I've been working on this stupid book. As part of that process, I have approached some rather more visible and well-known people in Photography, who have invariably given me many things to think about. I am loathe to mention names, because I do not wish to usurp their authority, nor do I wish to make it know generally that they are perfectly approachable lest they get inundated with more idiots with manuscripts. I mention this only because I don't want to pretend that what follows originates entirely in my own skull, it does not.
It is chic these days to sort of set aside the idea that you can discern anything about intent in the picture. This is part and parcel of the modern program of gassily waving away the idea that there's anything whatever that can be trusted in a photograph. I have, to my regret, been somewhat taken in on this point, but I was set straight by wiser heads.
My interest here is not particularly in what one, as a critic, might make of the author's nature by way of a photograph (although this also could be done.) I am interested in what we, as more or less normal people, looking at a photograph, might make of the author's intentions with this picture, and how that might color the way we make meaning from the picture.
If we were to, say, discern that the photographer had momma issues, that might color the meaning of the picture I suppose, but also perhaps not.
Whatever the Smart Set's opinions, the fact is that we do form theories of authorial intent when we look at photos, and that guessed-at intention does color how we make meaning from the picture.
Let us proceed and see what happens. I have no idea where this leads.
We do, sometimes at least, formulate a theory of the intention of the photographer. There is the thing we're supposed to look at. There might be other things of interest in the frame. This is a picture of the little girl, oh, and also her stuffed toy. Or perhaps the other way around. Usually there will be a bunch of extra crap that we decide isn't important to the frame There is an ugly cross-stitch on the wall behind the little girl, out of focus and partly obscured by the toy, it probably doesn't matter.
First and foremost, with most pictures, the thing we're supposed to look at is probably whatever is in the center. I don't mean most pictures taken by Serious Photographers, I simply mean most pictures. If the thing in the center of the frame is also out of focus, we have to decide whether the photographer meant something else as the Main Thing, or whether the photographer failed to achieve sharp focus.
This unpacks quite a ways, I think. What is it, really, that we're supposed to look at? Is it the thing in the middle, the thing in sharpest focus, the brightest thing? If the picture strikes us as a naive snapshot, we'll probably accept the thing in the middle, every time, and treat any other prominent things as accidents. If the photo bears marks of sophistication, we might be more cautious.
There are photos which are clearly, or at least we imagine are clearly, about the whole scene. A crowd of people. A landscape. Now, it might be that we have a naive photographer trying to photograph her daughter in a crowd with a with a wide lens. Is this a crowd scene, or a botched portrait of the little girl slightly left of center in the front of the crowd? We don't really have a way of knowing, but depending on the details we might lean one way or the other.
Photographers have often trained themselves to "follow leading lines" or look at "rule of thirds power points" for the subject, and if the hack who made the picture has used these devices, the subject is usually obvious anyways. The girl on the train tracks is indeed at the end of some leading lines, but she's also the girl in the photo so we look at her. There's nothing else in the picture of note, so she must be the thing the photo is "of." It is possible, though, that we could run in to trouble here. If the thing we're supposed to look at does not stand out particularly, a normal human being might not be able to identify it whereas a Thoroughly Modern Photographer would, because of its position in the frame.
A certain amount of contemporary (ach-German-oo) art photography doesn't seem to be of anything, and efforts to discern authorial intent might well founder entirely due to the over-sophistication of the photographer. The cynic (me) identifies the intention of the photograph to be indecipherable on the grounds that the photographer suffers from a sort of self-induced lunacy, and is seeing meaning where none is present. A less cynical but equally naive viewer might assume that they simply are not clever enough to discern the meaning. The photographer's students would, likely, nod wisely and claim to see the point, naturlich but find themselves mysteriously unable to articulate it.
This same sort of thing probably encompasses a lot of snapshots. Is there a difference between an idiot (me) trying to photograph a small bird with a 35mm lens, and a serious German artist taking a random snap, err, serious critique of humanity in the form of a bunch of tangled branches and shit, in which you can barely make out a tiny vaguely bird-shaped blotch?
This is, I guess, a manifestation of a larger issue which is really smeared all over the problem of making meaning from photos: we're all different, and we are sometimes going to come up with different things. My broader thesis is that we tend, generally, to light upon roughly similar things more often than not, and so make meaning in similar ways, and I think it holds true here. There might be more than one reasonable guess at authorial intent, but there probably aren't more than a small handful of such guesses.
What makes this relevant to me in this moment is that, whatever else is true, this process takes place outside of the photograph. Much of a photo's meaning arises, I have maintained, from in some sense inside the frame. We imagine ourselves there, rather than here. This theorizing about intent, though, cannot reasonably take place from that point of view. Like any formal analysis of the properties of the picture itself, it occurs from where we actually sit or stand looking at the picture.
It follows that my larger Theory of Photography includes the making of meaning from multiple locii. We inhabit the picture, sometimes we inhabit a role within the picture, and at the same time we remain here, looking at the picture.
Which is, roughly, "aaaig" from my point of view.
Adding to the difficulty is that we may or may not care that much about what we think the author intended. The old lady centered in the frame, smiling at the camera, might not be of much interest to us. Perhaps we find the vase on the shelf behind her to be most interesting. To be honest, that would be a bit perverse, but it's not impossible.
I don't mean to suggest that there's some specific order of operations here, but we can in a way imagine some sort of sequence like this:
I look at the photo, I see someone's grandmother. She bores me, my eye slides off her and alights on the vase behind her because I have a peculiar interest in mid-century vases. I then "step into" the frame and inhabit the role of a spectator in the frame, examining the vase and wondering about how it came to be there on the shelf, and whether the old lady would sell it, and so on.
In this case, we might imagine that I begin outside the picture, here in my chair, looking at the photo. I then metaphorically pass into the mirror world of the photo, and continue to make some kind of meaning, albeit in this case idiosyncratic meaning, from that point of view.
In reality I think it all sort of happens at once. There simply isn't that much time, our process of making meaning from a photo is all over in a second or two.
Friday, July 24, 2020
Thursday, July 23, 2020
In Praise of Friction
We don't value things that we don't pay for. If you have something that's worth a little bit, which you don't want, you might offer it up for free. You won't get many takers, and the people that do promise to come take it away generally won't. Offer it instead for a token price, and the situation changes completely.
