there is now outside my window a morning fog so thick i cannot see the river…monochromatic…soft, mysterious….it hides the fact that i am where i am….it has taken the "place" out of what is normally an obvious skyline….new york is temporarily "gone"……
i often contemplate "place"….both where i live and where i do my photographs….certain environments seem to be catalysts for good work done and others not…..i tend to feel more comfortable in southern climes…new york is way way too far north for me…only because it is new york can i deal with the biting cold wind of winter….cold is not so inspirational for me….a warm tropical dawn with fishermen readying their small boats for the sea moves me more than whale hunters preparing their dog sleds for a journey over the ice….
most photographers i know prefer certain "places" as well as certain types of stories….do you envision any time soon a story about Alaska from Alex Webb or James Nachtwey’s vision of Iowa or Maya Goded in China or Bruce Davidson in Japan or Mary Ellen Mark in New Zealand or Joseph Koudelka in Tahiti or Gregory Crewdson doing a tableau in Russia or Nan Goldin in Scotland ??? i cannot imagine Ansel Adams having set up his 8×10 in Indiana nor Henri Cartier-Bresson doing street photography in Hollywood…
how important do you think it is for a photographer to be in the right geographical environment to do their best work??
the fog lifts now slowly…..now i know where i am……
I think its very important. I always felt that the best photos come when you understand a place. You have a lot of experience in spanish speaking countries, David, you understand the Spanish-speaking cultures and you can read situations better. Im comfortable in Seoul, but less so outside it.
I agree with you David. The setting is as important as the subject is to one’s vision. But as you pointed out with numerous examples, one photographer’s inspiration may be another’s hell. And thank goodness for that, else we would all make the same photos.
Hi David,
This has been on my mind for a very long time. I live in the suburbs. I am very bored, uninspired with what I see around me. I don’t find it at all interesting. I’m sure there are plenty of photographs here or stories even, but I don’t believe I am the right one to capture those photographs. I feel no real connection to the space that surrounds me.
It’s hard for me to walk out my door with my camera and feel that I am going to see something new. No matter how creative I try to be – it feels forced.
When I am in the Caribbean, where I am from, I feel my inspiration there. That is where I am most “connected”. And I am not talking about pretty beach shots or sunsets. I am motivated, inspired, without intimidation by that world. And have a deeper, intrinsic sense of the culture, no matter the island and that sense allows me a certain creative freedom. It excites me because I feel unbounded.
Thanks for posting on this because I have often thought I am a poor creative who cannot make great images no matter where I am :)
-Sherman
David, I do think that even for the most accomplished photographers, there is sometimes something magical that happens in a given location, environment where they will do their best work. I am a huge fan of Alex Webb and have all the books he has ever published but, while I like all his work, I think that nothing is like his early work in the Carribean. I am thinking about the two books that he has published in the mid 80′s “Hot Light/ Half made worlds” and “Under a grudging sun”. Who-ever has not checked these two books should check these. In my view, that is his best work. I also like the work he has done in the Mexico border or more recently in Turkey but somehow, there was something even more magical in the warmth, light of the Carribbean…. I wonder what is this magical specific place for you David…. I have my pov but curious to what you would say…. By the way, not linked to the topic of this post, after checking one of your former post on Bruce Davidson, I started to look at his work and I discovered the book that he has done “subway”. I did buy the book and just got it couple of days ago. This is an amazing book…. As I know he is a friend, I wonder why this is the only book that he has done in color… Do you know why he switched to color for that book and seem to have stopped afterwards… I know that you are a big fan of his B&W work but this color work is very powerful!!! What do you think of his colour work? Cheers, Eric
I think place is incredibly important. Sometimes it is about being in a new place, for the first time, seeing, smelling, tasting all the new things in front of you. While I love this feeling, I personally find I love the feeling of being somewhere which seems so different to where I’m originally from. In a way, I’m so familiar with where I’m from (Britain), it doesn’t inspire me in the same way as when I’m here in China. My Chinese friends sometimes express their boredom and overfamiliarity with China, failing to see why Im so enchanted by it, and crave to be somewhere ‘different’ like Britain! Is the grass always greener?!
