Magnum Blog / Vermeer'esque lighting or the Munch'ian emotion

Vermeer'esque lighting or the Munch'ian emotion

© Mikhael Subotzky/Magnum Photos © Francisco Goya The blog competition from a month ago looking at the relationship between Magnum photographs and paintings has gotten me thinking. I thoroughly enjoyed the connections that were made, but I was reminded of one of my pet-hates when it comes to much recent photography - referencing for referencing's sake. Now this is clearly not the case with most of these Magnum photographs where a less self-conscious connection exists, I think its still worth discussing in relation to contemporary photography. It seems like the surest way to get your photography noticed is to state the visual reference to historical painting, or the reference to Debord or Deleuze. I recently received a press-release in the mail where the photographer claimed affinity to both Wittgenstein and Foucault. Is that combination possible!? While I have nothing against intelligently and historically framed photographic content, I just start to bristle when these feel like they are what they are just for the sake of the ability to cite the reference, or because that is what everybody else is doing. I love what Todd Papageorge says in a contemporary response to Capa - "If you photos aren't good enough, you haven't read enough". But please, lets all let that reading absorb slowly into our work rather then trying to trumpet this reference and that reference. In his advice to young photographers Donavon Wylie extols the importance of reading and literature. In the presentation of his work, you don't see him advertising this reference to Joyce and other obscure (jokes) Irish writers, but his work obviously displays a deeply subtle understanding of narrative and literary context which gives it an strength that goes far beyond visual exclamation marks or press-release citations. Its hard to go to a photography show these days without hearing art-world enthusiasts get excited about the Vermeer'esque lighting or the Munch'ian emotion! When I hear this, I wish that the tradition of photographic interaction with painting was better understood. I don't think anybody has more intelligently related to philosophy or the history of painting then Jeff Wall. I love the way his connection to historical painting is not based purely on a visual similarity, but rather then an in-depth interrogation of pictorial structure, as well as social, historical and metaphysical content. But now, just to contradict my own argument, here's a reference of my own that I should have entered in the competition. Completely unconscious of course - you are hardly able to think about getting into a Goya-like position in a cramped police cell at 3am in Beaufort West! Links » Mikhael Subotzky's Magnum Portfolio » Mikhael Subotzky's Books (Signed from the Magnum Store)

John Vink

Mikhael you're right: better to see guts with brains than brains without guts...

As to your face à face: not the same light... not the same light.

nigel amies

I agree Mikhael. It's all part of the pseudo-intellectualisation of photography that's been taking place over the last several years. I'm not sure where it comes from or why, but everyone seems to expect it - and everyone does it ad nauseum. You just can't make a photo without having to justify and rationalise it intelectually. Juries and curators are the worst, but other photographers play along with it too. Feels like existential insecurity to me. Let's just call a picture a picture and leave it to your imagination. But maybe that's what's lacking - imagination.

Ellen Rennard

Thank you for this post. Besides being a photographer, I've been a teacher of literature for over twenty-five years, and you're right -- literary influences, like any other artistic influences, must be absorbed, contemplated, and known deeply in order to manifest them in original and interesting ways. It isn't enough to toss off names or to quote with no understanding of the context. Perhaps part of the problem is that many people just haven't read enough. I recently came across an artist statement in which a photographer purloined Thoreau's phrase, "lives of quiet desperation" (with no nod to Thoreau, incidentally), and I can only wonder whether anyone else recognized the reference.

pierre yves racine

Dear Mikhael

Thanks for eventually writing on the blog.

What you wrote makes me think of a tendancy to dismiss artists' work by showing the similarities they have with former body of works.

