Before photography existed, things were simpler. Art was made by trained artists. A painting was made with intent, there was no such thing as an accidental painting. A dog could not paint Mona Lisa. Ants on the page could not accidentally form the notes of a moving piano concerto. Art was always made with intent.
With photography as an art, things became suddenly murkier. A camera left on a table, nosed and worried at by a dog, takes a photograph. Click. Is that photograph good? Probably not, but it could be. What if that photograph happens to duplicate in all important ways, a well known and generally agreed upon to be great photograph? Is the dog's photograph also great? If you say no, then what is the art? Is it all intent, no piece? This way lies conceptual art, and you wind up with garbage nailed to the wall next to an essay, which produces no emotional response beyond a vague sense that this is a scam. Still, it's a theory.
Maybe art is the combination of intent and the piece, somehow? Well, what if we lose the provenance of a piece, say, a painting. Is it art now, or merely paint smeared on a surface? This seems unsatisfying. The art world certainly deals with this regularly when forgeries are revealed. Embarrassingly, the work is suddenly much cheaper, and it's badly done and amateurish through some strange alchemy that nobody understands but everyone agrees with because the alternative is that Vermeer wasn't all that after all.
What if I take the accidentally-great photograph from the dog, and write up an essay claiming that I shot it, with intent? Is this thing art?
These sorts of questions lead to madness and absurdity. While one can construct some sort of coherent position in most variations, most of the positions admit absurd consequences. Easier and more aligned with what the common man thinks of as art to simply drop the intent component, and accept that accidental art is possible. The art resides entirely in the piece. If it looks like art, if it sounds like art, it's art. We don't need an essay to know it's good. We don't need to authenticate the artist to know the piece is good. We don't have to shamefacedly adjust a piece from good to bad when it turns out to be fake. We can still love it and appreciate it, we simply don't have to pay as much for it now we know it to be a superb forgery.
A consequence of this theory is that a mere snapshot can be art. We need not postulate a fantastically lucky dog, we need only a tourist with an intuitive grasp of form, a little luck, and a lot of snapshots. Some are offended at the idea of some schmuck making art without trying. Get over it. If it moves you, it doesn't matter what the intent was, it moves you. That cannot be denied, it is tautological. If you want to try to hold the line and claim that while the piece is moving, it is not art, well, more power to you. We part ways here.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Monday, July 30, 2012
The Light Pile/Bucket Theory
To support my assertion that the technical stuff is trivial, I introduce the light pile theory.
A picture is made up, more or less, of little dots. On every dot, there is a little pile of light. The bigger the pile, the brighter the dot. Itty-bitty-tiny pile, the dot is pretty much black. Big tall pile, white. If the light piled up is mostly green, green dot.
Exposing a photograph just means letting light in to pile up for a while. Make the hole light passes through bigger, more light piles up on each dot -- this is the aperture. The word aperture even means hole. Let the light pass through for a longer period of time, you get bigger piles again. This is shutter speed.
It's just like filling a bucket. If you use a bigger hose, you fill for less time. If you fill for less time, you need a bigger hose. If you want to stand around filling for a long time, use a smaller hose.
That's all there is to exposure.
If one pile of light is twice as big as another, we say the first one is "one stop" brighter. If you leave the shutter open twice as long, twice as much light piles up. That's one stop. Or, if you leave the shutter alone, but make the hole twice as big (1.4x as wide -- that's geometry), twice as much light piles up. That's one stop as well.
Ok, there's one more thing about exposure: ISO, which is just how big of a pile makes "white". The higher the ISO, the smaller the pile you need to make "white". Make the ISO twice as big, you only need a pile half as big to make white. You can also think of it has how big your bucket is.
So you wanna fill a bucket up. You can use a big fat hose for a really short period of time, or you can use a medium hose for a medium amount of time, or a really skinny hose for a long time. (wide open aperture, fast shutter speed; medium aperture and shutter speed; closed down aperture, slow shutter speed). Or you can use a bigger or smaller bucket (ISO).