Great question. I too live in the suburbs and although I am always camera in hand when I walk around, I know where to find the color. It’s the same every year. The red hydrant, the fire box, the faded blue on the cement small building that I don’t know what it is used for. I can’t always be traveling so I look and I find more, more detail, more pattern and sometimes my work surprises me. I think that always wanting to be somewhere else to photograph something new yet familiar will take away from what is potentially right where you are and will prevent you from looking and searching and pushing. That said, I’m going to bangkok next month and will be photographing nothing familiar and I can’t wait. But, that’s only for a week or so. The rest of the time I’m in a suburb of Boston, and since I can’t put my camera down, I need to be satisfied with ‘searching’ around here most of the year. And, I am.
Realizing that I prefer certain places struck me about a year ago. For me its the North Shore of Massachusetts and Cape Cod. But even then I can break it down to very small areas: Woods Hole, the National Seashore, Provincetown. In the North Shore its Annisquam, Gloucester, Marblehead, Pigeon Cove. And then other areas make me feel strangely uncomfortable: Essex. Why is this so? Past lives? But in these places, so far, is where I’ve done my best work. These areas are all associated with water and what goes on there. I.E. I’m fascinated by the Rock Neck area of Gloucester, especially the ship refitting company that hauls up big schooners, trawlers, and tugs. It’s rare, no matter what the physical conditions, that I can’t do some decent work each time I visit these areas. And then on the other hand, other areas, just leave me cold no matter how much I think I should like to take pictures there: Hawaii. Much of it depends on how one like to work, what they produce. For me it’s b & w and I love J. Koudelka & Paul Strand, and I can’t see either of them shooting in Hawaii.
hi Merritt, perhaps it’s the biting greenheads and the threat of eating at Woodman’s that makes you uncomfortable in Essex!
It’s funny, having grown up in Rockport, I have a hard time shooting on the North Shore. Sometimes when the place is one’s childhood home, the challenge is all together different than one’s adult home. I do think I could shoot certain aspects of Gloucester..fiesta and Mother of Grace, for example, but I imagine to do it profoundly or even well some magical mix of the past and the present would have to come into being.
I think you are right, location is important. I am always really happy to work in Paris, but the majority of my time is spent in the UK. Saying that, I have started work on a new book on Birmingham (England), and made the conscious decision that I wanted it to have a ‘Parisian feel’ – and because I want it to feel this way, I have been consciously looking for certain light, people, events etc – and the content is certainly looking more Parisian now.
David – An interesting subject that I have been thinking a lot about lately. I have spent most of the past 10 years shooting in very densly packed urban areas making “street” photos in B&W. New York, Philadelphia, Chicago. They are great locations and provide a wealth of subject matter. But I also have a sense sometimes that I am seeing the same scenes over and over again. Streets, people, cars, situations seem the same to me now. I have a yearning to get out of the urban settings I am comfortable in – whether it be suburbia, rural areas, foreign lands. I have been challenging myself to work outside of these “safe” areas and to work in color. I wonder if you can speak about how you become comfortable in these other areas. I grew up in New York – so it’s home – after many years of shooting in these cities I can do good work here. But I also want to grow in my work and to move forward by pushing myselft to do things and work in places where I am less at home.
All best,
Jonathan Elderfield
FYI – You can see some of the B&W work on the website – http://www.jefoto.com including the book I published on South Philly and some of the color work on the blog – http://jonathanelderfieldphotoblog.blogspot.com/
It’s a complex subject, since there is so much subjectivity and personalization in how a place makes us “click”, literally and figuratively. Not sure it deserves a long answer though, for that very reason.
For now, i am just cracking up at the idea of forcing James nachtwey in the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris, shooting kids looking at Guignol (marionettes) for 3 days.
Joking? Yes, yet.. remember some of the emotions in that famous shot of Eisenstadt, but also in truffaut’s “400 blows”.
This time of year on northern Puget Sound we have thick fog many mornings, but it doesn’t erase our sense of place as it did temporarily for David in New York! Instead, it is definitely an inescapable part of living here.
‘Sense of Place’ is what most of my own photography is all about, it was why I picked up a camera. In my late 20s I was living in the Palouse (N. Idaho–E. Washington border) and I said, “I have to photograph this place and these people!” Before that I had lived in New York, on the California Coast, in Oregon, in Texas– all iconic places for many people and many photographers, but it was the Palouse that first made me buy a camera and turned me into a photographer.
