HCB Appreciation

[nikos79]

Please don't take this wrong, but you'd do a great ChatGPT impersonation.

Sorry, that was a lame joke. I think you're very polite and courteous.

That’s probably because you haven’t seen the first furious draft I wrote .

After calming down and revisiting our past exchanges (and also from our private conversations), I understood your point and our differences. My politeness and respect are genuine

 

[snusmumriken]

It's a profound, perhaps visceral reaction. Sort of like "seeing is believing." The concept of "Punctum" seems to apply here.

Maybe ‘interpretation’ is the wrong word, and ‘understanding’ a better one. If you’ll play along with that, how do you (personally) understand the HCB Misissippi photo? Is it possible to appreciate it without understanding it? Even if it’s ambiguous, that would mean that at least two alternative ways of understanding suggest themselves.

 

[koraks]

It's a profound, perhaps visceral reaction. Sort of like "seeing is believing." The concept of "Punctum" seems to apply here.

Okay, I see; I can relate to what you said about the visceral reaction. Some images hit me in a spot just below the sternum.

 

[Don_ih]

I agree too that different media offer different ways of expressing meaning.

I think one of the lessons to be learned from photographic appreciation is that not only do different media express meaning differently, but there is not necessarily a complete accurate and true translation of one to the other. The experience of a photo can be meaningful but perhaps in a way that cannot be articulated. We get too mired in the idea of meaning as translation (think in terms of a dictionary definition, which essentially translates a word into a pile of other words and calls it "meaning"). But that idea of definition - of making something defined and definite, if you want - is inadequate to account for all experience.

So people can look at a photo and say "Wow" and not feel there's any need to say any more.

 

[nikos79]

Maybe ‘interpretation’ is the wrong word, and ‘understanding’ a better one. If you’ll play along with that, how do you (personally) understand the HCB Misissippi photo? Is it possible to appreciate it without understanding it? Even if it’s ambiguous, that would mean that at least two alternative ways of understanding suggest themselves.

Honestly I wouldn’t spend much time on either of these two photos. I would flip them through to the next one

 

[nikos79]

Maybe ‘interpretation’ is the wrong word, and ‘understanding’ a better one. If you’ll play along with that, how do you (personally) understand the HCB Misissippi photo? Is it possible to appreciate it without understanding it? Even if it’s ambiguous, that would mean that at least two alternative ways of understanding suggest themselves.

Maybe instead of understanding the photo is better to understand the artist and how that image can find place in his general work and use of his personal photographic language

 

[MattKing]

Love this, and I don't need any explanation or "interpretation" to appreciate it. How about, "Wow"!

In this instant, you are choosing the appreciate=like equivalency.
As I posted earlier in (I think) this thread, appreciate=comprehend is perhaps a more interesting equivalency with photographers like HCB.

But a picture cannot tell a single story. Same as poetry

Cinema or writing on the other hand can

I'd suggest that no matter hard you try, you won't succeed in constraining any creative or interpretive action into just one story.

verything is subject to multiple interpretations. That's why legal documents seek to disambiguate as much as possible - and why it turns the language of those documents into such an unreadable mess. Turns out, those legal documents are almost always still capable of being reinterpreted in a potentially unintended manner.

If they can't get a law to "tell a single story", no one can get a novel or movie to do it, either.

Most of the best legal documents aren't unintelligible - they are just immensely boring and quasi-repetitive.
Drafting them is both art and science.
There are more binding rules though with them then with photography.
For example:

There are even rules about how one should interpret the Interpretation Act of BC, and some of them are included in that Interpretation Act.

I'm particularly fond of provisions like the following - found instead in the Wills, Estates and Succession Act of BC - where one needs to understand old rules so as to know what has been abolished.

I reference all this to point out that if you expect there to be clearly understood and shared norms about something complex - such as photography - you either have to limit yourself to a very small subset of it, or impose such a level of rules and expectations as to constrain it. And by doing that, you severely limit its value.

 

[cliveh]

Perhaps I'm too simplistic, but I'm not interested in the socialogical aspects of a photograph, or if the exhibition is by a group of black lesbians, or photographs making a statement. I just like looking at good compositions taken (not made) at moments in time that have recieved zero to minimal manipulation in their production. For me HCB fits into that slot.

 

[nikos79]

Perhaps I'm too simplistic, but I'm not interested in the socialogical aspects of a photograph, or if the exhibition is by a group of black lesbians, or photographs making a statement. I just like looking at good compositions taken (not made) at moments in time that have recieved zero to minimal manipulation in their production.

And to add to that also the gaze Clive.. the gaze of the photographer.. so different each time. Revealing us a new photographic world

 

[snusmumriken]

Perhaps I'm too simplistic, but I'm not interested in the socialogical aspects of a photograph

But HCB was, Clive. You are choosing to ignore that.

