• Welcome to Photrio!
    Registration is fast and free. Join today to unlock search, see fewer ads, and access all forum features.
    Click here to sign up

HCB Appreciation

GregY said:
a) you don't know that SS didn't in fact use a camera
b) i don't think it makes a difference.....and taking a few snapshots & sending out the film for processing or printing only scratches the very surface.
Click to expand...

a) It is true I don't really know. Just by reading her mostly wine-philosophies I got the feeling she had never even practiced it to understand what she is writing about.
b) I am talking more about trying to do some serious photography and not just the occasional memorabilia or souvenir photography.

Edit: "Wine-philosophies" is a Greek term, not sure how it would translate to English
 
Last edited:

I don't think it is just photography, as I believe David Hockney said something similar about the professor of painting at the Royal College of Art. I can't find the quote just now, but Alex may know what I'm talking about. Many university lecturers and professors assert their position by critique with little knowledge or ability about the subjet they are talking about and the same goes for Susan Sontag.
 

still likely more knowledge than the average internet forum user....
 

It usually translates as 'symposium' I think. A good concept of civilisation throughthe millenia.
 
gdee123 said:
It usually translates as 'symposium' I think. A good concept of civilisation throughthe millenia.
Click to expand...

Hmm not really maybe you are thinking Ancient Greek because in modern Greek it has some ironic connotations
 

So judging or criticising photography can only be done by photographers? That's absurd, and I must say I'm a bit surprised by your opinion.
 

C, you & niko seem to be taking potshots. David Hockney can say what he likes.... he was a brilliant artist. You don't gain any traction by using his words.
Susan Sontang was a very intelligent and articulate woman....on a wide range of cultural subjects.
If not for those reasons, then one can imagine she was very knowledgeable on the subject of photography....given her close relationship with Annie Leibovitz. It makes nikos statement "I doubt if she ever picked up a camera to feel the intricacies and real difficulties of photography" laughable.
 
Last edited:
You don't have to be a photographer to write intellingently, and with great insight, about photography. You have to be able to look at photographs.

Susan Sontag knew how to look at photographs. As did John Berger—whose books About Looking and Understanding a Photograph are must reads—or Roland Barthes or Walter Benjamin, as does David Campany, Goeff Dyer—The Ongoing Moment is also a brilliant book—, and a bunch of others who aren't photographers and yet still help us through words learn how to look and see.

They all knew or know how to look at photographs, and therefore know how to think about the meaning of photographs and of photography. You may disagree with what they have to say about the meaning of photographs and/or of photography, but you can't deny they know how to think about it.

I know a whole bunch of photographers, of people who practice photography every day, including some who are actually quite good at it, who never open a photobook, who don't even own a photo book, and thus who do not know how to look at photographs. Being a photographer just means that maybe you know how to photograph. I doesn't in any way mean you have something to say about photography.
 
To put it in another way:

You can write brilliantly about death without being dead.
You can write brilliantly about faith without ever meeting God.

Or Gods, depending on which religion you are writing about.



(Edit: come to think about it, you can even write brilliantly about faith without even believing in God)
 
Alex Benjamin said:
You can write brilliantly about death without being dead.
You can write brilliantly about faith without ever meeting God.
Click to expand...

Or perhaps you can write what appears to be brilliant in those instances.

God being non-existent, at least you can write fiction about it. And death is something that is experienced only by the living: the dead experience nothing. Death is a phenomena known only to, and meaningful only for, those who are alive.
 
Don_ih said:
God being non-existent, at least you can write fiction about it.
Click to expand...

Writing about God may or may not be fiction, but writing about faith (or the impossibility of)—which is what I refered to—is to dive deeply into the heart of human experience. And this can be done in fiction, as Dostoyevski's The Brothers Karamazov so wonderfully show—fiction being nothing less than a hypothesis of what reality may be.
 
Considering Susan Sontag's relationship with Annie Leibovitz, I expect she at least picked up a few snippets of knowledge along the way.
 
Maybe we are a bit on pots Greg
Alex I don't dismiss them, I have also been influenced by their writings and they do indeed raise very interesting questions.

Here comes my critical point on them:
They do speak about the ethics of the photo a lot. Seriously?
They never had to chase a moment, miss a shot, wait for a gesture, feel the weight and power of the camera, experiment with vantage points and frames, feel the dissapointment of going back home and see you only shot failures, or experience the ethics of pointing a lens at a stranger. They also reduce photography to what photographs do to culture, this is their mainly approach through a cultural or existential view (Barthes photography and death), and not what photography does to the photographer.