Some of my personal history of involvement with places, both emotionally and photographically, is currently on my website in an extended photo and text essay, ‘Six Records of a Floating Life’ for anyone who is curious to see, so I won’t repeat here what is written there. But a couple of footnotes- in Idaho I found my own natural way of seeing to be close to that of a 28mm lens. In Korea, where I did documentary style shooting in both rural and urban areas, a 35mm lens seemed more optimal for expressing a lot of what I was seeing. When I got to Japan, I had to learn to see all over again because space is really arranged very differently there and in the built-up environment a wide-angle lens will often give you a jumble of chaotic clutter. It seems a lot of the really stunning beauty in Japan is best appreciated at 50mm or tighter. At least, that’s what I thought then, and what I saw in other people’s pictures, but if I go back there it’s gonna be 28mm all the way, bring on the clutter! That’s the real Japan that I now know and accept, not the fantasy I was trying to live and project. So in addition to all those factors that may involve us or not in a place– the warm weather, the winter light, the lovely brown skins, the babble of familiar or unfamiliar tongues, the shapes of the hills– it’s also a fact that space and perspectives in the manmade or human-altered landscape are very different in different places and may call for different types of vision to make ‘sense’ of them or bring out their hidden mysteries.
Now, I love the tropics, and have found the tropical countries I’ve visited very stimulating (and not just visually!) but in my soul I am a four-season guy (or maybe eight!- see my website under ‘Denizen of the Ancient Capital’). I certainly agree with David about New York winter- yet I used to love winter in Kyoto and the Japanese mountains. Something about the streets of New York, especially Manhattan, makes that biting winter wind and ice on the sidewalks seem crueler, harder, colder.
I can sympathize with both Sherman, not feeling connected or visually inspired in the suburbs, and Sean, excited visually by what may seem mundane to his Chinese friends. Where I live now, Bellingham (‘City of Subdued Excitement’) is a physically beautiful place with seacoast, mountains, forests, funky old neighborhoods, well tended gardens. But it does not excite me with the passion for photographing that I felt in the Palouse, in Korea, in Japan, in Indonesia, or that I feel in Vancouver just across the border to the north. The social fabric of the place, though it has some diversity (Native Americans, Mexican migrants, a few Asians, NW hippies left over from the 70s) is largely white suburban yuppie, SUV’s and McMansions. More Laura Greenfield than Steve McCurry country, I’m afraid!
We all have our places where we are inspired by not just the scenery and weather but the people and culture as well. I tend to come most alive when I am in a mix that includes a lot of Asians but also many other groups, and a mix of the urban and the rural with the outdoors and wilderness close at hand. Harbor cities. So in many ways the Vancouver BC area is my true spiritual home. It’s a little too rainy and grey for eight months of the year (eleven months this year!), not quite warm enough usually, and way too expensive. But I love it. Bellingham is forty miles away- as close as I can manage for now.
Now, the place I haven’t mentioned is France. I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said, “Every man has two natural homes, his own and France.” I think this may be especially true for photographers– given the history of our craft and all those great images we all grew up with, going to France is like going home. The times I have been there– whether in Paris or the Pays– has always reaffirmed for me the joy, and the necessity, of taking photographs.
Sidney
As far as they keep on shooting the same way it’s great to see how they adapt. Cartier-Bresson shot more 35mm lens when he was in the USA, which is quite funny. And in Hollywood he shot more Marilyn Monroe than street ;-) (well, most of us would have done the same, I guess)
I find it strange that the overall trend is to shoot in the places that are familiar to us or *somewhere warmer*. The only one that I can recall going somewhere colder is Jacob Aue Sobol going from Denmark to Canada and Greenland.
For me, place is all important. For reasons I’ve already mentioned here and elsewhere, I dont leave my neck of the woods very often; the grass may indeed be greener over the septic tank, but since I’m not going there any time soon, I dont let it bother me. Also, I think when you’re committed to the one area or the one subject you have to think much more about what you’re photographing because you have to find new ways of seeing, of trying to find the new in the ordinary and commonplace. It also gives me an excuse not to go anywhere. Bad things happen to me when I go places so I try to stay put.
Place is as important to photography as it is to literature–and “place” doesn’t refer to landscape but to milieu or environment. Lauren Greenfield’s “Fast Forward” and “Girl Culture” are great books about California (even if not all the pictures in GC are from the west coast). The idea of place–how it is conceived and presented–is an essential part of photography.
When you think of any great artist, regardless of the medium, you probably also associate him or her with a particular setting (physical and intellectual).
