Chriscrawfordphoto
Real Men Shoot Film.
To me, photography's power lies in its ability to show people those aspects of life and the world that most people do not notice. I photograph to open people's eyes to the world that surrounds them and does not get seen or noticed. I've shown people photos of trees, buildings, landscapes, etc. here in Indiana that these people drive past every day, for years and decades. I can't remember how many times people have looked at one of my photos around here and asked where it was made, only to be surprised to learn that it is something they've been around through their entire lives without really seeing it!
If we are seeing millions of photos of the same rock or tree or whatever, it is because so few photographers are paying attention to the world around them anymore than ordinary people do. Too many people travel to exotic locations to photograph while ignoring their own communities.
Nescio
Well-known
What's the diference with doing a fashion shoot to finance one's personal work? Perhaps I'm wrong, but I cannot imagine a photographer earning lots of money in the 1930's or 50's either.
Chriscrawfordphoto
Real Men Shoot Film.
Back then photographers did not get rich, but they could and did earn middle class incomes doing work for newspapers and magazines. I'm talking about the USA. I don't know if that was true in España. Here's an example from more recent history. In the city I live in, there are two daily newspapers. Until a few years ago, each paper had 5 photographers on staff. Today, each has 2.
Nescio
Well-known
Guess you're right, but maybe "middle class" ain't what it used to be. Needs were different, and so were prices... And income, of course, but that is precisely what's being backwarded, and not only in photography.
Out to Lunch
Ventor
All considered, a grumpy old man post.
Exactly...
I agree completely. This is where the magic comes from, not technology.
RedLion
Come to the Faire
The Photocalypse
The Photocalypse
To understand what's happening in the world of photography, where it might be heading, and what functions it could serve in the future, we need a better understanding of what's happening in culture.
As the old steady-state norms of photography, art and culture become more chaotic we approach a bifurcation point, where the emergence of a new forms are possible. These will be forms of increased complexity which are capable of metabolizing the symbolic "food" which is flooding the collective culture.
As technology has marched on, the fundamentals of image creation have been made almost automatic and have become democratized. The next level up on the complexity ladder is the mastery of the fundamentals of aesthetics. This too is now becoming more common with the wealth of on-line information available, workshops, and the increased level of skill afforded by the lowered cost of practicing photography.
The next level up on the complexity ladder is the domain of meaning and the ability to elicit an emotional response. This stage requires a degree of sensitivity in the photographer-artist whereby he/she is capable of consciously or intuitively recognizing the affective "charge" that's present in any given photographic moment. For Bresson the "charge" was found in the decisive moment. An example from the book “Bystander: A History of Street Photography”:
What carries an affective charge for people is what draws them to the subject and themes which they tend to photograph. The next level up in complexity is the ability to recognize the "charged" moment, the scene, the subject, the theme in real time, and to capture it in a way in which some some element of this charged image can be communicated.
Now the case can also be made, that in our supercharged high-tech visual mass-culture society we are all awash and overwhelmed with charged imagery in the form of sophisticated advertising and other forms of persuasion and "entertainment." And yet, these tools of visual persuasion are also becoming democratized. We are all becoming more sophisticated in recognizing the overt and covert forms of persuasion that we're all swimming and breathing in and in many cases we're mimicking some of this in our photographic endeavors as well as we copy one style, fad, and affectation after another.
So what's one result of the democratization of image capture, composition, persuasive forms, and stylistic affectations as we seek to express those charged images and visions which hold our attention?
A hint:
Excerpt from "The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance" by Joscelyn Goodwin
The Photocalypse
To understand what's happening in the world of photography, where it might be heading, and what functions it could serve in the future, we need a better understanding of what's happening in culture.
As the old steady-state norms of photography, art and culture become more chaotic we approach a bifurcation point, where the emergence of a new forms are possible. These will be forms of increased complexity which are capable of metabolizing the symbolic "food" which is flooding the collective culture.
