Paul Strand ... does this idea work for you?

jtk

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“Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees.”
~ Paul Strand

On Photography: Paul Strand, 1890-1976

“Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees.” — Paul Strand Paul Strand has been called the biggest, widest, most commanding talent in the history of American photography. He was born in the midst of one of the most exciting and innovative periods in the history of...
photofocus.com
 

halfaman

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I think it was Minor White who said something similar in a more poetic way, that all photographs are self-portraits of the photographer.

It works for me in the sense that I should photograph what interest me, not what others may be interested in, to have any chance to get a meaninful picture.
 

Don_ih

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jtk said:
“Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees.”
~ Paul Strand
Click to expand...

Yes, but it's not very meaningful. Your photography is your seeing - what you have seen, what you have seen - and is also determined by your concern. It's your view and it's what you wanted to make of that view. But what's the significance of that? Any number of things can be a record of your living.
 

Arthurwg

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Paul Strand: Best picture of chickens in the history of photography.
 

bags27

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Robert Adams has an amazing essay on Paul Strand. Says more about Adams than Strand, of course.

All history is autobiography-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
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jtk

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bags 27.... where did you find that essay?

awty... what are you suggesting about "really are?' I don't think normal people have hidden personalities but I do think they can relax or emote with a little stimulation.
 

bags27

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jtk said:
bags 27.... where did you find that essay?

awty... what are you suggesting about "really are?' I don't think normal people have hidden personalities but I do think they can relax or emote with a little stimulation.
Click to expand...

In his collected essays, Why People Photograph.
 

Don_ih

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jtk said:
awty... what are you suggesting about "really are?'
Click to expand...

I got a pretty good idea what he means. It's unfortunate that Australia is so far away - I'd like to hang out with him.
 

awty

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jtk said:
bags 27.... where did you find that essay?

awty... what are you suggesting about "really are?' I don't think normal people have hidden personalities but I do think they can relax or emote with a little stimulation.
Click to expand...

We all have to be "normal" to be accepted, then who designates what is normal and what isnt?
Normality is just another word for conformity.
Photographers for the most part are conformists.
 

awty

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Don Heisz said:
I got a pretty good idea what he means. It's unfortunate that Australia is so far away - I'd like to hang out with him.
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Don you should come to Australia, you dont have to go far to find places where there's no people and you can just get absorbed in the sounds of hundreds of different birds and insects, the breezes flowing past, the many smells, if you close your eyes you can feel the earth rotating.
Sorry thought I had to say something profound.
Im just a normal person and not very interesting.
 
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Nitroplait

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That Robert Adams essay on Paul Strand in Why People Photograph was really an eye-opener for me.
After reading that, I rushed out (on the internet) to locate a copy of Time In New England, and was glad to find that the Aperture version from 1980 is still very affordable.

My favorite Strand book (for reasons I don't really know) is Steidl's tiny unpretentious Toward a Deeper Understanding: Paul Strand at Work (2007) - it is a lovely little object to hold and has well curated beautiful small illustrations.
It it not for the coffee-table-book connoisseur, though.
 
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jtk

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awty said:
We all have to be "normal" to be accepted, then who designates what is normal and what isnt?
Normality is just another word for conformity.
Photographers for the most part are conformists.
Click to expand...

awty, "normal" and "acceptance" might be odd ideas for some of us. I think I'm normal, but my Navajo and Jewish friends recognize that I'm an outsider. Still, they do accept me, probably because we share values. Jews and Navajo are both deeply clan-people, which I can't be. I dislike pretend-normality of America's white Midwest and New England almost as much as I dislike the still-confederate belief system that rules a big chunk of America...and my photography is only accidentally decorative (I'm still affected by indirect experience with Minor White's teaching). Nonetheless, "root-hog or die" as one of Ken Kesey's old characters taught his kids in Sometimes A Great Notion.
 

Arthurwg

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bluechromis said:
Ha, ha.
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I'm not kidding about the chickens. I love this picture. Can be found in "Paul Strand: Circa 1916." Apparently made with a Graflex Home Portrait camera.

BTW, Paul Strand figures in our local Taos history, which includes his marriage to Rebecca Salsbury, association with Georgia O'Keeffe etc.
 

Vaughn

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jtk said:
“Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees.”
~ Paul Strand
Click to expand...
Agreed, but so is everything about one's living. The issue is finding those who really see. Most of us just look.
 

Pieter12

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Sometimes "your living" means to repress your personality. A commercial photographer may not always take the photo he or she really sees, but the one that will please the client.
 

Arthurwg

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Too abstract. Obviously Paul Strand could really see. Beyond that you've lost me.
 
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Sirius Glass

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That is like saying, "I breathe so I exist." but a French man said it better, "I think therefore I am."
 

awty

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Even within those societies those with diverse opinions were out cast or on the fringes. Societies flourish with diversity, but that scares some, so they need to at least look normal or go live on the fringe.
Disturbia is a great word.
 

awty

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Pieter12 said:
Sometimes "your living" means to repress your personality. A commercial photographer may not always take the photo he or she really sees, but the one that will please the client.
Click to expand...

Depends on how good a sales person they are, but a job is a job and is best to keep it separate.
 
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