Your camera probably tries to get all the buckets, on average, filled up halfway. That way some buckets are full, some are empty, and most of them are in the middle. So your picture has some black parts, some white parts, but mostly it has parts that are between the two. If it's nighttime, the camera doesn't know that, but you probably want you picture to look dark, like nighttime. That means your light piles all need to be smaller, you want to fill the buckets up less. How do you fill the buckets up less? Smaller hose (aperture), or fill for less time (faster shutter speed), or use bigger buckets (lower ISO). Similarly if your scene is supposed to be bright and light (maybe you're photographing a bride's dress, here in the USA where they are white): Bigger hose, slower shutter speed, smaller buckets.
There's a few subtle details here and there but you really don't need to know one single damn thing more about the technical nonsense of photography, even if you're going for a pretty fine level of control. You probably don't need to know this much. Most of the people going on about technology and urging you you to learn about this and that probably don't know as much as this.
It's just making little piles of light, or filling little buckets with light. It works the same as water, except the names are all different.
P.S. Wider apertures (bigger holes, bigger hoses) use smaller numbers. 2.8 is bigger than 4.0 is bigger than 11. Go figure.
A picture is made up, more or less, of little dots. On every dot, there is a little pile of light. The bigger the pile, the brighter the dot. Itty-bitty-tiny pile, the dot is pretty much black. Big tall pile, white. If the light piled up is mostly green, green dot.
Exposing a photograph just means letting light in to pile up for a while. Make the hole light passes through bigger, more light piles up on each dot -- this is the aperture. The word aperture even means hole. Let the light pass through for a longer period of time, you get bigger piles again. This is shutter speed.
It's just like filling a bucket. If you use a bigger hose, you fill for less time. If you fill for less time, you need a bigger hose. If you want to stand around filling for a long time, use a smaller hose.
That's all there is to exposure.
If one pile of light is twice as big as another, we say the first one is "one stop" brighter. If you leave the shutter open twice as long, twice as much light piles up. That's one stop. Or, if you leave the shutter alone, but make the hole twice as big (1.4x as wide -- that's geometry), twice as much light piles up. That's one stop as well.
Ok, there's one more thing about exposure: ISO, which is just how big of a pile makes "white". The higher the ISO, the smaller the pile you need to make "white". Make the ISO twice as big, you only need a pile half as big to make white. You can also think of it has how big your bucket is.
So you wanna fill a bucket up. You can use a big fat hose for a really short period of time, or you can use a medium hose for a medium amount of time, or a really skinny hose for a long time. (wide open aperture, fast shutter speed; medium aperture and shutter speed; closed down aperture, slow shutter speed). Or you can use a bigger or smaller bucket (ISO).
Your camera probably tries to get all the buckets, on average, filled up halfway. That way some buckets are full, some are empty, and most of them are in the middle. So your picture has some black parts, some white parts, but mostly it has parts that are between the two. If it's nighttime, the camera doesn't know that, but you probably want you picture to look dark, like nighttime. That means your light piles all need to be smaller, you want to fill the buckets up less. How do you fill the buckets up less? Smaller hose (aperture), or fill for less time (faster shutter speed), or use bigger buckets (lower ISO). Similarly if your scene is supposed to be bright and light (maybe you're photographing a bride's dress, here in the USA where they are white): Bigger hose, slower shutter speed, smaller buckets.
There's a few subtle details here and there but you really don't need to know one single damn thing more about the technical nonsense of photography, even if you're going for a pretty fine level of control. You probably don't need to know this much. Most of the people going on about technology and urging you you to learn about this and that probably don't know as much as this.
It's just making little piles of light, or filling little buckets with light. It works the same as water, except the names are all different.
P.S. Wider apertures (bigger holes, bigger hoses) use smaller numbers. 2.8 is bigger than 4.0 is bigger than 11. Go figure.
Friday, July 27, 2012
Eschew EXIF
There are forums out there on the internet where people spend far too much time looking at EXIF data for photographs, and not enough time looking at the photographs. I've even seen cases where people got irate because a photograph lacked EXIF data. Apparently, some people need to know what shutter speed was used for your photograph, before they can tell you what's wrong with it.
In the first place, don't listen to these people. They have nothing to say.
In the second place, don't be one of those people.
EXIF data, histograms, all that technical ancillary data, it tells you nothing that matters which cannot be seen in the photograph. Look at the photograph. EXIF and so on can be used to test yourself, to help you learn and judge whether you're seeing correctly, but it's never authoritative.
