Alfred Stieglitz Camera Work
A Pictorial Guide
Edited by Marianna Fulton Margolis.
This book is intended as a more or less academic index to the pictures in Alfred Stieglitz' seminal quarterly "Camera Work", published from 1903 to 1917 over a total of 50 issues. The present book contains all 559 pictures reproduced in that periodical, in chronological order. They are neatly indexed, and contain some somewhat compressed but useful notes on such things as the reproduction method used (in the original) for each picture. There are some opening notes that give some context, and which explain the system of notation throughout. At the end several indices are found: By artist, by title, and by sitter.
I am personally not terribly interested in this book itself, although it is clearly a useful and important resource for the relevant historians. I am interested in the book for the pictures it contains. It takes almost no research whatsoever to learn that "Camera Work" is among the most important bodies of work in the history of photography, especially photography as art. Even in the broader context of Art as Art, it is not an unimportant body of work, as it brought forth not only a great body of photography but also other works by Matisse, Rodin, and Picasso (at least).
My edition of this book has four pictures per page, on a pretty big page, which yields pictures perhaps 3 to 5 inches on a side. The reproductions in this book are also suspiciously similar looking in their renditions. Whether this simply reflects the aesthetic of "Camera Work" itself, or is in part the result of some of the pre-press handling of the pictures for this book, I do not venture to guess. Regardless, this is not really a book to get for the quality of the reproductions. They are adequate, but not excellent. Happily, most of the pictures in here are superb enough to stand up well in spite of less than perfect reproduction. The stylistic choices made by the artists are perfectly clear. Some hint of the various photographic processes used in the originals comes through, enough to get the flavor of it. Seeing some originals, by way of giving you some visual information to fill in the gaps, as it were, would do you no harm. But, as a for instance, I had no trouble instantly recognizing the work for Frederick Evans, even though no platinum was used in these reproductions.
The book's very compactness lets the reader quickly skim the entire body of work represented by "Camera Work", which is a very useful and interesting experiment to perform. What strikes me most about the work is the small evidence of progression. Much has been made of Stieglitz' evolution as a photographer and an editor, but it is frankly not particularly apparent in this book. There is some evolution. Surely some evolution is obscured by the non-chronological nature of the works presented, the magazine would back-track from time to time, to show us older work. Nonetheless, there is, to my eye always greater variation between the artists shown than between the early issues and the late. A few ideas drop out over time, there are no heavily manipulated negatives, no masses of scratches, by the later issues, for instance. For the most part, though, a great breadth of excellent work is shown, and the excellent work in 1917 was not all that visually different from the excellent work in 1903.
The lone exception, and it is an exception, is that Paul Strand's work dominates the end. The last issue (possible several issues?) were all Paul Strand. This does not strike the reader as particularly the endpoint of an evolution, but rather another radical leap in a new direction, similar to the magazine's reproductions of paintings and so on. Strand's work is almost completely different from almost everything else in the periodical. It's possible, though, that this last stage has been viewed as the last stage of a natural evolution. It's even possible that it is, and that the other stages are simply not clear to me.
Readers with suitable backgrounds will already know that "Camera Work" was a major outlet for Pictorialists. The magazine published dozens of portraits inspired by Rembrandt, and dozens of scenes inspired by JWM Turner. Not all the pictures in "Camera Work" look like paintings, but a lot of them do. What's missing, happily, is the worst of the Victorian sentiment.
This is, to my eye, the "good stuff" of the Pictorialist aesthetic. Photographs that look like paintings, nothing more, nothing less. Good photographs, not crummy fake looking messes.
They're really pretty good.
They look almost nothing like anything being shot today.
Buy this book! It's cheap, and good, and will be a wonderful addition to your library, caveats indicated above.
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Friday, May 24, 2013
Book Review: Pictorial effect in photography
This is a book by Henry Peach Robinson, one of the original "Pictorialists" in the late nineteenth century. It's a book that's available free through Google's books section, being long out of copyright and having been scanned by those folks. There's actually a couple of editions available as PDFs or other eBooks.
Pictorialism has been declared a terrible idea and dead as a doornail for something like 80 to 100 years as of this writing. It was replaced by the Modernism, or something. Ansel Adams, as a fallen-away Pictorialist, is trotted out as an example of the new thing as contrasted with the old thing. The old thing is usually represented with some muddy blurs, and the new thing with crisp, sharp, contrasty images. It's of interest to me because I think I might be becoming a Pictorialist, although I am not really in favor of muddy blurs.