When people propose online gallery shows, they generally are enthused about the idea that there's less friction. There's greater accessibility. Why, the whole world will be able to see our show! Which is all true, but it's not actually a good thing, it's a terrible thing.
The whole point of seeing a gallery show is that you've made a commitment of time and energy, which completely alters how you take the work. You're going to value it, you're going to actually look at it, you're going to struggle with it. Or, at least, you're more likely to do those things. If it's just a quick click away, you're far less likely to. It costs nothing to boredly click a mouse.
On the flip side, digital photography has reduced friction in the making of photographs. Instagram and its friends have virtually eliminated friction all the way through "publishing." It costs me nothing to snap a picture and shove it out there, it costs you nothing to look at it.
Why on earth anyone would imagine people would, somehow, find value in here is beyond me.
Friction is the point, after all. The value of all these things is completely abstract, completely socially constructed. I can't eat a photograph, and it would take an awfully large print to offer me much shelter from the elements. Removing friction removes some of that socially constructed value, and as such, doing so is a rotten idea.
Interestingly, the use of film and alternative processes is often treated as a form of value-adding friction, and in a sense it ought to be. Some people perceive added value here, for sure. I generally do not, but that is something of a personal take.
Sally Mann's wet plate work, for instance, derives value from the process in two quite separate ways. The first is that sort of socially generated friction-value. The second, though, is that the processes serve the work. The battlefields simply would not work without the flaws and trash introduced by the process. The blackwater photos demand the look of the tintype to work at all.
The second piece, though, the part I see as valuable, could be done equally well with a digital filter. For my money, Mann would do just as well to shoot all this stuff with a good phone and apply a snazzy "wet plate" filter that throws down random artifacts and shit all over the file. I mean, she's welcome to screw around with wet plate if she likes, she's got all the bottles and plates and whatnot, and she's obviously got it all on autopilot at this point so why not?
But the frictional value here, the fact that it's a demanding process, strikes me as largely negated by the fact that this could all be done with a filter.
So what kinds of friction really do add value?
Well, as near as I can tell it's the kind of friction that can't be simulated by the machine, and thus is something of a moving target.
I think (surprise!) that making a book is a good example. You can take your easily made digital photos, sequence them, wrap them in a design, think about stuff, write some copy, and so on. There's real work here, which is not (yet) subject to automation. The work shows up in the result. At the same time, I can't just lazily click a thing, I have to lever my ass out of this chair, pull the thing off the shelf, and, using my clumsy paws, leaf through it a page at a time.
Friction, value.
Putting things in a real white cube also creates friction, and value. Someone's deciding which print goes where. Someone's framing and matting things, and driving nails, and standing back, and adjusting lights. At the same time, I have to drag my ass down there, maybe even pay a fee, and walk through the gallery on my other clumsy paws, gaping stupidly at the walls.
Friction, value.
"Online gallery show" misses the entire point. It's just a shitty version of instagram. Don't do it!
When people propose online gallery shows, they generally are enthused about the idea that there's less friction. There's greater accessibility. Why, the whole world will be able to see our show! Which is all true, but it's not actually a good thing, it's a terrible thing.
The whole point of seeing a gallery show is that you've made a commitment of time and energy, which completely alters how you take the work. You're going to value it, you're going to actually look at it, you're going to struggle with it. Or, at least, you're more likely to do those things. If it's just a quick click away, you're far less likely to. It costs nothing to boredly click a mouse.
On the flip side, digital photography has reduced friction in the making of photographs. Instagram and its friends have virtually eliminated friction all the way through "publishing." It costs me nothing to snap a picture and shove it out there, it costs you nothing to look at it.
Why on earth anyone would imagine people would, somehow, find value in here is beyond me.
Friction is the point, after all. The value of all these things is completely abstract, completely socially constructed. I can't eat a photograph, and it would take an awfully large print to offer me much shelter from the elements. Removing friction removes some of that socially constructed value, and as such, doing so is a rotten idea.
Interestingly, the use of film and alternative processes is often treated as a form of value-adding friction, and in a sense it ought to be. Some people perceive added value here, for sure. I generally do not, but that is something of a personal take.
Sally Mann's wet plate work, for instance, derives value from the process in two quite separate ways. The first is that sort of socially generated friction-value. The second, though, is that the processes serve the work. The battlefields simply would not work without the flaws and trash introduced by the process. The blackwater photos demand the look of the tintype to work at all.
The second piece, though, the part I see as valuable, could be done equally well with a digital filter. For my money, Mann would do just as well to shoot all this stuff with a good phone and apply a snazzy "wet plate" filter that throws down random artifacts and shit all over the file. I mean, she's welcome to screw around with wet plate if she likes, she's got all the bottles and plates and whatnot, and she's obviously got it all on autopilot at this point so why not?
But the frictional value here, the fact that it's a demanding process, strikes me as largely negated by the fact that this could all be done with a filter.
So what kinds of friction really do add value?
Well, as near as I can tell it's the kind of friction that can't be simulated by the machine, and thus is something of a moving target.
I think (surprise!) that making a book is a good example. You can take your easily made digital photos, sequence them, wrap them in a design, think about stuff, write some copy, and so on. There's real work here, which is not (yet) subject to automation. The work shows up in the result. At the same time, I can't just lazily click a thing, I have to lever my ass out of this chair, pull the thing off the shelf, and, using my clumsy paws, leaf through it a page at a time.
Friction, value.
Putting things in a real white cube also creates friction, and value. Someone's deciding which print goes where. Someone's framing and matting things, and driving nails, and standing back, and adjusting lights. At the same time, I have to drag my ass down there, maybe even pay a fee, and walk through the gallery on my other clumsy paws, gaping stupidly at the walls.
Friction, value.
"Online gallery show" misses the entire point. It's just a shitty version of instagram. Don't do it!
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
On Theories of Photography
I've been more quiet than usual for a bunch of reasons, not least, summertime and feints at holidays. But also, I've been writing a short book, which is proving difficult as usual but fairly productive. I will be asking for readers in a little bit, I think.
Anyways, the point of the book is something that I think could be called a Theory of Photography.