For instance, in Arles, this summer, Jacob Aue Sobol's work on Tokyo was apparently said to be a copy of Petersen's work, particularly his work in Sète, France (which was shot in 2007, at the time Sobol was working in Tokyo....)

http://www.rue89.com/oelpv/2008/11/29/le-sombre-sobol-a-t-il-plagie-les-photos-du-morose-petersen

What do you think of this ??

david bowen

from my perspective EVERYTHING informs our practice.. cinima.. t.v... magazines.. painting.. houses.. personal history.. friends.. beer.. music.. parents.. beer.. that woman who preaches about god in nottingham market square.. and of course wine.

if it were not so how could we reflect what we see and how we feel about it?

i wonder if associations with painting have come to this level of late due to the high prices photography now commands, and the need to justify the expense.. i have always felt that it is up to the art buying public to call me an artist or not.. and for them to make associations is fine by me.
i guess the association game must also lend an indication of the narrators social position.. and so perhaps some are more influenced by champagne than, say beer.

for me, though, it's not a game i want to play - since i think it would be prohibitive to producing my own style to live in the shadow of an association my mind switches on..

david b

in the above i mean the high prices commanded for photographic prints, of course.
not commissions.. in no way commissions... sadly.

Joe

I wish more people would attempt to explore what they like and don’t like about an image without citing a photographer or a painter.

If you ever want to hear me raise my voice, go to dinner with me and a group of friends and wait until two individuals in the group find out they have the same obscure photography book and they start walloping about how great it is, .... but for the life of them neither of them can tell you with even a few descriptive terms why, … you just have to get the book, he says.

This has really happened to me, and it seemed then and it still seems now so utterly absurd. Maybe it’s because i never took an art class and maybe it’s because i only discovered photography a few years ago, but i find using only photographers to describe photography… well .... deeply infuriating and i guess that transcends pet-hate for me Alec ;-(

But if you follow any visual appeal to the origin, sooner or later you will be forced to use terms that humans used to describe these things before the cited artist was born.

i think it’s also a fallacy that you can distil anything to be just like a .. ‘fill in the blank’ .. when you are assessing any meaningful body of work,…. if it was just like .. ‘fill in the blank’ it .. would be very unlikely that it would be very meaningful.

but where do these conversations of visual appeal exist with words that real people use? What’s the generally accepted vocabulary available for discussing a photograph? Is it a list of emotions you feel when you look at it? Surely describing how a photograph makes you feel can’t be wrong, how you feel when you look at something is probably the most factual thing you can say about anything.

Is it some formulaic equation where you site the arrangement of features and the resemblance they have to other famous arrangements of features in other famous works? Surely this is a dead-end street, because short of an exercise in pattern recognition then nothing of true visual merit has been established.

The irony Alec, in my humble opinion, is that your image doesn’t have visual merit because it resembles the Goya painting. If that was the case why is Goya’s so visually moving? Who do we daisy-chain to next to establish Goya’s merit?

Why is it when we talk about both of these images that we don’t talk about the biblical imagery we’ve been steeped in, or the daily symbols we know? Or how we look at things in real life?

For example in both images we have a subject posed in a position we only universally recognise in two other places, in the middle of a corn field or in church on a crucifix, for me the bells start going off immediately… Then we have these victims opposite of universally recognised pointy aggressive features. In both of these images we have foreshadowing evidence that something seems to have happened before complimenting the evidence that something might happen now, we instinctually pick up these clues without referencing a past work, it’s called be human…

The white in Goya’s image is universal to us as peace and surrender and if you cover up the white collar on your victim Alec… Guess What?....the illusion totally changes to bad vs bad. The repetition of bars…. oppression, .... Goya’s repetition of rifles… oppression, .... only incidental to the pattern, but equally re-enforcing of the singular emotion coming from it…. This is a primordial narrative of good verse evil and oppressed verse the oppressor and it’s a motive that existed a thousand years before these images.

Goya had no problem with his dynamic range, but Alec, you were gifted with a nice histogram of tones, this nice histogram of tones is what I think of when I think something seems very painterly…

As far as the arrangement Alec, I think you’ve done yourself a disservice in the comparison, there’s much more of circular harmony in your image kept alive by the strong hard angles framing it. Goya’s is pretty east-west in flow and results for me in a more singular read.

Now of course this is pretty much exactly how I ‘feel’ when I look at these two images… and of course i feel pretty dorky describing them this way in front of people that do this for a living, but i do this as a point….. how are we supposed to talk about photographs?.. .. if you’re prevented from using a photographers name and you are more eloquent then my clumsy emotional attempt, how does the dialogue go? And by the way, where I can I read some of these exchanges between the people that do this for a living?

