Photographers – Soul Needs

The light of photography and the human spirit – juxtaposed

Here is a first attempt and juxtaposing quotations concerning photography with quotations about spiritual reality. If spirituality isn’t your thing just dig out the brilliant quotations concerning photography;

1 -“His beauty hath no veiling save light, His face no covering save revelation.” SV p 38

2 A painter works with colour as the medium, a photographer works with light. – Carlotta M. Corpron (God works with love RP)

3 -‘Love revealeth with unfailing and limitless power the mysteries latent in the universe’ SAB 27

4 “Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.” Walker Evans

5 -This is the Day, O my Lord, whose brightness Thou hast exalted above the brightness of the sun and the splendors thereof. I testify that the light it sheddeth proceedeth out of the glory of the light of Thy countenance, and is begotten by the radiance of the morn of Thy Revelation P& M 273

6 Light is my inspiration. My photographic images search for dimensions that words cannot touch– the result of intense responses to personal experiences. I do not wish to “record,” but rather to touch upon the illusive meanings which I perceive and try to comprehend in this limitless universe. -Ruth Bernhard, “Collection of Ginny Williams” by Ruth Bernhard , ISBN: 1881138046

7 -In every moment of genuine love, we are dwelling in God and God is dwelling in us. ~ Paul Tillich

8 Everything is one and I am one with it. -Ruth Bernhard

9 -“There exists only the present instant… a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.” Meister Eckhart

10 This unexpected image was the record of an inner state that I did not remember seeing and he did not remember experiencing at the moment of exposure. -Minor White, “Mirrors, messages, manifestations” by Minor White. Millerton, New York: Aperture, 1969.

11 -Free thyself from the fetters of this world, and loose thy soul from the prison of self. Seize thy chance, for it will come to thee no more. PHW

12 Inside movement there is one moment in which the elements are in balance. Photography must seize the importance of this moment and hold immobile the equilibrium of it. – HCB

13 Theological matters: – (There is no such’ thing’ as God. ‘Thingification’ is something we mustn’t do to others (as the Nazis did) – let alone God. So what then is God? ‘God is love.’ Love is a state of a) being and of b) relating. However it seems that as Bahá’ís we go beyond Tillich’s ‘the ground of being’ (because it was finistic?) because for us our theology is panentheistic – we believe simultaneously in God immanent and God transcendent. (RP)
Theology can be logical or illogical – but in both cases it is commentary on ineffable, personal experience of that which originates in Mystery, in the unknown & unknowable. If we are blessed some insights are gained from such experiences. Art photography can be windows to such insights, including glimpses of the ineffable and the divine. RP)

14 -‘Love is the breath of the Holy Spirit in the heart of Man’. PT 30

15 -“A photograph is neither taken nor seized by force. It offers itself up. It is the photo that takes you…..” – Henri Cartier-Bresson

16 -“ …creative quickening emanates from the breaths of the Holy Spirit”, PUP130

17 To take photographs means to recognize — simultaneously and within a fraction of a second — both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one’s head, one’s eye and one’s heart on the same axis. – Henri Cartier-Bresson

18 -“The breath of God is breathing me…”

19 *He made me suddenly realize that photographs could reach eternity through the moment. – HCB

20 -With inward and outward eyes he witnesseth the mysteries of resurrection in the realms of creation and the souls of men SV12

21 I’m not responsible for my photographs. Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience. It’s drowning yourself, dissolving yourself, and then sniff, sniff, sniff – being sensitive to coincidence. You can’t go looking for it; you can’t want it, or you wont get it. First you must lose your self. Then it happens. – Henri Cartier-B

22 -“That which you are seeking is doing the seeking.” (St. Francis of Assissi)

23 A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know. -Diane Arbus

24 -There are certain pillars which have been established as the unshakeable supports of the Faith of God. The mightiest of these is learning and the use of the mind, the expansion of consciousness, and insight into the realities of the universe and the hidden mysteries of Almighty God. SAB 126

25 Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen. Minor White

26 -“There exists only the present instant… a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.” Meister Eckhart

27 To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event, as well as of a precise organisation of forms which give that event its proper expression. Henri Cartier-Bresson

28 -Knowledge is of two kinds. One is subjective and the other objective knowledge – that is to say, an intuitive knowledge and a knowledge derived from perception.

The knowledge of things which men universally have is gained by reflection or by evidence – that is to say, either by the power of the mind the conception of an object is formed, or from beholding an object the form is produced in the mirror of the heart. The circle of this knowledge is very limited because it depends upon effort and attainment.
But the second sort of knowledge, which is the knowledge of being, is intuitive….. SAQ157-159

29 Impressionism has induced the study of what we see and shown us that we all see differently; it has done good to photography by showing that we should represent what we see and not what the lens sees . . . What do we see when we go to Nature? We see exactly what we are trained to see, and, if we are lucky, perhaps a little more but not much . . . We see what we are prepared to see and on that I base a theory that we should be very careful what we learn. – Henry Peach Robinson

30 -O SON OF SPIRIT! The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in thee. By its aid thou shalt see with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy neighbor. Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth thee to be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes. AHW 2

31 Thinking should be done before and after, not during photographing. Henri Cartier-Bresson

32 -How shall we attain the reality of knowledge? By the breaths and promptings of the Holy Spirit, which is light and knowledge itself. Through it the human mind is quickened and fortified into true conclusions and perfect knowledge. PUP p.22