David, All,
The ancient Romans believed that every place has its own spirit (“genius loci” or “spiritus loci” they called it), that places are haunted by intelligences that speak to us in different voices. Perhaps the song they sing in some places are sweeter for us than others. Sibelius would have not written “Finlandia” anywhere else than his homeland, and Dvořák in America kept dreaming of his native Moravia… There are places of the mind that keep emerging on our mental and emotional maps, and I think each one of us who’s attuned to the world seeks harmony with their surroundings and their sense of place. Seeks to find on a real map that place of emotion.
Not sure how photographers fit into all of this, but Koudelka’s solitary tree in Northern Greece, surrounded by snow, keeps coming to mind…
Giancarlo
I agree with Giancarlo; can anyone imagine Faulkner as a New York writer or Joyce as a Canadian or Kafka without Prague? Dante spent his exile in Ravenna dreaming of Florence; other than Koudelka, I can’t really think of an artist who has found a true home in exile. Exile usually has the effect of cutting the artist off from the source of their strength. Akhmatova knew this better than anyone. She could have left Russia and spared herself and her son a life of pain and bitterness, but she refused to leave.
“I am not one of those who left the land
to the mercy of its enemies.
Their flattery leaves me cold,
my songs are not for them to praise.
But I pity the exile’s lot.
Like a felon, like a man half-dead,
dark is your path, wanderer;
wormwood infects your foreign bread.
But here, in the murk of conflagration,
where scarcely a friend is left to know,
we, the survivors, do not flinch
from anything, not from a single blow.
Surely the reckoning will be made
after the passing of this cloud.
We are the people without tears,
straighter than you…more proud… ”
Anna Akhmatova, 1922
For me the place came before the photography.
I started visiting India in 1995 and out of that my love for photography was rekindled. For the first several years I was a (spiritual) tourist with a point and shoot. Then because of what I was seeing and the fact that I couldn’t “capture” it, I began to study photography. I’ve been to India every year for the past 12 years and it’s definitely been the place I’ve most associated with shooting. HOWEVER I am now in the process of moving to New Mexico and this year for the first time since I’ve been a photographer I won’t be going to India. I’ve been shooting my “assignment” in New Mexico and I have to say I have been enjoying it as much or more than India (if for no other reason than I can drink the water!) I’ve been forced to look beyond the bright colors and exotic locations and I think it’s been the best thing that’s happened to me “growth-wise” since I started shooting.
This has also happened at the same time I’ve been exposed to David and the blog…so the question is whether the change of location was as important as all that I’ve been exposed to here. Hard to say but for me moving in a direction different than what I thought “my place” was has been a good thing.
One more thought on exile… I once heard Andrei Tarkovski speak at a lecture in Florence, many years ago, and while he never openly spoke of Russia, you could hear the man reaching out to his homeland in every word he said. And then again it is more complicated than that, than just longing for our native place: some of us will go away to find their internal voice in a different place than where they were born. There are places on maps that we can’t touch, and their geography shapes the contours of whom we truly are…
Akaky, that is a beautiful poem you sent!
We all have our comfort zones, but there is generally a sense of excitement when going someplace new to shoot. I totally sympathize with Sherman coming from the Caribbean and experiencing the blandness of a suburb, but I appreciate Janet’s willingness to seek out something new while living in someplace similar.
Since we are photographers and have easy access to our international peers, maybe it’s best to consider our audience. I remember looking at the site of the photo festival in France, the Rencontres d’Arles 2007. In the introductory slideshow I remember a very basic shot of a typical suburban home with an SUV parked in the driveway. It made me wonder, is this shot so important because it’s not a typical scene in France, and purhaps wouldn’t go over so well or have as much photographic merit to an American audience? If I’m missing the context, please correct me.
I have my quirks about things I try to avoid when making pictures. Plastic chairs – modern cars – vinal siding – hate ‘em. I see this stuff every day. But to someone who doesn’t, things unknown become a point of interest, then you have an audience.
If you find yourself stuck in the suburbs, maybe you seek out the story that your audience wouldn’t expect. Find rebellion. Maybe it’s a story on encroching gang violence or heroin use among teens – or something lighter, like kids in garage bands trying to make their way out.
Of course I’d prefer to be traveling and shooting, but still feel compelled to find something meaningful wherever I am, or wherever I’m stuck.
David–
Speaking of photographers thriving in some places and not others, and being associated with and inspired by certain milieux and not others, I have always wondered how Bill Allard ended up shooting fashion models and runway shows in Paris, and what he thought about that– before, during, and after– do you have any backstory or insights that might illuminate this?