As technology has marched on, the fundamentals of image creation have been made almost automatic and have become democratized. The next level up on the complexity ladder is the mastery of the fundamentals of aesthetics. This too is now becoming more common with the wealth of on-line information available, workshops, and the increased level of skill afforded by the lowered cost of practicing photography.
The next level up on the complexity ladder is the domain of meaning and the ability to elicit an emotional response. This stage requires a degree of sensitivity in the photographer-artist whereby he/she is capable of consciously or intuitively recognizing the affective "charge" that's present in any given photographic moment. For Bresson the "charge" was found in the decisive moment. An example from the book “Bystander: A History of Street Photography”:
“The decisive moment is the moment just before a decision is made, the moment of anticipation rather than conclusion [...] [the instant being described is the one] when you are just about to take off, the point at which the shortstop is ready to dash in any direction as he watches the batter step into the ball [...] Cartier Bresson’s photographs are of actions that are yet to be resolved. They are of events that are inchoate, stopped at just this point by the photograph, they remain forever irresolvable, equivocal, ambivalent.
That moment just prior to the taking of a definite direction towards resolution was a moment of maximum tension for Bresson - a moment in time, the image of which carried affective charge.
What carries an affective charge for people is what draws them to the subject and themes which they tend to photograph. The next level up in complexity is the ability to recognize the "charged" moment, the scene, the subject, the theme in real time, and to capture it in a way in which some some element of this charged image can be communicated.
Now the case can also be made, that in our supercharged high-tech visual mass-culture society we are all awash and overwhelmed with charged imagery in the form of sophisticated advertising and other forms of persuasion and "entertainment." And yet, these tools of visual persuasion are also becoming democratized. We are all becoming more sophisticated in recognizing the overt and covert forms of persuasion that we're all swimming and breathing in and in many cases we're mimicking some of this in our photographic endeavors as well as we copy one style, fad, and affectation after another.
So what's one result of the democratization of image capture, composition, persuasive forms, and stylistic affectations as we seek to express those charged images and visions which hold our attention?
A hint:
Excerpt from "The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance" by Joscelyn Goodwin
One of the most attractive inventions of the early Renaissance is the studiolo, a small, private, decorated study. [...] The studiolo is a place of retreat from the public world into a private universe. As we understand it here, it is not a study for writing, nor a library, a treasury, or a monastic cell, though all of these contributed to its ancestry.
What most distinguishes the studiolo from the cell of a monk or nun is its decoration. A cell might contain a devotional picture [...]; but the purpose behind a studiolo's decoration was quite different. It was not so much to take the owner out of this world, as to situate him within it. The decorations served as mirrors to qualities, aspirations, and knowledge already latent in the individual, but placed in a historical, moral, Hermetic, or cosmic context. The room was a model of the owner's mind and an exteriorization of his or her imagination.
It was Cicero who said that one should decorate one's study with images of the Muses, as well as of the morally inspiring divinities: Apollo, Mars, Mercury, Minerva, and Hercules.. [...] Mythologically, the Muses are the inspirers of men, not only of artists but also of rulers. The psychological truth, that behind every masculine achivement is the creative energy of what C.G. Jung called the anima, expresses itself in Belfiore by giving the nine Muses, for the first time in history, the lineaments of desire [eros = the love and desire for wisdom]
What most distinguishes the studiolo from the cell of a monk or nun is its decoration. A cell might contain a devotional picture [...]; but the purpose behind a studiolo's decoration was quite different. It was not so much to take the owner out of this world, as to situate him within it. The decorations served as mirrors to qualities, aspirations, and knowledge already latent in the individual, but placed in a historical, moral, Hermetic, or cosmic context. The room was a model of the owner's mind and an exteriorization of his or her imagination.
It was Cicero who said that one should decorate one's study with images of the Muses, as well as of the morally inspiring divinities: Apollo, Mars, Mercury, Minerva, and Hercules.. [...] Mythologically, the Muses are the inspirers of men, not only of artists but also of rulers. The psychological truth, that behind every masculine achivement is the creative energy of what C.G. Jung called the anima, expresses itself in Belfiore by giving the nine Muses, for the first time in history, the lineaments of desire [eros = the love and desire for wisdom]
Nescio
Well-known
Well, Mr/mrs. RedLion, perhaps you'd like to know that in today's newspeak the word "muse" refers more often than not to a prostitute. I think that is more in line with the OP's point.