33 This recognition, in real life, of a rhythm of surfaces, lines, and values is for me the essence of photography; composition should be a constant of preoccupation, being a simultaneous coalition – an organic coordination of visual elements. – Henri Cartier-Bresson

34 -Of these truths some can be disclosed only to the extent of the capacity of the repositories of the light of Our knowledge, and the recipients of Our hidden grace. BWF 133

35 Photography is, for me, a spontaneous impulse coming from an ever attentive eye which captures the moment and its eternity. -HCB

36 -(the) heart, ….. is the seat of the revelation of the inner mysteries of God KI 192

37 As time passes by and you look at portraits, the people come back to you like a silent echo. A photograph is a vestige of a face, a face in transit.
Photography has something to do with death. It’s a trace. -Henri Cartier-Bresson

38 -truth in its essence cannot be put into words. (about pictures of Divinity maybe story) AB in L 22′

39 There is no art which affords less opportunity to execute expression than photography. Everything is concentrated in a few seconds, when after perhaps an hours seeking, waiting, and hesitation, the photographer sees the realization of his inward vision, and in that moment he has one advantage over most arts – his medium is swift enough to record his momentary inspiration. -Sadakichi Hartmann

40 -Dance, as though no one is watching,
Love, as though you’ve never been hurt before,
Sing, as though no one can hear you,
Work, as though you don’t need the money,
Live, as though heaven is on earth. ~Rumi~

41 I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help. -Ruth Bernhard

42 -“I was asleep on My couch: the breaths of My Lord the Merciful passed over Me and awakened Me from sleep: TN7

43 for me, the creation of a photograph is experienced as a heightened emotional response, most akin to poetry and music, each image the culmination of a compelling impulse I cannot deny. Whether working with a human figure or a still life, I am deeply aware of my spiritual connection with it. In my life, as in my work, I am motivated by a great yearning for balance and harmony beyond the realm of human experience, reaching for the essence of oneness with the Universe. -Ruth Bernhard

44 -God has revealed his light many times in order to illumine mankind in the path of evolution. AB DP 8

45 There is no closed figure in nature. Every shape participates with another. No one thing is independent of another, and one thing rhymes with another, and light gives them shape. -Henri Cartier-Bresson

46 -Now concerning mental faculties, they are in truth of the inherent properties of the soul, even as the radiation of light is the essential property of the sun. (Abdu’l-Baha, Tablet to August Forel, p. 8)

47 As time passes by and you look at portraits, the people come back to you like a silent echo. A photograph is a vestige of a face, a face in transit. Photography has something to do with death. It’s a trace. -Henri Cartier-Bresson

48 -Kill these four birds of prey,” [1] that after death the riddle of life may be unraveled. 4V 50

49 Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes a precise moment in time. We play with subjects that disappear; and when they’re gone, it’s impossible to bring them back to life. We can’t alter our subject afterward…. Writers can reflect before they put words on paper…. As photographers, we don’t have the luxury of this reflective time….We can’t redo our shoot once we’re back at the hotel. Our job consists of observing reality with help of our camera (which serves as a kind of sketchbook), of fixing reality in a moment, but not manipulating it, neither during the shoot nor in the darkroom later on. These types of manipulation are always noticed by anyone with a good eye. -Henri Cartier-Bresson, “American Photo”, September/October 1997, page: 76

50 -These sanctified Mirrors, these Day Springs of ancient glory, are, one and all, the Exponents on earth of Him Who is the central Orb of the universe, its Essence and ultimate Purpose. From Him proceed their knowledge and power; from Him is derived their sovereignty. The beauty of their countenance is but a reflection of His image, and their revelation a sign of His deathless glory. They are the Treasuries of Divine knowledge, and the Repositories of celestial wisdom. Through them is transmitted a grace that is infinite, and by them is revealed the Light that can never fade…. These Tabernacles of Holiness, these Primal Mirrors which reflect the light of unfading glory, are but expressions of Him Who is the Invisible of the Invisibles. By the revelation of these Gems of Divine virtue all the names and attributes of God, such as knowledge and power, sovereignty and dominion, mercy and wisdom, glory, bounty, and grace, are made manifest. GL 47

51 The state of mind of a photographer while creating is a blank…For those who would equate “blank” with a kind of static emptiness, I must explain that this is a special kind of blank. It is a very active state of mind really, a very receptive state of mind, ready at an instant to grasp an image, yet with no image pre-formed in it at any time. We should note that the lack of a pre-formed pattern or preconceived idea of how anything ought to look is essential to this blank condition. Such a state of mind is not unlike a sheet of film itself – seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second’s exposure conceives a life in it. (Not just life, but “a” life). -Minor White, “The Camera Mind and Eye” . Magazine of Art, Vol. 45, No. 1, pp.16-19

52 -No one else besides Thee hath, at any time, been able to fathom Thy mystery, or befittingly to extol Thy greatness. GL 4

To be developed

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Posted via email from sunwalking’s posterous

Reflection on Muybridge’s animated horse

1st draft

.‘Animated’ racehorse by photographer Eadweard Muybridge – works in Internet Explorer and FireFox but not Chrome – source WikiPedia

REFLECTIONS:

As a piece of science this work settled a dispute, argued over for a long time: horses’ hooves are all off the ground in galloping.

As a piece of (scientific) photography it is pivotal.

It is mesmerising cinema – the still pictures combine to show how beautiful was this particular horse – its legs and musculature are exquisite in motion.

