November. Vantage
Point.
I
took a while to present my stuff today because I was attempting to
reprise Szarkowski's final act. Vantage point on the face of it is
pretty straight forward, but he also provides some summary material
for the whole book including a definition of what a photographic
artist is all about. More about all that below and in the extras.
Simon
and I overlapped quite a bit with our approach to vantage point, I
wished to provide as many samples as possible, believing that we
learn visual things best from looking at lots of photographs. Simon
provided some carefully chosen images from his own work that gave a
more precise set of examples.
Greg
changed 'vantage point' to 'perspective' and quoted Szarkowski, “Much
has been said about the clarity of photography, but little about its
obscurity” as a springboard for his assertion that reality and
imagination rely on each other, - they interact. He showed us a set
of his own in-process imagery that combined origami with photography
- the constructed in the context of reality.
Homework,
I believe, asked for two images from the past year that for you best
exemplified what you got from the course. But I will provide an
update when I can get the exact wording. Or you could present images that relate to vantage point!
John
Szarkowski, in his book 'The photographer's Eye' has been placing
before us several aspects of the new art of photography that seem to
him to set it off from the older visual arts, “ ... an
investigation of what photographs look like, and why they look that
way.” Today we will be examining the last of these
characteristics - that of vantage point. We not only select our
subject matter but take our image from a specific angle. We select
our viewpoint and then capture, rather than create a synthesis as
would be more typical of a painting. Since, throughout the year we
have also been looking at portfolios of photographers who break with
this definition it is important to remember that Szarkowski is
working within the modernist tradition where photography first began.
Times change, the avant-garde moves the line forward into new
territory but the traditional approaches to photography still have
much to offer us all and may be revisited to find yet another
starting point when the present vogue begins to loose its sense of
purpose. For those of us who work with new ideas it is useful to
know, even if we reject them, where it all began and the qualities of
the foundation upon which we build new castles in the air.
Photography
has often presented, often relied upon, the unusual vantage point,
and in the beginning this strangeness disturbed viewers. To this day
through the multitudes of photographic images, our ideas about the
nature of reality are continually being challenged. We are still both
disturbed and excited. We see from another vantage point and receive
in the process another point of view.
Photographers from necessity
chose from the options available to them, and often this means
pictures from the other side of the proscenium showing the actor's
backs, pictures from the bird's view, or the worm's, or pictures in
which the subject is distorted by extreme foreshortening, or by none,
or by an unfamiliar pattern of light, or by a seemingly ambiguity of
action or gesture.
Photography
today is free to sample ideas from the long history of the visual
arts. Indeed, sometimes it seems that the camera, that potentially
expressive instrument, is simply used to document a scene created by
the artist, or to provide source material for photo-shopped
conceptual art. This, in Szarkowski's view, would seem to be a
failure to use the instrument well for what it does best and has
always done; directly recording the nature of reality - the thing
itself. However, the camera has always selected pieces of reality and
has always expressed the point of view of the photographer. The
present avant- garde of photography is simply an extension of, rather
than a departure from, photographic tradition.
Szarkowski
tells us that “An artist is a man who seeks new structures in which
to order and simplify his sense of the reality of life”. It may
seem a long stretch from Adam's and Weston's formal imagery to the
highly constructed and 'shopped' images or the simple 'selfies' of
the social media of the present day, but they all fit within his
definition. Times change and the camera has always held up the mirror
to whatever time it has found itself within.
The
influence of photography has been profound: we see reality, we
describe it to others, with thousands of photographs behind us
bending our perceptions. Not just other visual artists, but writers
and musicians make their images within this mind set. Even this
little essay could be seen as a series of snapshots: I expect my
readers to progressively 'see' my point of view.
Szarkowski
is working hard to make a special case for photography, but people
were making pictures long before photography arrived on the scene and
it is highly probable that the photographic image owes as much
to earlier forms of thought as present day photography does to the
photographic traditions of a hundred and fifty years ago.
But
Szarkowski is correct: the camera does have qualities that separate
it from other forms of visual art ( In fact through much of its
history photography was not considered capable of being art at all).
