How does photography help one study?

ChristopherCoy

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This morning I started reading Mapplethorpe's biography, and the thought of "how does photography help a person study a topic, and what's it's purpose," came to me. Perhaps I'm overanalyzing it, but it's something that I haven't ever thought about before.

Mapplethorpe's photography, I'm assuming from what I know of him at this point, allowed him to explore his homosexuality. But what did photography do, that going to a gay bar or other experience couldn't. In cases like these, is photography just an ice breaker of sorts? And is the purpose of making a permanent record for memory's sake?

I've never looked at art, whether it be photography, sketching, or otherwise, as an avenue of "study". It's always just been busy work to keep my apparently bipolar/alcoholic/A.D.D mind occupied so that I don't go off the deep end. But I'm interested in knowing how an artform provides a means of learning for some.
 
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ChristopherCoy

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I think it all depends who you are and what your interests are. I'm not in your shoes, but I know what my interests in life are. I know I observe and notice and study ... and photography allows me to get outside myself ( at times ) to use those powers of observation and study to create something that I use as a stepping stone to observe and notice and study some more. it doesn't make me calm, it isn't an ice breaker, but it gives me opportunities ( either interpersonal or internal ) that I may not have had before, whether I am visiting the test cell where chuck yeager's x15 rocket engine was made or making a portrait of a head of state, or a long forgotten magical island. When I did photojournalistic work and when I do historic preservation documentary work ( HABS ) I often get access to people places and things I never in 1,000,000 years would have had the opportunity to meet or see or photograph. The more I photograph things the more I realize everything is pretty much the same. Sometimes all the study photography does is it lets your mind wander. .
 
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Alan Edward Klein

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Sirius Glass

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I have found that photography really helps me study photography, just as music helps me study music and physics helps me study physics.
 
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ChristopherCoy

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Sirius Glass said:
I have found that photography really helps me study photography, just as music helps me study music and physics helps me study physics.
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That sounds like a more technical explanation to me. Studying photography for photography's sake, or researching which developer produces the best grain, or how developers even work to begin with.

But how does photography help you understand music? Or Physics?
 

Vaughn

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Photography is just one of the many ways to focus one's energy and thought.

edited to add: Since I am greatly interested in the visual world and how light interacts with the landscape, and in turn, affects how I perceive the world, photography is the perfect tool for me. And as I have written before; as the artist uses a tool to shape his/her work, the tool also shapes the artist.

A nephew told me, "Unk, I am so gay that I cannot even think straight." And alas, 99+% of us straights can't think gay. Sometimes images demand more than the viewer can, or is willing, to give.
 
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Sirius Glass

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I have not found a cross over from photography to music. Physics, engineering, chemistry and art help me understand photography better.
 

MattKing

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If you enjoy making photographs, and find that you can create things through photography and gain satisfaction from the process, then it makes sense to involve the activity of photography in any learning you do.
Same applies to music, writing, knitting, tap-dancing, etc., etc.
 

Andrew O'Neill

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Photography has taught me the history of Ukrainian churches on the Canadian Prairie, and through that, I learn about the culture. Photography teaches me about the coal mining industry in Japan, and helped teach the general public ( I hope!) how important that history is as well as preservation. It has taught me how powerful a photographic image can be.. I probably would have learnt all this if I had kept up my drawing, painting, and printmaking, too. ...
 

MartinCrabtree

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By allowing time to examine your reactions and feelings that a particular image provokes allows introspection whereas the same cannot be said to other's actions,i.e. a gay bar environment due to constant change.

On another plane have you tried meditation? A chemical free method of quieting an overactive mind that I've found some measure of success with. You do not need to be seeking elevation of existence for practice a simple relaxation is sufficiient.
 
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ChristopherCoy

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Ok, THAT, I understand and can fully comprehend. By placing the whip in his rectum and photographing it, he allowed himself time to examine and understand his feelings about it, because the photograph "freezes time." Whereas, just putting it in, and taking it out, is a fleeting moment that can't be fully understood. Your explanation makes complete sense and clears up a lot of mud for me.

And on the other note, yes I've tried meditation. But somewhere around 60 seconds in I get a thought, which leads to another thought, and then another though, and then suddenly I'm trying to pick out paint colors for the wall and trying to decide if I want fried chicken or burgers next friday for dinner.
 
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ChristopherCoy

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I want to impress upon you the magnitude that your explanation has, so I'm replying again.