If you can't tell roughly what focal length was used to shoot a photograph (relative focal length, the number of millimeters doesn't matter and depends on a bunch of factors -- all I mean is "super wide", "wide", "normal", "long", "super long") then one of two things is true:
There are plenty of photographs where the focal length doesn't matter, because the scene is pretty much two dimensional. In that case, who cares what focal length was used? Anything will do. If it does matter, and you still can't tell, learn to see better. Practice. This is where looking at EXIF can help you. Just don't talk about it, do it quietly.
Aperture? Can't you tell by looking? Either it doesn't matter, or you can't see. Shutter speed? Ditto. Exposure? Contrast range? Don't you be looking at the histogram! Not until you've made an honest guess, at least.
Lighting? Don't go asking about what lights went where. Look at the photo. Any light that matters made itself known by casting some light. Go find that light.
And whatever else you do, criticize anyone based on their EXIF data. Don't be a stupid nerd! Look at the photo and talk about that.
In the first place, don't listen to these people. They have nothing to say.
In the second place, don't be one of those people.
EXIF data, histograms, all that technical ancillary data, it tells you nothing that matters which cannot be seen in the photograph. Look at the photograph. EXIF and so on can be used to test yourself, to help you learn and judge whether you're seeing correctly, but it's never authoritative.
If you can't tell roughly what focal length was used to shoot a photograph (relative focal length, the number of millimeters doesn't matter and depends on a bunch of factors -- all I mean is "super wide", "wide", "normal", "long", "super long") then one of two things is true:
- it doesn't matter to the photograph
- you can't see very well
There are plenty of photographs where the focal length doesn't matter, because the scene is pretty much two dimensional. In that case, who cares what focal length was used? Anything will do. If it does matter, and you still can't tell, learn to see better. Practice. This is where looking at EXIF can help you. Just don't talk about it, do it quietly.
Aperture? Can't you tell by looking? Either it doesn't matter, or you can't see. Shutter speed? Ditto. Exposure? Contrast range? Don't you be looking at the histogram! Not until you've made an honest guess, at least.
Lighting? Don't go asking about what lights went where. Look at the photo. Any light that matters made itself known by casting some light. Go find that light.
And whatever else you do, criticize anyone based on their EXIF data. Don't be a stupid nerd! Look at the photo and talk about that.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
The FSA File
The FSA/OWI photo archive is online. This is one of the more important photographic artifacts in the world. It holds the raw material of what was to a large extent one man's vision of several narratives regarding the USA, in the late 1930s and 1940s. It belongs to citizens of the USA, it is large (about 165,000 images), it is diverse, it is lightly edited, and it contains a large number of superb images.
You can find it here.
The Resettlement Agency (RA) was more or less the brainchild of its director, Rexford Tugwell, an economist from Columbia University and an adviser to the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s. The RA's role, in broad strokes, was to help farmers in difficulty. The original conception of the photographic unit of the RA was to document the plight of those farmers, as well as the results of the aid rendered. Roy Stryker, who had worked with Tugwell at Columbia, was brought in to lead the unit of photographers. He continued to do so as the unit went through several agency changes, first to the Farm Security Administration (FSA), and then to the Office of War Information (OWI), employing various photographers along the way including Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. Stryker and his unit, despite the widely varied agency missions, were driven by the same ideas of documentary photography throughout.
Stryker seems to have been a propagandist at heart. While working for Tugwell at Columbia, he had responsibility for selecting illustrations for a book. He re-tasked existing images, supplying them with new captions, ignoring the original context. The images still served, in the sense of illustrating well (we assume), and there was arguably a truth to this work. However, the "truth" of the image, if any, in the new context was not the truth of the context in which the photograph was taken.
This approach informs the archive throughout. Any photograph was surely taken in a real place, with a real context. There is an underlying truth, there. Nonetheless, a photograph ultimately stands alone, it is fundamentally removed in time and space from that original context. It could as well illustrate something else. A photograph of a factory owner in working clothes, demonstrating usage of a machine, could as well illustrate as essay on the plight of the worker. And why shouldn't it?
