Does this describe you?

rpsawin · Mar 14, 2007

This thread has been very useful. When I take up shooting nudes I now have a response for anyone who questions my motives.

Thanks guys,

Bob

jd callow · Mar 14, 2007

jnanian said:
i agree with what was said.
the cameras, lenses &C are all tools
that we work with to make things. sometimes
it is not being a gear-freak, but learning how to
use the camera, lens, film, chemistry to one's advantage.
that is learning how to let the machinery speak and show what is in you head ...
not just show what is in the outside world, but merge that with
the "thing" inside you ...

i too listen michel

john

John,
nicely put and it is vibrantly reflected in your work.

chrisofwlp · Mar 14, 2007

I like that. No matter how the world looks, seeing it through a camera changes everything.

Thomassauerwein · Mar 14, 2007

Like John Sais: It is simply a tool but beyond that, it is a third eye.

Michel Hardy-Vallée · Mar 15, 2007

Thanks guys... Sometimes it feels as if.

Susan Sontag agrees more or less with Barthes and Bazin, to the effect that the photography is supposed to have a more essential relationship with its object than painting or drawing does. She also follows Baudelaire in the "flâneur" attitude that photography encourages: lurk around and pick what is availble rather than compose and structure. Finally, she relates photography essentially to memory, that it is an art irrevocably defined by the disappearance of what it represents. However, she grows more and more suspicious of photography as authentic and valuable over the years, if you read all the essays in On Photography.

But in the end, they are just that: essays. Nice words, insights, intensity, great writing, but no nitty-gritty painful questions.

If you want to have some real food for thought, look at the academic journals like the British Journal of Aesthetics or the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. It sounds like stuffy old farts talking about the sublime, but it's not. Way more useful than the po-mo/semio/deconstructo fartsies.

dickie vaara · Mar 15, 2007

This quote is ludicrous...why even print it? Context-schmontext. C'mon, there are no lines to read between here...another graduate of Moron University.

Struan Gray · Mar 15, 2007

I find that if I spend too long looking at photographs I start to see the world only as a collection of photographs. My seeing stagnates, and I start copying rather than creating.

Concentrating on how the camera observes the world can be good in the Winogrand, empirical sense. It can also be bad in the stereotypical plaid-clad tourist seeing the world through the the viewfinder of his videocamera sense. At worst, it can be really, really bad, as in the case of the father I once saw who effectively missed his daughter's wedding because he was futzing about with his camera so much.

I have recurrent disillusionment with photography because of its strong herd instinct. For me, the quote expressed it nicely: as did - in a wholly different way - many of the responses to it.

jstraw · Mar 15, 2007

PhotoPete said:
How accurately would you say this quote describes you as a photographer?

If they look through the camera out into the world, this is not because the world interests them, but because they are pursuing new possibilities of producing information and evaluating the photographic program. Their interest is concentrated on the camera; for them, the world is purely a pretext for the realization of camera possibilities.

--Vilem Flusser, Toward a Philosophy of Photography

Change a few words and apply this statement to Van Gogh, Piet Mondrian, Franz Kline, Pablo Picasso, Joseph Albers or Rembrandt...or Oldenberg, Warhol, Christo or Keith Haring. Or for that matter, to James Joyce, Shakespeare, Hunter Thompson, William Burroughs or ee cummings.

Exploring ones craft and tools and creating information are not sins nor do they make one equipment or process geeks.

I like that this was presented as it was because this statement is an ink blot, a tabla rasa, a litmus test. It applies to you or it does not...or it does to some degree.

I am all over the continuum between relating to the subjects of my interest using photography and using photography as a method for creating information from the abstractions toward which I can point a len.

I see this as less about being process/equipment driven and more about the relationship of form and substance...of objectivity and subjectivity.

Having mulled this, I wish I'd delayed my vote or could now change it.

Where Flusser is clearly wrong...or perhaps just being provocative, is in making a broad assertion that this is what photographers are or do. If he doesn't think it's a metric, he's mistaken.

wheelygirl · Mar 16, 2007

Toward a Philosphy of Photography

I am all over the continuum between relating to the subjects of my interest using photography and using photography as a method for creating information from the abstractions toward which I can point a len.--jstraw

I am in agreement with you, jstraw! Tho I'm a beginning novice at this artforms, I so-o o o want to express myself through the lens [TTL--LOL] that at times I wish there were more hours in my day. . .

chrisofwlp · Mar 16, 2007

Let me make sure Im reading this correctly. The connotation of the first statement is that what you photograph doesnt need to be "interesting," as long as you can create a pleasing composition with it. Secondly the camera is a tool that sees the world far differently then the human eye.