When we become poetic or mystical it teaches us about such essentials as;

appearance and reality

moments gone and moments captured

flow

nowness

the limits of the human eye and brain

knowing and knowledge, the unknown, the knowable and unknowable

There remains the mystery of the jockey to deconstruct!

This set of evolving reflections relates to the introductory essay to this site HERE

Do you remember when all the world was a giant ice-cream?

This wonderful, simple, perfect, timeless photograph by Benn Mitchell is on the Boca Raton Museum of Art.

bennmitchellgirleatingicecream

The museums blurb says this;

Color Me New York – Photographs by Benn Mitchell
Through January 18, 2009
The exhibition honors Benn Mitchell as a forerunner in realistic photography, documenting life in New York City during the 1930s through the 1950s. Mitchell (born in New York City 1926 – ) sold his first photograph to LIFE magazine at the age of 16. Just one year later he became a portrait photographer in Hollywood for Warner Brothers’ studios, capturing classic images of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, among others. In 1948, Mitchell started his own commercial studio in New York City, the beginning of a career lasting over five decades. This exhibition presents 16 color images shot in the streets of New York City between 1947 and 1980, which capture Benn Mitchell’s acute observations, and his award-winning eye for both the artistic and the incidental. Mitchell now lives with his wife Esther in Boca Raton.

To go to the museum’s site click HERE

Palestininan woman and Israeli soldier – photograph by Noel Jabbour

I loved the teasing ambiguity of this photograph at Boca Raton Museum Of Art – dare we hope that something good might, just might, be passing between them – some kindness instead of cruelty, some recognition instead of hatred? Is the hand about to become a fist? Is she touching his chest in an appeal such as she might make to her son? Does the ambiguity shift the photograph from documentary to fine art? Does the space created by the ambiguity make the art?

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Have you seen the SunWALK human-centred studies model? – summary HERE

Oskrivna Linje – a fine young photographer

The work of Oskrivna Linjer is a cut above most that’s on Flickr. Of course such images as this

by-oskrivna-linjer-on-flickr

remind me of such images as this;

billbrandt_nude

To see his work on Flickr go HERE

Reading Barthes – some points about the point or punctum of photography

richtersfmomareading1 — Lesende (Reader), 1994 Oil on linen Collection SFMOMA, purchased through the gifts of Mimi and Peter Haas and Helen and Charles Schwab, and the Accessions Committee Fund © Gerhard Richter.

The famous book Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes, about the nature of experiencing a photograph, refers to his depth of feeling about a photograph we never see, a photograph of his mother. This picture Lesende (Reader) affects me considerably, but not as much as one of my mother as a young woman leaning on her bicycle. It affects me for reasons I can bring to mind, but also affects me beyond such reasoning. (At first I thought it was a photograph – it is an oil painting in just one of Richter’s extraordinary range of styles.) We are much more than what we think, we are, in addition to that which is known, a mystery – even to ourselves.

The depth of affect (feeling) is determined by the subject, that is by the unique admixture of experiences and personal history each of us has had. But of course most have experiences in common; pleasure, pain, loss etc. The personal history is what determines the exact nature of the punctum, the ‘pain’ we feel when we are grabbed, held and moved by an art object.

Photographs then , or more accurately the experience of them, are created, like other forms of communication, from what the viewer brings added to what the artist provides. That is we ‘read’ a work of art with a combination of what is there, objectively, and what we subjectively bring.

It makes sense to refer to a) the affective resonance as compared to b) the cultural provision by the particular art work. Or the punctum and studium as per Barthes.

‘Resonates’ seems apt because it is a kind of shaking or spasm or feinting – depending on the surprise and depth of the aesthetic experience. We say, “It resonates with me, or “It didn’t resonate with me.” When there is a perfect alignment between the elements of the art object and our subjective self we are ‘swept away’, ‘riveted’, ‘the earth moves’, ‘we cease to exist’ (at least as a reasoning objectifying entity), we are stunned, speechless etc.

Of course the artist/photographer had his/her own co-equivalent to the punctum – the germ and urge to en-form some movement of spirit.

In narrative terms the above picture by Gerhard Richter sets up a host of possibilities – is she reading exam results, a newspaper story, a letter from a friend…… But that is not what takes us in the first place nor we return from the unitive experience of our first encounter is it such possibilities that are the really interesting philosophical payoffs.

For me it is that we are reading, just as she is reading, and it is the intensity of the focus in her reading – the set of her mouth and jaw that creates the power of the piece.

We are also on the edge of intrusion, in the tension of personaal and social space. That’s the punctum for me, that’s where the resonances are. Where are they for you?

SOURCES

Barthes’s Punctum – Michael Fried

What Do We Want Photography to Be? A Response to Michael Fried – James Elkins

LESSON POSSIBILITIES

You need to know more about what Candida Lucida says – start with WikiPedia article.

1 Find different reproductions of the painting – what difference does it make?

2 How would you name and explain punctum and studium in a more accessible language?

3 Have a look at Richter’s other work – an extraordinary range of styles.

4 Do philosophical inquiry lessons (PFC) on the major concerns of the article.

5 Make your own pictures of the Reader picture.

What are your own ideas for yourself or your class.

SOME QUESTIONS

What is a Camera Lucida and why might it have been a metaphor for Barthes

How and in what way is each mind, or soul, a Camera Lucida?

Is the use of a camera Lucida cheating? (See the whole debate started by the painter David Hockney)

What are your own questions for yourself or your class?

