Photography Musings, or something like that
Sometimes you really shouldn’t go down a rabbit hole. But if you know me well enough, you probably know I’m too dumb not to. There might be another word for it (personally I’d go for something like “curious”), but dumb is probably as accurate a word as any . . . well, maybe stupid would be better. Especially given it seems I return to the same rabbit holes again and again. At least I’m not crazy (some may question that assertion as well) because, according to the well-known definition of crazy, I’m not because I keep getting different results from the same action. Which might seem a good thing except for the fact that this trip down the rabbit hole led to what can only be described as an existential crisis. It may have only been a very short-lived existential crisis, but an intense existential crisis nonetheless. I guess I should back up a bit and start from something resembling a beginning.
I mentioned a few posts back that I’d pulled out a couple of books by and about Henri Cartier-Bresson and had been reading them. After the last post I’m sure you can figure out, at least in part, why I needed to get my mind focused on something else. Something, anything, to get my mind off the lunacy our life has become. But more importantly, to try to get my mind thinking about the things that (normally) keep me mentally engaged in things I love.
Reading through some of Bresson’s writings, and then writings and images about Bresson and Giacometti’s friendship and shared artistic vision, I started wondering about whether I’ve been too narrow in the things I’ve photographed recently (now years due to COVID) and whether I should be expanding the, so to speak, subject matter I photograph. Based on the images I make given my preferences, it appears I no longer have that innocent curiosity of pointing a camera at something and wondering what may turn out from it; at least it doesn’t happen very often. Perhaps it’s that narrowness of thinking that comes with age and experience (that we really should shrug off) or because in this age of digital imagery, that fascination of making an image and moving on, not able to find out what the image “looked like” until a week or more after you finished the roll of film, no longer exists. You make the image and can check it out immediately. Does that, in fact, inhibit exploration?
I stopped reading and thought about that question for a long while, and realized that in front of me there was a scene and that I had no idea what kind of photograph it would make. So I reached over and grabbed by x100 from the bookshelf next to my reading chair (yes, I’ve been thinking about needing to photograph with that camera more, so it’s been lying around my office lately) and made an image from my chair.
I put the camera down and returned to my reading, downloading the image only when the weekend arrived.
On its surface, it doesn’t appear to be much. But it has elements of things I’d not thought much about lately. One of them includes the different roles that photography can have. Both in one’s own life and for different photographers. There is the photograph that is the keepsake, the holder of memories. In the photograph I made there is much there that evokes personal feelings in me . . . my things that give me a sense of having lived a life, and of life to come. An image of things that evokes memories, inspiration and wonder. That of course does not resonate with everyone, or in fact anyone else. It’s like a posed, group picture in a photo album you see at some friend’s house that you’re looking at by yourself and you know none of the people in the photos. Rarely does that stir anything in the viewer. My photograph also contained a bit of the documentary photograph, a record of what’s there that seeks to tell some kind of story about the place and the people who inhabit it. Why two chairs? What are the titles of the books? What do they tell about the person whose office it is? Is he really that messy of a person? At least he recycles! And then, photographically, there are potential artistic qualities. Photographic qualities in the image of my office that are (well, might be) interesting - plays of light, juxtapositions, tensions between the elements, the framing - that appeal to my eye at least. The longer I look, the more I see - both positive and negative.
Is the photograph any good? I doubt it. To be honest, I don’t think so. But it has caused me to think and thus has served a purpose.
All of that is backdrop for the day after I downloaded and looked at the image.
I was back to my reading chair, continuing with my readings from “Henri Cartier-Bresson and Alberto Giacometti The Decision of the Eye.” I’d poured myself a glass of my latest favorite wine, Guarda Rios (River Guard or, as is on the label, Kingfisher) Signature, a great 14.99€ bottle of Alentejo region red wine obtained on sale for 5.79€, and decided to dig into the book.