For my purposes here let's call anything a Theory of Photography that grapples seriously with what happens when someone looks at a photo or a body of photographic work. We all claim that photographs affect people, affect societies, but often leave unstated any serious effort to answer the question: "Ok. How?" A Theory of Photography attempts to do that.
It might feel, for example, that "gaze" is a Theory of Photography, but I don't think it is. It's usually just a way to state a property of authorship, with a vague hand wave in the direction of some undemonstrated and undescribed negative effects. All we need to know is that "male gaze" is bad and "female gaze" is good, and that it the end of it. The actual alleged impact is left unstated, and the mechanism is silently assumed. "Representation" is similar. It's really the other end of the same stick.
Barthes' Camera Lucida on the other hand is a kind of Theory of Photography. He describes in detail the effect some photographs have on him, a "doubling a vision", a kind of ecstatic reification of the contents of the photograph, induced by a slippery thing called punctum, and finally the assertion that this is all there is. This is the limit of the power of the photograph. He is describing an effect, and naming and to some extent describing a mechanism, and then at least claiming a kind of completeness to his theory. It does this, via that, and that's the end of it.
I think he's got it wrong, but at least it's a Theory of Photography.
My memories of the details of Sontag are due for a refresh, but I am pretty sure that somewhere in there she articulated some things that sound like a Theory of Photography of some sort.
But who cares? Why would anyone need a Theory of Photography? I suppose I could leave this as an exercise to the reader, or assert that it's obvious (it is pretty obvious, surely?)
The point about a ToP is that it provides a framework in which to talk about how photography affects people and society. Without such a thing, you're just wandering around in the dark making unsupported assertions (cf. Colberg, Reading The Pictures, Bush, the MFA-Industrial-Complex, the Photobook Extraction Industry, the whole shoddy lot of them.) Worse, your assertions are not even connected to one another. When you read these guys you will routinely find them saying something one week and the exact opposite the next.
There are still old school photography critics out there, scribbling away. They seem, generally, to have at least some internalized ToP, though whether they ever got around to writing it down I can't tell. Still, even reviews I like tend toward a detailed description of the object under review, together with a fairly slender discussion of meaning and impact based as much on surrounding material as on the photographs. Photo reviews tend to end up as caption reviews.
See, for example, Vicki Goldberg on Sally Mann in this NY Times piece. The piece wanders back and forth between Mann, Hold Still, and the actual work being reviewed. A surprising amount of what appears to be criticism is actually paraphrased quotation: her willingness to experiment with levels of romance beyond what most late-20th-century artists could tolerate is something Mann says about southern artists generally, for example.
The actual criticism is larded into this material largely in the form of adjectives attached to descriptive material. To my eye, it's pretty spot on. It is clear that the critic has a firm idea of what the meaning of the show was, and she's not shy about suggesting that this meaning is, if not objective, at least broadly intersubjective. Goldberg is pretty sure that you ought to see these pictures the same way she does, and she makes at least a nod toward specific things she sees in the frame that support her views (both of the pictures, and the idea that you should also see the pictures the way she does.)
Is it perfect? No. It's not even very serious, and it cannot be. It's a newspaper review of a show. As such needs to spend a great deal of time and energy just describing the thing itself, it has to be fairly anodyne, and, contrary to pretensions, the NYT is a thoroughly un-serious paper designed to feel serious. All that said, I believe Goldberg did a fair job here.
Anyways, I am working up 12,000 words or so on a Theory of Photography which should be pretty familiar to long-time readers. I think I've made a fairly sturdy argument in support of it, but we shall see.
If you know any publishers eager to publish the next Camera Lucida hit me up, you delusional maniac.
Anyways, the point of the book is something that I think could be called a Theory of Photography.
For my purposes here let's call anything a Theory of Photography that grapples seriously with what happens when someone looks at a photo or a body of photographic work. We all claim that photographs affect people, affect societies, but often leave unstated any serious effort to answer the question: "Ok. How?" A Theory of Photography attempts to do that.
It might feel, for example, that "gaze" is a Theory of Photography, but I don't think it is. It's usually just a way to state a property of authorship, with a vague hand wave in the direction of some undemonstrated and undescribed negative effects. All we need to know is that "male gaze" is bad and "female gaze" is good, and that it the end of it. The actual alleged impact is left unstated, and the mechanism is silently assumed. "Representation" is similar. It's really the other end of the same stick.
Barthes' Camera Lucida on the other hand is a kind of Theory of Photography. He describes in detail the effect some photographs have on him, a "doubling a vision", a kind of ecstatic reification of the contents of the photograph, induced by a slippery thing called punctum, and finally the assertion that this is all there is. This is the limit of the power of the photograph. He is describing an effect, and naming and to some extent describing a mechanism, and then at least claiming a kind of completeness to his theory. It does this, via that, and that's the end of it.
I think he's got it wrong, but at least it's a Theory of Photography.
My memories of the details of Sontag are due for a refresh, but I am pretty sure that somewhere in there she articulated some things that sound like a Theory of Photography of some sort.
But who cares? Why would anyone need a Theory of Photography? I suppose I could leave this as an exercise to the reader, or assert that it's obvious (it is pretty obvious, surely?)
The point about a ToP is that it provides a framework in which to talk about how photography affects people and society. Without such a thing, you're just wandering around in the dark making unsupported assertions (cf. Colberg, Reading The Pictures, Bush, the MFA-Industrial-Complex, the Photobook Extraction Industry, the whole shoddy lot of them.) Worse, your assertions are not even connected to one another. When you read these guys you will routinely find them saying something one week and the exact opposite the next.
There are still old school photography critics out there, scribbling away. They seem, generally, to have at least some internalized ToP, though whether they ever got around to writing it down I can't tell. Still, even reviews I like tend toward a detailed description of the object under review, together with a fairly slender discussion of meaning and impact based as much on surrounding material as on the photographs. Photo reviews tend to end up as caption reviews.
See, for example, Vicki Goldberg on Sally Mann in this NY Times piece. The piece wanders back and forth between Mann, Hold Still, and the actual work being reviewed. A surprising amount of what appears to be criticism is actually paraphrased quotation: her willingness to experiment with levels of romance beyond what most late-20th-century artists could tolerate is something Mann says about southern artists generally, for example.