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Travelling Still – an appreciation of the beautiful photographs by Rob Carter

Take a look at the Travelling Still site by Rob Carter. He has produced a book of two or three series of images that are very striking;

99_westonbirt_arboretum_iii_350px1

Movement and stillness and nature moving into abstraction characterize his work.

103_wardens_point_350px

Rob Carter’s site is HERE

Photography time-lines

edwardsteichenlongisland1904

Here are some photography time-lines – some also contain useful links;

WikiPedia Photography time-line – updated

PhotoNet

National Geographic

Newark Public Library – many sites

Met

TimeLineIndex

Source – From the latest Cindy Sherman interview by David Hershkovits in PaperMag Arts.

For interview go HERE

If you know of more or better time-lines please let me have them – I am more interested in creative innovators than technical stuff.

Tonalism and ‘photography’s greatest artist’

‘Photography’s greatest artist’ – that’s what Carter B. Horsley claims for Edward Steichen, and he puts the Tonalist pictures centre stage in his essay

Edward Steichen, Across the Salt Marshes, Huntington, c. 1905, oil on canvas, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, Gift of Florence Scott Libbey, reproduced with permission of Joanna T. Steichen

The above reproduction is better than those in the esaay

The essay is HERE

Photography and Picturing the Intangible

If the Platonic idea of a ‘spiritual’ world corresponding to the physical world (and vice versa) is a reality then photography can play deliciously between the two, as in this I like this photographer’s work, four sets of which s/he refers to as ‘Picturing the Intangible‘;

shadows-at-18th-and-k — http://rphillipsabbott.com/page2.html

Seeing and not seeing……

Real and not real…..

Reality and illusion…..

Shadow and substance ……….

To see the work by R Phillips Abbott go HERE

America stalled, the dollar and Native American Women

fig. 2: Stalled, Oil paint on photograph
© Peña Bonita,1988

Joan M. Jensen, Professor Emerita, at New Mexico State University has written a fine essay on Native American Women Photographers As Storytellers. It combines about a dozen of my interests but has wider resonance, not least in her choice of the above photograph by Bonita.

She says;

As Native women have added cameras to fiber and clay, they have explored ways to combine a search for personal and public identity. Their work has formed a critique, a different story, that explicitly and implicitly critiques the “vanishing race” genre of romantic photography so popular at the turn of the century and since the 1970s revival of Edward Curtis and other photographers of American Indians. These photographers portray their cultures not as vanishing, but as part of a lively, assertive group of people confident about the importance of their cultures in the past, their importance to the present, and their influence on the future. They sometimes use images identified with Indian cultures, but these images are not used as emblems of a generic unified past. Instead the images carry specific messages or stories about how individual artists interpret family and tribal histories, how they experience the present, or what they project for the future. As women, they may employ signifiers identified with female cultures and tell stories that relate to women’s history, but their photographs may also have messages about gender relations, differences among Indian cultures, or commentary about Indian-Euro-American history. Sometimes there are no Indian signifiers at all except in written messages on the photographs or in captions. These photographers portray Native people with a wide range of physical and attitudinal characteristics. Some works are ironic or humorous, others angry, sophisticated, or reflective.

To read the essay go HERE

What is a photograph? What is photography? Some suggestions

Take your most thrilling photograph ( taken by you or by someone else ) and ask, “Is it……..?”

A way of not looking at the world

A framework for searching

A reminder of meditation, silence and stillness

A record of resonance

A creation of resonance

A vain attempt to be King Canute

Self flagellation

Sensual titillation – between is and is not

An attempt to look at looking

A scratching of the itch to tidy up

A prayer for transcendence

A quest to float in self-less harmony

A search for Self

A way-station in the telling of your story

A blink of death

A way of looking at the world

cindy_sherman_old-lost

cartier-bresson_italy

nan-goldin_one_month_battered

four-kosovo-refugees-carol-guzy

A re-presentation of reality

A breath visualized

A stuck moment

A freed moment

A heart beat-en

Infinity squeezed

An eternally searching for the eternal

A frozen exhalation

Lines

Is and is-not holding hands

Rapture ruptured

A metaphor machine

A path to follow – inward

Plato’s cave

Living death or death living

Formalized longing

Memory shadows

Your soul’s timbre

A visual hiccup in the flow of consciousness

An invitation to shift consciousness

If not what is a photograph, what is photography?

What is photography? “It is preserving of commonly perceived appearance achieved with the use of physical, chemical and mechanical processes, as the result of which we receive a plane covered with color spots, ordered in a certain way. The ordering of these spots causes an illusion of perceiving by a viewer three-dimensional objects in space(…)” – Alfred Ligocki – [translation cited in “Archeologia fotografii” (“Archeology of photography”) by Jerzy Lewczynski, Wydawnictwo KROPKA, Wrzesnia 2005, p. 53 (PhotoQuotes)

Nah – it ain’t that………………………………!

Cindy Sherman – doesn’t do men – its harder to get the wigs!

sherman-richard-burbidge-paper-mag-arts

David Hershkovits has published a very interesting interview with CS. It starts;

Cindy Sherman: I printed digitally maybe starting five years ago, but I still was shooting film, and I’d never go back now. Forget it. What I used to do is shoot the film and then I would have to take off the makeup, bring film to the lab and wait two or three hours for it to be developed. Then look at it and if I had to re-shoot it, I’d have to do the makeup all over again.

David Hershkovits: On your wall I see pictures of men.

