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Michal Daniel – In Your Face
Rules. “Don’t stare, don’t point,” said mom.
”Ask permission before making pictures,” say others.
That’s not for me. I want to get as close a look as I can, right in your face if possible, without you paying me any mind. If I can make a picture while you’re doing what you’re doing, unguarded, even though I’m right there in your face, that’s my goal.
But working with a visible camera impacts the scene. Not only can it irritate people, overt camera use also alters the entire existing dynamic, often destroying the very moment one wishes to record, before it is recorded. So my intention is to record the moments, while leaving everyone be, without them feeling observed.
Hard to do. Few succeeded like Walker Evans did, his camera hidden under his overcoat, lens peeking through a button hole. But even Evans kept his distance and could not get in people’s faces without his intent being noticed.
In 2001, after a quarter of a century of trying to be invisible with a standard camera, I finally found the perfect photographic tool which I use to this day: a plastic digital camera that fits on a digital organizer. The camera and organizer are now obsolete and the camera’s highest resolution — 640×480 pixels – is today the lowest resolution on the market.
640×480.net is where I put my keepers.
“Don’t mind me, just organizing here,” is what I exude in the process of picture making.
The Eyemodule2 — or “eyemod” as I call it and its output — is small, silent, and doesn’t resemble a camera. It’s just a bump on my PDA. When I use it, I look like I have a reason to be holding it, staring down at it, in the palm of my hand — a reason having nothing to do with photography. I behave as if completely absorbed with digital organizing, paying no attention to the people I photograph. To them, I simply seem like any other self-absorbed pedestrian.
I do love the digital Brownie “personality” of this camera, its color palette, tight dynamic range, near pinhole depth of field and the softness of its cheap lens. When enlarged to wall size, the eyemod prints start to resemble watercolor paintings. But all that is secondary. Most importantly, the tool helps me achieve my primary goal: recording people’s unguarded public selves, from the nearest proximity possible, while unnoticed, and leaving them to continue, undisturbed.
In the introduction to Walker Evans’ book Many Are Called, James Agee wrote of our guards: “Only in certain waking moments of suspension, of quiet, of solitude, are these guards down, and these moments are only rarely to be seen by the person himself, or by any other human being.”
This is my collection of some of these unguarded moments.
Photographs: Michal Daniel
Website: 640×480.net
Book: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/32889
Michal.. :)) hold on to that copy for me..glad others here can see the work too.
I have looked at this essay several times Michal, I love it. Keep it up. Looking forward to seeing more in the future.
I don’t know why these photographs produce a discussion about legality and such. Nothing wrong with them. You’re not expected to have privacy in public spaces, and these -although close- are quite covert, so the main worry for the subject is probably the invasion of personal space than the fact that a photograph was taken. It’s as if the term ‘public’ hadn’t yet sank in.
Not bad for a hack, cough, shooter, Misha.
;-)
MURREY! Nice to see your sorry ass showing up here! :-)))
Beautiful, strange and telling piece of work. The distortions and “imperfections” seem to tell quite a story about the person being photographed. Very interesting concept, and well executed. I could easily see this becoming a book project.
Oops, just saw the link that there already is a book :)
WOW. When it rains, it pours. Just got a PDN ringy dingy. Interview about this can of worms of mine on Thursday. David Alan Harvey, you ROCK MY WORLD!!! :-)))
Hypnosis. I can not look away. Michal Daniel your work is mesmerizing. The ordinary is truly extraordinary once passed through your filter….
Thank you for showing us the world through your eyes.
PDN; well there you go..congrats!! Send a link when it is up..
Yeah baby, momentum is building … putting the bus in gear. Congrats Michal :))
Can’t WAIT to post the link. I bet there will be questions about that whole “approach” of mine, just like there have been here.
Had to go back and look. The last and one and only time my stuff was in PDN, was on the cover of the February 1993 issue, feature story called, “The Twin Cities: Nation’s Second Largest Design Market. A panoramic rehearsal theatre photo of mine was top billing. Such a lovely spiral, to here…
Michal,
Thanks for making Burn so interesting and allowing the can of worms to open. David, thanks for planting the seed. I feel young again! One day I’ll go public with my blurb book.
Troutly your,
Paul
“but knowing that many of the people being photographed in this essay would feel exposed, degraded, and taken advantage of”
“How do you know this? I could just as easily say the opposite, that everyone depicted here would be thrilled to see themselves in this project and i would be just as wrong as you. That would be my subjective take. Just as it is yours.”
Really? You think these people would be thrilled? I’m not being self-righteous, I just see a difference between ridiculing people by taking close-up photographs when they are unaware and taking a frame where a person is part of a greater scene. If this project is moral, what isn’t?
Matt McInnis, please not the fact that the “ridicule” you find in my photos is all yours. I did not have it in mind when I made these images. I did not have it in mind when I collected them into this set. I would not be ashamed, nor have I ever been, to have anyone in my images see themselves pictured through my eyes. Is it immoral? Through your eyes it clearly is. Through mine it is not. I’ve already stated, upstream, what I feel is use of images that goes against my skin. But that is my opinion. Just as yours is, well, yours.
hey michal.. fantastic about pdn and thanks for bringing news back about a positive burn has spun..
i think matt is giving you good practice for the interview..