All of this context makes reading this book pretty interesting, since (for instance) Ansel Adams landscape work appears for all the world to be reading directly from Robinson's playbook. Virtually any Adams landscape makes a marvelous illustration of virtually any point Robinson makes.
All that aside, though, this is a fine little volume with a great deal to say about composition. Robinson's taste runs the gamut from sentimental to twee, and many of his ideas are a bit dated; but this can largely be ignored. The bulk of the book is a truly excellent primer on composition. It's a quick read, with many examples, and it doesn't mention a Golden Ratio anywhere, thankfully. The material in the book is clearly lifted from orthodox (in 1860ish) theory on painting, which is no surprise since Robinson was trained as a painter. Robinson does make a serious and largely successful effort to translate this material into photographic terms, and to render it applicable to photography.
There's also a fair bit of philosophy of art to be found, in little veins between the technical information. Fact versus Truth is a common theme, and a good one to be thinking about for any would-be artist. Robinson feels that Truth is vital to a photograph, but Fact can be dispensed with. Indeed, he makes a pretty solid argument that Truth is more important to a photograph than to a painting. He does explain what all this means, by the way, and quite ably. Again, here, we find that as many Modernists agree with Robinson as disagree. Weston's photographs certainly told a Truth, always, without necessarily being Factual. No surprise, Weston was another fallen-away Pictorialist.
Nowhere in this book does Robinson advocate the murky blurs that usually held up as examples of Pictorialism. On the contrary, he's all about depth of field, detail, and a full range of tonal values. He merely wants the photographer to manage these things carefully instead of dumping endless masses of equi-potent detail into our eyes. Robinson does advocate compositing of images, but this appears as much to be to overcome technical problems with the emulsions he was working with as anything else. Where Robinson cuts and pastes, Adams dodges and burns, Adams having access to panchromatic film.
The book is filled with amusing quotations and remarks, and references to other work. There is a wealth of detail which gives a bit of historical insight into the working of a nineteenth century photographer. And, there's a bit of straight-up bitching about bad photographers mucking things up, now that it's all so easy to take pictures, what with these new-fangled dry plates. While he doesn't use the term fauxtographer, he would have if it had been around. Same as it ever was.
This book is completely worth reading, whether you're an expert or a newbie. It's fun, it's informative, it's short, and it's free.
Pictorialism has been declared a terrible idea and dead as a doornail for something like 80 to 100 years as of this writing. It was replaced by the Modernism, or something. Ansel Adams, as a fallen-away Pictorialist, is trotted out as an example of the new thing as contrasted with the old thing. The old thing is usually represented with some muddy blurs, and the new thing with crisp, sharp, contrasty images. It's of interest to me because I think I might be becoming a Pictorialist, although I am not really in favor of muddy blurs.
All of this context makes reading this book pretty interesting, since (for instance) Ansel Adams landscape work appears for all the world to be reading directly from Robinson's playbook. Virtually any Adams landscape makes a marvelous illustration of virtually any point Robinson makes.
All that aside, though, this is a fine little volume with a great deal to say about composition. Robinson's taste runs the gamut from sentimental to twee, and many of his ideas are a bit dated; but this can largely be ignored. The bulk of the book is a truly excellent primer on composition. It's a quick read, with many examples, and it doesn't mention a Golden Ratio anywhere, thankfully. The material in the book is clearly lifted from orthodox (in 1860ish) theory on painting, which is no surprise since Robinson was trained as a painter. Robinson does make a serious and largely successful effort to translate this material into photographic terms, and to render it applicable to photography.
There's also a fair bit of philosophy of art to be found, in little veins between the technical information. Fact versus Truth is a common theme, and a good one to be thinking about for any would-be artist. Robinson feels that Truth is vital to a photograph, but Fact can be dispensed with. Indeed, he makes a pretty solid argument that Truth is more important to a photograph than to a painting. He does explain what all this means, by the way, and quite ably. Again, here, we find that as many Modernists agree with Robinson as disagree. Weston's photographs certainly told a Truth, always, without necessarily being Factual. No surprise, Weston was another fallen-away Pictorialist.