Edit: Mercury is the divinity of merchants and thieves.
Edit: Mercury is the divinity of merchants and thieves.
Roger Hicks
Veteran
Nescio
Well-known
In Spain it sure does. "10 muses are waiting for you" in the classifieds. Perhaps in English it's different and I posted too fast, but since 19th century romantics started talking about Sappho (not her fault, obviously) as the "10th muse", the term got eventually more and more devaluated. Gala being Dali's "muse" as a clear example in time. Just like the word Diva...
But that's the destiny of many if not all words...
But that's the destiny of many if not all words...
RedLion
Come to the Faire
Eros and Chaos
Eros and Chaos
Yes, Charlie Sheen and his "goddesses" (his two live-in girlfriends, one of whom was a porn star, as I recall) would be another example. Nescio is right in the sense of the muses being related to Eros. BUT Eros has taken on different connotations throughout history.
In the modern era, Freud linked this exclusively to the physical sex function, but when Jung had his break with Freud it was over just this point. The more general meaning of the term "Eros" is that of a longing or desire, the object of which can be anything from physical (sex), to mental/emotional (love & beauty) to the spiritual and transcendent.
So the apparent corruption of the term "muse" has more to do with modernism than anything else. And photography, as one of the arts, illustrates the wide variation and plurality of expressions of Eros. As photographer's manifest those images which carry charge for them, the whole pantheon of the gods and goddesses are being expressed in art, expressed as the whole spectrum of Eros from the profane to the terrifyingly beautiful.
The possible emergent that I'm speculating on is the possibility for photography to begin to transcend it's own content orientations and begin to take on it's semiotic role of "pointing" in a more conscious fashion. Sign -> Signified -> Referent. In other words, one possibility is for mass numbers of folks to become more consciously aware of the affective nature of the images, what they might be pointing to and the style in which they do so.
A gross example:
What new forms will emerge to reorganize and metabolize this (psychic, social, cultural, political, economic) energy, no one can predict with certainty, but I'm fairly confident that photography will be on the front lines of whatever is trying to come into manifestation.
Eros and Chaos
Yes, Charlie Sheen and his "goddesses" (his two live-in girlfriends, one of whom was a porn star, as I recall) would be another example. Nescio is right in the sense of the muses being related to Eros. BUT Eros has taken on different connotations throughout history.
In the modern era, Freud linked this exclusively to the physical sex function, but when Jung had his break with Freud it was over just this point. The more general meaning of the term "Eros" is that of a longing or desire, the object of which can be anything from physical (sex), to mental/emotional (love & beauty) to the spiritual and transcendent.
So the apparent corruption of the term "muse" has more to do with modernism than anything else. And photography, as one of the arts, illustrates the wide variation and plurality of expressions of Eros. As photographer's manifest those images which carry charge for them, the whole pantheon of the gods and goddesses are being expressed in art, expressed as the whole spectrum of Eros from the profane to the terrifyingly beautiful.
The possible emergent that I'm speculating on is the possibility for photography to begin to transcend it's own content orientations and begin to take on it's semiotic role of "pointing" in a more conscious fashion. Sign -> Signified -> Referent. In other words, one possibility is for mass numbers of folks to become more consciously aware of the affective nature of the images, what they might be pointing to and the style in which they do so.
A gross example:
- The sign is the photograph.
- The signified is the thoughts and emotional charge (affect) generated in the viewer which points towards ... what? There's the individual response (what Barthes called the "punctum") and there's the collective-cultural response (the "studium").
- The referent is the what that particular form of Eros is pointing to.