Jim P.: Death of photography? So what? Who cares? End of the word as we knew it? Happy trails and good riddance…. If anyone cares to join me coming back from the funeral, I will go out and keep taking pictures. Duh!!!!!
Michal, here’s one essay I don’t know if I REALLY like it (beyond appreciating what you did and how you did it, which I do). I find the manner, the idea, the dedication in it, and even the technique used totally valid and the talent undeniable. But after 3 faces, i kept hearing myself thinking “yet another angle on the unbearable heaviness of being (might as well used this turn of phrase, since you are originally czech)”. Simply said, I am not sure this is, these days, what attracts me, looking at photos: how marked we are, as humans, by life, by sins and deeds, personal or hereditary, local or global.
Also, unlike others, I can’t help thinking the markedness on their faces is either your own (achieving a sort of Dorian Gray self-portraiture), or else, an effect of incestous co-sanguinity, rather than the ffect of their individual life history.
It is a difficult dilemma to answer and pinpoint, why “noticed” (PDN assignment) photography (and styles underlining that philosophy) does tend to gravitate towards drama and the downtrodden aspects of life (real or unfactual-cameras do lie), rather than towards the nothingness/now-ness of happy moments (images/souvenirs of which we actually do remember the best as (for ex.) our end approaches, and help erase all the drama captured incessantly on film or in our psyches).
Harve, this is a set selected from about 3000 keepers I’ve made with this camera. What you do not see in this set is left out on purpose. There are countless happy snaps among all my keepers.
Here: http://www.640×480.net
Matt:
I think YOU see these people as ugly, ridiculous, foolish, whatever. That’s why you see this project as ridiculing the subjects, as portrayals that the people would find ugly, that they would feel degraded by. If you saw beauty in expressions earned by pure living, in age, experience, emotion, wear and tear..if you saw this kind of reality as beautiful then you would have faith that at least some of these people would totally get off on their portraits.
Life is not the subject’s best smile shown at the best angle in the best light. That’s not frigging real, that’s Memorex. This is not real either. It’s a crappy camera’s interpretation according to its limited technology. Neither is a paint brush real. It glops on the paint, it streaks, scrapes, dabs, dots, and dribbles a face into being. But would you say the subject would feel demeaned by that kind of interpretation? Even if he knew he was being painted, he has absolutely no control over the artist’s creative translation of his face onto the canvas. Lord, think about Francis Bacon’s interpretation of photos onto canvas, or Gerhard Richter. How do you think their subjects felt to see their faces become mere fodder for an artist’s quirky, sometimes perversely unique expression?
How about caricatures by Al Hirschfeld that graced the pages of the New Yorker from 1935 till he died at age 99? His drawings emphasized distinctly unglamorous characteristics like jowls, baldness, burly eyebrows, honkin’ noses, big ears, droopy lids, meaty lips. Yet He was declared a Living Landmark by the NYC Landmarks Conservancy. Here’s an irony from his bio that appeared in Editorial Cartoon News in 2003 upon his death:
“Only once, he admitted, did he set out to portray a person unfavorably: it was an ironic depiction of David Merrick, the producer, whom Hirschfeld drew as a demonic Santa Claus. The picture yielded mixed results.
“I did everything I could to make him look bad,” Hirschfeld said, “and what happened? He bought the original from me and used it on his Christmas card!”
So, Matt, let yourself enjoy these portraits. You don’t have to protect Michal’s subjects. Trust him to do his job of seeing and interpreting and respecting his subjects for all the good that they possess within them. Look at his people with new eyes, see their beauty because it IS there! We don’t have to carry around such a heavy weight of judgement and righteous protection of these people. Trust that no harm has been done here. Michal is in love with what he does and with his subjects. I KNOW this because i feel this also when i shoot. It is a love affair that lasts a moment and each of these photos, each of these people is beloved to this photographer.
And as for this question:
“If this project is moral, what isn’t?”
My answer:
Child fucking porn is immoral that’s what.
best to you
kat~
Herve (sorry about spelling your name wrong above), before I put together this set, selected eyemods were in a group show called Heartfelt: http://www.640×480.net/heartfelt
Here is the catalogue: http://tinyurl.com/c7fk45
I’m posting this to illustrate my point that I do not concentrate only on the unbearable heaviness of being.
