there is a little discussion going on in the previous post about "war vs. peace" photography and photographers…we can keep that one going, but i would also like to broaden the discussion a bit and chat about "subject matter" period…
how important is it with what you choose to photograph in the first place? do you think "great photographers" choose inherently "great subjects"??
so, just to get you thinking a bit more….please note that Ansel Adams did not set up his large format camera in Iowa…what would have happened if he did?? can you imagine Salgado shooting in a shopping mall in Los Angeles?….in discussing Allard, most of you referred to his photographs from the West (how important is the graphic element of the cowboys hats?) ….what about his stories on Thai elephants or Cyprus? ….does Nachtwey "need" conflict or war to be "great"? does Annie Leibovitz "need" celebrities to make her work sing?? must Mario Testino have "beautiful people" in front of his lens to be Mario??
these are just questions…questions that come up every time i meet with a photographer trying to find her/his way…i am not giving you my opinion (yet)…i want yours….
most "professional" photographers are, by nature, required to make any subject "look good"…they earn their living by lending their expertise and talent to a wide variety of subject matter….certainly the mantra for most professionals is the general thought that they should be able to go anywhere, anytime, and make "anything" look "dramatic" or at least "picture worthy"…
however, most of the photographers you mention here in your comments and actually "admire" do not do this at all…are they "smarter" by choosing the "right" subject or are they just "driven" to do what they do??
the long and short of it: are some subjects just "visually loaded"?? how important is this to you? where and how do you want to "take aim"??
i think it goes into the realm of what is important to you, what you care about, what you want to ‘talk’ about and you bring to that who you are and the way you respond to those elements… Ansel Adams, I think, was concerned with the environment…Allard just seems to delight in his ‘dance’ with people…his approach is warm, inviting and a little exciting. Annie is powerful and tender and to me, seems somewhat shy…i wonder if her association with celebrities gives her a vehicle to express herself. Nahtwey doesn’t hold anything back and i think he would make those same pictures so matter what he photographed. For me, the photographs that are compelling are so because the photograher is. We can’t help but bring to our work the inner reflection of our times and our locations.
david :))
want to bite on this one :)))))…no time, but can i be so bold, to leave you something about content: for me it’s born all of the same place, what lay inside…will write tonight…
and i’ll leaving something later this morning ;))
running
b
ANNE…
it is so so nice that i read you here!!! just before i left for Brazil, the day before, i finally received my copy of “Dancing in the Afternoon”….i am so so proud of you…more proud of you than i would ever ever be for myself!!!
you have personified the very things of which you speak above…to say “congratulations” is not enough…trite almost…so , i will just say that you have warmed my heart…that is all i can think of right this minute…i hope that is enough until we next meet in person….
love, david
BOB….
i wrote that whole post , just so you would “bite” !!!….we are all waiting!!! rip it up my friend…..and please please come on down to Look3…i will be waiting for you…
abrazos, david
David:
Just look at Ralph E. Meatyard’s work. No need to travel or choose exotic subjects. He could work with this freedom probably because his main concerns about photography where related something much more profound, like time, dead, sence of place.
I wish I had a better english to write a deeper coment…
Jorge
David :))
was talking with Marina last night about Look3…will write u when i return from Charlotte…
now, i have to run to teach, so i will leave u something, part of which i wrote for Rene’s book, part of which i expanded for you and look3…hope to publish it in its entirety soon if some mag is interested: about things…about photography…will write something later in the day about what photographers choose (where it comes from) or if subjects choose them…here is a beginning…
hugs
bob
=============================================
I
Of The Old and Memory
We are caught, a wisteried half-coin of shadow, between thumb and forefinger, of tooth and tongue, caught and unsettled in the absence of things. Is it they or we who are absent among the gathering and re-gathering of that which once was?
Once, undone.
The stitching of things: twigs, stone, kettle and the bone which once made up all that nailed itself around your calcified and indentured home. The ordinary spec of things which appear to be there for long, but much later seem to have been lost, a forsaking, to the space and the place of things. Where is it that things go, between the tough of palate and the turn of time, to which bending of which corner, what dampened and rusting space below the bannister, which clear glass of water, which board sagging beneath the weightless circumference of the shell that long ago was abandoned by an early and viscous interior life. Where to, those ordinary things jostling in their vanishing, when they have not yet long left our call and cadence of them is the place to which they depart?
The jolt in the un-finding.
We are bruised.
We are bruised by spared space and the lift of light, a tongued tunnel of shadow lip-lit, and the hanging of a boot, moth rain and the curl of steel beneath breathed-upon moisture, the arch of the wearied ribs of a roof and the calf of a window’s muscle, the knotted knuckles of twined flower-fingers poured out of themselves from a glass and the un-carefully set dime: the spare and dare of things.
We are bruised by the plum print of ordinary things. Those ordinary things which tattoo themselves along the passages of our ordinary lives, those things which seldom scotch-tape their removal stuck to us, but still tinkering away in their falling away: through our list and canter, the fibrous caught gone of us.
So, how does one begin to sing upon the sting of things without welching a maudlin voice? Begin with a memory, the stitch and twitch of something that broke through forlorn sight toward a more fecund sight: a cold winter evening when you were a child.
You remember the old this:
Once you could curl into any small space, the size in height of a quarter, the length of a broken limb from an Elm, between a floor radiator and the bowing oak floor itself. It was then that you learned to carve yourself into spaces, imprint your child’s flesh against the bark of the hard-chiselled radiator and the un-giving floor, chiselled the way one’s initials are carved into the dentures of a school desk. You settled there, yoga’d your body in the radial breathing and bending that would best allow you to stick, like a finger between hip and socket, into the hermitage of the baseboard heater, a space that became a Sistine firmament when you closed your eyes, there beneath that which was above. Beneath the radiator you crawled and listened to the hum, the soft drumming of sound that was fluent between the grammar of the wooden floor boards and the syntax of the cast-iron pipe, sound in song and dialogue above and beneath you. How large that space? How no one knew but you as you crawled from out of your bed into the pilot’s bunk beneath. Even now, the sound is there in a home years away and miles stretched, the pliant boards that still vibrate with the ache of their age and the softening knots of the water when heated and blown through iron pipes. The old and the new. But it was then that you learned to tattoo yourself against things: the way things leap at and into. What other explanation is there that you still dream of things you know longer know the names or places of. The naming of those spaces. A floor board, horse hair, licked rain, gone homes, a crucifixion on the streets of Havana, tattooed staring from bus-window caverns along dusty roads, the children netted by lavender and lost shadow, broken and bloodied feet, chewed upon sugarcane-bone, all.