Akaky–
Thanks for the poem. I too love the poetry of Akhmatova and find her life inspiring.
Giancarlo–
Many great thoughts in your contributions! The equivalent to your Roman ‘genius locus’ is the Japanese ‘kami’, the god or spirit that infuses a place and on which all of the Shinto religion is based.
David McGowan and Akaky–
You both raise important points that I wrestle with all the time and have not resolved. Once I was a world traveler (no comparison with DAH, but in my own modest way) but I have not been on an airplane or owned a car since autumn 2000. Partly this is because I am very poor these days, partly it is a matter of deeply held principle. I contributed far more than my share of CO2 to the planetary atmosphere over several decades but cannot in good conscience continue to do so. So I try to focus on the world close to home, even though there is much in it that does not inspire me, particularly visually. What I do photograph locally is a very filtered and unrepresentative fragment of the whole I see around me. I try to extend that to be more ‘representative’ of the truth of my environment, but it’s a daily struggle with myself. Maybe it’s foolish to agonize over this, but I was a geographer before I was a photographer.
Sidney
Thanks Sidney. You too!
One more thought — perhaps one that can shed some isight on Bill Allard… Many of us (pro photographers or not) need to make money to live and some times the logic of the marketplace takes us where we wouldn’t otherwise go… Then also, some of us follow a path of self discovery and through that, they find the world. It might seem that others follow the history and events of the world and and end up finding the inner path. The two journeys can lead to very different results…
Maybe that’s why Koudelka has always been comfortable(?) in many places: he is still pursuing an internal quest, wherever that takes him. The world is just his canvas.
Giancarlo
David,
My very backyard was a completely different world this morning. The fog was thickly present in MD, too.
Don’t know if I have a particular geographical environment that suits my photography or if I work better in the Southwest or the Northeast or where ever… I think I do my best work when my mind and body are working together. When I’m rested, healthy, enthusiastic, driven. Creativity gracefully flows from this. (usually) This can happen (or NOT!) in any environment… for me.
P.S. Did you happen to see my email response to you?
Thanks.
Home for lunch…
I think the answers are on 2 different levels. One would be to be very specific about the place that “clicks” with us, and the other more about the place that don’t inspire us, leaving quite a few that do, and on a rather large scale sometimes (spanish-speaking/influence warm climates, tropical Asia, etc…).
Curious: which one of you could really stick to one very specific place, of the dimension of one city, one region, one “zone”, and feel, on the contrary, that another locale/subject would be less natural to apprehend, and more like work, for pros?
Funnily, it’s without photography in mind that i feel ever-attracted by the South east asian sub-continent.
But with photography in mind, I tend to question this single-minded attraction. To answer like all of you did, i would say i have a predilection for semi-urban places, in preference to big capital cities and distant tribal ethnies.
A good example is the Issan region in Thailand, mostly farmland, with urban regional centers, all completely affected by the changes of the last 50 years in Thailand.
This said, if someone thought I’d be right to work on any other subject, in any place, I’d welcome the challenge with excitement. Beggars are not choosers! :-)
AKAKY…
yes….i was in paris with bill allard when he shot the paris fashion scene…i was there simultaneous doing a story on french teenagers…all for an entire issue on france..such fun we had together!!!
bill requested this shoot…as did i….we both totally enjoyed our respective work…
david
I have been obsessed with the look of NYC since I first came here in 1986, this is the place that made me buy an SLR camera and take a photo class while still in college in Boston in 1988 only to dislike and feel forced to take photos anywhere else but here in NYC. I moved here in 1990 and have been taking street photos on and off ever since. I am still obsessed with NYC I feel I have not even scratched it’s surface. There is no place I have ever been, and I have traveled quit a bit and lived in other places, that stirs my passion for doing photography then NYC. And I am almost positive if I ever move out of NYC that photograhy will be something of the past for me.
Spirit of place man! , The importance of an inspirational invironment cannot be overrated, I moved North of the tropic of Capricorn to be closer to the things and scenarios I love to photograph.
To have assignments that would take me close to places that I want to go to , But then again I had a brilliant winter photographing in London over christmas ,walking up and down tow paths on the Thames , Thin ,Dim light a bit of change is a good thing !