Am I correct here? That its not the subject but the photographer? And that the camera allows the photographer to see the world in a unique way?

If I am correct then hope all of you are mis-reading the quote. This is the very philosophy of the greatest photographers in history. "I should be able to look at my feet and find a photographer" Edward Weston. If you ever take a Michael and Paula workshop they pound this idea into your head because it works, and allows to break out of the typical 15 year creative span.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Ed Sukach · Mar 16, 2007

Not ALL photographers accept Vilhelm Flussers' philosophy. Some of us believe in the exact opposite of that statement:

If they look through the camera into the world, it is NOT that the camera interests them, but that they are pursuing the possibilities of producing information (for me - emotions) that will change their world program - the way they see the world.

Is this "correct"? - I do NOT know. Who is to judge what is "correct" and what is "incorrect"? - That is the reason for this OPINION poll.

Tony Egan · Mar 17, 2007

chrisofwlp said:
..........
If I am correct then hope all of you are mis-reading the quote. This is the very philosophy of the greatest photographers in history. "I should be able to look at my feet and find a photographer" Edward Weston. If you ever take a Michael and Paula workshop they pound this idea into your head because it works, and allows to break out of the typical 15 year creative span......

I did the Michael and Paula workshop last weekend and this quote resonates a lot with what Paula did with each participant under the darkcloth. If you change the word camera to "ground glass" it may help.

I do quite a bit of concert photography and tried re-framing the quote in that context as follows:

If I look through the camera at the performer, this is not because the performer interests me, but because I am pursuing new possibilities of producing information and evaluating the photographic program. My interest is concentrated on the viewfinder; for me, the performer is purely a pretext for the realization of possibilities I see through the viewfinder.

I am interested in both the performer and the photographic possibilities provided by the performance. The more excited by the performance the more excited by the photographic possibilities. However, in the very narrow context of "making a picture" and using a camera to do this, I think the statement is essentially accurate. Like any two-sentence summation of any art form it will come across as too narrow and sounding too dogmatic.

David H. Bebbington · Mar 17, 2007

For me the process is firstly to observe my surroundings, secondly to decide (or not) that I would like to explore certain aspects of them further, and thirdly (and only then) pick up a camera as one of a number of possible image-making devices to make a picture of what I see. Seems like Flusser is extrapolating from extreme amateur equipment freaks and "film testers".

PatTrent · Mar 17, 2007

PhotoPete said:
How accurately would you say this quote describes you as a photographer?

If they look through the camera out into the world, this is not because the world interests them, but because they are pursuing new possibilities of producing information and evaluating the photographic program. Their interest is concentrated on the camera; for them, the world is purely a pretext for the realization of camera possibilities.

--Vilem Flusser, Toward a Philosophy of Photography

Sometimes, but only sometimes, I am pointing the camera at the world because I'm testing equipment or film. Most of the time, however, it is the world that interests me.

smieglitz · Mar 17, 2007

I don't think Flusser is talking about camera equipment at all in this quote. To me it seems he is discussing using photography vs another medium to interpret an inward state rather than to describe an outward occurrence.

Maris · Mar 19, 2007

I have some sympathy with Flusser's position.

For the last few decades I have been making photographs to give visual expression to states of mind rather than just reporting the appearance of material forms. In photography the real world is the source of those material forms and that is part of the problem. Finding the subject matter with the right metaphoric connotations is a chore and I often find myself resenting subject matter for its ungenerousness. The pay-off is that when the right subject matter does turn up the final pictures, being photographs, carry a power not available in any other medium.

Flusser's preoccupation with the camera goes a bit too far. The camera is an essential tool that has to work reliably but, just like subject matter, film, and paper, it is a necessary nuisance that needs be endured on the way to the photograph in its final form.

flashgumby · Mar 26, 2007

Did this guy get paid to write this? I've seen greater wisdom scrawled on the wall of a public loo... 'For a good time call...'

:confused:

Does this describe you?

How accurately does this quote describe you?

Very accurately

Somewhat accurately

Not very accurately

Completely inaccurately

rpsawin

jd callow

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chrisofwlp

Thomassauerwein

Michel Hardy-Vallée

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dickie vaara

Struan Gray

jstraw

wheelygirl

chrisofwlp

Ed Sukach

Tony Egan

David H. Bebbington

PatTrent

smieglitz

Maris

flashgumby

Does this describe you?

How accurately does this quote describe you?

Very accurately

Somewhat accurately

Not very accurately

Completely inaccurately

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