He makes a specialized case for a different way of seeing and making,
a particularly America one, even one that chooses certain
photographers he brands as characteristic and ignores others. Within
those narrow walls however, he has a sharply focused way of seeing
what photography is and can be. His ideas have been very influential.
He takes a series of slices and unfolds them for us. Finally we
arrive at the last slice: vantage point.
What
is our vantage point as we click the shutter and how well does it
express our point of view?
Extra
1
When
I began to seriously think about 'vantage point' I once again made
the mistake of thinking that this was simply Szarkowski stating the
obvious. Only when I started shooting in preparation for this lecture
did I discover how I unconsciously use vantage point. How my images
are often very finely honed to satisfy some important aspect of my
visual mind; one that does not usually begin with a concept developed
with words and then seeks an illustration for it, but is strictly
visual thinking seeking formal visual satisfactions. Finding the
precise vantage point and pausing with my finger on the shutter
release until everything in my viewfinder is correctly arranged,
until some special little relationship has perfectly set itself up
is, it turns out, the inner key to many of my most personally prized
photographs.
My
granddaughter accidentally strikes an interestingly dynamic pose atop
a driftwood stump in Ruckle Park, but I do not take the photograph
until I can line up the distant beacon in the triangle of her knee.
The 'negative space' is integrated into the composition. Value added!
The
two arbutus trunks bend to form a strong graphic shape. I visualize
how this would look in black and white, but before clicking I
organize the image by minute adjustments in my vantage point so as to
place the distant Beaver Point in precisely the right visual position
in the V of the tree. The composition falls into place. Satisfaction!
My
son in law and granddaughter are ahead of me, walking far out on
Rathtrevor Beach. The stripped down landscape at this low tide, all
beach and sky, places their figures in the context of immensity. But
before I click the shutter I dodge to the left so that their figures
are dead centre to those of two other couples in the distance. From a
potentially weak and floppy kind of distant image I have created
something of geometrical precision. Sea, beach and the line that
divides them, and a three dimensional triangle linking the figure
points. I have made a strong and ordered picture from this scene.
Yes!
The
light is soft, the scene indistinct; the camera has difficulty
auto-focusing and so I focus manually on the white seagull. Here is a
floating world wrapped in Turner-esque light, so I purposely leave
the gull in an off-centre, intermediate place in the composition to
emphasis the mood and click away. Later, I sharpen the waves in the
foreground. A high key composition, vague, soft, dreamy... a
reflection of the moment itself!
In
my own mind these picky little visual alignments make art out of
'reality'; make intentional imagery of the kind Szarkowski describes:
“An artist is a man who seeks new structures in which to order and
simplify his sense of the reality of life.”
(
We notice “An artist is a man....” and mentally translate more
inclusively and correctly as “Artists are those who...”) :)
This
quality of order and structure in art ( and we are studying ART
photography remember) works on a variety of levels. At the craft
level we may simply apply a conventional rule of composition to
whatever image we make - the rule of thirds for example –
irrespective of what we may wish to communicate. Perhaps we have
nothing else in mind than superimposing a familiar structure on our
piece of reality that will supply our and our viewer's mind with a
satisfying sense of order. Art, in comparison, seems to be vague and
intuitive, shy of formulaic solutions and yet, even as it seeks to
poke us in the eye and wake us up, it still needs to find the right
structure for the idea it wishes to communicate. That is why it is
valued so highly of course, each work is, ideally, an individually
perfect solution to communicating a specific idea.
I
wrote a little piece on Dragongate to go along with my beach photos:
Extra
2
The
other ( rainy) day I walked with a friend down at Indian Point and
took a series of photographs which capitalized on her yellow
rain-gear. I used a variety of vantage points and was also careful
not to include her face so there would be no problems with copyright
permissions etc. Also, no facial identity made her more universal,
less specifically an individual and easier for us to both identify
with and yet see the figure as part of the overall composition.
Here
the figure is more dominant but turns away to lead our eyes too into
the scene. From this vantage point we look over her shoulder and are
invited to see it through her eyes. The figure has a function in the
composition.
The
figure is small and isolated in a lonely grey seascape. My distant
vantage point and wider angle lens emphasizes this and expresses my
point of view about our human place within the reality of the world.