Sorry if this sounds a bit like a rant, but that’s only because it sorta is ;-)
..

Joe

Sorry... Mikhael... not Alec .. something about the tone of your writing Mikhael seems so familiar to me that i didn't think twice ;-(

i hope you two think highly of each other based on that comparison! and please take my knee-jerk response to typing that comment as evidence that it's a compelling article :-)

Cary

"an in-depth interrogation of pictorial structure" That's a nice line, rolls right off the tongue.

bobblack

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. "--Samuel Beckett

Emil Ihrig

Interesting . . . I can see Goya turning in his grave right now!

Mark Martin

This line is key: "But please, lets all let that reading absorb slowly into our work rather then trying to trumpet this reference and that reference". Anything but this degree of assimilation rings false, which I believe is your whole point.
Whether it be reading, seeing, meeting, et al , an artist is influenced not so much in part but rather most effectively in whole.
More often than not, a direct comparison,
most especially when intended for affect, reeks of a pseudo-intellectualism that holds visual communication hostage to the verbal.

Joe

More often than not, a direct comparison, most especially when intended for affect, reeks of a pseudo-intellectualism that holds visual communication hostage to the verbal.

i like that sentence Mark, I like it allot. But here's a puzzle, there's the concept of citation, citation by the blatantly self-promoting artist or other blatantly self-benefiting parties (e.g. the galleries)..

then there's the concept of edit... edit in that a photographer collected a series of similar topical images and needs to decide which one is the most powerful to show and which one is less powerful and gets cut, recognition of similar past imagery may impact this decision..

Do these same activities of ‘recognition’ of past powerful imagery run at odds with each other with regards to the benefit we collect from the current image?

I don’t think they do, but I think they behave in an inverse way with regards to implementation. Let me try to explain with the real, relevant and recent world, and let’s stick with the image of the crucifix.

Brent Stirton recently collected an essay of images related to the murder of gorillas in the Congo. We are fortunate to know loads about one of these images, it’s singular power was enough to collect a world press photo award,.... the story behind the image is compelling at the literal level and the metaphorical level,.... and there is no less that eight minutes of commentary given by Brent on the World Press Photo site providing the soulful account of what was going through his mind before, during and after the image was collected.

no where does Brent make the citation in that eight minute interview of the blatant similarities of this image to that of a fallen Christ, the crucifix, or the somber look of the disciples. Are the citable similarities there? Of course they’re there, subsequent to this image becoming popular there were loads of articles written about it.

And this is my point, the power of the subtle and sublime. If there is a connection to something that registers to us on a different level, that connection is best left alone because once it’s made conscious, then the wave of emotion collapses and intellect takes over, not a bad thing, but emotion at times runs at odds with intellect and emotion is sometimes more moving and relevant and dare i say.... True to us!… and for me art is a sport of emotion. This is why I like what you said so much Mark, you describe perfect this collapse from emotion to intellect.

So, in my opinion, show me someone that feels compelled to show you the similarities of an image to anything citable in any other forum than that of a portfolio review or during a post-exhibit dinner, and I’ll show you someone that is ether deflating an energy that’s best collected when it’s not decrypted.... or worse, I’ll show you someone that is trying to add energy to an image by citation, energy that was never there.

on a totally different note.. can someone run over to Bob Black's house and make sure he's ok, i think someone is using his computer to leave very un-Bob-like-in-length-and-emotion comments ;-)

David Lapointe

Well, this is an interesting topic. I must admit that I am one of those that compare photography to painting, with simple adjectives like Goya'esque or Bruegel'esque. Does it really matter? I don't think so, because both art are essentially visual. What is appealing to me in a picture, on the first sight, is the color, the contrast, the light, the framing, etc... Same thing with painting. It is the sensual side of images...

I am sorry, but an image never reminds me Marcel Aymé, Jonathan Swift, Balzac, le Marquis de Sade, Schopenhauer or an any other writers, nor famous musician. This said, I can figure some similarities between the work of painters, sculptors, movie director and photographers.