The detritus of our lives: excavate it and see what shall unsettle.
The unsettling of the settlement of things ticking. Our forlorn and grieving bickering.
Come. Let us See.
II
Testimony and Abacus of Bone: Pictures
1. Iron bent like the curve of a vowel that has grown old, sat like long cupped rain over the shoulders of strangers who have failed to catch the soft sound for the coffin of the word that has pinched it: wrought and rung relief.
2. A wrist that carries the dragon seeds of the dead now clipped along the bellow’d bone of its travels: desert and time and elapsed taps: home.
3. Once the milky moon, wearied of it’s blue-ghost brother, shattered itself into tears which spread like fireflies across the firmament and fell, stardust and cottonseed breath, upon the netting of a summer window in a child’s room in the country: of which dreams became earth, of which net became the milky-way, of which reflection and bulb became chrysalis and quasar, of which became you.
4. At rest two reptilian spines, arched over wet weed and gooey block, the lustrating lustre, that shift and sift of that which once was: of this so are you.
5. And when you were asked, “what shall we do with your ashes?” you nodded and spoke of glass and water and root and bloom and pointed: in that glass see the bones of my limbs, the ribs of my smile, the teeth of my skin, the blood of the water of which I am composed, finger and joint, nail and hair, breathing: two unbaked tuber branches inside, drinking, the urn of glass: i too shall flower, through loss and leave, of this.
etc….
JORGE….
your English is “better”….good point about Meatyard….and there are many other good examples….i think some photographers are subject driven and some make “subjects” out of whatever is “inside” their heart and soul…
cheers, david
by the way, i have always felt things CHOOSE ME, not that I choose them…
David….and everyone….this is it. I’m one of the ones who is a bit shy, but i feel so strongly about this whole subject that i had to jump…into whatever…love that feeling. The first time i worked with David he knew exactly who else i’d “been with’ …and that infuriated me. Being a new photographer i was trying to learn and also to not deal with my own personal make-up….impulsive, wild, quiet, contemplative, timid about some things….well, it’s all gone away…most of it anyway…and it’s taken being with David and a couple other people…being in their yard, but doing my own building…it makes you respond more to others who have that same passion and it doens’t matter what they photograph. it’s very cool and so, so (to quote you, David) freeing and important to feed yourself.
BOB….
nice start!!! you are amazing!!!
ok, now i am running..damn …i have to make a presentation in an hour and i have not shaved, showered or even thought about it until right this second…thanks for the reminder!!
peace, david
Hi David, I think that the mentioned photographers have enough to do(earn) with inspiring/nice/atmospheric subjects. If you consider someone not famous, he might have to work on any kind of subjects in order to pay the bills, I might be wrong but it is surely easier to make what you like when you earn enough to live with it… On the other hand, some people tend to be better with specific subjects, it may be war, celebrities, whatever, they all have talent but this talent might even be superior when the matter is talking to them, more inspiring, referring to private stuff or whatever…
DAVID said (beautifully)
“good work is a balance of feeling the “weight” and yet being at peace with yourself and your work…”
PERHAPS most work that really sings has found a similar balance between ‘visually loaded material’ and the photographer’s ‘drive’..though there are undoubtedly individuals who could spin gold from straw.
Listening to the words in the video clips in that link about the Portuguese contest, the word EMOTION comes up more than others when talking about an image that excels. No one said..great cowboy hat.. but certainly there are visual triggers which play on our emotions, some raw, and some from the palette of the surrounds – feeding memory and desire and the collective myths we create as people.
Hello David and all, this is my first post here.I think there are some subjects that are “visually loaded” because they are “socially loaded” at the same time, as e.g. in conflict situations or crime. So there are a lot of emotions or other things going on, that attract our interest as social human beings. If we capture this with a camera, we may have an interesting visual copy, may be the chances to get others interested in this capture are higher, but it may nevertheless not be the outstanding picture. I think the most important “visual load” is brought by the photographer into the picture (dunno if i can say “onto the subject”?). When we are really fascinated by something or obsessed, we see other aspects, we see deeper into the matter. Then we cross a border and step beyond what can be explained factually, be it in words or visually. Some then write a piece of music, some a poem, and some take a photo to express the “load” (which is a load on them actually?). I wouldn´t have thought that taking pictures on a farm would be “visually loaded”, until I have seen Alessandra Sanguinetti´s presentation in Oslo about her work on a farm in Argentina and the two girls growing up there. The auditorium was fascinated and what you could hear again and again was “hey, she took pictures of cows and and dogs and farm life, normal stuff – but did you ever think this could be so interesting and original?” In the presentation you could feel how much Alessandra was interested and obsessed in this, that she really took care.
May be a photographer must be interested in the subject first and interested in photography second.
YAN…
every photograher that i know who became “famous” (your word) enough to have the freedom to do what they do, did so by always being “who they are” from the very beginning…everyone has to pay the bills, and most of the well known photogs still struggle to “pay the bills”…
you cannot become “well known” in the first place unless you have done something special and that must be done “on your own”…there is nobody out there who will pay you to “do your own thing” unless you are already doing “your own thing”…this must be done perhaps in your “spare time” with personal projects done as a labor of love and not for money…
the work you do to “struggle to pay the bills” will never get you to a point where you have the freedom you desire…waiting for some mythical person or institution to “recognize” your talents will never happen unless YOU recognize your talents and put them out for all to see…
ERICA…
i think you are “spot on”…emotion is certainly the “key” and different photographers find different ways to “trigger” their own emotions which then perhaps will “trigger” an emotional response in the viewer…
if we are all totally honest with ourselves, i think most photographers, no matter how talented, would admit that some subjects are “better” than others as “vehicles” to represent artistic intent…you are correct, nobody says “nice cowboy hat”,but you are also correct in saying that some icons serve in “feeding memory and desire and the collective myths”…well put…
i know for myself that some subjects just would never let me “be me”, no matter how hard i “work”…and with the same set of eyes that i have always…maybe i can always come up to a certain “level”, but i am talking about the work that “identifies” who you are as a photographer..just as some “great actors” sure do seem to be “better actors” when they have the “right script” and are in the “right movie”…
surely every “artist” is looking always for the “grist” that allows them the VOICE and lets them BE….
david
Ok, I’m going to jump in here on this one…first time poster…long time reader.