The actual criticism is larded into this material largely in the form of adjectives attached to descriptive material. To my eye, it's pretty spot on. It is clear that the critic has a firm idea of what the meaning of the show was, and she's not shy about suggesting that this meaning is, if not objective, at least broadly intersubjective. Goldberg is pretty sure that you ought to see these pictures the same way she does, and she makes at least a nod toward specific things she sees in the frame that support her views (both of the pictures, and the idea that you should also see the pictures the way she does.)
Is it perfect? No. It's not even very serious, and it cannot be. It's a newspaper review of a show. As such needs to spend a great deal of time and energy just describing the thing itself, it has to be fairly anodyne, and, contrary to pretensions, the NYT is a thoroughly un-serious paper designed to feel serious. All that said, I believe Goldberg did a fair job here.
Anyways, I am working up 12,000 words or so on a Theory of Photography which should be pretty familiar to long-time readers. I think I've made a fairly sturdy argument in support of it, but we shall see.
If you know any publishers eager to publish the next Camera Lucida hit me up, you delusional maniac.
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
On Representation
Those of you In The Know will be aware that there's a whole vague system of understanding photography around "representation" and "the politics of" which is built on the ideas of who portrays whom, and in what ways, and via what power, in media. I do not intend to dig in to that, particularly. Rather, I propose to continue to expound, like a psychotic monkey with a drum, on my current theme of "you enter the world of the photo."
Recall that my thesis is this: when you look at a photograph, at least if the photo works, you metaphorically enter the world of the picture. Your reactions are at least similar to, related to, the reactions you would have had if you had actually been there.
Consider now if there is a human figure in the frame. Let's suppose for now that the picture has a single dominant human subject.
It is in our nature to empathize with humans. We will, to some degree, see ourselves in that human subject. If we share a gender, an ethnicity, an age, if we both have or do not have a beard, if there's just something ineffable, our empathetic bond may be strengthened. The more we identify with the figure in the picture, the more we will see ourselves in them.
Which leads us to our role when we "pass through" the picture into the mirror world of the photo. To some extent we will arrive as spectators, and to some extent as characters in the scene.
Consider this blast from the past:
This is the photograph by Fabrice Monteiro which I talked about at length here: Something to Look At.
Now, I have essentially nothing in common with the model beyond being male and incredibly handsome. I empathize to a normal degree, I think, but not to any special degree.
If we imagine looking at a photo as a kind of Star Trek transporter beam, I materialize in the empty region on the right, looking at the man.
If I were a young black man, I might well find myself on arrival rather more inside, in the role of, the model and rather less outside looking in.
We arrive in the mirror world of the photo, and one of us is standing next to a man with a curious and violent looking contraption on his neck. The other of us is that man, wearing the contraption. To a degree, and metaphorically. But, to that degree, it alters the way we perceive not so much the photo itself, but the mirror world of the photo.
This is analogous to, though probably much less forceful than, "male gaze" in the original cinematic conception. In a standard Action Movie there is a male hero, a male villian, maybe some sidekicks, and a beautiful woman whose function to to be kidnapped and threatened by the villain before being rescued by the hero.
As a white male, when I watch these movies, I identify with the hero. To some small extent, I experience the movie vicariously as an exciting experience that I am having. I rescue the girl. Possibly, also, I threaten the girl. My wife, being a beautiful young woman, experiences the movie a little differently, she is the girl who is threatened, and then rescued.
Again, all of this is to a degree, and metaphorically.
Or, perhaps more correctly, our reactions to and experience of these things is subtly colored in ways that are as-if we were in the photo, or in the movie, in those various roles.
The important observation here is that there is in both cases something larger in play than simply the photo, or the movie. There is a whole world implied by the photo and by the movie, a world of our own imaginative construction. We are injected into this larger world, or if you prefer we build it around ourself. Our empathatic machinery inevitably places us in — or not in — various roles in that world.
Am I slave or free in the world of my imagining? Am I the hero, or the ingénue?
I believe the "politics of representation" starts, more or less, from here (albeit probably without as firm a footing, usually) and proceeds off into the kinds of damage that result from being persistently placed in this role or that, and that's certainly an avenue of discussion.
Be that as it may, the underlying mechanic is a separate thing and is what I am interested in here.
We are, as it were, projected into this mirror world. We make meaning from the photograph from that vantage point. We understand the photograph to an extent as if we were there, in the role(s) our empathetic machine assigns to us.
If I arrive in Monteiro's photograph as a middle aged white man, a spectator, in the empty space of the frame so neatly prepared for me, I will understand the photograph one way. If instead I arrive as the young black man with the grotesque collar, I will understand the photograph in, arguably, a radically different way.
If I, as a critic, want to understand Monteiro's photograph broadly, I probably need to be able to imagine myself as a young black man with a grotesque collar. Any attempt to understand the way a young black man will understand this picture will necessarily involve an attempt to see the photo as he sees it. He, arguably, wears the collar at one remove. The best I can do is wear it twice removed, but that is an effort I should make.
I don't think I did anything like that in my original discussion, and that was a failure on my part.
Recall that my thesis is this: when you look at a photograph, at least if the photo works, you metaphorically enter the world of the picture. Your reactions are at least similar to, related to, the reactions you would have had if you had actually been there.
Consider now if there is a human figure in the frame. Let's suppose for now that the picture has a single dominant human subject.
It is in our nature to empathize with humans. We will, to some degree, see ourselves in that human subject. If we share a gender, an ethnicity, an age, if we both have or do not have a beard, if there's just something ineffable, our empathetic bond may be strengthened. The more we identify with the figure in the picture, the more we will see ourselves in them.
Which leads us to our role when we "pass through" the picture into the mirror world of the photo. To some extent we will arrive as spectators, and to some extent as characters in the scene.
Consider this blast from the past:
This is the photograph by Fabrice Monteiro which I talked about at length here: Something to Look At.
Now, I have essentially nothing in common with the model beyond being male and incredibly handsome. I empathize to a normal degree, I think, but not to any special degree.
If we imagine looking at a photo as a kind of Star Trek transporter beam, I materialize in the empty region on the right, looking at the man.
If I were a young black man, I might well find myself on arrival rather more inside, in the role of, the model and rather less outside looking in.