CS: Those are off the Internet — real portraits that I was inspired by and thinking, ‘If I get it together, I’ll do some men.’ I didn’t get it together for this show, but I still might try something. Why not?

DH: Your work has often been cited by post-feminist critics for its ability to parse the dilemma of the modern woman. Men don’t interest you as much?

CS: I’ve done some. Not that many. It’s just a little harder, is all. It’s harder to get the wigs.

To read the full interview go HERE

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For other resources on Cindy Sherman use the search thingy on this site.

Two artists Weathering Art: Roni Horn and Jari Silomaki

roni-horn-large

Roni Horn has a book about her ongoing project in Iceland

Weather Reports You

by Roni Horn

Pub: Steidl & Partners. Available on Amazon

“Everyone has a story about the weather. This may be the single thing each of us holds in common. And though the weather varies greatly from here to there, it is, ultimately, one weather that we share. Small talk everywhere has occasioned the popular distribution of the weather. Some say talking about the weather is talking about oneself. And with each passing day, the weather increasingly becomes ours, if not us. Weather Reports You is one beginning of a collective self-portrait.” Roni Horn

Over the past two years Roni Horn has been working with a small team in the southwest of Iceland gathering personal testimonies from people talking about the weather. These “weather reports” include descriptions, reflections, memories and stories based on experiences of the weather that range from the matter-of-fact to the marvellous. The different nuances and usages of language suggest that the weather is not just a matter of meteorological conditions but is, in Roni Horn’s words, “a metaphor for the physical, metaphysical, political, social and moral energy of a person and a place”.

A wonderful article HERE

Brilliant set of resources including videos HERE

Jari Silomaki

You might be interested to link Roni Horn’s idea with this Finnish photographer Jari Silomaki

Some time ago, when I first saw an exhibition of Silomaki’s work I wrote the following;

Powerful resonance in yoking the subjective eye with the global event

An appreciation of the art of Finnish photographer Jari Silomaki

The Finnish photographer Jari Silomaki writes on the photographs he shows – in the exhibition I saw he wrote in white ink. He writes about the photograph he took and its context in his life and the fact that it was coincidental with some major event. Several of his arresting photographs can be seen HERE:

SOURCE

‘Since 2001 I have taken a landscape photograph every day. I connect these photographs to important personal and world political events…. The starting point of this work was that world events, personal events and weather will repeat themselves and merge into one continuum……. On the other hand, linking landscape and news concretises how we are in contact with world events through the media. Everything is brought up close, which also means that events that are truly nearby are no longer close.’

Jari Silomaki, photographer (Finland)

For me Silomaki, and this idea, is one of the most exciting finds in many years. The linking of the public events and the choice of a landscape brings powerfully together the subjective and the public. It’s not only about the cataclysmic such as Kennedy’s assassination or the Twin Towers attack but also anything significant on global news.

Concerning the cataclysmic I remember the Twin Towers collapse because my wife and I were in Ikea having taken an American friend. In the case of Kennedy’s assassination I was in a weight-training club above a green-grocer’s shop where the smell of the potatoes and greens from downstairs was (thankfully) just more powerful than the smell of sweat. I didn’t take those two ‘memory-photographs’, but the Ikea one I could still take, because we all remember where we stood as the sense of horror began to fill in the store. The green-grocer shop I’m sure is no more.

One of the interesting elements in Silomaki’s great idea is the sense that you get when you realize that he chose ‘this perspective’h, ‘this angle’, ‘this composition’ as the personal – with the global news circulating in that day’s consciousness. The images become impregnated with the facts both personal and public. They create, for me, an oceanic resonances drawn from time and timelessness and place and placelessness, the subjectively personal and the binding knowledge that comes from global news. Why because we see what the photographer held to be significant in the ravaging consciounes of the event. We are seeing his world with his eyes.

In seeing the world with his eyes the question is raised as to the relationship between what he frames in the photograph and the frame created by the writing. Is that a limiting aesthetic? Is it limiting because we don’t know more about the web of significances in the photographer’s environment.

The human form as landscape.

I became interested in landscape and the human body, the human body as landscape when I first saw Bill Brandt’s wonderful nudes – several taken on Sussex beaches;

Astonishing - wide-angle, up-close, cropped? (two people?)

Others, including Eldor Gemst, have carried on the theme;

Perfection in 'human landscape'? — Perfection in the human form ?

In an exhibition of work by Roni Horn at the CAC Madrid I discovered another dimension. One of her projects gave rise to a book ‘Weather Reports You’. In it she says;

Weather Reports You by Roni Horn Pub: Steidl & Partners

“Everyone has a story about the weather. This may be the single thing each of us holds in common. And though the weather varies greatly from here to there, it is, ultimately, one weather that we share. Small talk everywhere has occasioned the popular distribution of the weather. Some say talking about the weather is talking about oneself. And with each passing day, the weather increasingly becomes ours, if not us. Weather Reports You is one beginning of a collective self-portrait.” Roni Horn

Over the past two years Roni Horn has been working with a small team in the southwest of Iceland gathering personal testimonies from people talking about the weather. These “weather reports” include descriptions, reflections, memories and stories based on experiences of the weather that range from the matter-of-fact to the marvellous. The different nuances and usages of language suggest that the weather is not just a matter of meteorological conditions but is, in Roni Horn’s words, “a metaphor for the physical, metaphysical, political, social and moral energy of a person and a place”.

horn-roni-cac

Another piece by Roni Horn extended the idea of landscape and the human form further for me – the idea that the human form, in this case various portraits of a young man, could be set up as a landscape through which we can walk.