On the surface, there are two types of photographers here or photographic opportunities, if you will. Those who are being paid to get the picture (Leibovitz) and those who have the luxury of choosing their subject matter (Adams). I think Nachtway is a hybrid of this, he chose to be a war photographer and earns his living from it. Have to get the shot…want to get the shot.
Under the surface however there is obviously more going on…passion, commitment…something to say…how well the photographer really knows and can express themself visually.
Last night, I attended a presentation by Harry Benson and he made a comment that really made me think…he said, “I photograph people the way they want to see themselves” Seems contrary to the comments we hear about personal vision, ” through my eyes”, etc… Seems to me that you would really have to know your subject to be able to do this, yet he spent very little time with many of the celebrities he photographed and still pulled that off. I digress…
I think it boils down to passion, commitment and having something to say. Using your examples David, Admams had a passion for and commitment to preserving the environment…Nachtway, a passion for a commitment to exposing the atrocities of war…they feel it and sacrifice for it. Thus, subject matter…maybe less important. Passion for and commitment to subject matter…maybe everything.
ROBERT McCURLEY…
thanks for “jumping in”…
i think you have it right….
surely, i would not put Harry Benson in the same category as most of the photographers whose names have been mentioned here…he is a hard working,charming, resourceful, “go get ‘em Fleet St. photographer”, and he has gotten some real celebrity “scoops”, but i would not look to him as inspirational…
now, i will wait to get “hit over the head” by a Harry Benson lover!!!
peace,david
This is a great subject. It is, however, so loaded, that a guy could get into real trouble trying to tackle it all.
If Ansel…Iowa, the world would have the greatest pre sunset cornfield shots in the world. Salgado would shoot malls at dawn on the day after Xmas to get the hordes. Now that would make a statement.
I think there is a bit of serendipity involved when a photographer finds a subject both that he can get into and that will market well.
There is a heirarchy in art appreciation, or maybe it’s a triangle shape large at the bottom narrow at top. The most common sensibility is, “Wow, I’ve been on that mountain at that mall.” Somewhere up higher is “hmm, I like it, but I don’t know why. What was the artist trying to do?” AND everything in between and above.
When Friedlander was laid up with an illness, he shot, what was it, plants that were right around him?
What do any of you think about the watertower series from the couple in Germany?
When you see a series showing only people’s feet/legs on the street, what is your response? “Wish I’d done that first.”
What’s your purpose, to inform? delight?
Of course there has to be a balance between subject and photographer, but what is it?
As I said, loaded question, loaded with more questions.
I think good actors are good by the films they choose to be in. Nobody is going to remember great acting if the script is shite. Good photographers are good by the subject matter they choose isn’t the rest just craft?
To stretch Harry’s actor metaphor a little further, arent we really typecasting a little here? When we hear Ansel Adams, we expect to see Yosemite, we hear Salgado we expect to see the wretched of the earth, we hear Nachtwey we expect to see war. When we hear these names and then see photos of Iowa or a mall or people walking down a street doing nothing but talking to each other arent we all a little disappointed that our expectations have not been met? And that we will judge these photographs not on their own inherent virtues but on our disappointed expectations?
I may be wrong but I do not think one can name 10 well known photographers, dead or alive, whose success lies in their encompassing the gamut of photographic subjects. Forget the gamut, even 3 or 4. I am talking highest standards, not good stuff (since they are well known). Granted some subject overlap (environmental, street, facial portraits), yet by highest standards, one can still see the special gifts within these more “technical” categories, and if equal, according to social relevance.
So, save few exceptions, you can always pin down a well-known photographer to a style, which is more than often tied to a visceral approach to the world, that limits the scope of subjects, while freeing the scope of emotions.
(quite possible I needed another cup of coffee, and erred again…)
On the topic of loaded subjects, I was surprised to read Mc Curry say that it did not matter if the “afghan girl” was indian or pakistanese. From the technical POV, sure, but no way from the ever-increasing fame OVER THE YEARS. A great shot became iconic because of the history and suffering of a specific country in a specific time. ie. “load” is important.
Nice subject. I’m still looking for the answer. I think it implicates a choice of life, an hard choice. Raymond Depardon tried to answer at this question in his book Paris Journal. Very Nice pictures in that book, shooted “around” his daily life in Paris. He’s more known for his work in Africa and in the desert. But same man, same style.
I think that any good professional photographer can make good photographs out of any subject at least at a technical level with a fair amount of vision/creativity. However the more emotionally connected you are as a photographer to the subject matter at hand the easier it is to be both yourself as an artist and be inspired by the situation.
As my fellow news photographer buddies and I say “If you go to a war zone or famine and can’t bring back pictures that break your heart – there is something critically wrong with you.”
That said the photographers whom we find inspirational gravitate to the subjects that they care about. Once Ansel Adams did a project with Dorothea Lange with the idea that Adams would do the landscapes and Lange would do the portraits. As soon as they got on location Ansel was more into doing the portraits and Lange was caught up in the nature photos. So they did that instead.
My background is nature photography but my love is to photograph people in their own beautiful and mysterious lives. My landscapes are good but fail to emotionally captivate me the way that ordinary people do and my photos show it.
When I have a subject that I am excited about my work is always better than the ones where I am making something out of thin air. When the greats go to work they have a much greater ability to choose their assignments and even then they tailor their coverage to the things that are in their emotional “wow zone”.
David, if you got a call to do the photographs on a story about the life cycle of the Namibian Sand Wasp which only lives in an isolated patch of the desert, would you take it? I wouldn’t think so as even though you could find ways to make interesting photos of that subject you are emotionally and creatively driven by people. That would be a story for a guy like Frans Lanting who is all about animals and nature and very much to a lesser degree peoples lives.
