Cold Turkey

I haven't posted lately because I've been in Portland for the past several days out of computer range. Saturday Tab and the boys took the train up to meet me. Their visit roughly coincided with me running completely out of film. For me, running out of film is like a smoker quitting cigarettes cold turkey. It really feels like the end of the world. I had along my digital point-n-shoot and snapped these photos today, mostly of the kids. I'm posting them because they have a different feel than most of my b/w film work.

Border Patrol

As a rough estimate, I'd say that 80% of all photographs I see exhibited in galleries are digitally printed. Most of them look great, and I have no complaint about their general print quality. It is usually topnotch. However, I do have one pet peeve about digital printing, and it is the use of a black border around the image.

In the age of darkroom printing, a black border around an image said something specific. When an image is enlarged through a filed out carrier, the space between the image and carrier exposes to black. So with darkroom prints, a black border signifies a fullframe print, no cropping. In the digital age this tie no longer exists. The image can be cropped or whole, manipulated into any size or aspect ratio. The border is applied afterward. Now I'm not here to preach "thou shalt not crop" or any such dictum. I'm just saying, there's something slightly phony about taking a technique that has a very specific meaning in a darkroom and applying it all over the place without regard to its original meaning. It reminds me a bit of how the words "natural" or "organic" are used to market food nowadays, often appropriated by items whose connection to nature is tenuous.

One thing that has definitely been lost with digital black borders is their sense of authenticity. Digital borders are all the same: they are straight black lines. But in the darkroom, each camera and carrier leaves its own particular border. The print merges into the border not in a straight line but in bumps and hiccups, leaving an identity as specific as a bullet's ballistic markings. A photographer using the same camera over the course of many years can leave his/her fingerprint in the border of entire projects. If you look closely at Diane Arbus' 1972 Monograph, which I believe was the first published photobook to print fullframe bordered images, her Rollei leaves its fingerprint in all the work. In the bottom right corner of every print is a small zigzagging staircase left by the camera, left by HER.


The digital world has attempted to keep pace. You can buy custom borders online (e.g. here) which mimic the look of darkroom borders with their bumps and hiccups. I suppose if you printed all your digital work with such a border it might become your fingerprint. Yet look again closely at the Arbus book. Not only does each print show her fingerprint, each one is unique! Some are thick. Some are thin. Sometimes there is no border, yet even then the fingerprint is visible. Her prints are all related yet different, the way only darkroom prints can be. This effect would be very hard to duplicate digitally, although I'm sure someone out there is working on it...


As a final experiment, go ahead and do a Google search for Arbus' images on the web. You'll see it is somewhat difficult to find anything by her online with the border/fingerprint intact. Most of her images online have been stripped of their distinct border. I suppose this isn't too surprising. I expect to see many of her images circulate in the future bordered by straight, black, digitally perfect lines.

Photographic Lineups

When I approach subject matter and consider how to photograph it, one my main considerations is whether forms in the shot should line up or not. By "line up" I mean foreground and background combine to create shapes distinct from the photo's subject matter, like this


Although people like Mike Smith have toyed with this effect in color

I think it is generally more effective in black and white. When everything is reduced to graytones, the combination of similar tones in physically different layers can blend photographically to create ambiguous situations. Basically, the form of the photo assumes the role of content.

Christopher Rauschenberg plays a lot with this in his b/w work



as does Erwitt


but of course the ultimate liner upper has to be Friedlander



All three of these folks were important to my development as a photographer, perhaps to a fault. In fact their influence is so strong that now when I am out shooting I need to make a conscious effort to avoid lining things up or I'll do it unconsciously (more examples here on my website). I suppose this is ok in some ways. What bothers me is that when things in a photo are lined up, the shot can appear too thought out. I think there is a delicate balancing act between casualness and perfection. A good photo requires some of each, yet too much of either can ruin it. So when a shot is very carefully lined, when the elements in the shot interrelate with such precision that any other vantage point would ruin the photo, that photo might be missing a slight piece of its soul, the accidental part. Such photos seem to be more about the photographer than what's in the photo. And yes, all photos are to some extent about the people who take them, but that's even more reason it requires special effort to hide one's self. Lining things up is not hiding onesself.

Realizing this, I've tried to break my lineup habit in a few ways. First, I switched a few years ago from an SLR to a rangefinder camera. While it is possible to line things up using a rangefinder, it is much more difficult than with other cameras. It takes guesswork to compensate for parallax. I can't imagine how Friedlander took all those lineup shots using a Leica. So some of the temptation to line things up is removed. Secondly, I've started shooting color in the past year. As I mentioned above, color seems much less suited to lineups than b/w. Now when I do line things up, the photos usually fail. It's the ones which aren't lined up, the naturally "objective" ones which I find myself liking more and more.
(A recent image: Color? Check. Rangefinder? Check. Not lined up? Check. Objective? Subjective.)

