Here, There, and Everywhere

"My interest in snapshot photography began because, every now and then, I would come across a picture that was startling in its directness. Made without pretense to art, these images were without artifice, and their simplicity gave them a special vitality. While there are certainly visual conventions among snapshots, at their best they are seemingly unmediated and unconditioned, the result of an accident or chance. This immediacy has become rarer and rarer as people are more and more exposed to images, and it indicates a path toward understanding, by contrast, what part of a typical photograph is the overlay of visual convention."

--Stephen Shore here

"Picasso famously said that it took him a lifetime to paint like a child. I takes many professional photographers that long to strip their pictures of artiness. How humbling to realize that simple mechanical reproduction can offer so much more than creative interpretation."  

--Alec Soth there

"It rarely occurs to such a photographer to take a picture of something, say a Venetian foundation, without a loved one standing directly in front of it and smiling into the lens. What artistic results he obtains are almost inevitably accidental and totally without self-consciousness. Perhaps because of his very artlessness, and his very numbers, this nameless picturetaker may in the end be the truest and most valuable recorder of our times."

--Jean Shepherd here

"I am a passionate lover of the snapshot, because of all photographic images it comes closest to the truth. The snapshot is a specific spiritual moment. It cannot be willed or desired to be achieved. It simply happens to certain people and not to others. Some people may never take a snapshot in their lives, though they take many pictures."

--Lisette Model there

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."

--Shunryu Suzuki everywhere

Unlisted

Are you ready for listmania? It may be November but the annual year-end lists have already begun, with favorite photobooks of 2012 by ICP and Alec Soth posted recently. Both have some interesting picks, although there is a mildly depressing amount of crossover duplication. I expect many more lists to come in the next few weeks, after which we'll have a good sense of which books had the biggest impact.

As usual it's hard for me to judge these lists because I haven't seen most of the books in person. I don't often receive review copies. It's just little old me and my local library and used bookstores, with occasional visits to Ampersand, but even they don't carry everything. So these lists always give me the same feeling. They remind me that I'm out of the loop.

That said, I am currently enjoying a photo book which I doubt will wind up on anyone's list, because it's not a monograph. It's a historical book. The recently published Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Tim Egan is a fascinating account of the life of Edward S. Curtis. I hadn't known much about Curtis before aside from his photos. But the guy led an amazing life. He was raised in poverty, moved to Seattle as a teen where he supported his family until mortgaging the homestead to invest in a small photo studio, which he quickly built into the most respected in the city. He hobnobbed with Roosevelt, Pinchot, JP Morgan, and various power brokers.

Then he ditched everything --family, business, daily comforts, Seattle, etc-- to embark on a 30-year non-stop roadtrip documenting North American Indians. No one thought he'd complete the project, but the resulting 20 volume (!) set is a classic of both photography and ethnographic study. Eventually he faded into obscurity before his reputation was revived posthumously. Pretty interesting guy.

Photography plays a side role in the book. Most of the focus is on Curtis's various travels and relationships, and the closing of the American frontier which occurred concurrently with his project. But above all this is a study of North American Indians, and how they were basically fucked every which way imaginable during America's westward expansion. It's a story we all know but still worth the occasional reminder, lest we forget. And Egan is a great writer, so it's fun to revisit this period through his words.

So enjoy the upcoming season of lists. But if you find yourself tired of looking at monographs and just want to curl up on the couch with a good read, Egan's book is highly recommended.

The bomb and the trade

One of the more interesting photographers to come to the attention of In-Public recently is Jan Meissner. Although some in the group had known of her for years, most of us including myself discovered her this fall through a profile on the Leica Liker blog. A brief glance through her portfolio showed us that she was someone to be reckoned with. Her photos displayed an acute sense of spacing and of the moment, as demonstrated in photos like this. 

This particular photo seemed to drop out of the sky like a bomb into the In-Public discussion board. What the heck? It was nearly perfect. Who was this savant? 