What new forms will emerge to reorganize and metabolize this (psychic, social, cultural, political, economic) energy, no one can predict with certainty, but I'm fairly confident that photography will be on the front lines of whatever is trying to come into manifestation.
rkm
Well-known
What a post Red Lion. I'll be digesting that for some time.
v_roma
Well-known
Interesting discussion. Maybe what Pickett is alluding to, in part, is that photography no longer seems to require you to be extremely skilled with your tool? As it did in the past and for other art forms as well. Great painters had to be masters of their tools as well as have artistic vision. Are we at the point where it's all about artistic vision because the act of taking a photograph itself is no longer a challenge? Is that good or bad? Is something lost in that process?
Roger Hicks
Veteran
Ming Rider
Film, the next evolution.
The same thing happened 10 years ago in the music industry.
Musicians would spend hours perfecting just one part of a track, repeatedly recording a drum sound, or a vocal part etc. It became over-refined and impure.
And then The White Stripes came along. A drummer and a guitarist/vocalist. Distortion, mistakes and an [apparently] not very good drummer OR singer. Brought the Blues and Rock back to it's roots.
The same is happening daily with photography. I did it 6 months ago. Sold ALL my digital kit and now have one film camera and one lens.
No I'm not digging up the old film v digital debate and neither should you all.
Musicians would spend hours perfecting just one part of a track, repeatedly recording a drum sound, or a vocal part etc. It became over-refined and impure.
And then The White Stripes came along. A drummer and a guitarist/vocalist. Distortion, mistakes and an [apparently] not very good drummer OR singer. Brought the Blues and Rock back to it's roots.
The same is happening daily with photography. I did it 6 months ago. Sold ALL my digital kit and now have one film camera and one lens.
No I'm not digging up the old film v digital debate and neither should you all.
Roger Hicks
Veteran
rkm
Well-known
Democratization is happening in a lot of fields. I have spent a lot of my life as a musician, and sometimes as a music producer. I've been excited by technology and have at times lamented the aesthetic changes that gave come with it, and the demise of things like real recording studios. It has become harder to make a living from it over the years.
The overall trend since the advent of the digital audio workstation has been toward perfection. Cutting and pasting many takes, using auto tune on melodic parts, beat detective on drums. Bad musicianship can be made to sound reasonable. There is also a pressure as a producer to use the tools to meet this false idea of perfection. The result is a sea of reasonable sounding music which lacks any real emotional resonance.
In many ways the public have been trained to expect perfection. Their ears can't tolerate an average singer who doesn't quite nail every note. HOWEVER, I believe the public can be literally gobsmacked when they encounter a highly skilled vocal performer who has achieved a different kind of perfection: who can use the notes in-between the "right" ones; who can phrase in and around the beat; who has something to say. Combine that with a great band playing in real time together, and it's something that stands in complete contrast to prevalent aesthetic.
I'm a novice at this photography thing, but wonder if this notion of a different kind of perfection is relevant?
The overall trend since the advent of the digital audio workstation has been toward perfection. Cutting and pasting many takes, using auto tune on melodic parts, beat detective on drums. Bad musicianship can be made to sound reasonable. There is also a pressure as a producer to use the tools to meet this false idea of perfection. The result is a sea of reasonable sounding music which lacks any real emotional resonance.
In many ways the public have been trained to expect perfection. Their ears can't tolerate an average singer who doesn't quite nail every note. HOWEVER, I believe the public can be literally gobsmacked when they encounter a highly skilled vocal performer who has achieved a different kind of perfection: who can use the notes in-between the "right" ones; who can phrase in and around the beat; who has something to say. Combine that with a great band playing in real time together, and it's something that stands in complete contrast to prevalent aesthetic.
I'm a novice at this photography thing, but wonder if this notion of a different kind of perfection is relevant?
Nescio
Well-known
@RedLion
Bueno, my memory isn't one of the best, nor was it when I was young and preparing my high school exams with The Ramones (capitals allowed, as they're no gods) banging my brains out on my head phones. But if I remember well - and I don't have all my library here with me in Spain - the strenght of eros (no capitals, please, never challenge the real ones) that lies in what you call "longing or desire", is precisely it's weakness in the sense that desire never gets fullfilled.