It is all about concept. It is a question of inconcious mental connections. It is absolutly normal to make link into your mind between similar works. Maybe some people said that kind of comments ('Goya'esque...') to show their knowledge. These people are, most of the time, unuseful people. But if a picture reminds me something else, it reminds me something else.

And whatever some people are trying to tell us in this forum, photography is not an intellectual art... it is emotional...

ps.: Sorry for my bad english...

Louis

Boris Mikhailov's Unfinished Dissertation my personal favourite when it comes to connecting philosophy and literature to photography, I've always found Wall a bit forced.

david b

honestly - photography does not remind me of paintings...
photos only really remind me other photos if i see a derivitive link..

i studied some art history and was tutored, in part, by a philosopher in collage and neither has informed my practice more than actual life.. actually getting out there and talking to people.
i guess after time my own little philosophies have come together nicely--

again - no problem here with people who choose to referance, and i have to teach students to do just that while they study... it's just a game i don't enjoy.

bobblack

no time no time to write...on a major deadline, and for me, beckett said it all....

so ok, i'll fail somemore and add this:

it doesnt matter how much some reads (for good or ill, i've read and still read ridiculously too much, same for how many stupid photography and art books i've swalled, since that's been my life since, well, who knows), but how they read, how they allow the words and stories and ideas and colors and kilns and bones to sword inside them, to prick their guts...i always always get nervous when people say "they dont read enough"...and i say that as a writer...read whatever and how much they want, just read the same way you fuck or get fucked: with life and breath and body....

anyway, as to LITERATURE influcencing PHOTOGRAPHY...ok, here is something for y'all...

from my Project about Portugal....Night Tree...for me, about my beloved Antonio Lobo Antunes...and in particular his book THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS....did i set out to photograph that novel, fuck know...did it sit inside me like a burning rash while i was there, fuck yea....

let bone and ash breath inside ya'll, what else do we have but breath :)))

here a pic from that series inspired by Antunes

http://www.flickr.com/photos/73821181@N00/448327470/sizes/o/

running
bob

gracchus

new here and this subject does fascinate me..and i'm not sure if what i write fits in here but as i have dabbled in photography and painting and sculpture it is suprising how the subconscious for me plays a role...is a little metaphysical i know but for me whatever we reproduce what is around us or read etc translates to what we create artistically wethere it be photographically or through painting..if you set up a scene based on a specific painting or scene in a book well that is something different....when you plan and when your spontaneous these are seperate issues for me..

Christopher Anderson

One the other hand, in addition to being influenced by literature and music, or literature IN music (I used to say that I wanted to do with pictures what Bavid Byrne did with lyrics), I am also influenced by and therefore referencing painting. I think I learned more about light and composition and even emotion and sense of movement and moment from painting than I did from photography.

Dan Sumption

Can anyone say "Tom Hunter"? The absolute bottom-of-the-barrel of "referencing for referencing's sake", and the fact that he was the first photographer to have an exhibition in the (English) National Gallery just rubs salt in the wounds.

Frank Nachtman

This issue is clearly all Jeff Wall's fault.

Ross Nolly

Christopher;
"One the other hand, in addition to being influenced by literature and music, or literature IN music (I used to say that I wanted to do with pictures what Bavid Byrne did with lyrics)"

I often say that I want my images to be like a visual version of a Pete Townshend solo song.. I'm still failing badly at it, but trying....

Overall i feel that all artistic influences colour your work and style. It's like a smorgasbord meal... you take a bit from this, abit from that and unconciously form your own style....

Mikhael Subotzky

It would have to be Bob Dylan for me - even thought it doesn't sound like the most inspiring or original of choices. In equal measure, I love the socially critical, the romantically depressed, the absurd, the manic, the young and naive, and the burnt old man, qualities of his songwriting. But its the sheer inability to define him that I love the most. If I could cram all of those elements into my photography, I would be a happy man.