When Friedlander took photos of the plants near his bed when he was sick, they were not his best images. Put him in his “wow zone” and he’s Lee Friedlander again. Put David in Havana and it’s visual party time. Put David on his belly on the hot desert sand with a macro lens to shoot bugs – much less so.
… If exist “right” subject, why we have not two hundred “Nachtweys” every time when bus with “photojouranlist-turist” going into the war?
… If “right” subject not exist why Nachtwey not publish his “drama” pictures from his kitchen?
First of all “good photography” is not only photojournalism.
I think good photography is always something what we see looking at past not for future.
there not exist “Recipe” for good photography… talent?… subject?… intelect?… luck?… moment?… money?… possibilities?… magnum?… equipment?… ????
even if we will have all of it… it is not mean that we will have good photography.
but when we looking at good picture… or five hundred good pictures… we will see that this photographer had talent, right subject, intelect, luck, possibilities, equipment…
I think that “right” subject is very very important.
but what is “right” for me or for you not mean that it is “right” for all. That’s why “good look professional” photography is not “great” photography. that’s why I will never be Nachtwey and “everythingmade professional photographer” never will be me and Nachtwey. But this is not mean that Nachtwey will have great pictures only into conflict and he can’t make “great” pictures of flowers and pets.
I thought last time that I have “right” subject, but I still have not “right” pictures… why? what I missed?
talent?… subject?… intelect?… luck?… moment?… money?… possibilities?… magnum?… equipment?… ????
David, I know that this is not easy for everyone, and I’ve learned by reading your blog that well known photographers also struggle and of course they also have to pay the bills, I didn’t want to be arrogant… I just wonder if it wasn’t easier to reach the top of the bucket before the digital era, when less people where on the market…sorry for my poor english, my words might not reflect my mind… Getting recognized is a lot of work I guess and a lot of luck at the right time maybe ? By looking at the websites of some writers here I see a lot of good photographs (for what I can judge) and I am sure they work hard and it still doesn’t make them famous.. Anyway your initiative (blog, emerging photographers, …) is a very good opportunity and chance…
I’ve heard photographers complain about things, that their story is not a big issue, is not as good as others, is not as exotic as the story of the monkey trainer in India from Mary Ellen Mark for example, or like the stories in major publications… I quite agree with Jorge, that many of us forget to see around them to get the biggest story of their life.
And I would say yes to Anne Henning, who said about “it goes into the realm of what is important to you, what you care about, what you want to ‘talk’ about and you bring to that who you are and the way you respond to those elements”. Passion connects us to our pictures. But it depends on the intensity of our passion to the subject, and also depends on the way we frame the subject in our consciousness. And so will the picture not only the reflection of the time and location of the moment, but also the reflection of ourselves.
IMHO… correct me if I’m wrong..
thanks
suryo
Another very interesting topic along this one, is: can a well-known, influential, “great” photographer loose his/her “Midas” touch, for any reason (age, artistic block, no reason, etc…)?
I know it’s been said of a few ones here (Salgado, Nachtwey, etc…), that there was a period of genius, unmatched later on, even as the photographer kept his/her relevance, if historic at least.
PS: I keep writing “well-known”, as opposite to me, for ex., who has the total freedom to choose shooting what and as I wish, “say” absolutely nothing in the process, while blissfully enjoying it all like a pig in a pigstye, the muddier, the better… Priceless! :-)
In my opinion, for most photographers it is obviously a combination of subject and talent.
But then you have the kind of talent that doesn’t need an interesting subject. The greatest street photographers, for example, work with the mundane, and somehow manage to find interest there. Witness Winogrand, or the obvious example, Cartier Bresson. Or William Eggleston. Martin Parr, even though he shoots in a variety of places all over the world, has a special talent to expose the mundane. In Parr’s case, one would almost say that an “interesting” subject would work against the merit of his photographs.
It might just be that it is a matter of different kinds of “talent.” It does take talent to make a good photograph in your own backyard. But it also takes talent (of a different type, probably) to make good photographs in a war zone.
“however, most of the photographers you mention here in your comments and actually “admire” do not do this at all…are they “smarter” by choosing the “right” subject or are they just “driven” to do what they do??”
I would hope that photographers who are shooting, not for a job, are shooting what they have a passion for, visual or otherwise, and not shooting because of what they think everyone else will like or what will look the best to others. That is my hope, I always like people who are down to earth and honest and shoot stuff they are honestly into and have a passion for. For myself that is all I can do because I can not “see” what I do not have a passion for even though I know say shooting an in depth essay say on heroine addicts is one lots of people think is “deep” and interesting and photographically interesting.
What I do when looking at pictures is consider “subject” inseparable from theme and style. When I see a great photograph, these notes are played at just the right pitch and the resulting chord resonates, creates harmonics, and sings.
Theme… I think of as the unspoken, universal, abstract idea behind the work as a whole. If the world is chaotic and photography, by framing it and arresting it, imposes order, then the reason behind that order is my “theme”… metanarrative. Or the deeper meaning, passion (or obsession, or fetish, or drive, or preoccupation…)
Subject… content, what it “is”, is not, and represents. Symbol, stand-in or simulacra, signifier and relationship to signified, etc…
Style… the form of the photo, how the photographer chooses to say what he or she is saying.
I think what makes a photographer “great” is the degree of refinement of each of these very complex parts, and their ability to relate them to each other in interesting ways. With refinement, I think, comes self-awareness and with that the ability to consistently create great work.
So, if Nachtwey’s theme is empathy for human suffering, and his Dalai Lama pictures are as poetic as his always are, maybe the subject didn’t serve the theme, didn’t address it directly enough (symbol of a symbol?)… maybe that’s why folks are disappointed with the work? Does he need war specifically? No, I don’t think so… (prisoners in Alabama?)
If Leibovitz’s theme is the mythos of celebrity, maybe photos of non-celebrities would also be disappointing (but maybe a photo of a non-celebrity that comments on the theme would be enough?)
If Adam’s theme is the sublime in nature, I think he would have found that anywhere. Maybe not in midtown.