Nowhere in this book does Robinson advocate the murky blurs that usually held up as examples of Pictorialism. On the contrary, he's all about depth of field, detail, and a full range of tonal values. He merely wants the photographer to manage these things carefully instead of dumping endless masses of equi-potent detail into our eyes. Robinson does advocate compositing of images, but this appears as much to be to overcome technical problems with the emulsions he was working with as anything else. Where Robinson cuts and pastes, Adams dodges and burns, Adams having access to panchromatic film.
The book is filled with amusing quotations and remarks, and references to other work. There is a wealth of detail which gives a bit of historical insight into the working of a nineteenth century photographer. And, there's a bit of straight-up bitching about bad photographers mucking things up, now that it's all so easy to take pictures, what with these new-fangled dry plates. While he doesn't use the term fauxtographer, he would have if it had been around. Same as it ever was.
This book is completely worth reading, whether you're an expert or a newbie. It's fun, it's informative, it's short, and it's free.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Walker Evans: American Photographs
In keeping with my track record of reviewing books only decades after they are published, I will now record my thoughts on the 75th anniversary edition of Walker Evans' seminal book, American Photographs.
This book contains 87 photographs, in two sections. They are presented with no accompanying text whatsoever, only a number referring to a very brief descriptive text for each photograph at the end of each of the two sections. The reproductions are quite nice, and the book is incredibly cheap - less than $US25 at the moment. It might be one of the best values out there.
There are two essays included with the current edition. The first, on the making of the current edition, is a fascinating glimpse into the problems inherent in re-making a book of photographs after 25 years. Technology advances, and photographs are lost or harder to obtain. The second essay was included in the original edition, and is a discussion of the work and the photographer, written by a friend of Evans, Lincoln Kerstein. I found it somewhat labored and not particularly interesting. It is probably more of interest for the snapshot it gives us of how Evans was viewed in his time, than of much current interest.
I have mostly been familiar with Evans through is FSA work, and the work he did nominally for the FSA but in reality for the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (which was a collaboration with James Agee). The current volume gives us a much broader view of the photographer's work. These photographs were, for the most part, selected for the book by Evans himself to accompany an exhibit of his photographs in 1938, so we're probably still not looking at a fully representative view of his work.
The first thing that struck me, looking through this work, was how relatively poor it was. This is not to say the work is bad, it certainly is not. However, it fares poorly when stacked up next to the towering, gigantic, monumental work he did for the book with Agee. The work is still excellent and well worth your time to look at carefully. The second thing that struck me was the breadth of Evans' work. There are at least two different photographers in Walker Evans, the view camera man and the 35mm man. While it's not a perfect correlation, the work with the smaller camera is much looser, in some sense. There's a number of images that flirt with "street" while being, ultimately, documentary. The view camera work is generally more formal, each image having a very deliberate feeling of structure.
The subject matter is all over the place. The title of the book is apt, Evans work here seems to have been an honest stab at capturing the breadth of the nation, in some interesting sense. There are people, street scenes, architecture, still lifes, and strange things drawn, painted, or glued to walls. There are very few landscapes, which is telling in a book of this title. Evans seems to have felt that America is in her people, their belongings, their buildings, their streets.
Buy it, keep it near. It's superb.
This book contains 87 photographs, in two sections. They are presented with no accompanying text whatsoever, only a number referring to a very brief descriptive text for each photograph at the end of each of the two sections. The reproductions are quite nice, and the book is incredibly cheap - less than $US25 at the moment. It might be one of the best values out there.
There are two essays included with the current edition. The first, on the making of the current edition, is a fascinating glimpse into the problems inherent in re-making a book of photographs after 25 years. Technology advances, and photographs are lost or harder to obtain. The second essay was included in the original edition, and is a discussion of the work and the photographer, written by a friend of Evans, Lincoln Kerstein. I found it somewhat labored and not particularly interesting. It is probably more of interest for the snapshot it gives us of how Evans was viewed in his time, than of much current interest.
I have mostly been familiar with Evans through is FSA work, and the work he did nominally for the FSA but in reality for the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (which was a collaboration with James Agee). The current volume gives us a much broader view of the photographer's work. These photographs were, for the most part, selected for the book by Evans himself to accompany an exhibit of his photographs in 1938, so we're probably still not looking at a fully representative view of his work.