Ross Nolly

Mikhael ;
Yea Dylan is a great choice too... Leonard Cohen, Suzanne Vega, Natalie Merchant, Keith Richards etc, etc, etc!!

marc davdidson

Garcia/Hunter for me...

"once in awhile you can get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right"

Patricia Lay-Dorsey

It was Edward Hopper who taught me about light. In September 2007 I happened to be in Washington, DC on the day an extensive Hopper exhibit opened at the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art. Until then I'd always thought of Hopper as an exemplar of the narrative of isolation/alienation. But that day it was his use of light & shadow that sent me scurrying onto the streets of DC in a wild search for what I saw as Hopperesque light. I followed his lead through two photo projects during the next three months. My eye was only seeing b&w even though Hopper was a master of color.

So, Mikhael, when you speak of photos & paintings in the same breath, I understand. Of course th fact that I was a painter for 30 years before getting serious about photography influences how I look at everything. But now it is only LIGHT that draws me into its web. Color is lovely but light is everything.

Patricia

bobblack

of the many who taught about light, for me, one of those who remains steadfast in my heart:

christopher wilmarth....

seek him.....

bobblack

as for music, how to begin to count (like the teeth in my skull) those who i carry everwhere i go...music, maybe more even than poets or painters or sculptors....for my daddy tossed me, in once a rain storm in maryland, a song....but since y'all dont give know him, another guy that sang to me in the rain...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flVEoNuEYgE

John Vink

Patricia, a reminder
photos graphein: light writing
photography: writing with light

Joe

Patricia... so true, when i figured out that light was the judge and jury with regards to what would be amplified in those frame lines, then a big piece of the puzzle was solved for me,....

…. there’s nothing worse than being drawn to subject matter but knowing the key features in that image will fall into the light spectrum that will be blown out with regards to the rest of the image or clipped in shadows by the rest of the image,… for me tonality of light is my new master, it’s what makes things seem ‘painterly’ it can make the mundane look spiritual and without it the unbelievable will just be clipped slop….

I’m going to get assaulted for saying this, but painters had it easy!!, they could just invent/exaggerate/control the light that wanted, they never had problems with dynamic range and were the first abusers of HDR!! ;-)

Chris, loved the talking heads 'citation'.... did you know the song 'Once in a Lifetime' was named as one of the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century by NPR and a song i find myself singing all the time ;-) in a good way of course!
..

david bowen

.-. there is water underground..

when i used to do street photos it was always plugged into a walkman.. and obviously when i mostly did work based around music festivals i was immersed in sound.. and i think it really helped me get more connected with what i was doing.
maybe removing a sence which helped the focus of another?

anyroad - it does seem from above that people are informed by whatever they do.. read, paint, or dance infron tof the mirror singing into a hairbrush
:ø)

bobblack

Joe, dude, i gotta take you to task my friend....as a "retired" painter, i'll just say that the thought "but painters had it easy!!, they could just invent/exaggerate/control the light that wanted, they never had problems with dynamic range and were the first abusers of HDR.."....is totally nonsensical...if not nonsense as well....first of all, photographers have the SAME latitude....and the "difficulty" of being a painter comes from the same commonwealth of the difficulty of being a photograher...using tools to excavate moments and ideas and gesture and objects as a way to speak upon things....

as for the "nothing worse than being drawn to subject matter but knowing the key features in that image will fall into the light spectrum that will be blown out with regards to the rest of the image or clipped in shadows by the rest of the image.."....

can i ask you to take a look at Moriyama, or Frank or Anders or, well, ok, 19th century photography my friend....

free your mind and your thinking, that shall be the beginning of the liberation of the image and your own photography :))

oi, im gonna go out on a limb and smile and touch that as just youthful enthusiasm...

what makes photography (any effort to create to capture to convolute to alcehmize) brilliant is it's limitless breadth.....

all the best
bob

Joe

Hey Bob from anyone else i would be having some to-and-fro fun, if just for some drama!, but you're not anyone else!...

so, more quickly I’ll say of course it was absurd to devalue one of the finest medias in the world to a population of slackers ;-) but I’m not above absurd :-) for the sake of some blood boiling!