Stryker seems to have always had a narrative in mind when directing his photographers, and often provided them with written shooting scripts, instructions for how best to serve the narrative he had in mind. Initially the narrative was of hard-pressed farmers in drought conditions, being helped out by Generous New Deal programs. Later, he wanted to document an idealized (and arguably completely fictional) notion of small town life in the USA. When his unit was folded in to the Office of War Information (OWI) the unit worked to portray the strength of the USA as it built for war, the clearest case of propaganda work.
So, the archive is propaganda, and must be viewed in that light. One might argue that it was propagandizing an essentially true situation, and that it is irrelevant to consider whether any particular photograph is literally true. The proper answer here is murky. Is the underlying narrative true, that the photographs illustrated? This is another question entirely, and the answer here is also is not clear to me.
So, the archive certainly raises questions, often without clear answers. Regardless, it contains many important and wonderful images both famous and otherwise. Regardless, it should be viewed with suspicion. Regardless, it should be viewed. Regardless, it is important, the images do document something real and important in the history of the USA.
You can find it here.
The Resettlement Agency (RA) was more or less the brainchild of its director, Rexford Tugwell, an economist from Columbia University and an adviser to the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s. The RA's role, in broad strokes, was to help farmers in difficulty. The original conception of the photographic unit of the RA was to document the plight of those farmers, as well as the results of the aid rendered. Roy Stryker, who had worked with Tugwell at Columbia, was brought in to lead the unit of photographers. He continued to do so as the unit went through several agency changes, first to the Farm Security Administration (FSA), and then to the Office of War Information (OWI), employing various photographers along the way including Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. Stryker and his unit, despite the widely varied agency missions, were driven by the same ideas of documentary photography throughout.
Stryker seems to have been a propagandist at heart. While working for Tugwell at Columbia, he had responsibility for selecting illustrations for a book. He re-tasked existing images, supplying them with new captions, ignoring the original context. The images still served, in the sense of illustrating well (we assume), and there was arguably a truth to this work. However, the "truth" of the image, if any, in the new context was not the truth of the context in which the photograph was taken.
This approach informs the archive throughout. Any photograph was surely taken in a real place, with a real context. There is an underlying truth, there. Nonetheless, a photograph ultimately stands alone, it is fundamentally removed in time and space from that original context. It could as well illustrate something else. A photograph of a factory owner in working clothes, demonstrating usage of a machine, could as well illustrate as essay on the plight of the worker. And why shouldn't it?
Stryker seems to have always had a narrative in mind when directing his photographers, and often provided them with written shooting scripts, instructions for how best to serve the narrative he had in mind. Initially the narrative was of hard-pressed farmers in drought conditions, being helped out by Generous New Deal programs. Later, he wanted to document an idealized (and arguably completely fictional) notion of small town life in the USA. When his unit was folded in to the Office of War Information (OWI) the unit worked to portray the strength of the USA as it built for war, the clearest case of propaganda work.
So, the archive is propaganda, and must be viewed in that light. One might argue that it was propagandizing an essentially true situation, and that it is irrelevant to consider whether any particular photograph is literally true. The proper answer here is murky. Is the underlying narrative true, that the photographs illustrated? This is another question entirely, and the answer here is also is not clear to me.
So, the archive certainly raises questions, often without clear answers. Regardless, it contains many important and wonderful images both famous and otherwise. Regardless, it should be viewed with suspicion. Regardless, it should be viewed. Regardless, it is important, the images do document something real and important in the history of the USA.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
FSA Photo of the Week
I've decided to mix up the format a little and move all my commentary down after the photograph, so you can enjoy it for a little while as-is.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Photographs and the Personal Now
First: We all live, each moment, in a Personal Now. This is Now. Every instant, about 7 billion Personal Nows occur on this planet. Your Personal Now consists of yourself, what you're thinking, what you're feeling, what you're wearing, where you are. My Personal Now is me, my contents, and my context.
Next: What does intentionality have to do with a photograph? Ultimately, a photograph stands on its own. It works, or it does not. It communicates, or it fails to communicate, and that's all there is. Intent matters to the extent that informs content, both the literal stuff in the frame, and the meaning of that stuff as seen by the photographer. This in turns informs, but does not dictate, what will be communicated to the viewer. Intent matters, to a second or third order degree.