According to our Meissner contact, she'd only taken up street photography a few years ago at the age of 60! Most of her earlier life had been spent as a painter. That would help explain her remarkable sense of composition, but still. How does someone with relatively little experience find scenes like the one above. Or this one?

Such a beautiful moment plucked from the river of life, with bodies spread evenly across the frame and subjects mirroring and playing off each other. And capped by a delicious sense of the absurd with the PARTS sign! Street photographers wait for decades for scenes like this to appear, and here was a relative novice who'd shown an uncanny ability to discover them repeatedly. Had we discovered the next Gary Stochl? Or Vivian Maier? 

If there was any criticism it was that she relied a bit heavily on flat compositions. Most of her photos, like the ones above, were shot straight on into static backgrounds. They showed a distant eye and one which shied away from complicated angles. Some of the same backgrounds reappeared in multiple photos. For example the PARTS sign photo above was one of several in her portfolio from the same corner.

Clearly she was staking out these scenes patiently, just waiting for the right moment. And probably shooting from a tripod. Some street shooters frown on tripods, but in this case it seemed to work. In fact it seemed like the natural course for someone with a painting background. 

As with any such work coming out of left field like this, I suppose it's only natural that doubts began to surface. Sure they were great photos, but some of them looked almost too great. Even more problematic was that the great ones shared room in a portfolio with many average shots. Why was there such a variance in quality? Were these in fact real street scenes, or were some of them perhaps composites of multiple exposures? 

Quash the thought! Our Meissner contact assured us that these were the real deal. He knew Meissner well and had shared many meals. She was legit. But she was a former painter, so perhaps she didn't yet know how good some of her photos were. To me this made them seem even better. I loved the idea that an amateur with little background could create instant classics. It seemed further proof of the democratic power of photography. 

Unfortunately the group had begun to smell blood in the water. Questions came flying. What about the man carrying the sign? someone asked. Where's his shadow? Forget the shadows, said another. If a guy is running at you that close, you look up. Ask to see her raw files, another suggested. 

These comments caught me by surprise. Upon first viewing the photos I'd never considered the possibility of them being anything but straight photos, but now I began to look more closely. Were they comps or were they real? I gave all of them a long second look. I honestly couldn't tell.

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, 1601-02, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

I suppose the more important question is, does it matter? To most of the photography world the answer is no. Photographs are no longer expected to be "truthful", whatever that phrase means. We've moved past that. We're almost to the point now where comping is not only accepted but expected. The emphasis is on the final product no matter how it's made, whether in camera or using Photoshop later. 

In a sense photography has finally come of age. We don't expect paintings or sculptures or novels to be faithful to reality. We can appreciate Caravaggio painting even if it has no physical relationship to an actual scene. So why should photographs be any different? 

Strangers in the Light #7, Catherine Balet

Yes, I know the "does it matter?" question has been with us forever, and it's probably boring to those of you who've settled it in your minds. People have been altering photographs since the beginning of the medium. In recent years as tools have improved, not only have alterations become more seamless, so has their acceptance into the mainstream. 

Lindisfarme Boats, David Byrne

No longer do we marvel over the technical wizardry of Jerry Uelsmann or Robert Heineken. Now we have people like Catherine Balet or Matthew Baum making photographic collages with barely a mention of technique in any accompanying text or review. Julie Blackmon abandons candid technique for pastiche mid-career and it hardly merits a footnote. Or we see countless photographs like David Byrne's Lindisfarne Boats which circulate easily with various other generic landscapes, unless someone happens to look more closely at them and stir up a fuss. But a case like David Byrne's is the exception. For most art photography, manipulation is no longer very noteworthy, and maybe it never has been.

But there are a few pesky corners of the photo world still clinging to the old ways, and one of them is street photography. For street photographers, reality vs comping does matter. Why? Because the bread and butter of street photography is not imagination. It's simple observation. When you mix the two, it's no contest. Imagination can always create a more fantastic image than what can be seen in real life. That's why we have a porn industry or new car ads. 