Glenn,
G’day. Checked out your site a little- loved it all, the landscapes (Astral Travelling) and the more journalistic stuff (Tronna). As good as any imagery I’ve seen out of Oz. Dinkum! Especially impressed with your East Timor coverage. Good onya, mate!
Sidney
Thanks Sidney , You’re a gentleman and a scholar and so slouch your self, whens 5 & 6 coming along?
Judging from everyone’s comments, place is an important concept for photographers, perhaps one of the most central concepts. Not surprising when it is the surfaces of the world and how they reflect light that we are interested in studying.
Place is just where time and space meet, but it is thick and meaning-filled. We photographers, and maybe we people, enshrine place with memory and its material equivalents — like photographs.
Akaky, Ahkmatova is a wonderful example of this. The poet in Leningrad was surrounded by the spectors of place. Even the name of the city was lost to political struggle: her lonely home, the prison where her son was locked away, fellow poets and friends lost to suicide or the terror of Stalin… all ghosts of place. Yet it was still her Russia, her place, and sustained her as the poem you posted so eloquently states.
For me, photography has been the best vehicle for exploring place. I’ve grown up absorbed in the pages of NG and it has been Alex Webb and the photographers of NG — hint, hint — that inspired me into this game.
So what is it about photography that makes it so suitable for envisioning place, I wonder?
Place is everything, but it nescesery dont have too be fare away, Josef Sudek was photographing his garden in 30 years or so. And that garden was small, but his art is not. It all depends on the type of photo we do. War hopfully not at home, flowers yes.(if you have:) Some get bored of one thing, others not. So as the rest of things in life it is personally, I find it more and more interesting to photograph where I Iive, because that challenge me. Fresh images in the same old place. (I live in an suburb)
But it could also be wery frustrating coming to a wonder place like Venice and awoid the cliches.
Sidney like your writings and photos!
Gunnar
Obviously place is important but I’m much more subject driven (I’m interested in animals) Next year with luck I’ll be visiting a jungle (I hate taking pictures in jungles) Russia-China in the snow(If I can beg the equipment I need)and Southern Africa. Sorry Sidney my carbon footprint will be terrible next year. I much prefer Africa and I hate jungles but that’s where the story is.
As long as it’s new I find I’m happy. I’m in love with a national park in Zimbabwe that I’ve visited a couple of times and would love to stay there for a year but I’m sure after a year I’d be itching to get pictures of penguins or seals.
I think I’d be being lazy if I just went where I know I could take good pictures.
Harry.
When I started photography in Sydney, I thought it was absolutely photogenic and Bangkok, my hometown, would never beat that. I mean I would never take shots like in Sydney.
However, now, I think it’s more about photographer’s view to the city. Like relationship of a couple. There is introduction stage, getting to know each other. Then it develops the chemistry to a certain point. Some works, some does not. The more connection they have, the more compelling the works show. That is where the preference comes in the way.
On contrary, I believe that many photographers quickly adapt to the environment and produce amazing works. Does that mean they have less connection to the surrounding?
At early stage of photography, I prefer exploring other places even though still enjoy finding interesting stuff on the streets of Sydney. Can’t wait for my Thailand trip next month.
When I started photography in Sydney, I thought it was absolutely photogenic and Bangkok, my hometown, would never beat that. I mean I would never take shots like in Sydney.
However, now, I think it’s more about photographer’s view to the city. Like relationship of a couple. There is introduction stage, getting to know each other. Then it develops the chemistry to a certain point. Some works, some does not. The more connection they have, the more compelling the works show. That is where the preference comes in the way.
On contrary, I believe that many photographers quickly adapt to the environment and produce amazing works. Does that mean they have less connection to the surrounding?
At early stage of photography, I prefer exploring other places even though still enjoy finding interesting stuff on the streets of Sydney. Can’t wait for my Thailand trip next month.
When I started photography in Sydney, I thought it was absolutely photogenic and Bangkok, my hometown, would never beat that. I mean I would never take shots like in Sydney.
However, now, I think it’s more about photographer’s view to the city. Like relationship of a couple. There is introduction stage, getting to know each other. Then it develops the chemistry to a certain point. Some works, some does not. The more connection they have, the more compelling the works show. That is where the preference comes in the way.
On contrary, I believe that many photographers quickly adapt to the environment and produce amazing works. Does that mean they have less connection to the surrounding?
At early stage of photography, I prefer exploring other places even though still enjoy finding interesting stuff on the streets of Sydney. Can’t wait for my Thailand trip next month.