We arrive in the mirror world of the photo, and one of us is standing next to a man with a curious and violent looking contraption on his neck. The other of us is that man, wearing the contraption. To a degree, and metaphorically. But, to that degree, it alters the way we perceive not so much the photo itself, but the mirror world of the photo.
This is analogous to, though probably much less forceful than, "male gaze" in the original cinematic conception. In a standard Action Movie there is a male hero, a male villian, maybe some sidekicks, and a beautiful woman whose function to to be kidnapped and threatened by the villain before being rescued by the hero.
As a white male, when I watch these movies, I identify with the hero. To some small extent, I experience the movie vicariously as an exciting experience that I am having. I rescue the girl. Possibly, also, I threaten the girl. My wife, being a beautiful young woman, experiences the movie a little differently, she is the girl who is threatened, and then rescued.
Again, all of this is to a degree, and metaphorically.
Or, perhaps more correctly, our reactions to and experience of these things is subtly colored in ways that are as-if we were in the photo, or in the movie, in those various roles.
The important observation here is that there is in both cases something larger in play than simply the photo, or the movie. There is a whole world implied by the photo and by the movie, a world of our own imaginative construction. We are injected into this larger world, or if you prefer we build it around ourself. Our empathatic machinery inevitably places us in — or not in — various roles in that world.
Am I slave or free in the world of my imagining? Am I the hero, or the ingénue?
I believe the "politics of representation" starts, more or less, from here (albeit probably without as firm a footing, usually) and proceeds off into the kinds of damage that result from being persistently placed in this role or that, and that's certainly an avenue of discussion.
Be that as it may, the underlying mechanic is a separate thing and is what I am interested in here.
We are, as it were, projected into this mirror world. We make meaning from the photograph from that vantage point. We understand the photograph to an extent as if we were there, in the role(s) our empathetic machine assigns to us.
If I arrive in Monteiro's photograph as a middle aged white man, a spectator, in the empty space of the frame so neatly prepared for me, I will understand the photograph one way. If instead I arrive as the young black man with the grotesque collar, I will understand the photograph in, arguably, a radically different way.
If I, as a critic, want to understand Monteiro's photograph broadly, I probably need to be able to imagine myself as a young black man with a grotesque collar. Any attempt to understand the way a young black man will understand this picture will necessarily involve an attempt to see the photo as he sees it. He, arguably, wears the collar at one remove. The best I can do is wear it twice removed, but that is an effort I should make.
I don't think I did anything like that in my original discussion, and that was a failure on my part.
Friday, July 10, 2020
The Power of the Photo II
Lately I have been banging on about the idea that a photograph functions to take you to the scene. That is, your reaction to a photograph resembles in important ways your reaction to physically being present at the place and moment the photograph was made. I now intend to see how far this analogy will stretch.
If a photograph does indeed work that way, then we can consider looking at a photo to be a bit like visiting someplace. You go there for a little while, and then you return. This speaks to the power of the photograph as follows:
When we visit somewhere, it is not unusual to be inspired. I shall learn Japanese! or I will start to make my own yogurt!
When we return home, these aspirations tend to fade away. We make yogurt once, and that is the end of it. Perhaps 1 person in 1000 actually takes up a dedicated hobby of yogurt making, or takes a serious stab at learning Japanese. Some small percentage.
In the same way, a photograph, even one which inspires us, which makes us rage, which makes us weep, which makes us shout with joy, is but a short visit to another world. When we turn the page, the inspired reaction begins to fade, and two hours later it is largely gone. Except, perhaps, in a few cases, perhaps one in a thousand.
Suppose, though, that we visit each weekend for 20 years the town which inspires us to make yogurt. Even if only one visitor in a thousand takes up yogurt making, more than 60% of thousand-time-visitors will have become dedicated yogurt makers. The visit becomes more like a class, regularly attended, with a message consistently delivered.
This is, then, one way to think of the difference between a single evocative photo, or even a parade of disconnected evocative photos. It's like visiting Japan, over and over, going to this city or that one, soaking it all in. You are inspired, you are enlarged, it's a really good thing to do, to have done. You are probably a better person for it. What you are not is someone who speaks Japanese. That never happened, though after every trip you pick up the grammar and hammer away at it for a few days. You are still struggling with where is the bathroom? and you always will.
That's OK. Not learning Japanese doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't mean all the trips to Japan were pointless.
In the same way, endless photographs of Tiger Woods have wrought no particular change in the demographics of golf. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't have been made.
Photographs don't work like that. They enlarge us, the reveal to us possibilities and ideas and situations we would never have seen, or felt. They do not teach us Japanese, they let us experience Japan through the eyes of a foreigner.
Nobody seriously suggests that one can learn Japanese by visiting Japan a lot. That's not really the point of visiting Japan. To learn Japanese, you take classes.
Organized classes are akin to organized media campaigns. To change the demographics of golf, you need more than a lot of photos of Tiger Woods; to learn Japanese, you need to do more than visit Japan a dozen times. They are simply different things. To change the demographics of golf, an organized media campaign might succeed where Tiger failed; to learn Japanese, a series of classes might succeed where relentless tourism will inevitably fail.
Viewing a photograph as a short visit to a mirror world seems to me to encapsulate this difference rather neatly!
If a photograph does indeed work that way, then we can consider looking at a photo to be a bit like visiting someplace. You go there for a little while, and then you return. This speaks to the power of the photograph as follows:
When we visit somewhere, it is not unusual to be inspired. I shall learn Japanese! or I will start to make my own yogurt!
When we return home, these aspirations tend to fade away. We make yogurt once, and that is the end of it. Perhaps 1 person in 1000 actually takes up a dedicated hobby of yogurt making, or takes a serious stab at learning Japanese. Some small percentage.
In the same way, a photograph, even one which inspires us, which makes us rage, which makes us weep, which makes us shout with joy, is but a short visit to another world. When we turn the page, the inspired reaction begins to fade, and two hours later it is largely gone. Except, perhaps, in a few cases, perhaps one in a thousand.
Suppose, though, that we visit each weekend for 20 years the town which inspires us to make yogurt. Even if only one visitor in a thousand takes up yogurt making, more than 60% of thousand-time-visitors will have become dedicated yogurt makers. The visit becomes more like a class, regularly attended, with a message consistently delivered.