If Blenkinsop’s subjects are victims of conflict, motorcycle accidents and dog slaughterhouses, what is his theme? Lurid death seems to fit… so I see a disconnect between his work and what he says about it (how he wants/needs to be perceived)
So my short answer… while some subjects may be visually loaded, (generally) great photos need more…
I just read of this big exhibition in London by a german photographer…50,000 visitors in few weeks…
He portrayed people few days before dying and just after death.
children included. Just two photos each. I wonder if this is photography or what….. voyeurism?
it seems just a problem of finding the ultimate idea, as weird as possible…
hi david, hi all,
hhhhhmmmmmm subjects: which ones do we choose? or, do they choose us? i think that this is all down to our individual make: up our personal history, our mood on any given day, our thoughts, our feelings.
sometimes something becomes interesting to me because of a book or books i have read, movies/tv programs i have seen, people i have spoken to, or have simply seen or experienced directly. the seed has been planted by some external means. but then i my seek out a subject based on my thoughts, opinions, feelings, my mood. the subject may reflect what i’m thinking. it gives form to to what exists in my head. but then a subject may arrive out of nowhere, as if by magic.
just before chritmas i had an assignment to photograph in a prison, it was only for a few hours, but it got me interested. i find myself thinking about that place more and more. beforehand it was something that i never really thought about, or had an interest in. but then, courtesy of an editor, a little gift landed in my lap.
sometimes i think its to easy to look down at the things we photograph in order to “pay the bills”. sometimes we may end up being bored, uninspired. the job doesn’t live up to our first impressions, our expectations. but at other times these assignments can takes us somewhere that ordinarily we may never have gone. for that reason alone they are worth doing. they can takes us out of our comfort zone, they make us work in way that we may not do normally. they can challenge us in more ways than is immediately apparent. so they help us to grow.
now, i would probably not choose the same subject as bob black, or herve, or marcin, or perhaps i might. but my interest my interpretation would probably take a complete different form to theirs. why, because they are who they are and i am who i am.
i think that this, like so many of the questions we discuss here, has no answer. who knows why any of us are are interested in something. we just are. perhaps thinking to much about it will spoil it. strip away the layers of mystery that keep us going back for more. anyway, however it happens lets thank our lucky stars when it does.
Jason.
I remember a comment of Christopher Anderson when he won an award due to his work of Latin America…
He mentioned that he hoped there was more people who wanted to finance projects in Latin America.
I also heard the same from another photog, who said me that there are more grants available for projects in china for example or Africa.
I do not know if this is so by my own experience… but this make me thing that certainly there are some limitations for photographers who want to propose a project they feel attracted, but don’t find anyone who things the same.
I also think that the photographer may be influenced by other photographers work to choose the subject that are “appealing”… and everybody takes the same road… I don’t know how many photos have I seen of “morocco”, or “the masais”, or “china”… in so called “travel photography”… and “misery”, “prostitution”, “drugs” in photographers interested in documentary…
It seems to me that there is something like “if this is a good subject, I must have it in my portfolio”, no matter if that subject concerns you or not.
What I have realized is that many of this comes from the photo schools… I have done only short workshops in different schools, and the material shown to teach is almost always the same: “Salgado”, “Cartier-Bresson”, “Nachtwey”, “Magnum”, “Magnum”, “Magnum”… and not even the entire Magnum spectrum…
I remember that in one point I decided not to learn more from workshops… and continue learning from myself. That’s how I found this site, for example.
What you want to photograph must come from your stomach… maybe later you can explain to yourself and others why it is important to you and compose a large bla bla bla about it… but the very first sensation when you find something must come from an EMOTION, pure and simple.
btw David last eastern I was very happy to know Cristina García Rodero here in Venezuela, we only had a very short short conversation, but I was very pleased to meet her… a very humble person what I could see… I wish I could
also heard that René Burri is here… but not a clue about what’s he doing and where he is… do you know if there is someone to ask?
un abrazo
btw David last eastern I was very happy to know Cristina García Rodero here in Venezuela, we only had a very short short conversation, but I was very pleased to meet her… a very humble person what I could see… I wish I could
also heard that René Burri is here… but not a clue about what’s he doing and where he is… do you know if there is someone to ask?
un abrazo
i’ve been wondering this same thing for awhile now. As I travel from place to place I find some places to be more photographically inspiring than others. San Miguel was great, cancun was not. I’m definitely still trying to find myself as a photographer, but i’m discovering new and interesting thoughts about the craft that I had never considered and your blog here also provides lots of good things to think about. Just FYI, David, I’m in the Southeast US for awhile, so if your traveling brings you in my direction send me an email and I will try to meet up! Later– kendrick
Yes a photographer should be able to take a picture anywhere, and make it look acceptable. However, I really believe great photographs come from what you are passionate about. Can I do many things-yes-but what am I willing to travel 10,000 to shoot? Certainly not flowers or sunrises. I can’t get real excited about shooting towels on white seamless. But I am willing to spend a few weeks in Africa waiting for just the right moment, when the light is just right to photograph a person. I really believe it is all about what one is passionate about.
i agree with what has been said: great photography comes from within the person. it is the photographer’s vision and passion that make the picture. which is not to say that a great photographer can make any subject look great. because that vision and passion is essentially linked to what that photographer finds meaningful or significant or interesting. if salgado shhots in an l.a. mall i’m sure he’ll still produce great looking photos by most people’s standards but i suspect they wouldn’t be great photos (by his own standards at least) because salgado might not “feel” the subject. which is probably why he doesn’t shoot in l.a., because he wouldn’t “feel” like doing it
Choice of subject is important. But what is a great subject is ofcourse subjective. I for one have lately abandoned the usual things Ive been shooting after having really tried to digest the kind of photography that, for example, Nan Goldin is famous for. Getting into that and then into some other diaristic photographers Ive started to almost exclusively shoot at home to create a diaristic record of my life. Im mostly focusin on my family but also on my in-laws’ home (which unfortunately due to lack of time I cant really visit very often). For me its whats interesting right now, and when I try to go out an shoot I cant see much to capture, Im just not motivated. I think that motivation is the most important thing. A photographer must have interest and passion for what he is shooting. I think its from that that authorship comes from.
