drmatthes
Zeiss Addict
Thanx to FrankS, GREAT idea to open this thread!
Ok folks, for the hardliners, let's have a bit of theory.
Haiku originate from mediaeval Japanese court poetry, deriving from a short poem consisting of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables (I keep forgetting the name of that one), shortly after having been even more reduced to 5-7-5, forcing any author to stick to the subject as close as possible.
There were two developments of the Haiku in the following centuries, (i) an intellectual sort of party game in which the participants held dialogues or discussions in the 5-7-5 form and (ii) a meditative form of catching or snapping a moment in time with its impression to or expression from the author, and being strongly connected to the lapse of time, the seasons, the emerging and vanishing of all things and beings, and the minute illusion of a halt in that process one tends to feel in a moment, for example on new years day.
What could be more reminiscent of or similar to photography?
I have often thought of this when seeing photographs by Roger Fenton, Eugene Atget, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Manuel Alvarez-Bravo, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Philip Lorca DiCorcia, Bastienne Schmidt... (you name them!).
There is an essay by the late Susan Sontag I found quoted in a book about the history of photography in which she states that photography catches live moments but that in spite - or rather because of - that the resulting photographs themselves are dead, a mere illusion of bringing the lapse of time to a brief halt, so according to Sontag no photography can be done without this relation to time, illusion - and finally death.
Now this concept is extraordinarily and astonishingly close to the feeling of Haiku.
At this point, and on a historical basis, it is very important to emphasize that the most famous Haiku poets, like Basho and Buzon, were also of strong Buddhist faith, in which the identity of impression and illusion plays an important role - so far that one is confronted with the, at first sight, shocking sentence that the self and its longings are an illusion themselves, vain and void.
What remains is to catch and convey the feel of the moment and the sympathy for all the things and beings that are subject to time.
So there is a strong and firm philosophical concept underlying FrankS's idea of starting this thread.
Whoever has become depressed having read this: Hey, snap your rangefinder and take photographs of the weekend party, your children playing in the garden, your dog madly running after a piece of wood or anything and ENJOY!!! 😀
(Darn me, and what about the photo albums that end up being sold on the flea markets some fifty years later? - It's all in the concept of Sue & the Haiku... :angel: )
Ok, finally: there is another similarity between a Haiku and a photograph.
Not anything 5-7-5 is a good Haiku.
Not everything in the viewfinder is a good Photograph.
But if it's to do with the minute moment of essence in the lapse of time, then it is!
_______________________________________
Here's mine (no camera around anyway)
Pushing the button -
now you're forever frozen,
poor little blackbird.
Jesko
P.S.: Anyone into Sonnets? There was one guy in the thread complaining that Haiku are too far off the western tradition. I would recommend Sonnets 😉 !
Ok folks, for the hardliners, let's have a bit of theory.
Haiku originate from mediaeval Japanese court poetry, deriving from a short poem consisting of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables (I keep forgetting the name of that one), shortly after having been even more reduced to 5-7-5, forcing any author to stick to the subject as close as possible.
There were two developments of the Haiku in the following centuries, (i) an intellectual sort of party game in which the participants held dialogues or discussions in the 5-7-5 form and (ii) a meditative form of catching or snapping a moment in time with its impression to or expression from the author, and being strongly connected to the lapse of time, the seasons, the emerging and vanishing of all things and beings, and the minute illusion of a halt in that process one tends to feel in a moment, for example on new years day.
What could be more reminiscent of or similar to photography?
I have often thought of this when seeing photographs by Roger Fenton, Eugene Atget, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Manuel Alvarez-Bravo, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Philip Lorca DiCorcia, Bastienne Schmidt... (you name them!).
There is an essay by the late Susan Sontag I found quoted in a book about the history of photography in which she states that photography catches live moments but that in spite - or rather because of - that the resulting photographs themselves are dead, a mere illusion of bringing the lapse of time to a brief halt, so according to Sontag no photography can be done without this relation to time, illusion - and finally death.
Now this concept is extraordinarily and astonishingly close to the feeling of Haiku.
At this point, and on a historical basis, it is very important to emphasize that the most famous Haiku poets, like Basho and Buzon, were also of strong Buddhist faith, in which the identity of impression and illusion plays an important role - so far that one is confronted with the, at first sight, shocking sentence that the self and its longings are an illusion themselves, vain and void.
What remains is to catch and convey the feel of the moment and the sympathy for all the things and beings that are subject to time.
So there is a strong and firm philosophical concept underlying FrankS's idea of starting this thread.
Whoever has become depressed having read this: Hey, snap your rangefinder and take photographs of the weekend party, your children playing in the garden, your dog madly running after a piece of wood or anything and ENJOY!!! 😀
(Darn me, and what about the photo albums that end up being sold on the flea markets some fifty years later? - It's all in the concept of Sue & the Haiku... :angel: )
Ok, finally: there is another similarity between a Haiku and a photograph.
Not anything 5-7-5 is a good Haiku.
Not everything in the viewfinder is a good Photograph.
But if it's to do with the minute moment of essence in the lapse of time, then it is!
_______________________________________
Here's mine (no camera around anyway)
Pushing the button -
now you're forever frozen,
poor little blackbird.
Jesko
P.S.: Anyone into Sonnets? There was one guy in the thread complaining that Haiku are too far off the western tradition. I would recommend Sonnets 😉 !