When I started photography in Sydney, I thought it was absolutely photogenic and Bangkok, my hometown, would never beat that. I mean I would never take shots like in Sydney.
However, now, I think it’s more about photographer’s view to the city. Like relationship of a couple. There is introduction stage, getting to know each other. Then it develops the chemistry to a certain point. Some works, some does not. The more connection they have, the more compelling the works show. That is where the preference comes in the way.
On contrary, I believe that many photographers quickly adapt to the environment and produce amazing works. Does that mean they have less connection to the surrounding?
At early stage of photography, I prefer exploring other places even though still enjoy finding interesting stuff on the streets of Sydney. Can’t wait for my Thailand trip next month.
When I started photography in Sydney, I thought it was absolutely photogenic and Bangkok, my hometown, would never beat that. I mean I would never take shots like in Sydney.
However, now, I think it’s more about photographer’s view to the city. Like relationship of a couple. There is introduction stage, getting to know each other. Then it develops the chemistry to a certain point. Some works, some does not. The more connection they have, the more compelling the works show. That is where the preference comes in the way.
On contrary, I believe that many photographers quickly adapt to the environment and produce amazing works. Does that mean they have less connection to the surrounding?
At early stage of photography, I prefer exploring other places even though still enjoy finding interesting stuff on the streets of Sydney. Can’t wait for my Thailand trip next month.
I never thought I would voice the dissenting opinion, but space is not that important for me (or I have not come across my preferred space yet of course ;-). I thought there was the old adagio that a good photographer can work in any environment-space-situation? After reading the comments, is it possible that people are confusing (or defining) space with personality/interest/background? To me, I think that your productivity in a certain space is more determined by those subjective traits (personality/interest/background) than by space itself. This is a bit tautological, of course, since your personality/interest/background are to a large extent driven by past space experience. Or maybe this is a (rather crude?) attempt by my scientific mind to explain the “spiritus loci” phenomenon?
Okay, after two what the hell’s and a moment’s consternation that the tantrum I threw last night (the New Yorkers here will know why)had somehow affected my eyesight, another go through of the posts has revealed the source of the confusion. Mr Harvey, Sidney asked about Mr Allard and the Parisian fashion models, not me. I know Mr Allard’s work and if he wants to take pictures of hot French babes strutting down a runway in Paris instead of bison grazing on the prairie in the middle of the Big Empty than he should go for it. I mean, is there an actual choice here, when you really think about it? Babes or buffalo; yeah, I know I’d have to think about it for a long while…garcon, garcon, ou es mon Big Mac, sil vous plait?
Okay, after two what the hell’s and a moment’s consternation that the tantrum I threw last night (the New Yorkers here will know why)had somehow affected my eyesight, another go through of the posts has revealed the source of the confusion. Mr Harvey, Sidney asked about Mr Allard and the Parisian fashion models, not me. I know Mr Allard’s work and if he wants to take pictures of hot French babes strutting down a runway in Paris instead of bison grazing on the prairie in the middle of the Big Empty than he should go for it. I mean, is there an actual choice here, when you really think about it? Babes or buffalo; yeah, I know I’d have to think about it for a long while…garcon, garcon, ou es mon Big Mac, sil vous plait?
Whoops, sorry about the double hit there. I must stop leaning on the enter key
Hi everyone,
I’ve been reading David’s blog on and off for a while now and there have been some really interesting topics discussed.
Like some of the other readers, a sense of place is at the heart of my work. Exploring the idea of what “place” means – and even more crucially, trying to uncover the unique culture and human identity which flows out of a strong sense of place – is why I photograph.
I think that it is inevitable that a creative person is going to be inspired by certain places more than others and therefore their best work is going to made in, or be about those most inspiring places.
Writers like Faulkner (as mentioned above) or Hemingway, Dickens, and Willa Cather all had place at the centre of their work. As did the painters Turner, Hopper, and van Gogh. Of course, I could go on and list musicians too, such as Bill Monroe (the father of bluegrass music), Edith Piaf, Roscoe Holcomb etc etc.
Obviously it doesn’t have to be just one specific place for one to make their best work, but it is usually a certain kind of place.
I have always though that HCB made his best work in Europe, Bill Allard’s best pictures are of the American West, Eggleston’s are of the South regardless of him not wanting to be considered a Southern photographer, and you could probably argue that Bruce Gilden’s are from New York (alongside Go from urban Japan).