But ironically Mr. Black, you picked the wrong tog for me to get thee to the library to check out, Professor…. for the last six months i’ve been working on a project (cowgate sketches) kept alive primarily because of Daido, after seeing the deliberate way he works when he's out shooting as well as the prints from his effort.... of course no where near the same caliber of results, but definitely the same magnitude of exploration with the dynamic range of b&w fast film! So i hope i can save the trip to the library at least on this count Mr. Black ;-)

Of course that doesn’t excuse my comment on painting, but you haven’t really convinced me it it was absurd with regards to DR and HRD that well Bob ;-) joking.. :-)
..

Patricia Lay-Dorsey

Regarding the "ease " of working with light vis a vis painters & photographers, I'd say it's an equally hard task. Photogos have to find it, and painters to create it. In both cases it is all too easy to get it just a shade off.

Patricia

dizi izle

ty man nice page

Christopher Anderson

Hey Joe, that is very cool to know (NPR and Taking Heads)! Thanks.
Am going hunting for that list now!

Meanwhile, a couple more musical influences (which lead to references) on my photography:

Fugazi
The Minutemen
Herman Dune

bobblack

about light, searching for light...

light (and the absence of light) is there inside, what is NOT important is WHAT LIGHT a photographer sees, but HOW a photographer sees and feels light....

moriyama:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1145/1391626611_14dbe856b8_o.jpg

my friend Oli, who has a thing or two to say about good and bad light:

http://www.olivierpin-fat.com

winogrand:

http://static.photo.net/attachments/bboard/00B/00Bj9z-22694784.jpg

c: Anderson:

Magnum Archive NYC74153

frank:

http://www.artthrob.co.za/01june/images/frank01a.jpg

etc etc...

GOOD LIGHT is not about "good photographic light" but about HOW a photographer SEES the light and imagines from that what can be accomplished......

CHRIS ANDERSON! :)))

amigo, sorry we missed u in nyc...hope to be there early 2009, following up on your muzik, me too, ditto Minutemen, and Ian (everything, minor threat and fugazi), thrown into the mix thses beloved ones:

Husker Du...just a reminder:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1sYN0PuRs4

and of course, beloved Pixies....(maybe Husker Du, Minute Men and Jesusmarychain, smiths, sonic youth, wire, echoand the bmen, rem, birthdayparty etc) made me the immature dad i still am ;)))))...

and by the way, have you see this DVD: heartbreaking:

WE JAM ECONO:

http://www.theminutemen.com/home.html

Watch it! :)))))

I saw them on this tour in Pittsburgh...or was it DC....who knows ;))))

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQbUEWBmcB4

bobblack

p.s, last link ;)))

my philosophy about photography:

"with a sponge and a rusty spanner..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iMeyKEOvBI&feature=related

bobblack

Joe/Chris a:

my comment is being looked at to make sure it wasnt spam (since i put lots of links: pics for Joe and Music for chris)...

it'lll make more sense once Martin approves the comment (lots of links)

CHRIS: ...we jam econo!!!! ;)))

running
b

bobblack

Joe: ok, who the hell knows how long it will take for my last post to surface since it's being reviewed ;)), but just a tease: i wrote you about what is light for a photographer....and offered some interesting links to moriyama, winogrand, c anderson, frank and my friend oli pin-fat.....u'll see soon :)))

chris a: ok, i left u some music from my youth heros: husker du, minutemen, echoandbmen, jesusmchain, smiths, rem, etc etc etc....where would i be without Mould and boon??....

ok, last:

one of my fave bands covering my highschool/college dream singers:

i wanna go home....running to write for dah....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtmS2ePSSdU&feature=related

Christopher Anderson

Excellent! Bob!
Great obscure Minutemen reference: we jam econo
let's close our eyes, repeat those lines and think about photography, ha!

Joe

Bob re: and offered some interesting links to moriyama, winogrand, c anderson, frank and my friend oli pin-fat.....u'll see soon :)))

if those posts don't show up Bob, please fire the links off in a e-mail.. i'm always interested in seeing a point made with some examples :-)

in the spirit of comparisons, puzzles of light, and including Anderson and Frank in the same string of words... it was a few days before i figured out what teasing me about your Mitt Romney flash in the car image Christopher...