Favorite photography books

Looking for ideas for your next photo book purchase? Below are some favorites of a few selected photographers. My favorites can be found here. I would love to see lists from blog readers.

Michael Kenna:
1. Bill Brandt, Shadows of Light: Photographs
2. Bill Jay, Occam's Razor: An Outside-In View of Contemporary Photography
3. Josef Sudek, Kirschner Zdenek
4. John Szarkowski & Maria Morris Hambourg, The Work of Atget
5. Olivia Parker, Signs of Life: Photographs
6. David Heiden, Dust to Dust: A Doctor's View of Famine in Africa

Mark Klett:
1. Bill Burke, I Want to Take Picture
2. Robert Adams, To Make It Home: Photographs of the American West
3. Araki Nohuyoshi, Sentimental Journey
4. James Rodney Hastings & Raymond M. Turner, The Changing Mile: An Ecological Study of Vegetation, Change with Time in the Lower Mile of an Arid and Semiarid Region
5. Nathan Lyons, Notations in Passing
6. Weston Naef & James Wood, Era of Exploration: The Rise of Landscape Photography in the American West, 1860-1885

Christopher Rauschenberg:
1. John Szarkowski & Maria Morris Hambourg, The Work of Atget
2. Robert Frank, The Americans
3. Garry Winogrand, The Animals
4. Diane Arbus, Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph
5. Larry Sultan & Mike Mandel, Evidence
6. John Szarowski, Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art

Ruth Bernhard:
1. Sebastio Salgado, An Uncertain Grace

Jerry Uelsmann:
1. Michael Tucker, Dreaming With Open Eyes: The Shamanic Spirit in Twentieth Century Art and Culture
2. David Bayles & Ted Orland, Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking
3. Duane Michals & Marco Livingston, The Essential Duane Michals
4. Carl G. Jung & Marie-Luise von Franz, Man and His Symbols
5. Ralph Hattersley, Discover Yourself Through Photography: A Creative Workbook for Amateurs and Professionals
6. Max Ernst, Max Ernst: A Retrospective

Emmet Gowin:
1. Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment
2. Walker Evans, American Photographs
3. Arthur D. Trottenberg, A Vision of Paris
4. Bill Brandt, Perspective of Nudes
5. Harry Callahan, Photographs: Harry Callahan
6. Frederick Sommer, 1939-1962: Photographs
7. Waldo David Frank, Ed., America and Alfred Stieglitz: A Collective Portrait
8. James Agee & Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
9. Dorothy Norman, Alfred Steiglitz: Introduction to an American Seer
10. Robert Frank, The Americans
11. Berhard und Hilla Becher, Anonyme Skulpturen
12. Edward Ruscha, Thirty-Four Parking Lots in Los Angeles
13. John Szarkowski, Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art

Peter Brown:
1. Robert Frank, The Americans
2. Robert Adams & William Stafford, Listening to the River: Seasons in the American West
3. Walker Evans, American Photographs
4. Solomon D. Butcher, Photographing the American Dream
5. John Szarkowski & Maria Morris Hambourg, The Work of Atget
6. Mike Disfarmer, The Heber Springs Portraits, 1939-1946
7. Josef Koudelka, Gypsies: Photographs
8. Sarah M. Lowe & Donna Lucy, Photographing Montana, 1894-1928: The Life Work of Evelyn Cameron

Keith Carter:
1. John Szarkowski, Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art
2. John Szarkowski & Maria Morris Hambourg, The Work of Atget
3. Stanley Burns, M.D., Sleeping Beauty: Early Post Mortem Photography in America
4. Josef Koudelka, Exiles: Photographs
5. Pierre de Fenoyl, Chefs - D'Oeuvre des Photographs Anonymes
6. William Eggleston, The Democratic Forest

George Krause:
1. Neago Phillippe, Francoise Hlbrun & Pierre Bonnard, Photographs and Paintings
2. E. J. Bellocq, Bellocq: Photographs from Storyville, the Redlight District of New Orleans
3. Bunny Yeager & A. S. Barnes, How I Photograph Myself
4. August Sander, Gunther Sander, & Maureen Oberli-TurnerMen Without Masks: Faces of Germany, 1910-1938
5. Edward Steichen, The Family of Man
6. Marcel Bovis & Francois Saint-Julien, Mus D'Autrefois, 1850-1900

(Source: Building a Photographic Library, edited by D. Clarke Evans & Jean Caslin, Copyright 2001, Texas Photographic Society)

Transcript

Take a moment to look closely at this photo:


It's nothing, right? Just an old dusty fragment from the bottom of a closet. Hard to read much from it one way or another, and certainly not worth much time researching. Right?

