Quite so. To expand on this and also to reach back to an in my view artificial/forced distinction that was made earlier: there's no reason why the emphasis in an image on structure or composition would be at odds with or erode the emotional undertone or message. When I look at most of the examples shown in this thread, HCB's images strike me as witty, elegant and playful. If I were to hypothesize what this would say about the person who made them, I would expect this person to be interested in highlighting the comical and cheerful aspects of the 'human condition'. In my mind, that's an inherently human-centered and arguably humanistic approach. Whether or not he engaged directly with his subjects, I don't know - and to the extent it speaks from the images, it's a mixed bag: in some instances he must have done so and there must have been at least a degree of rapport between photographer and subject. In many instances, the human actors are more anonymous and of a more transient nature - but there still seems to be a strong element of engagement perhaps not always with the individual, but at least with people as such.
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HCB Appreciation
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Quite so. To expand on this and also to reach back to an in my view artificial/forced distinction that was made earlier: there's no reason why the emphasis in an image on structure or composition would be at odds with or erode the emotional undertone or message. When I look at most of the examples shown in this thread, HCB's images strike me as witty, elegant and playful. If I were to hypothesize what this would say about the person who made them, I would expect this person to be interested in highlighting the comical and cheerful aspects of the 'human condition'. In my mind, that's an inherently human-centered and arguably humanistic approach. Whether or not he engaged directly with his subjects, I don't know - and to the extent it speaks from the images, it's a mixed bag: in some instances he must have done so and there must have been at least a degree of rapport between photographer and subject. In many instances, the human actors are more anonymous and of a more transient nature - but there still seems to be a strong element of engagement perhaps not always with the individual, but at least with people as such.
snusmumriken
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I couldn’t agree more about appreciating what we have … except that understanding what he wasn’t is key to understanding what he was. You describe it perfectly.
We do agree. It doesn't really matter. Kind of
Engagement isn’t a moral requirement, but a descriptive tool also to assess photos: it helps explain why some photographs feel that they work and some others not.
It in no way explains anything about photos that don't attempt any kind of engagement - certainly nothing like whether or not they work.
"This landscape doesn't work because it's not a photo of a clown. I like clowns."
Photographs don't feel. You feel about a photograph. That's a very different thing, it's also very obvious, but apparently it's still easily overlooked.
A photograph isn't an objective, universal truth in itself. It's open to interpretation. Thank god for that; it makes the art a whole lot more interesting, too.
I agree that photographs don’t feel, it is us that we do as a result of them. And yes, they’re open to interpretation, thankfully, others it would be boring. But interpretation doesn’t exist in a vacuum. When certain responses happen across different viewers, they form a shared ground (maybe a subjective objectivity?) that allows discussion and disagreement to be meaningful.
When I say a photograph doesn’t work for me, I’m not claiming a universal truth, I think we discussed it a lot in the past too, but I am placing my response in relation to others. If our readings are close, dialogue is easy, if they’re far apart, it becomes harder — but still quite informative. And the reader can gain from that friction on either side.
And since this is an HCB appreciation thread among very knowledgeable people, I’m already assuming a shared admiration (hopefully) as a common ground. My comments are meant as a closer, more critical look at specific images and HCB artistic signature and not a departure from that appreciation.
If all it amounts to is "I don't really like it", then there's nothing more to say. An actual critical commentary would be to claim that a photo doesn't "work" since it doesn't quite do what it seems to be trying to do - that it fails in some way. Even that ends up bringing in a lot of presuppositions.
To claim a photo "doesn't work" because it doesn't do what the photographer never even tried to do makes no sense.
Don, It’s never meant as a simple "I don’t like it." Saying something like "I don’t like Bach" for example would be meaningless, because personal preference plays no real role there.
What I’m trying to do with HCB is closer to saying: I understand the work, I admire a great deal of it, and there are also parts that feel less compelling or perhaps too comfortable for him, and why not: let's do a dialogue to challenge our views on photography and within this process we might also enrich our understanding and appreciation of HCB too.
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@Don_ih, @koraks: this is fair enough, isn’t it? What else can there be to say in an HCB Appreciation thread, if not “I really like that” and “Wow, yeah, me too”?
By the way, it is perfectly acceptable to say that a gooseberry feels hairy, without assuming any sentience on the part of the gooseberry
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I was not my intention to correct you but to offer one exception to the rule. I think it is sometimes overlooked how diverse HCB's photos actually are. They take in Surrealism, symbolism, photo journalism, abstractions, still lifes, portraits, landscapes etc. The convenient catch all phrases or descriptions that he seems to have been lumbered with over time tend to do a disservice to his varied oeuvre.
Isn't this originally a black and white photo?
snusmumriken
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I totally agree. Sorry to have misread your intention.
Well articulated Don...
Alan Edward Klein
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You can't separate one's inner psyche with their interpretation and feelings about a photograph or art in general.
MattKing
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I think we can appreciate a lot about HCB from the fact that so relatively few of his published photographs exhibit a sense of engagement with his human subjects.
The same applies, in reverse, to most of the iconic portrait and people photographers.
I point out that the title of this thread is HCB Appreciation. I read "Appreciation" there as being a tiny bit about "liking" and, much more importantly, "understanding".
The same applies, in reverse, to most of the iconic portrait and people photographers.
I point out that the title of this thread is HCB Appreciation. I read "Appreciation" there as being a tiny bit about "liking" and, much more importantly, "understanding".
Even worse, they're very likely the inner workings of a large language model.
Thank you cliveh, for saying what others have been thinking
snusmumriken
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Honestly, I don't think you need to worry. When Bach stole a Vivaldi violin concerto to play on the organ, nothing really suffered. Likewise when Manet imitated Titian's Venus d'Urbino to make his Olympia. Great work endures regardless. Mind you, I'd draw the line at putting any HCB photo on a china mug
.Actually, I was thinking how I always knew the doors would have been blue, like the sky, and the shadows. And how this travesty raises the interesting issue that HCB stuck with b/w when decent colour film was available.
Bach didn't steal anything. He transcribed some of Vivaldi's concertos, and transcribing other people's work was common practice at the time. He was open to other musicians 'stealing' - as you put it - his music, too: his scores are famously open ended and open to interpretation, so much so that people have often 'stolen' (->transcribed) several of his Klavier works - Busoni's transcription of the Chorale Prelude BWV 659 and Kempff's transcription of the Chorale Prelude BWV 734 are particularly noteworthy, though I'm sure there would have been people transcribing his work already in his time.
I find it quite interesting how you often seem to alternate, from thread to thread, between a poorly concealed unwillingness to fully appreciate these photographers and a deep desire to really do so. The Atget 'appreciation' thread is a glowing example of this.
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On the whole I feel that this has been a very interesting discussion and there is a lot of really good critique in this thread. If I were a photography or an art teacher I could take this thread and turn it into a lesson plan on art, photography and critique of same.
I am sorry I didn't do it to debase his value I just came across a current photo of the same spot in Greece now and I always wondered how the original photo looked like with the colours so I recreated it using this as a base. I thought it was cool. And interesting to see how it would have looked in colour.
You know some photographers here in Greece when photographing islands they do intentionally black and white just because they want to avoid the cliches of the blue skies and white houses that accompany the Greek island colour photos.
I was also curious to see if the colour photo would fall victim to that too. As you see above the photo works as good in colour too.
To highlight a point I had made in an another thread (which is now locked
) that a good photo will be good whatever you choose to do with it (bw or colour)Attachments
Thank you I think it has been a very interesting thread too
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