Now, that would be a nice or even common analogue of any artistic pretension (just look at all these artists that never care nor want to look back on what they've made), in the sense that true art is "like an arrow about to hit the bulls-eye just before it gets released". And that's about tension and intention.
So far so good. I think I more or less understand what you're talking about. But on what I disagree is your perception of a posible cognitive sublimational outturn or result of the popularization of photography.
Instead of the zen-like object/subject identification of the arrow analogue, nowadays things more and more have become like "pulling the trigger" of a machine gun. The erotic or "functional" desire, at least to me, seems to be on its way back. There will be exceptions, of course. But since you state that "photography begins to transcend it's own content orientations", others will say that "content begins to transcend photography". The difference is more than subtle; yours points towards transformation, the 2nd towards the end of it, in line with the OP's statement.
I do agree with you that the "form factor" (my words) has become more "transparent" (yours). But I don't agree that this necesarilly leads to a more "virtualized, etherialized, more abstract" (yours again) view (sic) of, well of what, reality?, virtuality?
Personally, I feel that the recent overkill of images - in plural and of any kind - is killing the image "an sich" or "in itself". Compare it to a renaissance painting. These days we can only "read" the picture with a history book and a bible, though we can, perhaps, appreciate its technique, trace and so on. Reading images of our time requieres a lot more than that in the sense that there are no clear references anymore. No history books, just your "average" (pun intended) contemporary references that flow as fast as the Niagara Falls.
All that said, truth is that I'm more of a literature kind of guy, and I feel perfectly comfortable when saying that "I know many a word that is worth a thousand images" (both in a poetical as in a semantical way).
Nescio
PS: sorry for my English; I know it's good enough to say "hello" on the street, but it costs me a lot to put my thoughts into words.
Bueno, my memory isn't one of the best, nor was it when I was young and preparing my high school exams with The Ramones (capitals allowed, as they're no gods) banging my brains out on my head phones. But if I remember well - and I don't have all my library here with me in Spain - the strenght of eros (no capitals, please, never challenge the real ones) that lies in what you call "longing or desire", is precisely it's weakness in the sense that desire never gets fullfilled.
Now, that would be a nice or even common analogue of any artistic pretension (just look at all these artists that never care nor want to look back on what they've made), in the sense that true art is "like an arrow about to hit the bulls-eye just before it gets released". And that's about tension and intention.
So far so good. I think I more or less understand what you're talking about. But on what I disagree is your perception of a posible cognitive sublimational outturn or result of the popularization of photography.
Instead of the zen-like object/subject identification of the arrow analogue, nowadays things more and more have become like "pulling the trigger" of a machine gun. The erotic or "functional" desire, at least to me, seems to be on its way back. There will be exceptions, of course. But since you state that "photography begins to transcend it's own content orientations", others will say that "content begins to transcend photography". The difference is more than subtle; yours points towards transformation, the 2nd towards the end of it, in line with the OP's statement.
I do agree with you that the "form factor" (my words) has become more "transparent" (yours). But I don't agree that this necesarilly leads to a more "virtualized, etherialized, more abstract" (yours again) view (sic) of, well of what, reality?, virtuality?
Personally, I feel that the recent overkill of images - in plural and of any kind - is killing the image "an sich" or "in itself". Compare it to a renaissance painting. These days we can only "read" the picture with a history book and a bible, though we can, perhaps, appreciate its technique, trace and so on. Reading images of our time requieres a lot more than that in the sense that there are no clear references anymore. No history books, just your "average" (pun intended) contemporary references that flow as fast as the Niagara Falls.
All that said, truth is that I'm more of a literature kind of guy, and I feel perfectly comfortable when saying that "I know many a word that is worth a thousand images" (both in a poetical as in a semantical way).
Nescio
PS: sorry for my English; I know it's good enough to say "hello" on the street, but it costs me a lot to put my thoughts into words.
paulfish4570
Veteran
post-modernism holds that every person has a story and every story is equal. i submit that if this is true, then every photo made by any person is the equal of any other photo.