Material witness
So a girl can’t even step away from a blog for a bit without things getting crazy. The (wonderful) Paul Graham said some things about the current state of photography and I can still feel the aftershocks. I could post links here, but you’re going to have to just Google them. Here’s my take. Photographers who are mostly interested in what happens before the shutter snaps, let’s call them Pre, are the Good Guys. I’m not one of them. Sets, model makers, models, lights, anything that can be planned, positioned, controlled, rented, or scripted, will put you on the path toward righteousness. We can count among them those who use extensive digital post-production as well, because that entire process still occurs before the simple click that sends the file to a machine that will print it. We know who they are, and often admire their work. They are stars.
Photographers who care most about the un-directed image, the Snaps, respond to the world as it is, with their cameras as tools of capture. Like snares. Paul Graham could be called one of them, and I think curators and critics do have an unusually difficult time understanding that work for the reasons Graham describes. Is it enough to just aim a camera and press a button? Well yes, because the little three-letter word “aim” is deceptively simple and twinkling with magical powers. Anyone can snap a shutter, but it takes a true master to show us something different, mysterious, wrong, dangerous, or humorous with that snap. It’s most certainly not effortless, and most certainly not a lesser art. Photographers know this, but are not often enough the curators, gallerists, or critics.
Pity now, for a moment, poor little Post. Where pink-cheeked Pre carefully and elaborately poses the world in front of the lens and is richly rewarded by Market, Museum, and Press, Post has a much more complicated task. Like Snap, she responds to the world as it is. She accepts what it gives her, but then chews it up and messes with it a bit. For her, the photograph is an artifact with a physical nature, and the print is important. It really is. If our bodies are our temples, then our prints are our, ah, well they’re important. They mean something. They are physical manifestations of the effects of light on metal, chemical reactions, brush strokes, jiggles of the dev tray. Photography is still light-writing for dear little Post, and she knows the process doesn’t end with the click of the shutter. It begins.
May 31st, 2010 at 7:08 pm
I am so sorry that I did not find this blog/entry until now, but, as they say, better late than never…
I consider myself a Post for the reasons here stated, that is, a response to the world au natural, but going through extensive motions to create a print that is close to what I actually FELT while I was “snapping “. Often the final result is a considerable departure from what was there at the time, but, if it is a successful effort, I get to show someone else what I MEANT when I pointed the camera in that direction in the first place. For the Post, perhaps it is the seeing, rather than the imagining, of Pre. Not to say that it is more or less valid, it’s just that Post never seems to get quite the same respect. Maybe people value something more because they don’t understand it fully, and delicate subtlety needs a bit more work to arrive at a point of realization.