The first thing that struck me, looking through this work, was how relatively poor it was. This is not to say the work is bad, it certainly is not. However, it fares poorly when stacked up next to the towering, gigantic, monumental work he did for the book with Agee. The work is still excellent and well worth your time to look at carefully. The second thing that struck me was the breadth of Evans' work. There are at least two different photographers in Walker Evans, the view camera man and the 35mm man. While it's not a perfect correlation, the work with the smaller camera is much looser, in some sense. There's a number of images that flirt with "street" while being, ultimately, documentary. The view camera work is generally more formal, each image having a very deliberate feeling of structure.
The subject matter is all over the place. The title of the book is apt, Evans work here seems to have been an honest stab at capturing the breadth of the nation, in some interesting sense. There are people, street scenes, architecture, still lifes, and strange things drawn, painted, or glued to walls. There are very few landscapes, which is telling in a book of this title. Evans seems to have felt that America is in her people, their belongings, their buildings, their streets.
Buy it, keep it near. It's superb.
Monday, August 6, 2012
Joint Attention and Winogrand
I spent some time with a book of Garry Winogrand's photos recently. The Man In The Crowd: The Uneasy Streets of Garry Winogrand, I shan't really review it, because I haven't really got much to say about it, really.
An extremely important element of the work in it, though, revolves around the concept of Joint Attention. At its highest levels (well, the highest levels humans can do, and therefore the highest levels we recognize) it involves following the gaze another animal to whatever it's looking at, with a mental model of the looker in mind. Evidence of a mental model can be turning back to the looker, checking, and similar. As a human being, there's a pretty good chance you know about this. It is, basically, thinking "what is she looking at?" and turning to look at the same thing. The idea, "what is she looking at" is critical, here. It turns out we can't do this reliably until we're almost teenagers, we haven't the neurological machinery in place. Autistic people can't do it at all. Like young children and a lot of mammals, they gaze-follow, but they seem to lack the idea "what is he looking at?" at some important level.
Winogrand's street photographs are simply littered with this stuff. There's the pretty girl, and then there's the man watching her. And the woman watching the man. Two men in conversation, one is looking at the other, but the other looks out of frame. The sailor and the girl passing on the street, looking at one another. Our gaze follows the gaze in the image, joint attention. Sometimes the gaze ping-pongs around the image 2 or 3 hops. It is us, the viewer, that gaze-follows and holds the mental model of the looker.
It's interesting! It occurs to me that, possibly, an autistic person might enjoy Cartier-Bresson's photographs with their deep respect for geometry, but would probably get nothing whatsoever from Winogrand.
By engaging these pretty low-level neurological phenomena, Winogrand draws us is. We are wired at a very primitive level to gaze-follow, to see an animal's eyes, calculate where that animal is looking, and to look there. Non-autistic humans add in the layer of mental engagement, the "what is he looking at?" thought, that seeks to understand what's going on in the looker's mind. Many of Winogrand's photos, therefore, essentially force a moderately deep degree of mental engagement. This, with luck, gives the geometry and composition of the photograph, and the other appealing elements, time to sink in and work.
To be honest, I don't love Winogrand's work. It's engaging, but it's a rare photograph in this book that I actually like, and those are mostly the witty ones.
An extremely important element of the work in it, though, revolves around the concept of Joint Attention. At its highest levels (well, the highest levels humans can do, and therefore the highest levels we recognize) it involves following the gaze another animal to whatever it's looking at, with a mental model of the looker in mind. Evidence of a mental model can be turning back to the looker, checking, and similar. As a human being, there's a pretty good chance you know about this. It is, basically, thinking "what is she looking at?" and turning to look at the same thing. The idea, "what is she looking at" is critical, here. It turns out we can't do this reliably until we're almost teenagers, we haven't the neurological machinery in place. Autistic people can't do it at all. Like young children and a lot of mammals, they gaze-follow, but they seem to lack the idea "what is he looking at?" at some important level.
Winogrand's street photographs are simply littered with this stuff. There's the pretty girl, and then there's the man watching her. And the woman watching the man. Two men in conversation, one is looking at the other, but the other looks out of frame. The sailor and the girl passing on the street, looking at one another. Our gaze follows the gaze in the image, joint attention. Sometimes the gaze ping-pongs around the image 2 or 3 hops. It is us, the viewer, that gaze-follows and holds the mental model of the looker.