…for some reason it makes me think of plate 30 from the Americans, the image with the three boys in the car at night…. Both your image Chris, and Frank’s were shot through the windshield at night, but both images seem like the glass between the lens and the subjects wasn’t there and also that the light inside the car looks more moody than light inside cars typically look.

with your image Chris i wondered how you got your flash through that window as if that window wasn't there…i would have expected a splash of back reflection, I actually wondered if you snooted and gridded the flash,... as far as Frank's image, I’ve just come to believe that the dome lights in the cars of that time had almost soft-box like qualities ;-)

bobblack

Joe:

this will be quick as today is the day i MUST finish my essay for David...and almost there, almost home...so, ok the original post i wrote last night with a few photographic links, including the link to Chris magnificent photo of Mitt romney that caused such a tempest here....that was one of the examples i offered....Light is not about Good Light ( like Hooper's paintings), although for many photographers that salivate and wet themselves over the "good" light...I know Trent P shoots only during specific times of the day, the beloved moment of the wolf, when the light is just right at day's end....and Aussie light too is a different matter...Dave Harvey has also made an extraordinary beautiful life's body of work working with that golden light and rich shadows....but....light isn't about Great light....light also means the absence of light, poor light, graying etc.....

as photographers the think is that we work with light, we work with shadow with hard light soft light manufactured light authentic light and the absence of it....

the most important point i guess that i am trying to make and i've written about many many times here and at LS and at DAH blog and in essays is that photography means only this: to use the properties of all light, good and poor, hard and soft, bright and opaque, dark and white, in order to open up a moment, a memory, a place, a reaction....an alchemy of time and thought and experience....

i could go on forever...but one does not have to master life, one does not have to use only ideal light, one does not have to harness their vision to the dictates of Adams to understand that light is a tool not the goal of photography....

too much categorization of an expression means the dumbing and the numbing and the castration of the art, of the story, and above all the life, our lives, that make up the algebra and calculus of photography...

running
cheers
bob

p.s. take a look at the links i've provided :))

Xavier Rey

excellent work !

Justin Partyka

Bob,

Very nicely said!

Of course that golden light has its place, and as you point out, there are photographers who depend upon it and who use it in special ways - Alex Webb is an important name for the list I think.

But I totally agree with you that light is just a tool and it is important that other qualities of light are considered special too.

As you'll see when you get the pdf I'm sending you, here in East Anglia I've gone the opposite route and like to mainly work in the overcast monochrome light of winter. There are some exceptions in my work, but that light is what excites me most, and when I feel the character of the place is best revealed.

I actually think that I struggle when photographing in places with the golden light, such as my work in Cadiz. When that golden light comes I rarely find the special moments.

I seem to recall reading somewhere once that HCB preferred to work in overcast light to avoid shadows. People rave about the golden light, but you don't really hear people waxing lyrical about those overcast days.

I wonder, are too many photographers caught up in the myth of the golden hour?

trent

Yes Aussie light is a different matter. You learn to work with what you have got and to make the best of those conditions. It is also part of the place , and important to a way of life. On a typical Australian sunny day, photograph anytime after 9am and before 4pm and all you get is big hats and black heads. ( I did experiment with this for a while )

I dare say Mark Powers images would look very different if he lived in Australia and chose only to photograph his own country. Either that or it would have taken him a very long time to accumulate a body of work under whitened skies.

So you learn to use what you have been given or you go somewhere else.

However,

One of the most crucial elements of my work aside from light is the exploration of memory.

Why i am drawn to pick up a camera and press the button. I am very interested in the role of the subconscious and the events that have shaped my life ,( and the nations) the hidden memories that lie down deep . And what triggers these forgotten memories to resurface in the form of a photograph. Either as something similar or something different.

Recently i had to give a talk at the Art Gallery of New South Wales about influences and my favourite things. When i was young i used to tape RAGE, an all night music video program on Friday nights and then trawl through them the following day, looking for the music that I liked.

