Are we more or less alone now that we hold “the world” in our hands? Do we seek out empty places so that the real world doesn’t interfere with our experiencing the virtual world? Maybe in the 1980s Aztec Camera could remark, “They call us lonely when we’re really just alone,” but today I worry that we are both alone and lonely.
Diptychs (and triptychs). Thinking about photos in groups: twos, threes, and fours, maybe more (the grids of photos by the Bernd & Hilla Becher, e.g.). How does pairing photos change them? How does looking for pairs alter the process of photographing? I don’t know, but I like to think about it.
Keith Smith noted: By saying he was going to make a picture of some thing, he ended up making second-hand, non-visual pictures (see “Not vivid, Not exciting.”). I wonder how often I take pictures of something I have imagined (whether or not I’ve said it aloud to others or silently to myself) rather than take pictures visually of things I have never described or imagined. How often do I not “see” something because I was fixated on finding what I hadn’t seen?
The other day I walked by a tree resplendent in fall color, leaves wafting down in the breeze. Under the tree was a lone chair, bathed in warm light reflecting up from the fallen leaves and filtering down through those still on the tree. I imagined that scene, returned with my camera, and took a dozen supremely mediocre pictures of it, from lots of different angles. Nothing.
The other night I wandered out after dark, looking to spend some time alone. Nothing more. As usual, I took my camera with me. I took a handful of pictures, some of which, in hindsight, have become interesting (to me) photographs. In the moment, I had no real sense of the scene being anything. I just took a picture. After the fact, and with some editing, I have ended up with photographs that I quite like, photographs that I had not previously described in words.
After noting the problem of taking pictures of scenes he has already described in words, Smith goes on to say:
I can look at a completed picture and find, ‘Oh, yes, I used tertiary colors here, complementary there, saturated color in this small shape as a solution to counter balance the weight of the heavy form in another part of the composition, et cetera.”
Smith’s observation seems, to me, to describe much of how people discuss composition. It is easy, after the fact, to find the rule of thirds, the golden spiral, golden triangle, balancing elements, leading lines, etc., and to assert that the photographer used them in taking the picture. As if to say: while out in the field, or even in the studio, the photographer viewed the world through some rule-of-thirds overlay, or golden spiral overlay, or whatever. More often, I think, what we mean (and perhaps should state clearly) is something like: Now that the photograph is complete, we can find in it evidence of the rule of thirds, complementary colors, a golden spiral, etc. I do not doubt that we can find evidence of those compositional rules, but I do doubt that those rules were operative when the photographer “took the photo,” i.e., when the photographer was out in the wild and pushed the shutter release button. In other words, insofar as “rules of composition” implies that they were operative in composing the picture, I don’t think they play much of a role. I think they might play a role in editing pictures and producing finished photographs.
The question, then, seems to be: When does a photograph acquire those aspects. In the comfort of the studio or the office? Then the photographer (and perhaps the photographer’s assistants) has the luxury to review all the pictures from a particular trip or day or session or whatever and has selected the pictures considered best (see, e.g., the oft-praised Magnum Contact Sheets book). From that subset of pictures the photographer (and perhaps some assistants) then often crops or edits that image further (see, e.g., Arnold Newman’s portrait of Igor Stravinsky).
Taking Smith’s comment seriously, I wonder how many pictures turn out to be dull, second-hand photographs because they merely reflect the rules of composition, and how many pictures made without any attention to the rules of composition turn out to be great photographs.
I’m not interested in the issue of “breaking” the rules of composition (I’m not interested in the rules of composition at all and all discussions of learning them to break them seem to me to be stale.). Instead, I wonder how relying on any rule, guiding principle, pre-described scene, goal, plan, expectation, affects my photography. I am motivated by Smith’s subsequent comments:
We must learn to see: nature, space, color; to see photographically, to see with our third eye, to read visual material; it is a constant struggle. We must find various ways of learning. One of many is concentration. We must daily practice observation — we are in the business of seeing. Seeing demands research, discipline, training and courage. It takes energy to be visually perceptive rather than to follow simulated vision.
How many of these former estates get recycled, finding new life as (often it seems) institutions of some sort? The opulence and exclusivity of a century ago transmogrified into some (quasi-)utilitarian and occasionally public space. The other afternoon, rainy and cold, I wandered around one such place. If you look closely at the main house, you will see traces of its regal past, in the stonework, the (repurposed) porte-cochère, the expansive entry and stairway. On the landing, original Tiffany windows glow in the evening’s gloom, incongruous next to the window A/C unit next to it.