But that imbalance works the other way too. It's what gives street photography its strong kick. Because when you do observe a fantastic scene in real life and manage to capture it with a camera, it's a rare treat. You can see how someone who spends hours and days and weeks seeking out such a scene might take it personally when a photographer comps one together artificially. In traditional street photography they don't mix. 

If Meissner was indeed mixing the two, her work immediately lost its shine. But was she? The Leica profile made no mention of comping. Her artist statement was vague. The only thing we had to judge by was her photos. We are good observers. We had time. We now held the photos to even tighter scrutiny than before:

1. The lady with the orange cowl to the right of the frame has no reflection in the window. 

2. There are three dogs in this shot all ignoring each other completely. 

3. The metadata gives a shutter speed of 200th/sec yet a pigeons wings are completely frozen top left. 

4. One of the two centre figures has a shadow beneath while the other mysteriously doesn't.

Plausible responses came forth:

1. Reflection could be directly behind her and not visible from the camera - and this is an open-shade exposure, thus reflections are muted anyway. 

2. Centre dog is running, not paying attention; front two dogs beginning to look at each other. 

3. Pigeon is coasting in slowly, not flapping at moment of exposure, and might be slightly blurry if seen larger. 

4. I will grant that the shadows beneath the figures may have been inconsistently burned or dodged. There is a shadow under the woman in the center; the green and streaky bicycle lane pavement paint also mutes it. Notice how faint the shadow is under the running figure with the flowers. The man carrying the sign also has a black briefcase and a pack, increasing both the size and density of his shadow.

I still wasn't sure what to think. Honestly I could've been swayed either way at this point. Many good points had been raised, and all of them potentially rebutted. And we probably could've kept going down this path for a while with no concrete decision. I wanted to believe. I think we all wanted to. "To find they are comped would be a little like finding out father christmas doesn't exist!" wrote someone on the IP board. 

The point that kept coming up again and again was that they just didn't look right. Something seemed off about the photos, something that couldn't easily be put into words. After thinking more about this complaint I think it's the same something that's apparent in any of the photos shown above in this post. Something just doesn't look right about them. At least to a street photographer it doesn't. To a street shooter, a picture of screen junkies looks something like this:

George Kelly, 2011

It looks right because it's not perfect. The photo is imbalanced and awkward, but that's what makes it real. A picture like the one below? Something just doesn't look right. And Meissner's photos shared some of that quality.

Strangers in the Light #2, Catherine Balet

Finally someone suggested we ask Meissner directly. By this point I don't think anyone was surprised by her answer:

The photograph that you specifically want to know about was built. A time came, last December, when I taught myself to bring frames together, and this was the most extreme example, a kind of prototype, a way for all the people, and the dogs, that I had captured in a twenty minute shooting spree, to come together. I felt them there together, wanted them to be together, passing, touching one another, and I learned how to make this happen. But I was definitely suspicious of what I had done--and I definitely had feelings of real ambivalence about the value of this way of working. I still do.  

But, as Whitman said, on his daily walks through these same streets, he passed "thousands of lovers." He had momentary and serial love affairs--one was not enough--and in his mind these lovers came together. I claimed this as a kind of partial explanation of my desire to bring all those moments, those lovers, together into one sprawling moment. 

It was a poetic explanation but it didn't hide the basic facts. Father Christmas didn't exist after all. Oh well. We fumed for a while, then moved on.

Something didn't look right. Street shooters are an observant lot. If something looks off in a street scene  they will generally notice, and those off moments are sometimes the kernel of great photos. But when it comes to looking at photographs the opposite is true. Perfection itself is often the clue that something isn't right. If a scene doesn't look off, it looks off.

A week after our In-Public discussion I put a link to Meissner on the HCSP discussion board. I was careful not to include any clue about whether or not the photos had been altered. I just wanted to get honest reactions from the street community. It took less than a day for doubts to begin surfacing. Were the photos real or comps? A back and forth discussion ensued on HCSP similar to the one on IP, before the general sentiment coalesced around comping.