Hi David,
To start I think it would be important to distinguish between personal work and assignments. There are some photographers fortunate enough to choose their own assignments (the truth is that they have work really hard to get where they are).
To the question how important is it what you choose to photograph in the first place? do you think “great photographers” choose inherently “great subjects”?? I believe that the subject definitely matters in what you are trying to capture. Your personal beliefs and how passionate you feel about a certain issue/subject will make the difference in your work.
For instance, I really admire Salgado’s work. I believe his photographs reflect his beliefs and personal struggles. I think there is no coincidence in the fact that he studied economy and that he has extensively documented the unfair asymmetries in current societies from different perspectives. I feel he was trying to make a statement, to make the difference, although he claims that there are no political intentions behind his images .
As you well know Salgado’s personal life is quiet remarkable. He was a highly educated economist who decided to give up on his profession and started as photographer. But through a long period of time he was following his “great subjects”, maybe not always in his assignments, but was able to do this when he won recognition…
But lets take a look to a different case… there is Douglas North who was a talented photographer and also an economist. He even worked with Dorothea Lange and she tried to convince him to become a photographer… he finally decided to embrace economy and make the difference from the academic realm. After years of research he developed his famous institutional theory and won the Nobel Prize in economy…
(For his autobiography see: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1993/north-autobio.html)
My conclusion: Subject matters in all disciplines and a really good body of work (photography, literature, academic publications and so on) is the natural result of a life long commitment and strong beliefs.
Enjoy Brazil,
Un abrazo,
Beatrix
Subjects are VERY important for me. In fact that is my dream. To be a photographer of subjects, of those “great” ideas that come to my mind and work on it until is done. Right now I have many assignments that do not fit my requires at all. I mean, those are subjects that I don’t like and where I don’t feel my soul. I just do it because it is also photography, because I love to have the camera in my hand and it gives me money. In a way, I like it… But when I really feel good, when I really fell FREE is when I get my camera bag and walk out into the wild in search of the subjects that really moves me. I have now a couple of them in mind. And I will be very happy doing it.
I think we mention all these photographers that are great in subjects because all of us (at least me) desire to do what we really feel like. We want to do things that move our hearts and can move other’s hearts.
But that does not mean that I can’t also enjoy the unexpected. In fact, many times happen that something just go on in front of you, something that you never expected and it can be also a great subject. So… yes to subjects, but not always thought as a plan. Give an opportunity to chance!
Abrazos!
Hello David, hello all,
I agree with most of the above.
For me as well, it’s about commitment, about the heart, what you feel in the belly and what you want to show the world.
Whether that is celebrety portraits like Annie, War and famine in all its facets like James…
It’s passion to tell a certain story in your own unique way. And in that sense I believe the subject often chooses you. It’s about how you look at the world around you and what you want others to see.
What I like in the watertowers from the Bechers is the passion that speaks out of the volume of the work. I’m not an architecture photographer, I’m not particularly fond of towers like that, it’s not the style i work in, and looking at an individual picture of them, does not really do anything to me.
What makes it great is to see it together and there for see the obsession and the passion the couple had in documenting these wierd shaped buildings.
And that for me, no matter what kind of photography i see, makes work great for me. Passion.
Wendy
Hi everybody,
have not had the time to read all of the above so I hope I am not repeating the same stuff over.
I think in this case it’s about the little “extra involvement”. Every good photographer will probably be able to make nicely composed pictures out of almost everything, regardless if he/she is personally involved by the subject or not. The composition I mean here is a more formal thing that in worst case (?!) even neglects the subject. For me in a next step would be the composition that “dances along” with the subject, that interacts, maybe even sculpts out a defined message. But then one has to have a message first, or one has to be able to feel it intuitively.
But then … there are probably for everyone these subjects that fill you up with images from the start, images you wait for, so you can finally take them, even if they are not yet specified, somehow they are there (David’s portrait of Wyeth at the window seems to be such a image). Like an embryo. You know they are there, you feel them, like when you have a word on the tip of your tongue … I think that is the motivational part, because if you have this feeling, you will probably stay and wait a little longer until these pictures materialize somehow, you will go out and try to see them happen… or leave somewhat unfullfilled.
Some will probably even try to MAKE them happen, even if this would not be my approach, as I would be afraid of killing the chance to get something even grander, something I could not possibly have thought of….
Would you all intervene to get what you want?
Abraços à todos,
L
Hmm…
when I talk about intervention, I do not mean planning a still life picture like Bechers did…
Just not to cause any confusion here… I probably put it too general. It depends on the assignment and on the subject, of course.
I whish I had the words to really ask what I want to ask, but I hope you all get it anyway.
Hallo LASSAL,
habe leider von deiner Nachricht neulich nur den Absender lesen können. Mail über Deine HP kam auch zurück.
Die “materialisierten Ideen” sind ja toll. Wow, was für eine IDEE !
Viele Grüsse aus dem überhaupt nicht frühlingshaften München.
olli
Hi Olli,
echt?! Mist.
Ich habe mich schon gewundert, ob da was mit dem Kontaktformular evtl nicht stimmt. Muss ich überprüfen lassen. Danke für den Hinweis.
Mail ist info@lassal.de oder .com
Hatte schon befürchtet, Dir irgendwie auf die Füße getreten zu sein… Habe immer so wenig Zeit zum Schreiben, dass ich füchte, manchmal den falschen Ton zu treffen…
War über Ostern in Muc… Hatte aber vergessen zu fragen, ob Du Zeit hast, sonst hätte man sich mal auf einen Kaffee treffen können. Next time. Immer auch gerne in Ffm.
Lieben Gruß,
Lassal
Sorry everybody, Olli just gave me an important hint: The contact-formular on my website seems not to be working.