Back when I started photography, I knew nothing of lighting. I couldn't understand for the life of me how to do it. It didn't matter how many books I read, or how many videos I watched, or workshops I attended - I just didn't get it. And then one day, while at yet another workshop, a photographer said "remember when you were in art class, and you shaded a circle to make it look like a sphere? That's what you're trying to do with lighting." Literally, YEARS of misunderstanding was cleared up in the amount of time it took him to say that sentence.

That's what your explanation just did.
 

MartinCrabtree

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Uhm....wow.........thanks..............never received a compliment quite so monumental............ glad to be of help.
 

tballphoto

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Well in the case of Mapplethorpe, it gave him access to more subjects, made him famous, allowed him to break people down easily and get spank bank material.

Also can give you a sort of protection, from in case the fecal matter hits the ceiling fan. "im just a photographer".
 

warden

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ChristopherCoy said:
Mapplethorpe's photography, I'm assuming from what I know of him at this point, allowed him to explore his homosexuality. But what did photography do, that going to a gay bar or other experience couldn't.
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Well he certainly used photography to explore many things, including his life and sexuality. I think the artistic merit of his practice was beyond what he found in gay bars though.

I bet you already know this but in case you haven't already read it Patti Smith's Just Kids would be the perfect companion to the book you're currently reading. It's wonderful and heartbreaking.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/books/18book.html
 

dpurdy

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In all honesty I would say that the fact that you asked that question shows that you will never understand the answer.
 
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ChristopherCoy

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dpurdy said:
In all honesty I would say that the fact that you asked that question shows that you will never understand the answer.
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Well aren't you just a barrel of positive encouragement?
 
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ChristopherCoy

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From what I've read of her in the Mapplethorpe book, I'm not sure I could stomach her for any significant amount of time. She's kind of like a train wreck for me, you don't want to look but you sort of have to, and when you do you kind of get brainwashed into staring for an obnoxious amount of time. I've not been able to pinpoint exactly what it is about her that rubs me the wrong way. I'll see if I can stomach a sample though. Thanks for the suggestion!
 

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I think the problem here might be with the word "study". A study of something is an examination of that thing from some point of view. Photography is itself a study of whatever its object is, it illuminates at least one point of view, but the result is open to interpretation since it (that result) is itself an object which can be studied.

Take a picture of a light bulb. You won't get a better understanding of how the light bulb itself produces light, but you will get an understanding of how light reflects off it - among other things.
 
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ChristopherCoy

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Don Heisz said:
Take a picture of a light bulb. You won't get a better understanding of how the light bulb itself produces light, but you will get an understanding of how light reflects off it - among other things.
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It's the "other things" that I have trouble understanding, or am not intellectual enough to fathom.
 

Alex Benjamin

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Helps you study people.

Their relationship with themselves, their interaction with their body (they way they express themselves through the body), their interaction with other people, their interaction with nature (or destruction thereof), the meaning they give to their surroundings and to the various artefacts that fill their lives.

And, because you have to get close enough, their interaction with you and your interaction with them - meaning your capacity for empathy, for understanding. In that sense, it's a powerful tool for understanding yourself and your place in the world.

And, most importantly, it allows you to do all this without judgment and set it in time and memory (this is how it was, this is who we were, this is how we were, etc.).

To me, that's the thread that links - just to name Americans - Robert Frank, Joel Sternfeld, Walker Evans, Dawoud Bey, Gordon Parks, Alex Webb, Richard Misrach, Berenice Abbott, Vivian Maier, Steven Shore, Diane Arbus, Alec Soth, Robert Adams, Robert Mappelthorpe, Richard Avedon (In the American West), Danny Lyon, W. Eugene Smith, Garry Winogrand and a whole bunch of others: a quest to understand or at least reveal something of the complexity of human nature and human interactions and to memorialize it.
 

Don_ih

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ChristopherCoy said:
It's the "other things" that I have trouble understanding, or am not intellectual enough to fathom.
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There seems to be a drive for people to find meaning or significance, not as capable of being simply stated, but as complexes of emotion and possibly some experience of the sublime. But, you know, that all has the strong whiff of horsecrap. You're likely not missing out on anything in your pursuit of photography - it's the aspects of the practice that interest you that are likely most meaningful and the actual field of your study is probably not exceeding the limit of your understanding. There just might not be anything else to it at the moment. Of course, attitudes and goals can change.
 
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