The book started with some short quotes and a few images. All insightful and inspirational as I’d hoped. The swell before the crisis started with an essay by Yves Bonnefoy about Giacometti and Cartier-Bresson. In that essay about the fear and danger of looking, truly looking in the act of seeing the world as it is and then image-making, and the discussion of how these two artists did so in ways so few have, I came to understand more about phenomenology than I did from my Phenomenology and Existentialism course in college. My mind was racing with new enlightenment when the images followed the text, and then the tsunami wave of the crisis hit.
Ann and I have a joke we share, well, more like she uses on me like a sharp stick to the ribs, based on a comment I made (in jest, I swear, though here’s that “stupid” thing rearing it’s head again because how could I possibly have thought that putting such a statement in a blog post wouldn’t have the consequences it did?) that Ann is no Henri Cartier-Bresson. It doesn’t matter that no one is Henri Cartier-Bresson (in the world of St. Ansel’s Cathedral, he is the icon that stands on the altar), and certainly not me. But the joke exists to be pulled out by either of us in the appropriate moment. Well, this time it was not a joke. I paused at one of his photographs in the book, one I don’t recall having seen before. I looked. Carefully. And it’s simplicity, complexity and sheer brilliance drove home just how much I am no Henri Cartier-Bresson. It was a simple image, looking down on a plaza with buildings, people and shadows and yet, had so much complex geometry and interrelationships that I realized I probably wasn’t getting the half of it. How could I possibly think I should ever pick up a camera? Why even try when something as incredible as that image is out there? Do you really think you can do that? Come even close?
After a very, very long pause, I slowly flipped onward for a few more pages. There were images of Giacometti sculptures and of Cartier-Bresson photographs that I was more familiar with, but that were no less brilliant. In fact, those images were probably more brilliant than the one that shook me. I had to stop. I sat there for quite a while, thinking about what I’d read, what I’d seen, and what would it take . . . not to be like Giacometti or Cartier-Bresson (because I am no Henri Cartier-Bresson), but to at least do more, create better? What does it take to look and truly see? And then to make that into an image?
At some point during the past couple of weeks, Ann and I decided to re-watch the first season of Star Trek Picard in the lead up to watching season 2 as it comes out. As I was sitting there in my office, in the midst of my crisis, I thought of Albert Camus (whose books are up on the bookshelf to the left, hidden by a 4x5 photograph, in the photograph above). I thought of Camus probably because Captain Rios from Picard was constantly reading existential writings in season one, and one scene showed a binder of a Camus book . . . “The Stranger” I think it was. It dawned on me that maybe it is time for me to re-read Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus.” Maybe this time I’d actually understand it.
I sat there, thinking, for a while longer. Maybe I don’t even need to read it again, because with that thought, deep in my existential crisis of knowing, truly knowing I am no Henri Cartier-Bresson, I came to understand why I call the photography I create “work.” That’s because it is work, it is a struggle. Not to just make a good image, but to actually see something anew, and then make something more. To make an image that goes beyond the surface of the subject I am photographing. And whether that’s to discover for myself the essence of that subject and then to craft that into an image, or to find that moment, in a composed instance, that unveils something about the world I didn’t know about before, it’s work. And it usually ends in failure. But what more is there than to keep at it? I love it. I love doing it. And I’ll still insist that I don’t love the failure (sorry Camus), because I don’t. It’s frustrating and terribly depressing at times. But I recognize the fact that the failure is probably necessary, an inextricable part of the process that might lead to a successful image. So I keep at it. No, I’ll never be Henri Cartier-Bresson, but that doesn’t matter. That isn’t what drives me. It’s that curiosity that keeps me at it, despite all the failures. Call me stupid.
And with that realization, I went upstairs and into the kitchen to refill my glass of wine and started cooking dinner (if you call mostly reheating last night’s dinner, delicious as it may be, cooking).
And as I was slicing some heirloom tomatoes for the meal, I trimmed off a couple of edges and sprinkled them with a bit of freshly ground Himalayan salt and ground pepper. Wow! Tomatoes never tasted so good! And I was reminded of the Oracle in the Matrix when she offers Neo a fresh baked cookie, “Here, take a cookie. I promise that by the time you’re done eating it, you’ll feel right as rain.” She was so right - crisis over.
Hey, and if it’s not over, I can always blame the wine.