This is, then, one way to think of the difference between a single evocative photo, or even a parade of disconnected evocative photos. It's like visiting Japan, over and over, going to this city or that one, soaking it all in. You are inspired, you are enlarged, it's a really good thing to do, to have done. You are probably a better person for it. What you are not is someone who speaks Japanese. That never happened, though after every trip you pick up the grammar and hammer away at it for a few days. You are still struggling with where is the bathroom? and you always will.
That's OK. Not learning Japanese doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't mean all the trips to Japan were pointless.
In the same way, endless photographs of Tiger Woods have wrought no particular change in the demographics of golf. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't have been made.
Photographs don't work like that. They enlarge us, the reveal to us possibilities and ideas and situations we would never have seen, or felt. They do not teach us Japanese, they let us experience Japan through the eyes of a foreigner.
Nobody seriously suggests that one can learn Japanese by visiting Japan a lot. That's not really the point of visiting Japan. To learn Japanese, you take classes.
Organized classes are akin to organized media campaigns. To change the demographics of golf, you need more than a lot of photos of Tiger Woods; to learn Japanese, you need to do more than visit Japan a dozen times. They are simply different things. To change the demographics of golf, an organized media campaign might succeed where Tiger failed; to learn Japanese, a series of classes might succeed where relentless tourism will inevitably fail.
Viewing a photograph as a short visit to a mirror world seems to me to encapsulate this difference rather neatly!
Thursday, July 9, 2020
The Power Of The Photo
The usual suspects are rambling on, on twitter, about how reprehensible and wicked it is to photograph someone without getting that person's consent. They have no argument, of course, it's simply received wisdom that it's wrong. And, look, it's not a trivial problem. There are issues here. But it's a lot more complicated than either side of that debate ("street photographers" versus "academics" let's say, or "type 1 assholes" versus "type 2 assholes" if you prefer) See, for instance my brilliant analysis here.
I diagnose this, based on not very much, as rooted in the conceit that photographs are Terribly Powerful. This is a notion held, to nobody's surprise, by a lot of people who have devoted themselves to photography — either doing it, or bloviating about it, or both. If you dig through the archives of this very blog, you'll probably find some dumb shit I said. Consistency is for the weak.
Since photographs are Terribly Powerful, it follows that one needs to be Terrible Careful with them, and everyone except the bloviating-elite has been (obviously) insufficiently careful, and so colonialism and so on. Then there ensues much hand-wringing and pearl-clutching on twitter about How Awful It Is.
It all reminds me rather of a Wired article I read years ago about containerized shipping. In the piece, the author waxed lyrical about the amount of data that surrounds a shipping container, basically: what's in it, and where it is. The author proposed that some day the data about a container might some day be worth more than the contents, which sounds very high tech and shit, but is obviously stupid. I will pay, it turns out, absolutely no more than $20 for information about a $20 bill. That is a hard limit.
Photographs run into the same problem: there is always the hard limit of reality, against which the photograph competes.
Why are there very few black sailors in the USA? Because black people in the USA generally don't swim. Why don't black people in the USA swim? Because there are no black lifeguards. There is, I am pretty sure, actual research backing this up. Good research? I dunno, but it's just an example, so let's go forward anyways.
This is a classic "representation" problem. If you don't see anyone who looks like you doing a thing, you're less likely to feel like it's a thing you could do, or should do, or want to do. Nobody wants to be the only black kid in the pool. It's not an impenetrable wall, obviously, but it's a barrier of sorts.
This gets translated, by a sort of sleight of hand, into a story about media. The conceit is that media is pretty much the same thing as life, so if you see (or don't see) yourself represented in media in a certain way, they you react in certain ways. It sounds logical, and maybe it even is.
The thing is, media is not real life. You can see all the black lifeguards you like in magazines and on TV, but when you get to the pool, you're still the only black kid in this here pool in real life. There has been no spike, or even noticeable increase, in black kids playing golf over the career of Tiger Woods. Media's power is always less than the power of real life.
This shows us one boundary on the power of media in general, and photography specifically.
Let's consider propaganda. It absolutely works. Advertising and propaganda are well worked out and successful strategies. They absolutely alter perception and behavior, and they are, fundamentally, media. So... uh? What gives?
Well, first of all, ads and propaganda work when you're talking about organized and well funded campaigns. Message discipline and saturation are both necessary. So, if you want to sell cake mixes, or cars, what definitely does not work is a random assemblage of bullshit thrown together by amateurs across the world, all with their own personal takes on the matter.
There is a world of difference between a whole bunch of pictures of Tiger holding up trophies, and a propaganda/ad campaign aimed to get black kids to play golf.
Ads and propaganda also work best when they're working an already established trend. Goebbels wasn't trying to turn Battleship Germany around, he was just trying to steer it a little to the right and whip already existing sentiment up to a fever pitch. You can sell people stuff mainly if they're already ready to buy.
Partly, this is the campaign: you prepare the ground for, potentially, years. Partly, it is simply taking advantage of conditions on the ground. These two blend in to one another.
So, we have another bound on the power of media: scattershot jumbles have very low impact, organized campaigns can have real juice. 1000 dolts posting pictures on flickr is, we can be pretty sure, going to have exactly zero impact on the world. 30 dolts posting news photos on the front page of the NYT probably don't do much either. One dolt with a budget and a coherent plan? Now we're cooking with gas.
Photographs, being but one form of media, and a limited one at that, cannot possibly have the power claimed. Photographs do certain things, they have certain effects, but the power of the photograph to alter the world, whether for good or ill, is extremely limited.
If you're worrying about some dipshit's book project because you don't approve of his methods, maybe you should stop being such a goddamned princess and start worrying about things that actually matter.
There are days when it appears that much of "photoland" is devoted primarily to scolding. They seem to have an entire theory of photography which, while disconnected almost completely from reality, is optimized to provide material and rationalization for scolding, because scolding is their favorite thing.
I diagnose this, based on not very much, as rooted in the conceit that photographs are Terribly Powerful. This is a notion held, to nobody's surprise, by a lot of people who have devoted themselves to photography — either doing it, or bloviating about it, or both. If you dig through the archives of this very blog, you'll probably find some dumb shit I said. Consistency is for the weak.