The distant ferry is an important visual element here because it
leads the eye ( and thought) from figure to ferry thus completing the
third leg of the triangle composition begun by coastline and branch.
Turns
out that vantage point is the angle from which one takes the photo
and also the degree of zoom or how close we are. They work together.
Viewed
through a screen of branches and the last back-lighted tattered
leaves of Fall, the seascape is much more expressive than if it was
photographed without this compositional framing devise. Vantage point
is a powerful and expressive photographic technique.
Extra
4: Visualization: from vantage point to point of view.
In
my photo presentation I showed a number of images, my own and those
by more experienced photographers, and was struck by how the ability
to pre-visualize was present in the finished images. In particular,
the powerful photo of John and Yoko, by Annie Leibovitz, taken
earlier on the day he was shot to death, suggests a degree of
intuition of all concerned that is weirdly prescient.
My
own sketch for a book illustration project, first in pencil and then
photographed and placed in Lightroom' for the tonal work, requires
the ability to visualize and build a scene from scratch, and yet
photographic seeing may have been influential in choosing the angle
of view, the perspective and the light. How much more 'real' the
cabin seems because it in the guise of a common photographic vantage
point using a wide angle lens and yet how different it is from a
photograph in execution.
The
images from David Blackwood of his childhood memories of Wesleyville
on the far east coast of Newfoundland were chosen because the
photograph's chief value over time has been as a documentation of the
present for its value in the future. Blackwood uses his memory rather
than a camera to create images of a vanished way of life. The
question could be, as Szarkowski mentions, to what degree has the
photographic tradition influenced the engravings presented here? How
much have old b&w images influenced the artist’s way of
presenting his personal perspective?
When
making a photograph I know that I pre-visualize the finished image
even as I see the photograph I wish to take, and adjust my shoot to
suit: this is where vantage point blends with view point and then
becomes a personal point of view or 'take' on the world. I know that
this process is not unique to me but is a skill common to most
photographers. Can it be learned or is it built into us individually
from the beginning?
Extra
4 Rational versus intuitive.
What
is art? Questioned, Picasso answers: “ Even if I knew I wouldn't
say!”
The
artist paints, dances or composes his revelations.... For artistic
intuition emanates from the cosmos and embraces the whole world.
Colour
creates Light. Studies with Hans Hoffman Tina Dickey
Flat
grey sky, a long strip of black islands and something dark and ill
defined on the sea's edge behind the crest of a breaking wave. For me
this has a power to set my teeth on edge. It is a disturbing image
out of all proportion to “dark day, ferry wave”. There are some
images that Jung would describe as coming from our remote human past
that bring up strong reactions. Perhaps a great white shark, an Orca,
or a crocodile surges out to snag us off the shore and our first
instinctual reaction is out of proportion to the present reality. We
feel it, even though we may not be able to tell the reason why
through standard compositional analysis or through ideas about what
constitutes a 'good photograph'.
One
of the problems involved in teaching the arts is that on the one hand
an instructor wishes to present information that people can get their
minds around, and on the other to shrug and say that really there are
no rules and the whole process is intuitive and mysterious.
Szarkowski performs a series of cross sectional scans of photography
and step by step presents us with some conclusions that with effort
and practice we can incorporate into our own way of seeing. Well and
good, and thank you for this John. How is it then that often as not
the images that touch us do not seem to follow rules at all? Or that
we seem to take our photos intuitively and only later analyze them in
terms of composition. In photography the `thing` we capture is all
important, as though we the photographers are at the mercy of
powerful chance, as though our subject has us by the neck and draws
us like an arrow in a bow to the final shutter release. Weird stuff,
and irrational, but in the end it is not wholly fancy equipment or
practical training that produces the most telling images.
Extra 5
'What, how and why' and
Szarkowski's emphasis on 'reality - the thing itself'.
An
artist is a man who seeks new structures in which to order and
simplify his sense of the reality of life. For the artist
photographer, much of his sense of reality ( where his picture
starts) and much of his sense of structure or craft ( where his
picture is completed) are anonymous gifts from photography itself.