As promised, i’ll try to offer something about this too, though since i’ve already began with a ridiculously long 1st comment, i’ll try to keep it temperate…plus, Dima is waiting, as we’re going out for pizza for return for Family board Game night (yea tonight), before i depart for us…lots of great thoughts already above and I agree with them and there’s nothing more to add really, but i’d like to offer a tact that looks at the idea of “what makes a good photographer/photograph” from a perspective other than the considerations of traditional/classical PJ/Documentary work, which is generally what this blog seems most concerned with, just as it seems that the vast majority of members are “traditionalists” or consider photography within that very specific range of photography: using “real life” as the beginning and ending of photography: the document……but, in truth, photography is much broader, richer and more odd than that…at the heart, it seems to me, one elemental requirement: and that is the photographers relationship to her work: their love and passion and commitment to whatever it is she is doing or thinking about or communicating. For in truth, whatever a photographer does and within whatever definition of photography she works in (journalism, documentary, conceptual, film, abstraction, fine art, point-shoot, travel, family albums, whatever), the fact is that photography is simply another vehicle to tell a story. The story is the language of our disperate and often desperate species: we communicate, above all else, not only with words, but with images and gesture and music and ideas and spiritual and silence and absence. Photography is simply another way of telling a tale, probably the basic tale we are all hungry to hear and hungry to tell, the witnessing, if you well, of this departing life and our role and negotiation and misunderstanding and longing for and of it. We’re storytellers, each and everyone of us, above all else…It seems to me that the stories we each tell ourselves, the stories to which we gravitate, the stories about which we seem to see our own pallid selves are the things which measure that which seems to roost the most richly…passion, uncertainty, commitment, empathy, love, loss, all those….those are the measures, at least for me, by which things begin to ring: to set the darkness ringing, indeed..as Heamus reminds…
As with a marriage or a friendship or spiritual reclamation, there is no algebra for wellness, no formula by which we can decide what is or isnt a good photograph, who is or isnt a good photographer or how or how not to embark on this maddeningly emotional journey: to be a photographer, or more simply, to make photographs. I think, at least for me, one thing is uncontestable: my photography and my relationship to making photographs (the subjects (people, place, moments), the style (film, b/w, prints, etc), the time (when, when not to even take a camera) are all born of the same simple truth: I invest in my photography the same way i invest in the rest of my life: it’s simply an extension of who i am and how i attempt, ridiculously and imperfectly, to live this life with passion and doubt and commitment. I’ve written often here (and elsewhere) that for me photography, making photographs, is another extension of my breathing, another way that I have chosen (or it chose me late in life) to try to “comprehend” (not understand) the life inside and outside. For me, photography, as with my writing, is a way, a tool, i’ve acquired to try to come to terms with my life, with the life of people and places around me, a way for me to reflect and question and negotiate and think about things. Sometimes I feel compelled (often) to write about ideas and people and places, sometimes not. Sometiems i feel compelled to photograph people and places and sometimes not. Sometimes I try to photograph with an idea/reflection, sometimes i photograph with the idea of trying to show “what i have seen” or “what i have heard” or “how someone has expressed something to me.” Sometimes, i dont even think about photography. But, my photography is an investment and an extension of who I am, what i think about, where i have gone and the people that I have met or known or seen (if not known). Another tool that allows me to stew and fry and shake upon this fever that has entered me, this joyeous and painful and doubtful think we call the experience of being alive.
If i didn’t care about the people i photograph or the places, if i wasn’t somehow infected by them, by place, by their stories, i couldnt photograph. Often, actually, the moments that move me the most profoundly raize and extinquish my desire to use the camera, instead a welling of silence occurs: i just want to listen or watch or savor, allow it to bloom and then, pop, sift and drift away. For me, in general, it’s never been a question of “should i shoot this or that”, or at least not anymore. It’s much more organic than that, but that has come (as a luxury) after lots of frustration and struggle. For me, the best photography seems to be invested by just that. I cannot distinguish (though I dont know for sure, this is merely an intuition) between the photographer/photograph and the response. In otherwords, the great photographers that affect and have inspired me, the great images, all seem to be defined by the same thing: the alchemy of the marriage of subject and “content” (the photographic properties of an image): the emotion, the epiphanous moment, the extraordinary expression the billows up from that image. The What of the What.
the best photographers to me seem to be the ones who have invested themselves (in both success and failure) in the honesty of their commitment to that which drove and inspired them. I admire such a huge range of photographers, and some of the photographers to whom i return again and again rarely (if ever) come up in conversations here at the blog or in conversations i have with other photographers. The totality of photography is what has juiced me. Beginning with the “classicists” like brady, dovchenko, bresson and capa, smith which lead to the remarkable and inspiring work of the photogrphers i admire so much (the magnum dudes, including our beloved David and John and my hero jones griffiths to the experimentalists and the artists, like Man Ray (who opened my eyes when i was in college) and Russian Constructionists (they still startle me, nearly 100 years later) and all the “fine artists” who first really lived inside me and inspired me like Jessica Woodman and Duane Michaels and Robert Frank and Ralph Meatyard (one of my heros too) to the deeply personal weirdos like Moriyama and Arbus and another hero of mine the artists Christian Boltanski and frazier and the painter Anselm Kiefer (yes, he’s as much a photographer as a painter as beneath all those mammouth paintings are photographs), and the remarkable photographer/filmmaker M. Rodner (from Israel) to filmmakers like Chris Marker and Goddard and Tarkovsky (who also photographed and inspired Pinkhassov) and Vitor Erice, from PJ’s to Artists to Documentarians to family albums and snap shooters…….can i mention my grandmother, who spent her entire life as a photographer in obsquirity, and yet her slides speak more to me than almost any other color photographer i know…you see, photography for me doesnt just mean magnum and bresson and nachtwey and all that, but is so much richer…shit, look at all the great children’s photography done with pinhole cameras and milk cartoons…that shit probably speaks to me more than anything by Nachtwey (and I think Jim is one of the Olympians and most inspriational people, photographer or otherwise, breathing on this planet)….