Henri Cartier-Bresson: perfect geometry, the ‘Decisive Moment’ and the compassionate eye

Updated 11th Dec 2008

This short article is both a celebratory appreciation and a lesson for use in schools or colleges.

Is this an early perfect Cartier-Bresson photograph? — A) Is this an early perfect Cartier-Bresson photograph - according to the three elements in my aesthetic model for appreciating HCB?

1) Photography that is art is (potentially) a bridge to reality, a bridge to a more sensitive reading of the world and a bridge to understanding the true self. Q. Is photography that isn’t art a bridge to reality etc.?

2) What is art? My working definition is;

Art is culturally, and personally, significant meaning, skilfully encoded in an affecting, sensuous medium.
(RP’s working definition – after a definition by Richard Anderson quoted in Freeland (2001 p. 77))

Decide how satisfactory this definition is for you. Find others – compare them. Decide on your own definition until you feel compelled to modify your definition.

3) What about the art of this great photographer, HCB, whose work spanned the extraordinary changes of most of the 20thC? What are the elements of that greatness?

4) Upon reflection I think that the perfect Cartier-Bresson photograph is one in which there is a near perfect balance between three interrelating elements; the decisive moment, geometry and compassion (compassion as the key quality in the eye of of the humanistic eye). See A above.

“The decisive moment, it is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson

In most of his photographs one of these three elements dominates. One question for debate is this; “Is he at his greatest when all three, more or less, in balance with each other?”

5) In this ‘triangulation’ of compassion, geometry and the decisive moment we have a Cartier-Bresson-ian aesthetic with which to view Cartier-Bresson’s photographs.

Draw a triangle with each of my three elements at the three corners. Look closely at a series of HCB photographs and put a dot on your triangle to suggest where you think each photograph is placed.

6) We also have an aesthetic with which to appreciate many other photographs and photographers.

7) This image (B below),

one of the most famous of his photographs, is primarily about the decisive moment- to an astonishing extent. Just look at the distance between the man’s heel and the surface of the water – it was a split second of intuitive timing. It just would’t have been so perfect if the heel had penetrated the water.

Those I like best are those that are exemplary of all three principles – ‘the Decisive Moment’, the humanity and the form as perfect geometry – but some just throb with one or two elements. Here for example compassion;

Here (C below) for example a snatched moment that resonates with meanings about time, past & presents, generation linkages etc – but its not strong on geometry;

Q Did HCB take ‘the Decisive Moment’ too far?

Q HCB also refused to crop any photograpy – he always had the negative printed full frame. His financial independence meant he could travel the world and take thousands of photographs, accepting that only one or two per year would satisfy him. Was the imposition of the ‘no-cropping full-frame self-imposed’ rule counter-productive, a discipline too far?

With a bit of adaptation by the teacher using a range of tecahing methods especially PFC (Philosophy for Children) this lesson would work at any level from primary to university.

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True achievement, success and happiness lie in being fully and positively human –

through our caring our creativity and our criticality –

developed via service to the communities to which we belong.

All postings to this site relate to the central model in the

PhD. Summaries are HERE

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On this site there are 1000+ ideas that you can put to work straight away.

“Why not use the SEARCH, CATGORIES or INDEX to find the ideas for you?”

Geoff Dyer’s ‘The Ongoing Moment’

In this writer’s view the claims for Geoff Dyer’s The Ongoing Moment are not over the top. It must rank with the best writing on photography. It ranks with Barthes and Susan Sontag – depending on how you feel about those two!

You can hear afascinating interview with Geoff Dyer HERE

Good review HERE in The Independent

Guardian review HERE

Amazon reviews HERE

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

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‘Light on the Landscape’ – stunning photography by Claudio Marcozzi

If you love photography don’t miss the work of Claudio Marcozzi;

See more of his work and some terrific writing about landscape HERE

This statement about landscape contains two outstanding points. The first is ‘the landscape ends at the horizon, but begins inside of us. The second is the idea that the landscape we see and photograph is an aspect of us, or even an aspect of Self.

To photograph a landscape as one takes a portrait in a studio may seem a paradox, but it is almost the same thing. It deals with working with the light on the subject and in the background in order to make the somatic (or geologic) characteristics stand out: the wrinkles of the ground, the gentleness of the slopes, the roughness of the ruts in the land. To underline the contours or to give importance to the volumes, to specify the forms or to make the depth stand out.
Working in the studio we can arrange the light sources as we like, but the situation is very different working in the “field”. There is only one light source, and is not always available. We must wait. When our light technician wants to work he is almost a God, but if he doesn’t want to…..plentiful doses of insults and curses aren’t worth anything. We have to wait (and this aspect is a great lessons of humility and life). It is necessary to know in advance when there will be good light, and sometimes even this doesn’t count. Sometimes the light passes, slips, runs, creeps, spreads, envelops, vanishes, goes. And, with its conspiratorial shadow, makes the texture stand out.
In these situations, photographing the landscape becomes stimulating – to be on the alert to steal the moment – while usually one thinks that it must be an utterly relaxing occupation. It is exactly in these circumstances that that magic I-don’t-know-what shows itself, allowing us to transfigure, rather than simply reproduce, a portion of world. And it is in this way that one can capture the soul of the environment that surrounds us, that is none other than the reflection of our soul.
Because the landscape ends at the horizon, but begins inside of us.