It's interesting! It occurs to me that, possibly, an autistic person might enjoy Cartier-Bresson's photographs with their deep respect for geometry, but would probably get nothing whatsoever from Winogrand.
By engaging these pretty low-level neurological phenomena, Winogrand draws us is. We are wired at a very primitive level to gaze-follow, to see an animal's eyes, calculate where that animal is looking, and to look there. Non-autistic humans add in the layer of mental engagement, the "what is he looking at?" thought, that seeks to understand what's going on in the looker's mind. Many of Winogrand's photos, therefore, essentially force a moderately deep degree of mental engagement. This, with luck, gives the geometry and composition of the photograph, and the other appealing elements, time to sink in and work.
To be honest, I don't love Winogrand's work. It's engaging, but it's a rare photograph in this book that I actually like, and those are mostly the witty ones.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Book Review: Photoportraits
Photoportraits by Henri Cartier-Bresson.
This book is almost 30 years old, so perhaps reviewing it at this late date has no purpose. Be that as it may, I shall proceed. This is a large book with 255 portraits in a very simple presentation. On each pair of facing pages there are between 1 and 6 photographs presented. Single photos are always alone on the right hand page. The most common grouping is 1 photograph left, and 1 right, but there are many sets with several photographs on one or both pages. Every photograph is distinctly an Henri Cartier-Bresson image, and just as distinctly a a portrait. I mean here a portrait in that the subject is clearly a person (or, rarely a small group of people).
This book is almost 30 years old, so perhaps reviewing it at this late date has no purpose. Be that as it may, I shall proceed. This is a large book with 255 portraits in a very simple presentation. On each pair of facing pages there are between 1 and 6 photographs presented. Single photos are always alone on the right hand page. The most common grouping is 1 photograph left, and 1 right, but there are many sets with several photographs on one or both pages. Every photograph is distinctly an Henri Cartier-Bresson image, and just as distinctly a a portrait. I mean here a portrait in that the subject is clearly a person (or, rarely a small group of people).
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Book Review: Mind's Eye, Mind's Truth
Mind's Eye, Mind's Truth: FSA Photography Reconsidered, by James Curtis.
Throughout what follows, I will use the word "true" repeatedly. It is my usage, not Curtis's. My usage is deliberately vague, but I hope it captures some part of what the author was driving at.
The central thesis of the book might be summarized thus:
Documentary photography, and in particular the photography in the FSA archive, is not and should not be considered as literal truth. These images are a carefully constructed artifact designed to deliver a message or an impression, and to support specific ideas. Photographs by their nature are imbued with a sense of reality and truth. We believe them instinctively, and therefore tend to believe the impressions they lead us to, and the ideas they communicate. We must therefore exercise caution and a critical attitude when looking at them if we wish to not be led astray.
While Curtis does not describe the images in the FSA photography archive as "propaganda" he makes a pretty convincing case that they are. He shows that much of the work was produced with some kind of a "shooting script" in hand, and shows us that the results frequently match the shooting script. He
argues that the photographers working in the field selected their images to support either a shooting script, or their own esthetic. The successful images were those which communicated a sharp message which the public was ready to receive.
Throughout what follows, I will use the word "true" repeatedly. It is my usage, not Curtis's. My usage is deliberately vague, but I hope it captures some part of what the author was driving at.
The central thesis of the book might be summarized thus:
Documentary photography, and in particular the photography in the FSA archive, is not and should not be considered as literal truth. These images are a carefully constructed artifact designed to deliver a message or an impression, and to support specific ideas. Photographs by their nature are imbued with a sense of reality and truth. We believe them instinctively, and therefore tend to believe the impressions they lead us to, and the ideas they communicate. We must therefore exercise caution and a critical attitude when looking at them if we wish to not be led astray.
While Curtis does not describe the images in the FSA photography archive as "propaganda" he makes a pretty convincing case that they are. He shows that much of the work was produced with some kind of a "shooting script" in hand, and shows us that the results frequently match the shooting script. He
argues that the photographers working in the field selected their images to support either a shooting script, or their own esthetic. The successful images were those which communicated a sharp message which the public was ready to receive.
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