Since photographs are Terribly Powerful, it follows that one needs to be Terrible Careful with them, and everyone except the bloviating-elite has been (obviously) insufficiently careful, and so colonialism and so on. Then there ensues much hand-wringing and pearl-clutching on twitter about How Awful It Is.
It all reminds me rather of a Wired article I read years ago about containerized shipping. In the piece, the author waxed lyrical about the amount of data that surrounds a shipping container, basically: what's in it, and where it is. The author proposed that some day the data about a container might some day be worth more than the contents, which sounds very high tech and shit, but is obviously stupid. I will pay, it turns out, absolutely no more than $20 for information about a $20 bill. That is a hard limit.
Photographs run into the same problem: there is always the hard limit of reality, against which the photograph competes.
Why are there very few black sailors in the USA? Because black people in the USA generally don't swim. Why don't black people in the USA swim? Because there are no black lifeguards. There is, I am pretty sure, actual research backing this up. Good research? I dunno, but it's just an example, so let's go forward anyways.
This is a classic "representation" problem. If you don't see anyone who looks like you doing a thing, you're less likely to feel like it's a thing you could do, or should do, or want to do. Nobody wants to be the only black kid in the pool. It's not an impenetrable wall, obviously, but it's a barrier of sorts.
This gets translated, by a sort of sleight of hand, into a story about media. The conceit is that media is pretty much the same thing as life, so if you see (or don't see) yourself represented in media in a certain way, they you react in certain ways. It sounds logical, and maybe it even is.
The thing is, media is not real life. You can see all the black lifeguards you like in magazines and on TV, but when you get to the pool, you're still the only black kid in this here pool in real life. There has been no spike, or even noticeable increase, in black kids playing golf over the career of Tiger Woods. Media's power is always less than the power of real life.
This shows us one boundary on the power of media in general, and photography specifically.
Let's consider propaganda. It absolutely works. Advertising and propaganda are well worked out and successful strategies. They absolutely alter perception and behavior, and they are, fundamentally, media. So... uh? What gives?
Well, first of all, ads and propaganda work when you're talking about organized and well funded campaigns. Message discipline and saturation are both necessary. So, if you want to sell cake mixes, or cars, what definitely does not work is a random assemblage of bullshit thrown together by amateurs across the world, all with their own personal takes on the matter.
There is a world of difference between a whole bunch of pictures of Tiger holding up trophies, and a propaganda/ad campaign aimed to get black kids to play golf.
Ads and propaganda also work best when they're working an already established trend. Goebbels wasn't trying to turn Battleship Germany around, he was just trying to steer it a little to the right and whip already existing sentiment up to a fever pitch. You can sell people stuff mainly if they're already ready to buy.
Partly, this is the campaign: you prepare the ground for, potentially, years. Partly, it is simply taking advantage of conditions on the ground. These two blend in to one another.
So, we have another bound on the power of media: scattershot jumbles have very low impact, organized campaigns can have real juice. 1000 dolts posting pictures on flickr is, we can be pretty sure, going to have exactly zero impact on the world. 30 dolts posting news photos on the front page of the NYT probably don't do much either. One dolt with a budget and a coherent plan? Now we're cooking with gas.
Photographs, being but one form of media, and a limited one at that, cannot possibly have the power claimed. Photographs do certain things, they have certain effects, but the power of the photograph to alter the world, whether for good or ill, is extremely limited.
If you're worrying about some dipshit's book project because you don't approve of his methods, maybe you should stop being such a goddamned princess and start worrying about things that actually matter.
There are days when it appears that much of "photoland" is devoted primarily to scolding. They seem to have an entire theory of photography which, while disconnected almost completely from reality, is optimized to provide material and rationalization for scolding, because scolding is their favorite thing.
Wednesday, July 1, 2020
Something to Look At
Via Reading The Pictures, we have this photo:
Michael Shaw offers his typically blockheaded discussion here, which I will request that you peruse at some point. Let us inventory the thing. Back to front, let's say.
A sunset, or possibly a sunrise. A statue of some sort with a standing figure, a bowed figure, and some other shit I can't make out. Small and out of focus, but probably recognizable to anyone familiar with the statue, unrecognizable otherwise. A fence and some kind caution tape, possibly but not certainly to barricade the statue. Some people out of focus doing various things, nothing particularly recognizable. One might be taking a photo, or drinking from a flask as far as we can tell. Some temporary waste containers.
Two figures in the foreground.
A young black women with braided hair, un-striking clothing, a bandanna-style mask with writing on it, pulled down off her face. Her posture is mostly relaxed, hip slightly cocked, hands behind her back. Posture might have a hint of some kind of tension in it. Her chin is up, she gazes upwards slightly, eyes rolled further to the sky. Her expression is neutral. She has an attitude, maybe, of studied calm. Consistent with a sense that she is waiting, almost but not quite patiently. Equally consistent with a sense that she is listening intently and with focus.
An older white man a couple of feet away, close, looks directly at the young woman with brows apparently furrowed. One hand is in his pants pocket, the other is spread wide, possibly but not certainly gesturing at the statue. Possibly also at the waste bins, or something else, or nothing at all. He leans forward toward the young woman, there is a clear intensity to his posture. He appears hot, possibly excited. His posture is consistent with talking intently to the young woman, with a degree of tension. He is masked, so we cannot be sure he is even talking, but we guess that he is.
We are, I think, certain that there is some interaction between the two foreground figures, which has been going on for a little while at least. More than the last few seconds. Perhaps at least a minute or two, and maybe a lot longer. The two figures appear to be interacting, with intensity but without any obvious tell of pleasure or satisfaction.
The overall structure of the photograph certainly suggests an intense discussion between the two figures, and the photographer has indeed placed the backlit statue dramatically between them. Since, according to the caption, they were indeed arguing about the statue, the structure of the photo does indeed match the ground truth. Good job, Evelyn Hockstein.
Now would be a good time to read Michael's analysis if you haven't yet. He does his usual prog-left "analysis" which tells us a great deal about Michael Shaw and very little about the picture. He does the weird thing where he notices random geometrical coincidences, and assigns meaning to them. He does not tell us what he intends here, though: Is this meaning the photographer intended? Is it meaning that everyone would see? Is it just meaning Michael sees? Who knows! It could be anything, because Michael is not going to say. He just notices the juxtapositions as if they have import, and moves on. Why doesn't he notice that the texture of tree resembles the texture of the young woman's hair? Why not notice that the word TRASH is written on WHITE plastic as if to label the man as WHITE TRASH? Who the fuck knows.