To read more go HERE

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Ernst Haas brief biography and appreciation

About Haas no less a photographer than Cartier-Bresson said , “For me Erst was sensitivity itself….”

Haas was born March 2, 1921 in Vienna, Austria and died September 12, 1986 in New York City. Photographer and photojournalist who was influential for his innovations in colour photography. His wonderful photographs include scenes and people just after WWII through to his later experimentations in abstract light and form. He received the Hasselblad Award in 1986.

He said these beautiful, penetrating, things about photography;

“A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?”

“I am not interested in shooting new things – I am interested to see things new.”

“There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.”

“With photography a new language has been created. Now for the first time it is possible to express reality by reality. We can look at an impression as long as we wish, we can delve into it and, so to speak, renew past experiences at will.”

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Something of the spirit of the man and his work can be seen in three of my favourite images;

This for me is the greatest narrative photograph I have ever seen.

More great photos at this gallery

This is exquisite sensuality of line and texture – made more powerful by the metaphor in the title ‘Snow lovers’.

click to see full-size

To be developed

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Visuacy and learning to see – really see: Vera Sytch’s story

Every day we see thousands of photographs. If I’m not mistaken Kodak used to run an ad many years ago saying that our eyes take a million photographs everyday. Both the images we see and the ones we ‘take’ as photographs now exist in our lives in vast numbers – even without film and television. But we never have time (or inclination) to stand and stare;

“Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.” Walker Evans

We flick our eye over each photograph and rarely have the compulsion to dwell, meditatively, on an image. But surely like paintings, or art generally, good photographs are something to get lost in? Their increasing disposability and virtual costless production mean that we have to make an effort to find photographs worthy of a contemplative approach and frequent re-visiting.

My effort to find such photographs is part of my current search to understand more about the essential nature and spirit of photography. Surely we must also entitle all children to a proper basic education in visuacy. One photograph I return to time and again is a photograph by Carol Guzy HERE.

In the search I also came across a deeply moving personal testimony about the day a woman came to see, really see properly for the first time.

Her name is Vera Sytch and she tells how good fortune, or God’s grace, she came to live after falling into icy water – when her fiancée died. After the tragic event her life changed. She says;

I spent the next year rediscovering the world around me. I jumped tracks from pursuing a Ph.D. to exploring the world through my camera. I felt that the blinders with which I’d been rushing through life had been removed. I slowed down and spent my free time gazing at icicles and snow, wondering why no one else took the time to notice their delicate beauty.

One wonders why the shift that took place in her doesn’t happen voluntarily in the rest of us;

People became more important to me. I realized that belongings are temporary but memories are forever. The only thing I truly own is my time, and how I spend it reflects what I value. My greatest treasures aren’t the material things I’ve accumulated, but the people in my life.

Read Vera’s full account HERE

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Favourite photographers

Among the best sites for viewing photographs are;

Masters of Photography http://www.artphotogallery.org/02/monthly/indexof.html

Stunning sites HERE

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Bing Ilse 1899 – 1998 (This one photograph especially)

Henri Cartier-Bresson

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Carol Guzy: pulitzer prize winning Washington Post photographer

In development.

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An appreciation of

Washington Post photographer Carol Guzy

These four young refugees from Kosovo seem almost blown out of the right of the frame – a perfect blend of young joy in friendship within a double context of a windy hillside and the wider context of the war, from which presumably this is blessed relief.

It is one of the most perfect photographs I have ever seen because its form so perfectly enforces the spirit of its subject matter. Everything contributes, including the bits that might be considered imperfections; the right-hand girls’ almost closed eyes, the falling out of the right-hand side of the frame, the gap-toothed grin, the grandeur of the terrain, the sky-scape the upper right of the sun’s position, the floral sleeve that helps the little one peek out from the world and photographer from the embrace of safety, the wind coming up from down the valley, the threat of the dark clouds, the floral girl’s head position and the right-hand girls up raised arm continue the flow of wind and energy from bottom right, the shadow on the grey T-shirt which we hope (and trust) is benign, the shadow-shaping of the hills, the tightness of the embrace, the almost universal laughter, the sheer joie de vivre……………

This woman peers through a gauze cloth with her two companions, during Mother Theresa’s funeral.

Such resonance and associations, grief itself, our seeing through a gauze darkly, the eyes deadened by grief, the delicate flowers (weeds or grasses?), the echo between the grass-flowers and the diagonal stripes in the gauze……………

Most of all they appear to be moving as in a carraige and the glance of that heavied face appears to be the serendipity of ‘The Decise Moment’.

Through the genius of the photographer, and the life of Mother Theresa we might come to see, and be seen – clearly.

A major gallery of Carol Guzy’s work is HERE

The Washington Post ‘Camera Works’ is HERE

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Heart-rending testimony of an Afghan woman in Fazal Sheikh’s online book, ‘When Two Bulls Fight the Leg of the Calf is Broken’

Be sure to visit Fazal Sheikh’s on-line HERE

Take a look at the heart-rending testimony of an Afghan woman in ‘Fazal Sheikh’s online book When Two Bulls Fight the Leg of the Calf is Broken’.