Of the photographers that interest me, I think only Sam Abell, Jeff Jacobson, Robert Frank and Larry Towell have shown a consistency is creating great work throughout a variety of places. I’m sure there are others out there, but I may also be proven wrong.
I think the key, for me at least, is to have two or three places in which to photograph on a regular basis if you focus on long term projects. However inspiring and exciting a place is, it can be hard day in day out photographing in the same location or region, especially on those tough days when no pictures come and you wonder why you even started a project.
I’ve been photographing rural East Anglia (in the UK) since 2001 and I feel that the project is slowing coming to an end and I have given myself one more year of photographing. But in that time I have also started projects in Cadiz and Saskatchewan. I’ve been to Cadiz seven times now since 2004 and being able to photograph somewhere different now and again has been crucial to being able to keep a continued focus on photographing in East Anglia for all that time. And now I feel Saskatchewan calling again.
I think it is crucial to squeeze every single picture out of a place and if you work hard and really contemplate your work at times it can be quite surprising how many pictures you can produce in one place. But also just go with it and not worry about where the new pictures will come, they will just appear when you least expect it. I have found in East Anglia that I think I’ve exhausted a farm photographically, but then I take a break and don’t go there for a while and I return and notice something I hadn’t seen before. I’m just wondering how many times this can happen….
Anybody interested in place should read The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane, recently published by Granta.
Cheers,
Justin Partyka
Hey!
Last week it was very moody fog in place where I’m now, but I had only digital camera any film, now when i have my m6 and a few films this fog gone! but i need it! I want make essay about this palce and I hate this place! so I need fog and gray clouds, full shadow like always here to show how much I hate this palce. but my fog just gone. so i’ll be waiting for dark.
i think infuence of place for photography depends on photographer, but changes is always good for turn on full power.
I like working in warm place (with this light!) and cold place (with this mood!). that why i fly to cuba and think how to get money for Island… hmmmm… or siberia!
ok. I’m going to shoot some frames my hate…
I’ll look here tomorrow
Martin
I only ever photograph in my home city of Manchester UK. For me it is important that I know the place I am photography well.
david….my wife has made a nice surprise to me yesterday: she ordered a Leica M8 to thank me for my strong support during the first month since we had Anne-Camille…So I will be the HAPPY owner by the end of the week…
Can I ask you if you are shooting on Auto with this camera and mesering the highlights as you told me for slides few weeks back?
I know I know, it is kind of a technical question, but please ususally I just ask philosophical questions!!
arie
As a shy person, I don’t give myself too much credit when I don’t feel very comfortable in a place. Most of the subjects that interest me to photograph are in places where, at least at the beginning, I know I’ll feel inhibited. So, constantly I’m pushing myself.
I think that to be in connection with the place and my “comfort zone” are two very different things (in my case). But shyness is very tricky and don’t let you see the difference so clear. That place that “clicks” me (as Herve said), doesn’t have to be the place where I feel most relaxed.
I really love taking pictuers in places I know but a new city or a new area in my city always attract me. for me everything is depended to people live there. their relation with places made them important , since 2 years ago I’ve worked more inside homes, in rooms, in basements you know what it means low light…. warm tropical areas with sun light? waooo I love that
When I read your word, I think “he is a poet or a photographer?”.
I agree with you that the place can modify the way to watch, the way to feel for a photographer, but I also think that a good feeling with herself can help a photographer to get a good picture.
Sometimes I feel good when I’m aloe with my camera, sometimes I feel good when I’m fall in love, sometimes I feel good also when I’m angry with all the world!
I think that is important to know what you want to capture…and the shot, without think too much.
Anyway, I love your works Alan, and also your word.
Paolo
PS: where I can find your email!?
Wonderful picture David.
As to your topic … I can shoot anywhere but far prefer or wish for a place where people do something. That something is not important but something other than just stand around. If I could wish what that something could be I would wish for an activity that is meaningful to their existence. This is all fairly vague but it goes well in line with my feeling that I would be happy to photograph anything anywhere.
I do however have a few exeptions. I could not photograph people being tortured or do a documentary on the porn industry. I suppose some of the work James Nachtwey has done is where I would draw the line.
oi, fuck, that IS A MAGNIFICENT A BEAUTIFUL PHOTOGRAPH!!!!………..
i dont want to write after looking at it, just alot it to simmer inside…..
ahkmatova said it all…
no need to any anything else….
….a short bobblack post….