As a result of this talk i went back through many of those early vidoes to find that unconsciously, several videos had influenced a lot of imagery in my own work.
Not only the imagery, but the structure I use to shape a body of work.
Random unrelated moments that when compiled in a certain way, form a completely different narrative.
So ten years later I found myself asking the question, could 3 minutes of video be responsible for the basis of a lifetimes work?

Radioheads Street Spirit certainly played a big part, especially in my Minutes to Midnight project.
Nine Inch Nails, I want to fuck you like an animal, was another gem clip.
The Smashing Pumpkins were always innovative, and later Muse.

And now where would my life be without Sigur Ros.

( For the talk i then used projections of several of the most influential videos beside projections of my photographs )

joe

My friends in the film industry tell me that exotic compositions and erratic, non-linear sequences are often born out of the experiments of music videos. It seems the ability to sample in small doses non-standard techniques coupled with the crutch of good music lends itself to more daring ideas.

This concept brings this article back on topic for me, because where so many seem steeped in painting for inspiration and instruction, i think i might be more of the MTV generation, and although i could give a guided tour through some areas of the National Gallery, i can’t say it inspires my capture behaviour.

I’m still stuck in the mud that paintings like Goya’s above bent all the laws of physics, both in depth of field and in dynamic range.. that painting above is simply not possible in real-life; it might have happened in real life exactly as it looks, but human eyes would see the image much more like Mikhael’s image;.... the shadows would be clipped, the highlights like the white shirt would be blown, and about fifty percent of the information important to Goya’s image would not exist for us to see, let alone any sensor, analogue or digital,..... especially in that fidelity, colour temperature, and don’t get me started on that depth of field/shutter speed dynamics considering the exposure value of the scene and the inclusion of humans inclined to movement.

And although i’ve 'read' and viewed loads of books relevant to photography or just life, they never seem to invoke my imagination for what’s possible,... just what’s been done. Seeing a successful photograph for me, as a photographer (not as a spectator of art) seems a bit like seeing a finished puzzle with regards to motivation and inspiration.. I do enjoy it as a spectator, but it doesn’t make me want to try and better it.

It’s not until i see the vague moody videos (ironically some of the ones Trent mentions) do i start to feel the gauntlet thrown towards my effort with still-photography. Christopher Anderson, you say you’d like to do with photography what David Byrne does with music, well right now, i’d like to haunt with still-images like Adam Jones’s does with the clay-mation scenes in many of the Tool videos and.... well, I‘ll keep my carnal Reznor photographic ambitions to myself for now.

But when i really think of someone that has knitted together a bunch of stills in a feature film, where the dialogue and moving pictures seem almost incidental to the mood of the light and the composition, then there’s got to be no better than what Kamiński gives us with Schindler’s list. This is visual evidence to me that a light collecting device (not to be mistaken with a brush) can produce something so haunting that the rest of my life could easily be spent trying to create something remotely equal with mood and narrative with just still images.

bobblack

Trent :))

gotta tell you up front that if the apocalypse ever descends and my wife and i are stranded on a deserted chair set adrift, and we had only 10 photo books to hunch over for sustenance, Minutes would be one of them :)))....and that was part our lives long before the magnum ringa-ding-dingy....and as I told Tamara V this summer when she dropped by our place to nibble on some saffire gin, Narelle's work is a big part of our dream life too :))))))....and I totally dont think of Parke work about Light, but about Memory carved around the cornice of light :))))....

and sigur r are the lick-singers to which i've spent the last 8 weeks finalizing my project for dave harvey (bones of time) listening to....what to do without them indeed....

terrific words trent, happy to see you here: merry christmas from Up here in cold cold frickin' snowy cold Above ;)))))...

Justin :)))))...

cant wait to see it...will be done all for Dave tomorrow, then send me the PDF :))))))

Joe: :))....while video may have killed the radio star, the music and the work fed my heart too...

runnning running

running
b

Cantero

really strong pictures

Jsc
www.js-cantero.com

Odossyrevetet

I think you are thinking like sukrat, but I think you should cover the other side of the topic in the post too...