Here is a short extract;

‘When our great Islamic revolution succeeded, we thought our day of deliverance had come. Finally we would be free and independent. Afghanistan was released. But once again women were treated as the goat in the game, pulled this way and that by one faction or another. Once again, on all sides, indiscriminate bombing and rocket-attacks, bullets and mines killed Afghan children in their mother’s wombs. We were forced to flee with bare feet and uncovered heads to escape the killing. Some of us fled to foreign countries and became refugees. It should not be forgotten that some of us were forced to flee to Moscow for our safety!

I shall never forget how so many of us spent frightened lonely nights waiting patiently in the front line for a single loaf of bread. How many of us were abducted by armed men from Mujahedin parties in the middle of the day in busy streets. How many of us were raped. How many of us threw themselves from buildings to keep their chastity. How many of us were taken from the scorching refugee camps in Jalalabad to become a commodity for men in neighboring countries. How many widows were forced to sell themselves to feed their families.

Those who have come to power, those with guns, continue to leer at us, to make fun of us, to take pleasure in harassing us. These men who think of themselves as the defenders of our faith, as our fathers and brothers sent to protect us, are the same ones who call us “Honey”. They say: “Don’t come out of your bottle, the flies might touch you.” The flies are the men that rush at you. Others tell us that we are “live wires that must be covered.” It is a pity they don’t recognize us as individuals, as fellow human beings. Over the loudspeakers they announce that years of holy war has simply been to cover Afghan women in Muslim dress.

That, dear brother, dear father and son, I am sure was not the purpose of the holy war……’

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Of course people need water and food but as Maslow pointed out long ago security is a comparably important need.

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NB All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Key photography quotations toward defining a photographic aesthetic

This is a running list of quotations selected to help me move toward an understanding of my own photographic aesthetic – based on the SunWALK model.

“The camera is an instrument of detection. We photograph not only what we know, but also what we don’t know. ” Lisette Model

The book (Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes) develops the twin concepts of studium and punctum: studium denoting the cultural, linguistic, and political interpretation of a photograph, punctum denoting the wounding, personally touching detail which establishes a direct relationship with the object or person within it. Wiki

While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see. ~Dorothea Lange

A photograph is usually looked at – seldom looked into. ~Ansel Adams

There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer. ~Ansel Adams

The camera can photograph thought. ~Dirk Bogarde

I think the best pictures are often on the edges of any situation, I don’t find photographing the situation nearly as interesting as photographing the edges. ~William Albert Allard, “The Photographic Essay”

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence. ~Ansel Adams

The goal is not to change your subjects, but for the subject to change the photographer. ~Author Unknown

A photograph is memory in the raw. ~Carrie Latet

All photos are accurate. None of them is the truth. ~Richard Avedon

The camera cannot lie, but it can be an accessory to untruth. ~Harold Evans, “Pictures on a Page”

You don’t take a photograph, you make it. ~Ansel Adams

Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure. ~Tony Benn

A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense, and is, thereby, a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety. ~Ansel Adams

I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help. ~Ruth Bernhard

A Ming vase can be well-designed and well-made and is beautiful for that reason alone. I don’t think this can be true for photography. Unless there is something a little incomplete and a little strange, it will simply look like a copy of something pretty. We won’t take an interest in it. ~John Loengard, “Pictures Under Discussion”

I just think it’s important to be direct and honest with people about why you’re photographing them and what you’re doing. After all, you are taking some of their soul. ~Mary Ellen Mark

Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man. ~Edward Steichen

The photograph itself doesn’t interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality. ~Henri Cartier Bresson

The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box. ~Henri Cartier Bresson

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again. ~Henri Cartier-Bresson

If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug around a camera. ~Lewis Hine

A photograph is like the recipe – a memory the finished dish. ~Carrie Latet

Everyone has a photographic memory, but not everyone has film. ~Author Unknown

Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me. ~Sam Abbel

A picture is worth a thousand words; a slide show is both. ~Author Unknown

One photo out of focus is a mistake, ten photo out of focus are an experimentation, one hundred photo out of focus are a style. ~Author Unknown

All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this – as in other ways – they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it. ~John Berger

I didn’t want to tell the tree or weed what it was. I wanted it to tell me something and through me express its meaning in nature. ~Wynn Bullock

Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be. ~Duane Michals

The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the print the performance. ~Ansel Adams

Useful sites

http://www.photoquotes.com/ Blogs on Photography

http://photosleavehome.blogspot.com/2005/03/john-berger-understanding-photograph.html

http://www.temple.edu/photo/photographers/

http://moma.org/collection/depts/photography/index.html

http://www.photo-seminars.com/fame.htm

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NB All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Mystical implications of photography

Photo by: Andre Kertesz – source

For some time now I have been interested in how both cinema and photography might be compared to mystical experience. I will post separately re cinema.

One point of comparison lies in how the two see the moment.

In the mystical the moment is seen as out of time – a visit to the eternal present.

In photography the moment is given duration, brought frozen into time – up to a theoretical eternal existence.

Of course a major source of inspiration, in both his photography and his writings, is Henri Cartier-Bresson;

A wonderful retrospective is HERE at Magnum

However in assembling some materials to help articulate a view re photography and the mystical I have discovered some fine materials high amongst which is The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer. Concerning Andre Kertesz, see photo at the top of this post, he says;

What Kertesz sees when he looks out at the street is often this silhouetted representative of his own feelings about being adrift and unappreciated in New York. The people in the streets, heading to shops, are emissaries of his own sadness. That is the lot of the photographer: you walk the streets or sit on a bench – or you look out of the window at people……

Some more wonderful photographs by Andre Kertesz;

TO BE DEVELOPED