My biggest objection is that they speak a LOT about a medium that barely needs that interpretation. They use language, so they approach photography literally. They miss the part that photography is already literal. Therefore I prefer a poetic approach to it when talking about photography, like John Szarkowsky's (who was a decent art photographer and knew about what it takes to practice it).
To her credit though "Against, interpretation" is a wonderful essay that speaks about approaching photography as a visual poetry indeed.
 
nikos79 said:
They never had to [...]
Click to expand...
Maybe they can imagine those things pretty well.
Maybe there are experiences in human life that are quite similar in the sentiments and dilemmas they involve.

Discrediting all critical writings only because the authors haven't gone through the exact motions the result of which they reflect on, is similar to stating that no novel can ever be any good unless it's 100% autobiographical.

We have that big chunk of fatty tissue between our ears; it works miracles. Have a little faith in it. People can sometimes reflect in a meaningful way on things they've never experienced.

nikos79 said:
They also reduce photography to what photographs do to culture
Click to expand...
If that's what the intended scope of a writing is, I can't see anything wrong with it. Can we discuss how well a meal tastes without waxing lyrical about the sweat & toil of the farmer in a field? We sure can. And it's perfectly legitimate.
 
Alex Benjamin said:
You don't have to be a photographer to write intellingently, and with great insight, about photography. You have to be able to look at photographs.
Click to expand...

Exactly, something very difficult that very few of us might have and it takes years to develop. I am only starting to touch the surface personally to be able to look at photographs.
But do you really believe you can do it without even practicing it? I am afraid that you would only look at them through cultural context, while being part of the art (as a photographer) you will come to appreciate them by admiring the language of photography (e.g. the form, the nuances, the play of light, the juxtapositions, the frame, the visual dialogue, etc.)
I am not saying to admire the technical aspects of a photo but the aspects that are part of the medium and its art that can't be described unless you somehow know about them through your experience with photography
 
Alex Benjamin said:
but writing about faith
Click to expand...

Well, faith has everything to do with human existence and almost nothing to do with God. It's sorta the foundation of all existentialism (whether they like it or not).

nikos79 said:
I believe in photography it is so simple and yet so difficult that you really NEED to use at least a camera a few times to understand what you are talking about
Click to expand...

Why? What would make you think that? After studying a few thousand photos carefully, a non-photographer would get a real understanding of characteristics of lighting, of composition, even of exposure - and doesn't need to know how to do any of them to speak meaningfully about how well they were accomplished. A non-photographer is also more likely to study elements that many photographers would ignore or outright dismiss as being technically inferior to whatever they do. I think a photographer is more likely to miss the point of a photo than a non-photographer, because so many photographers will focus on irrelevancies - like, what camera? what lens? what film? what paper is that? where'd you buy the soft-box? I think you should've dodged right there a bit....
 

Maybe it is my intuition on it but I still believe it. I have seen photographers who speak awfully about photography and some others (like Garry Winogrand or HCB) that had said the most insightful things ever about it.
 
koraks said:
Can we discuss how well a meal tastes without waxing lyrical about the sweat & toil of the farmer in a field? We sure can.
Click to expand...

Ah, but you can't appreciate a good steak unless you're still wiping the blood from your hands after killing the cow....

@nikos79 -- what about movies? Do you need to act or direct to really appreciate one?

And chasing the photo, missing the shot, etc - none of that is relevant to the product of the activity for a viewer. I thought you were of the opinion that a photograph should be able to speak for itself?
 

For a movie no I don't believe it, it works in other levels.
I indeed think that a photograph should be able to speak for itself but then it needs a very sensitive and "trained" viewer someone like Alex says that knows "how to look"
Me I am not even there yet this is something very difficult and frankly if I haven't practiced photography I don't think I would have stood a chance
 
nikos79 said:
Me I am not even there yet this is something very difficult and frankly if I haven't practiced photography I don't think I would have stood a chance
Click to expand...

What's far more likely is the interest would not have developed.

You can learn all about how to use a camera, how to take photos that meet client or employer requirements, and have no clue whatsoever about how to "look at" a photo. You're aware a massive number of photographers don't even consider photography art? They don't think there is anything more to say about a photo beyond whatever technical aspects are noteworthy and how attractive the naked lady is (or whatever other way they qualify the content).
 
One could take the argument to extremes and suggest that you can’t appreciate the photos of Don McCullin unless you’ve been a war photographer, specifically. Or that you had to have been there, otherwise you just don’t get it.

I believe the contrary: that perceptive non-photographer critics can valuably identify aspects that even the photographer was totally unaware of. They don’t all, of course, and I have to say that Susan Sontag’s On Photography was a book I learned little from and quickly passed on.
 

I am sure it would quickly drift off to "which fertilizer are you using" and "Why use a Massey Ferguson combine harvester when some obscure 1950s GDR Kombinat one can do the job cheaper"
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register