But let us stipulate that apart from a few minor quibbles what Michael sees in the photo is a perfectly good reading, and much of what he sees people of his political stripe would see.
I will note that Michael says Or who has the greater exposure to the virus? and what he surely means is that people of color are getting sick more than white dudes. What is present in the picture, though, is an unmasked black woman interacting with a masked white man, and let us recall my mask protects you, your mask protects me so we have a little conflict here which Michael, being a prog-left dolt, simply ignores.
Anyways. Michael sees mansplaining, whitesplaining, a white man's rendition of history. Which, sure, you can totally read into this.
What Michael does not notice is the equally reasonable alternate reading, which is of an earnest white man trying to engage with a young woman who is responding by rolling her eyes and waiting for him to stop making mouth noises because OK boomer. This is surely what someone who wants the statue to not be torn down would see in this photo.
The man can be understood as irrationally furious, earnest, tired, or any and all of those things. Depending on your politics, you will see him in whatever way suits you. The woman can be understood as listening intently, or as arrogant and dismissive, or anywhere in between. Depending on your politics, you will see her in whatever way suits you. Regardless, the way you read this photo will reveal much about you, as it has revealed (again) much about Michael Shaw.
Honestly, how can you take the white guy more proximate to the waste bin seriously? Shaw is like my high school English teacher who found symbols for Jesus and for sex in every book.
Me? I think you should take all the monuments down. Monuments are stupid. Or, leave 'em all up, but march all the schoolkids past 'em every year as teachable moments. Anything but leave them there to catch bird shit and do nothing. Honestly, people don't even see these things after a little while.
 |
| Evelyn Hockstein/The Washington Post |
Michael Shaw offers his typically blockheaded discussion here, which I will request that you peruse at some point. Let us inventory the thing. Back to front, let's say.
A sunset, or possibly a sunrise. A statue of some sort with a standing figure, a bowed figure, and some other shit I can't make out. Small and out of focus, but probably recognizable to anyone familiar with the statue, unrecognizable otherwise. A fence and some kind caution tape, possibly but not certainly to barricade the statue. Some people out of focus doing various things, nothing particularly recognizable. One might be taking a photo, or drinking from a flask as far as we can tell. Some temporary waste containers.
Two figures in the foreground.
A young black women with braided hair, un-striking clothing, a bandanna-style mask with writing on it, pulled down off her face. Her posture is mostly relaxed, hip slightly cocked, hands behind her back. Posture might have a hint of some kind of tension in it. Her chin is up, she gazes upwards slightly, eyes rolled further to the sky. Her expression is neutral. She has an attitude, maybe, of studied calm. Consistent with a sense that she is waiting, almost but not quite patiently. Equally consistent with a sense that she is listening intently and with focus.
An older white man a couple of feet away, close, looks directly at the young woman with brows apparently furrowed. One hand is in his pants pocket, the other is spread wide, possibly but not certainly gesturing at the statue. Possibly also at the waste bins, or something else, or nothing at all. He leans forward toward the young woman, there is a clear intensity to his posture. He appears hot, possibly excited. His posture is consistent with talking intently to the young woman, with a degree of tension. He is masked, so we cannot be sure he is even talking, but we guess that he is.
We are, I think, certain that there is some interaction between the two foreground figures, which has been going on for a little while at least. More than the last few seconds. Perhaps at least a minute or two, and maybe a lot longer. The two figures appear to be interacting, with intensity but without any obvious tell of pleasure or satisfaction.
The overall structure of the photograph certainly suggests an intense discussion between the two figures, and the photographer has indeed placed the backlit statue dramatically between them. Since, according to the caption, they were indeed arguing about the statue, the structure of the photo does indeed match the ground truth. Good job, Evelyn Hockstein.
Now would be a good time to read Michael's analysis if you haven't yet. He does his usual prog-left "analysis" which tells us a great deal about Michael Shaw and very little about the picture. He does the weird thing where he notices random geometrical coincidences, and assigns meaning to them. He does not tell us what he intends here, though: Is this meaning the photographer intended? Is it meaning that everyone would see? Is it just meaning Michael sees? Who knows! It could be anything, because Michael is not going to say. He just notices the juxtapositions as if they have import, and moves on. Why doesn't he notice that the texture of tree resembles the texture of the young woman's hair? Why not notice that the word TRASH is written on WHITE plastic as if to label the man as WHITE TRASH? Who the fuck knows.
But let us stipulate that apart from a few minor quibbles what Michael sees in the photo is a perfectly good reading, and much of what he sees people of his political stripe would see.
I will note that Michael says Or who has the greater exposure to the virus? and what he surely means is that people of color are getting sick more than white dudes. What is present in the picture, though, is an unmasked black woman interacting with a masked white man, and let us recall my mask protects you, your mask protects me so we have a little conflict here which Michael, being a prog-left dolt, simply ignores.
Anyways. Michael sees mansplaining, whitesplaining, a white man's rendition of history. Which, sure, you can totally read into this.
What Michael does not notice is the equally reasonable alternate reading, which is of an earnest white man trying to engage with a young woman who is responding by rolling her eyes and waiting for him to stop making mouth noises because OK boomer. This is surely what someone who wants the statue to not be torn down would see in this photo.
The man can be understood as irrationally furious, earnest, tired, or any and all of those things. Depending on your politics, you will see him in whatever way suits you. The woman can be understood as listening intently, or as arrogant and dismissive, or anywhere in between. Depending on your politics, you will see her in whatever way suits you. Regardless, the way you read this photo will reveal much about you, as it has revealed (again) much about Michael Shaw.
Honestly, how can you take the white guy more proximate to the waste bin seriously? Shaw is like my high school English teacher who found symbols for Jesus and for sex in every book.
Me? I think you should take all the monuments down. Monuments are stupid. Or, leave 'em all up, but march all the schoolkids past 'em every year as teachable moments. Anything but leave them there to catch bird shit and do nothing. Honestly, people don't even see these things after a little while.
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