The photographer's Eye. John
Szarkowski
When
we ask “what is art or who is an artist?” we can get confused by
the variety of definitions. Szarkowski was the curator at the Museum
of Modern Art so we have to take his definition seriously, even as we
recognize that here he is cutting it to fit the new form of art -
photography. In an era dominated by abstraction he makes a case for a
unique photographic art form oriented towards reality. He presents
those qualities that mark photography as different from abstract and
non objective painting.
One
way of understanding why he puts so much emphasis on reality
is to think of our human drive to make images, which has been an
important part of our behaviour as far back as we can imagine, as
central. In the past and in the present we as individuals and as
societies see the world around us and we ask the question “What
is this thing we experience as reality?” We explore this by making
images, by music, by dance and through language. So, there is the
world out there but we are part of it too and our human way of
dealing with it is also part of reality.
If
we ask what and why this reality is, we touch on
religion and in the visual arts of Christian western societies for
the past two thousand years this tie has been very strong. If we ask
what and how this is, we touch upon another important
way of approaching reality – through the magnifying lens of
science.
Szarkowski's
important way of defining photography, by concentrating on what
and leaving the other questions to be imagined by the viewer is
well suited to photography and its instrument the camera, which
records in detail – the thing itself. His ideal photographers are
ones like Weston and Adams who, theoretically at least, favour clear,
sharp images of nature in all its forms: reality. And that at least
is a narrow, clear cut way of defining photographs and relating them
to the larger world of the visual arts.
Now,
he is aware that an individual photographer does not work in
isolation, that he too is immersed within a society and is influenced
by other photographs and photographers. We all start by confronting
reality ( the what) but how we see it and how we take its
picture is conditioned by every other image we see around us. (Just
go to a photo site like photo.net and see how closely all images
conform to one another) . Hence his insistence on the Modernist
agenda to seek “ new structures”. He tells us that photography
works well when it is keyed to reality and that each of us is
responsible for finding our own original ways of recording its image:
that's the art.
A
lot of effort in society goes into arguments about various
definitions of art and this is part of a natural process of finding
'new structures' and is a central tenet of Modernist philosophy that
has been a standard in photography since it was invented. We are
inheritors of this 'progressive' way of thinking and it pervades all
aspects of western societies. In science we pursue 'how' and ask it
to provide newer and more refined answers. Religions are expected to
explain the 'why' of our lives in regularly updated and more modern
ways.
Art
photography, Szarkowski seem to be insisting, should concentrate on
keeping a clear vision of reality ( the what), and
photographers need to focus on Seeing first and foremost and using
their cameras to clarify, record and communicate 'the thing itself'
to society as a whole. This would place the photographer within the
role that western artists have occupied since the first cave
paintings in Europe thousands of years ago: makers of 'structured'
images that reflect the reality of the world*.
*The
first point to grasp is the immense fecundity of humans in
producing objects of art. I argue here that art predated not only
writing but probably structured speech too, that it was closely
associated with the ordering instinct which makes society possible,
and that it has therefore always been essential to human happiness.
ART. A new
history. Paul Johnson
Extra
6: Peering through the doors on perception
The
most important duty of all is to look at art long and often, and
above all to look at it with our own eyes. Facts are external and
need to be learned. But the love of art is a subjective phenomenon,
which comes to us through our subjective eye, and no expert should be
allowed to mediate. In the end, our own eyes are the key to making
art our guide and solace, our delight and comfort, our clarifier and
mentor. We should use our own eyes, train them, and trust them.
from
Art: A New History. Paul Johnson
We
are at the end of a year's study of Photographic art: with Bill we
have examined the American modernist writing about photography of
Szarkowski and learned to both value and question his point of view;
we have learned the practical aspects involved in making art
photographs through the eyes and practice of Simon, and finally with
Greg we have had our treasured beliefs challenged through works of
post- modernist photographers. We have peered through many and varied
doors on perception and are now set free to come to our own
conclusions and to develop our own perspectives and ideas about our
best personal practice.
The
above quote talks about viewing art but of course it applies even
more urgently to the makes of art, to us with our cameras. May
we look so hard that we begin to See and may we see so well that our
photographs take on a life of their own.