Street shooters have a third sense about comping. I could probably put Meissner's work in front of any street group and they'd eventually detect manipulation. As for the broader photo world I'm not so sure. Not only is there a general sentiment that comping doesn't matter much. The unwritten assumption is that most photos are comped to one degree or another. Maybe to a future group of photo critics, such photos will look right. Or worse, they'll no longer care. They'll view them as we view a Caravaggio painting from hundreds of years ago, with no burden to bear any indexical reference to reality.

But I would trade every Caravaggio in the world for a crappy vintage 5 x 7 snapshot of St Thomas, if such a thing were somehow possible. Any photograph from that period would be more fascinating than a hundred paintings of it. Assuming the photo wasn't comped.

Camera as artifact

Camera Night At The Ivar

The Ivar in the 1980s

I was in LA for 4 days last week. Most of my time there was spent shooting the streets (more on that in a future post) but I did manage to squeeze in a visit to a single photo exhibit. And boy was it worthwhile.

Camera Night At The Ivar at Drkrm Gallery documents a period during the early 80s when The Ivar Theatre in Hollywood opened its doors to photographers Sundays and Tuesdays. This was back in the heyday of strip clubs before dance poles or shaving, and public genital displays still bore the tint of hidden mystery. No TVs or T-bone steaks for distraction, just a woman on a bare stage with 5 minutes to undress and spread em.

Since most strip clubs expressly prohibit candid photography, Camera Night was a unique opportunity. The scene drew photographers from all over, many with national reputations. Collected in this show alone are Norman Breslow, Bill Dane, David Fahey, Anthony Friedkin, Michael Gurske, Ryan Herz, and Paul McDonough. Judging by the number of shooters visible in the photos (Winogrand can be seen lurking in the background of several) that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Ryan Herz, The Ivar Theatre, 1982

I suppose one could get similar photographs paying a studio model to expose herself, but the resulting photos wouldn't be much different from common porn. What separates the Camera Night photos from such pictures is that they depict not only the strippers but the crazy voyeuristic scene surrounding it, a sort of sociological study of shared sexual experience, ritual observation, and male fantasy. Photographers cluster around the vaginas like paparazzi around celebrities, some mere inches from the origin of the world. Many in background also peer through cameras. Some men in the audience stare bug-eyed. Some masturbate. A few look bored. Some manage to do all at once. 

Regardless of activity all attention is unified. Everyone watches the stripper. But alas, even the center cannot hold. After looking at photo after photo in Drkrm the strippers fade in importance and the real subject becomes clear: voyeurism. These photos depict the act of photographing as an animal instinct. Observation, patience, stalking that delirious moment of proper shutter release, and then exposure.

The scene feels real. The photographs feel real. It's an authentic look inside a fleeting moment in history. Then as now, nothing was as mysterious as a fact clearly described.

The prints in the show are excellent. Most are vintage black and white silver gelatins. Using a flash 12 inches from someone's crotch one might expect flesh tones to lose shadow detail, but instead they disport a rich tonality. These guys were pros at printing as well as shooting. Some of the close shots depict a pubic form as intricate and convoluted as an abstract painting. They resemble ariel photos of a verdant jungle, or perhaps graffiti drawn by a very fine hand.

A few of the images --by Paul McDonough and Bill Dane for example-- have appeared in various books over the years. But the vast bulk of these have never been shown. They were curated by Drkrm for this single exhibition which is unlikely to travel or be repeated due to its graphic nature. Even Los Angeles has turned a prudish eye, with no local press willing to review it. The show ends on November 25th. If you live in the LA area, I'd highly recommend seeing it this week. An exhibition catalog (cover left) is available here in both print and digital form.  

Camera Night At The Ivar is at Drkrm Gallery, 727 Spring St., Los Angeles, CA through 11/25/12