“I think YOU see these people as ugly, ridiculous, foolish, whatever. That’s why you see this project as ridiculing the subjects, as portrayals that the people would find ugly, that they would feel degraded by. If you saw beauty in expressions earned by pure living, in age, experience, emotion, wear and tear..if you saw this kind of reality as beautiful then you would have faith that at least some of these people would totally get off on their portraits”
I completely understand what you are saying. I think my interpretation of this project, the peoples faces etc. doesn’t matter. What I find beautiful differs from the next person, and I DO find beauty in the faces of these people. Age and experience doesn’t necessarily equal ugliness or something that should be looked down upon, and that isn’t my argument. I also understand your point about caricatures by Al Hirschfeld and painted portraits that may have significant artistic interpretation. This project just rubs me wrong, its the combination of its sneakiness AND its choice of characters. I think ethics should be discussed, and starting that discussion shouldn’t prompt anger. Photographers have a long history of being ethical watchdogs, and sometimes that lens (excuse the pun) should be turned on the photographer. This is a valid essay, I’m not saying that at all, and the responses and questions it has brought up in discussion makes it a valuable post on Burn.
tTere´s no anger at all, Matt..this conversation with you has probably been more helpful to me than anyone else. It helps me to think through unfinished business i have within myself about shooting people from the hip. Anyway, i understand your feelings. I do. it´s your reaction to this project and that´s how it is. But what we have talked about has been important, just as you say. Very important and i am grateful for your enthusiastic input.
take care, you :)
kat-
Kat-
ditto. much thanks for your insight, it has definitely challenged my views and pushed me to acknowledge my prejudices. Cheers to a good discussion!
The discussion taking place here has transformed me as well. When I submitted these images to David, I did not imagine this. Sorry I’m all weepy and sappy again but this is the best anyone could ask of the internet.
Matt
xoxoxo..you are definitely a cool person to talk to!
Michal
You are nothing but a sentimental fool..hehe, and i say that with the greatest respect..
xoxoxo to you too!
best to both of you
kat-
and dammit, Michal, KEEP SHOOTING these wonderful characters!
Michal! ;))))
didn’t i warn you a bit back you of the beauty of being here? ;)))))))))…..that is still what, in the beginning, many didnt’ get, but is now beginning to bloom! :))))
When i told DAH, i’d absolutely do the Editor’s gig (with writing thrown in), i thought: what better way to do something free (if u must) then to work with a close friend and bring challenging, inspirational, and (i hope) engaging work and ideas :)))
now, dont be too transformed my friend ;))))…cant afford to loose the ‘U’ in you! ;))
running
hugs
b
My only disapointment right now is that Jim Powers never came back here after saying, on May 3, 2009 at 6:36 am, “Burn is veering off into the banal and weird. When enlarged to wall size??? 640×480 enlarged to wall size? Oh, come on.
Burn seems intent with officiating at the death of photography.”
jim is jim, michal is michal
my only disappointment is that you never commented on my comment. :)))
Apologies, Aunt Gracie! I truly didn’t consider the need to comment on the fact that I am in fact terrrrible!!!
must you be reminded of the loook of disdain
when you missbeehave!!
mrs.no.2
auntie gracie
(btw, i am still giggling ever since your essay’s been up.
i also see myself in all of these people – whoever said that.
i have been every single one of them.)
Michal…how wonderful to see you and your work again, and specially in this space. I feel privileged and grateful to have seen it develop, growing pains and all. Unlike the controlled space and suspended animation of Evans’ subway portraits, yours are dynamic, dripping with the countless permutations of the street. The human face inside its defense perimeter; at a range that only intimates, doctors and priests ever see us and in that autopilot half-dream that we spend most of our lives in.
Passionate work like this is a natural fit for such a passionate venture as Burn.
— Luis
Luis! Thanks for being there, seeing and undertanding, verbalizing what I was doing, when I was just beginning with this. You are one of the pillars on which these pictures stand. I’ll always try to live up to your standard!
Which rminds me, David are you reding this, high time Bee Flowers to BRUN! http://beeflowers.com
Well, the PDN interview sure was intense! David Walker’s questions felt like being photographed by Bruce Gilden, with a heart. Bam of a flash question after question, with kind follow-ups in between, for non-stop fifty minutes. Felt as comfortable as expected, with the spot light in the eyes, being grilled about all that questionable in your face stuff, perpetrated for all these decades. Can’t wait to read the edit!
I was told by PDN that if all goes well, I can look for this work in the next Fine Arts Issue. Fingers crossed, knocking on wood. If there is a link, I’ll post it here. Thanks David, thanks all!
Check the July issue of PDN. I’m told it’s going to bed In Your Face included. WOOHOO!
Right on Michal..:)))))))))))))))))))))
What’s the word for total freaking fulfillment? Happiness? Yeah, that’s it. Feelin’ it. :-)
… Nope.. Not happiness but “mild substance abuse”..
:)))
Guilty. :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShVlJ0ffgeE
My July copy of PDN has not yet arrived, but a friend called to let me know hers has, and my stuff is in it. Yes! Nothing on-line, though, otherwise I’d post the link. Thanks again, David!
Here it is: http://www.proofsheet.com/press/pdn09/
Ah, here now is the article at PDN, linking right back to here:
http://www.pdngearguide.com/gearguide/content_display/features/e3i5bc95dcbd33158677d6644801b7f0da6
NPR just published an article about this series, called “In Your Face: Big Pix, Few Pixels”:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2009/07/in_your_face_big_pix_from_a_ti.html