social photography
14 Apr
I managed to squeeze into the intro photo class. Half the people who came on the first day didn’t get in. We all wrote why we wanted to take the class on notecards for the teacher’s consideration, and it was only later that I realized what I wrote was dumb. I didn’t talk about the specific subjects I want to photograph at all and I didn’t emphasize the fact that I wanted to develop a personal style on my own, that I wasn’t looking for secret ‘get-rich-quick’ tips on how to make my photos “better.”
Though now I am afraid that these art-background people will kick my ass. Apparently pictograms (directly exposing photopaper), collaging and all sorts of things are allowed in the final portfolio in addition to traditional prints. Let’s just hope that I turn out to be one hell of a meticulous printer. We’re supposed to have at least a roll by Wednesday. About half the class has started and the other half has not. Which confuses me. It’s already the third week of a ten week course. We got 2 lectures on the technical aspects and today he showed us Cartier-Bresson and Man Ray photos as a juxtaposition of two styles.
There was a huge Friedlander show at SFMOMA. Both of the photos which seemed memorable to me contained the Statue of Liberty – one with the fake one in Vegas, shot out the car window, and the other of two postcards on a NYC street. I can’t say that I’m appreciative of his style, which sometimes seems very uncomposed and snapshottish, though it could be that it was a statement against formalism. But the overall feeling of the show was very lively and focusing quite a bit on what’s not generally considered photogenic, which was rather inspirational once we got out on the street.
Walking out onto Grant St we both had an overwhelming feeling of everything being photogenic. Unfortunately, we were both paralyzed into inaction til the moment passed. I think it has something to do with the light reflecting off glass buildings onto the stone structures on the other side of the street and creating a very underwater-ish feeling while in the shade of the buildings.
But actually the photos I liked more were Gabriele Basilico’s Silicon Valley set. I’m going to get the book and pore over the photos til I learn something.
After class today I pondered why I don’t like HCB despite understanding why his photos are great and “effortlessly right,” as the instructor put it. He drew an analogy to Mozart in music, and that made it pretty clear to me: I don’t like Mozart either. As much as I listen to Mozart and appreciate how good he is, there’s just nothing to draw me in emotionally. I don’t feel like Mozart or HCB really are of my time. I can’t relate to them, and I don’t live in their world.
Which is why I loved the Basilico. Those pictures are of places I recognize, of a familiar place in the present. There’s just something more relevent feeling about them, and I’d bet it’s what cities of his time felt like to HCB. It seems pointless to aim for the classicism of the past greats anyway, since so many of them were taken in Europe and those cities just have a different feel and look that contributes to the classicism of the shots. Americans don’t live and run about on the streets in the same way and our buildings look somehow more industrial, boxy. There’s a whole other vibe here that I want to learn how to shoot effectively. I haven’t figured it at all, and frankly I’m hoping staring at the Basilico will set something off in my brain, lead me to a common thread between the pics I like.
I also really wonder about people’s reactions to being photographed in public and whether that’s changed any. I mean, photography was relatively new back in HCB’s day and cameras were usually pretty hefty, so a guy using one of the new-fangled tiny 35mm cams must’ve not seemed very intimidating at all. Who knows if he was a friendly guy, but seems like photography would’ve been a much less threatening medium, unlike today, when any photos someone takes of you could end up on the internet, and everybody and their mom has a superzoom or red stripe lens mounted on their huge SLR. I read somewhere that the DSLR market is growing far faster than the point and shoot market. As they become more affordable, a hell of a lot of people are snapping them up. It must change the type of photo available to a street, or candid shooter.
Which reminds me. Felzmann assigned a New Yorker reading (“Exposure” by Philip Gourevitch and – yay! – Errol Morris, who’s making a film about it called “Standard Operating Procedure“) for the class about the Abu Ghraib point and shoot photos, about how the availability of cameras changes the role of the snapshooter, changes who documents history, changes the profession. The old pros have been complaining about this “everybody thinks he’s a hotshot photographer” syndrome for a bit now. I’m sure it’s still a minority of people who can produce seriously good photos, but the attitude certainly has changed, hasn’t it?