Next: What does intentionality have to do with a photograph? Ultimately, a photograph stands on its own. It works, or it does not. It communicates, or it fails to communicate, and that's all there is. Intent matters to the extent that informs content, both the literal stuff in the frame, and the meaning of that stuff as seen by the photographer. This in turns informs, but does not dictate, what will be communicated to the viewer. Intent matters, to a second or third order degree.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Ambiguity
How big is it?
What is he thinking?
Where is she going?
What has the dog got?
Ambiguity is an important element of "street", it's pretty much all there is in "abstract", and it appears here and there in all the arts. Used with care, it is a potent tool.
Viewers, to varying degrees, enjoy a puzzle, a mystery. We enjoy being allowed to fill in pieces of an image from our own experience and imagination. Given something unknown, we write our own narratives and develop our own ideas about an image. To a degree, we enjoy things simply left unknown and unknowable, but hinted at. We may not be able always to hang a story on those elements, but we like them.
The risk the artist runs in using ambiguity is in losing the viewer with an excess of mystery. A viewer might understandably resent being required to work too hard to make sense of an image, and thus move on too quickly. A viewer might stick with an image, but simply find it baffling. While bafflement is certainly a reaction to an image, it is rarely what the artist had in mind. While every viewer will have a different threshold of "too much" mystery, surely the artist wants to calibrate the mystery to a good level for a lot of viewers.
One approach to managing the degree of mystery successfully is to wrap the ambiguous up in a generous serving of the familiar, the easily grasped. It is this, I think, which makes a particularly successful "street" photograph. We understand much of the scene, we recognize buildings, people, the dog on the leash. It is only a small subset of the image that is ambiguous, ".. but what is SHE doing?" A mystery or an incomplete story given to us as a reward for looking a little deeper. It is this wrapping of the mystery in the known that makes a great portrait, as well. We recognize that the image is a portrait, we recognize many of the elements. Somewhere in there, often in the subject's expression or body language, we see elements that are unclear, ambiguous. On this ambiguity, we write our own interpretation.
See also: the Mona Lisa.
Poorly balancing the mysterious with the familiar can lead to images which are either banal, or too difficult to understand. The viewer moves on, the message is lost.
When we abandon the familiar, we enter the realm of the purely abstract, for all practical purposes. This is a tough world in which to create an effective image.
What is he thinking?
Where is she going?
What has the dog got?
Ambiguity is an important element of "street", it's pretty much all there is in "abstract", and it appears here and there in all the arts. Used with care, it is a potent tool.
Viewers, to varying degrees, enjoy a puzzle, a mystery. We enjoy being allowed to fill in pieces of an image from our own experience and imagination. Given something unknown, we write our own narratives and develop our own ideas about an image. To a degree, we enjoy things simply left unknown and unknowable, but hinted at. We may not be able always to hang a story on those elements, but we like them.
The risk the artist runs in using ambiguity is in losing the viewer with an excess of mystery. A viewer might understandably resent being required to work too hard to make sense of an image, and thus move on too quickly. A viewer might stick with an image, but simply find it baffling. While bafflement is certainly a reaction to an image, it is rarely what the artist had in mind. While every viewer will have a different threshold of "too much" mystery, surely the artist wants to calibrate the mystery to a good level for a lot of viewers.
One approach to managing the degree of mystery successfully is to wrap the ambiguous up in a generous serving of the familiar, the easily grasped. It is this, I think, which makes a particularly successful "street" photograph. We understand much of the scene, we recognize buildings, people, the dog on the leash. It is only a small subset of the image that is ambiguous, ".. but what is SHE doing?" A mystery or an incomplete story given to us as a reward for looking a little deeper. It is this wrapping of the mystery in the known that makes a great portrait, as well. We recognize that the image is a portrait, we recognize many of the elements. Somewhere in there, often in the subject's expression or body language, we see elements that are unclear, ambiguous. On this ambiguity, we write our own interpretation.
See also: the Mona Lisa.
Poorly balancing the mysterious with the familiar can lead to images which are either banal, or too difficult to understand. The viewer moves on, the message is lost.
When we abandon the familiar, we enter the realm of the purely abstract, for all practical purposes. This is a tough world in which to create an effective image.
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