 

[cliveh]

But HCB was, Clive. You are choosing to ignore that.
View attachment 414700

Perhaps I am. But most of the time, I don't believe that was his aim. He did that sort of imagery to sell to the press, not what I believe he prefered to do.

 

[nikos79]

But HCB was, Clive. You are choosing to ignore that.
View attachment 414700

For me, this is an example of a HCB photo that feels almost too easy for HCB and immediately readable. The visual contrast is very clear almost winking the eye to the viewer which then happily gets a kind of quick satisfaction, they feel they have "understood" it almost at once. Personally, I tend to prefer photographs that resist this kind of instant resolution and "flattering" the audience and leave more space for uncertainty or ambiguation. Not my favorite HCB photo

 

[nikos79]

I mean you saw the image, you got the meaning or game or play or whatever you want to call it at once, then why look back at this photo again? The interest is lost

 

[nikos79]

I hope I am not operating on another norm again

 

[cliveh]

 

[nikos79]

It's a profound, perhaps visceral reaction. Sort of like "seeing is believing." The concept of "Punctum" seems to apply here.

Most things are not explainable. I like that reaction. If you get it then is a yes or a wow, if not maybe a "nahhh"

 

[nikos79]

View attachment 414701

Exactly! This on the other hand is raising questions I can look at it again and again.
And I heard the story behind it and is not what someone might think.

 

[nikos79]

But HCB was, Clive. You are choosing to ignore that.

From my interviews book:

You had nothing more to prove [in photography]?

HCB: But photography proves nothing at all. And I am not trying to prove

anything. My friend Sebastião Salgado makes extraordinary pictures

that require an enormous amount of work. They have not been

conceived by the eye of a painter, but that of a sociologist, economist,

and activist.

 

[nikos79]

In this instant, you are choosing the appreciate=like equivalency.
As I posted earlier in (I think) this thread, appreciate=comprehend is perhaps a more interesting equivalency with photographers like HCB.

I don't think is that simple. The "like" of a Photrio member who has seen a lot of photography is not exactly a like of the common everyday viewer. Even though it comes immediately and almost instinctively, I reckon there are years of cultivation behind it, right Arthur?

 

[MattKing]

I don't think is that simple. The "like" of a Photrio member who has seen a lot of photography is not exactly a like of the common everyday viewer. Even though it comes immediately and almost instinctively, I reckon there are years of cultivation behind it, right Arthur?

Cultivation sometimes involves heaping manure over the plant, and then waiting a long while until something new grows again .
I attach lots of value to the reactions of the relatively uninitiated - sometimes it is the new eyes that see things with the most clarity.
And sometimes it is the old and jaded who can bring to the photograph the knowledge and experience that the photograph demands.
Good photographers, in my mind, create work that is demanding of attention. However, as the comparisons in this thread between Cartier-Bresson and someone like Salgado show us, those demands vary tremendously in type and style and import and character.

 

[snusmumriken]

Personally, I tend to prefer photographs that resist this kind of instant resolution and "flattering" the audience and leave more space for uncertainty or ambiguation.

I get the feeling that HCB did too. He preferred not to explain, letting the photo do its own fascinating.

Nevertheless, you are restricting yourself to a small fraction of his work, even among those he selected for his touring exhibition or for books. And many of those that have an obvious social context have immaculate compositions.

HCB did allow photos to be captioned with place and time, so evidently he thought that info was relevant for the viewer’s understanding.

 

[snusmumriken]

Interesting essay I’ve just come across: HCB Juvissy, France

 

[nikos79]

Interesting essay I’ve just come across: HCB Juvissy, France

Interesting read

 

[nikos79]

Nevertheless, you are restricting yourself to a small fraction of his work, even among those he selected for his touring exhibition or for books.

Indeed. But I tend to believe that these 50-100 photos are the “core” of his work that define him as an artist.

HCB did allow photos to be captioned with place and time, so evidently he thought that info was relevant for the viewer’s understanding.

I actually like that. I like to imagine a country back in time. These are very basic captions too that don’t “guide” the viewer towards an explanation

 

[Don_ih]

Most of the best legal documents aren't unintelligible - they are just immensely boring and quasi-repetitive.
Drafting them is both art and science.
There are more binding rules though with them then with photography.

I already agreed with you, Matt - I didn't even say unintelligible - I said "unreadable", by which I meant reading them is unpleasant (partly due to the repetition and the definitions and fixed references). I took a Philosophy of Law senior seminar course in university taught by a lawyer who didn't understand that that way of writing was not an appropriate model for speaking to a room full of students. Everyone was so bored they wanted to hang either him or themselves just to end it.

I tend to believe that these 50-100 photos are the “core” of his work

He's doing far better than every other famous photographer people can think of, then. Almost all of them are known for only a handful of photos. W. Eugene Smith practically lived off sales of prints of that Walk to Paradise Garden photo. Well, that and pawning cameras and lenses....