Beyond the main house and stately old trees, there is little left of the estate. There’s little reason to manicure the lawns or tend the gardens. Students don’t tend to pay much attention to gardens and lawns, nor do teachers. The grounds are now kept practical and utilitarian. Fountains, statues, and sundials, common on estate grounds, have been replaced by chairs and benches. Four sit empty in the drizzle and faint glow of the lamp.
In some twisted way, I guess we can consider this a form of “recycle and reuse” bantered about so often these days even if it fails to “reduce” anything.
Most days Haverford College is idyllic and lovely, and therefor kind of bland. Beautiful trees, manicured lawns, clean buildings, maintained nature trail. It is all so picturesque, so “park like” as somebody said yesterday while looking at a large maple tree resplendent in fall colors. But is there another way to see Haverford, one that is not so bright and cheery?
I enjoy photography because it encourages me to see the world at different times and in different ways. I can juxtapose images and scenes to give a different impression. Or I can seek out scenes in different circumstances and conditions, allowing me to see them in ways most people won’t.
Along the ridge is a line of old power poles, serving a few houses tucked into the hills above town. Whenever I walk the trail past these poles, I photograph them, noting how much the scene changes at different times of day.
One day these poles will be gone, replaced by more modern, taller poles that bring electricity to the many houses that will cover the foothills. When that happens, at least we’ll have these photos to remind us of a simpler, less crowded time.
I find something compelling about Bernd and Hilla Becher’s book, Typologies of Industrial Buildings. Juxtaposing numerous individual examples of industrial structures highlights their similarities and their differences. It also draws attention to often overlooked or ignored architecture, encouraging us to see design and aesthetic choices, to view these utilitarian structures as art. While each of their photographs, taken alone, is interesting, when taken together they are a sort of conceptual art, as well as a study in form.
The Bechers’ work lies behind my interest in otherwise overlooked infrastructure. Windmills, manhole covers, utility poles, high tension towers, bridge supports. These are all opportunities to focus on the mundane in an effort to find the interesting.
Manhole covers. Lots of people have found manhole covers interesting. Some people use manhole covers to make great prints. Other people have spent time photographing them. But what happens when we consider them in large numbers? Can we produce a typology of manhole covers? Sewer covers, storm drain covers, utility covers, and communications covers. In the process, can we see the traces of their histories? The imperfections, individual marks of fabrication, scars, and design quirks of individual foundries. Do they also reveal the history of industry, consolidation, and shipping? Local foundry names giving way to larger, regional foundries, which are then replaced foundries in foreign countries.
I don’t know. Maybe there’s nothing here. But maybe there is.
We work incredibly hard to create remnants of the past that will help us imagine what it was like: think of ghost towns and historic monuments. National and state park systems have developed strict guidelines for how to repair “historic” structures, e.g., what materials can be used for public-facing projects (stuff visitors might see) need to be or seem to be authentic to the period (whereas non-public-facing projects can use modern materials). Valley Forge is filled with such structures — fences, cabins, embankments — maintained to give visitors a sense of history.
That stormy March afternoon, the quiet, lonely cabin certainly didn’t help me imagine the history of the place — 244 years earlier I suspect it was a relatively loud and lively camp with perhaps as many as 1,500 cabins and more than 10,000 soldiers scattered around the Valley Forge encampment. This cabin doesn’t help me understand what life was like for the Continental Army, but standing there in the blowing snow and listening to the ice cracking on the tree limbs as they flexed and bent in the wind I was able to conjure up an image, a fiction of what it might be like to live in such a place.
It was a miserable day. Cold and windy, and then cold, windy, and snowy. Stores closed early because the “winter storm warning.” Most people wisely chose to stay home, warm and dry. A perfect day, it seemed to me, to go for a hike. Thick leaden clouds and blowing snow created a sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland of dead trees and empty spaces. There was no palette — everything shaded from black to gray. Nearly every scene was hauntingly beautiful.
On days like this I am drawn by the sirens’ songs and venture out into the howling winds. The discomfort and physical effort compensated for by the chance to be alone and the opportunity to photograph scenes few other people will experience.
Standing here looking west, it’s easy to lose yourself in thick forest of trees. There is no path leading forward. No obvious way to the far side, if indeed there is a far side. Although the sun shines somewhere overhead, here under the canopy of branches and leaves a diffuse light seems to permeate the scene. I pause for a moment to enjoy the solitude and to imagine I’m on the edge of some vast unknown.
Then the pneumatic hammer begins pounding, so close it startles me. I am not, alas, in the middle of some ancient forest but a scant few feet from a construction project. Men running jack hammers and excavating the existing parking lot presumably to replace it with a new one. I turn around and watch the workmen for a few minutes, lament the intrusion of civilization, and then head down the nature trail toward my office where, if I’m lucky, it will be quieter.