland Barthes is often quoted in the book, in fact he and benjamin are constantly swirring around me, they're very important for photography and cultural studies alike.
 
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Photography is allways a language with a grammar. The grammar is created by the photographer alone. The big question is whether the photographer is able to make his grammar understandable to the onlookers. And is the grammar his own? Maybe he is just copying the others?
 
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