In then end, they are invested in their singular sense that photography, like writing and music and dancing and working on accounting books and building buildings and cutting air comes from the same basic spot: the personal understanding how you choose to live your life is often an indication of how that life sits inside and upon you…
Also, there are so many different kinds of photographers. Some have the luxury to simply photograph what and how they want. Some must suppliment their “personal” projects with others, like assignments or commercial work, or shooting. Also, even the pictures we “see” are a small, small part of what a photographer shoots, so even that has been refined. It seems to me that the most “successful” photographers are those who, for whatever reason or moment or place, CONNECT to a subject, an idea, an aeshetic, a style, a commitment, an empathy to the work, the people, the craft. We “recognize” this because they have somehow imparted a part of themselves. I know a David Alan Harvey photograph by, not it’s brilliant and gorgeous color, but by its nearly erotic sense of loneliness and silence. David’s photographs, at least to me, always speak of eros, eros in the largest sense: love lost, love hungered for, and the confusion: the empty spaces and the silence, the sadness that seems in nearly all of his pictures, not an answer, but a hungering question. Not all of David’s photographs “speak to me” but lots do, not because we’re the same type of photographer, but ultimately because as a human, i recongize his voice, his humanity and the humanity of the people and places he shoots. Same too with “conceptual” artists, with those whom i feel an affinity or bond, it is often because something in them clicks inside me. I think of the Starne brothers and from the moment i first saw their work i thought: holy fuck, that’s what spills into my life too. Rarely to i see people discuss them anymore, and never here or at LS, which just goes to show how ghettoized the photography world still is…to me, i respond to photographs the same as with books or music: if somehow it sings inside me, or somehow one recognizes that there is a debth of expression and exploration and singularity there (not necessarily originality, cause thats bollocks) of a person reaching out to tell some story, which may be the story of others (photojournalists, documentaries) or the story of themselves or the story of the craft/ideas (conceptualists) etc…doesn’t matter…
and in the end, still, rarely does anything affect me as deeply as a person’s family album…this is probably why i love david’s first (family drive) book and that magnificent book about the poor family in Virginia…though David is working in the specific tradition of Document work, there is still the same thing there…how, really, is that work different from Starne brothers or christian boltansky or NG or art school kids or my son’s photos with his $10 plastic camera when he was 5….
the act of photography as the commited act of telling a story about what this experience of being alive is…to me, watch kids playing soccer, or go to a jr. high dance (yea, im a pappa now) and one understands quite quickly what all that means and how it relates to what we/;re talking about…….
to sing this life electric, to, for a brief moment, arrest the disappearance within the frame of light and shadow as way to remember that once we were warriorers, once we were here…
sorry for the long novel ;)
thats warriors ;)))…or worried warriors ;))
Shit Bob!!! you sure know how to spin a yarn!
You are and will allways be the Poet Laureate of this community! ( with Akaky riffing along ).
I hope to have more to add but I seem to have missed the thread on how important is the graphic element of the cowboys hats!
Something I have had to deal with for most of my career , be it wearing them while shooting that speed lite turning up the brim look don’t cut it , how to get a bit of light in there so’s the guy who hired you don’t sack you because he can’t sea anyones faces, Shit man! the day that I learned that there’s a reason good photographers don’nt start work till 5pm in the southern hemisphere was a revelation that changed my life. Shooting people in cowboy hats makes you think a lot more , theres the added element of disguise, when cowboys wear their hats they ARE their hats , the hats disolve any sense of individuality (they hide the eyes you see!) ,You know what? I can’t remember who took it but picture of a cowboy that really sticks in my mind is of a young guy brekfasting on a hunk of old bread dripping with syrup and not yet wearing his hat with a tan line accross his face from the bottom of his nose to the bottom of his ears ( Can you help me here DAH ) might have been sam abell might have been allard , I’m sure to cop shit for not knowing who took it.
BOB- Have you seen the Kiwi film once were warriors?
Cheers Glenn
Very nice Bob..
DAVID, ALL
I was thinking about how emotion is such an important aspect of the image, and how we now have a good deal of art world successes who seem to specialize in the photograph of the blank emotion..pieces that seem more about the photographer’s concept of something (isolation, separation, I don’t know, not the kind of loneliness Bob describes in David’s works) than any communication of emotion from the subject. For a spell there was a lot of this coming from Yale grads I think..but forgive me if this a speeping stupidity on my part.
So I wonder, why are many drawn to the anti- emotion photo?
Bob, check your e-mail and call me!
HELLO ALL…
what can i say?
this has been the most interesting and , may i say, BRILLIANT set of comments from all of you ever…
my first reaction, and i have thought this many times before, is that the comments from all of you this past year must must must be compiled and edited into book form…this cannot be just an online forum only….
at the end of the day (pardon the cliche), i am a “print guy”….somehow, with your permission of course, i must try to get THIS into print…
i continue to be flattered, inspired, amazed and just am just flat out “blown away” by the way this audience has “held up”, grown, and flourished beyond anything i ever could have imagined or “planned”…
your collective VOICE, both in text and with so much thoughtful photographic work that i see coming in from every possible angle, has created (albeit inadvertently) a new medium…as you speak about the creative process , you are creating….
Marshall McLuan where are you when i need you??
it may seem to many of you that perhaps there are not really so many writers here….but, you have no idea how many loyal readers (lurkers) are out there…
in any case, let’s forget the numbers….i would rather have a discussion with a small, sophisticated, yet unpretentious , “readership” that has true “class” , than to appeal to some mythical “mass” that has no “personality” or, above all, HEART…
i cannot and will not stop doing my photographic work…i am literally no good to you as an “editor”….i must be working, editing, failing, and feeling right along with you…without this, i will have nothing to offer….i am getting ready to come “out of the blocks” as i speak…but, perhaps ironically, i can be “on” here and still do what i have to do with my upcoming work…strange but true….
i am not quite sure how i got into THIS and i am not quite sure where THIS all goes, but i know SOMETHING when i see it….but THIS particular THIS is a collaboration…the likes of which i have never seen….and i am laughing now, in the best sense of “laugh”, because YOU are doing all the WORK…
so, please everybody RELAX and SMILE….do not think about it too much….i won’t either…serendipity has always been my mantra with whatever i created…..maybe my only “talent” has always been (according to my friends) knowing a “good thing” when i see it…not a “talent” actually…..pretty simple really….so so obvious…
ok, now i ramble too much…6 cups of coffee does that to me sometimes…i might “hang” here in Sao Paulo over the weekend..my official work is over…but my friends here beckon….yes, serendipity may have “gotten” me again!!!
abraços, david