Yet this photo is potentially very important. It is likely the earliest surviving image attributable to Carleton Watkins, dating from around 1856. I think it's quite incredible that an image so nondescript and fragmentary --so basically ordinary looking-- can be tied to a specific photographer that long ago. The connections are so simultaneously tenuous yet convincing that the whole thing fascinates me. What follows is a transcript of a conversation between photo historians talking about the image and its possible connection to Watkins, excerpted from In Focus: Carleton Watkins (Copyright 1997: J. Paul Getty Museum)

David Featherstone: The first picture we're going to look at comes from this period of Watkin's early work as a photographer, when he was in the San Jose area, but it has not been clearly established that this was made by him. It is a fragment of an ambrotype, which is a positive image made on glass. Peter, you've established some evidence that may attribute this to Watkins.

Peter Palmquist: Basically, it involves the fact that Watkins was in San Jose and connected with James M. Ford. If we are looking at this as possibly teh earliest artifact that can be attributed to Watkins, the connection has to be tenuous, but there is a succession of evidence that suggests it's highly likely. If this is not by Watkins, it is probably by Ford, but the latter was away for long periods of time. One of the competing photographers in San Jose talked about the success that Ford had at the state fair. He referred specifically to the quality of work of a man Ford employed on and off. This infuriated the other gallery owners, who said, "This isn't your regular employee." I believe this is a reference to Watkins.

Weston Naef: This picture has been identified at the Augustin Alviso ranch, which was in the southeast part of the Bay Area, near Newark. Its association with Watkins is based on a series of circumstantial associations with a handful of other surviving photographs. These contain some common threads that are so slender that it's hard to imagine we could begin to identify this particular picture with any known maker. Stranger things have happened in the history of art, however. For example, some of the greatest vase paintings of ancient Greece are attributed to known makers on the basis of tiny fragments, where the visual sensibility of a maker is so clearly evident that a consensus of opinion comes to be formed that a fragments can stand for the entire work of a maker.

Peter Palmquist: This came from the Alviso family. It has always been known in the family for what it si and remains the only imge of that particular sites. It is a full plate, and full-plate ambrotypes are rather uncommon.

Amy Rule: Are there some ambrotypes by Ford that have been identified?

Peter Palmquist: There are some that are attributed to him, but nothing has been demonstrated absolutely. None are of an outdoor nature.

Tom Fels: If you try to picture this as a whole plate, while it's certainly typical of its time, it has some things that we might agree are characteristic of Watkins. It has a kind of clarity and stateliness in the presence of the building, for example. I couldn't say that it's Watkins, but that's not a bad place to start.

Weston Naef: To go one step further with what Tom is saying, what makes this so promising is that we are seeing evidence of a major event. If you look along the balcony you'll notice that a number of people are posed there. There's a wagon in the foreground. perhaps most important of all is the arrangement of the three horses: one looking forward, one looking to the right, and one looking to the left. We're seeing here that someone had enough charisma to orchestrate a courtyard full of people and animals into a setting of his wishes. We know from other work by Watkins, particularly his landscapes around the Bay Area, that he was a master at placing figures in landscapes.

When I first saw this fragment --and I tend to be pretty skeptical about such things since everybody wants to read something into the unknown-- I felt that is was really uncanny. It somehow had the mark of mastery, and there were not very many people working in photography in the southern Bay Area who had this kind of mastery. It could have been Ford, but we assume that he was a specialist at photographing indoors. Watkins had begun to establish his own identity as someone who was particularly gifted at working with situations in flux.

David Robertson: If you look at the way the trees are orchestrated against the background rocks in the 1861 photograph River View, Cathedral Rocks, which we will discuss later, you come to the conclusion that Watkins chose that particular view very carefully in order to produce a syncopation of rocks and trees. In this photograph, if you look at the arrangement of the horses and the people and the wagon and the building, you see the very same care to spread things out so they establish a rhythmic counterpoint.

Weston Naef:Peter, can you talk a little more about the role of the wagon? It has appeared in other very early and exceedingly rare photographs and therefore establishes a common thread that cannot be ignored.

Peter Palmquist: There are six images we are aware of that were made in the is general area, and in four of them this same wagon appears. Of the six images, Watkins subsequently copied or manipulated four of them, and they appear in his work thereafter.