Fuzzy vs. sharp

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Thought I'd throw my two cents in...

Ansel Adams remarked once about "sharp photographs with fuzzy concepts." I think it was Voltaire who claimed "All styles are valid, except the boring."

All art begins with the concept, the idea. What is it that the artist wishes to express or to communicate? The technicalities are merely the vehicle towards that expression. Whether or not the artist has achieved his or her objective is the only relevant question. Everything else is snobbery. As a devotee of the "straight school," it pains me to say this, while I accept its truth.

The most improtant thing is that the artist must express himself or herself with honesty and integrity. That supercedes all other concerns. If artistic expression is rendered honestly and authentically, than it doesn't really matter how a work of art is presented.

-- Mark Finhill (Lobos9@worldnet.att.net), September 26, 2000

Answers

I think you and Ansel are in agreement. Since he was from a group that touted sharp photographs, for him to make a statement about people who make "sharp photographs with fuzzy concepts" indicates that he believed it was intention more than technique that makes a great photograph.

-- Ed Buffaloe (edbuffaloe@unblinkingeye.com), September 27, 2000.

"There is nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept." -- Ansel Adams

When a person looks at a work of art, the concept embodied by the art should leap out immediately. I think all of use have made art which made the viewer say, "what the **** is it?" Basically, why bother with painstakingly printing a blah photograph?

-- Brian C. Miller (brian.c.miller@gte.net), September 27, 2000.


When a person looks at a work of art, the concept embodied by the art should leap out immediately.

Why? Many concepts are subtle, or evolutionary, and take time to grasp. The idea that the concept must be so simple that it leaps out immediately sounds more like television than art.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), September 27, 2000.


Why?

Why not?

If the concept is sharp, it will stand out. When I was first starting out photographing things, many of the photographs were not good because the subject was horribly obscured. One old photographer gave me a little lesson: the concept of one. One subject/concept should be the photograph's focus.

No photograph is like television. Television is not contemplated. Photographs are contemplated. This contemplation brings out the subtleties of the photograph's focus. When a photograph can only claim subtleties, then there is the question of whether or not there actually exists a focus within the photograph. If there is no focus, is there really a subject?

Look at any photograph which remains in people's minds. There is a ready subject (focus) in each of them. You know what you are looking at, and it needs no explanation. Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima. Earth from the moon. Moon over Hernandez, NM. Murdered thug on a sidewalk. Kennedy being shot. Ruby shooting Oswald. A battleship. A baby.

Is there any photograph which stands out in your mind which has nothing but subtleties? A photograph which is recognized outside the art/university clique?

-- Brian C. Miller (brian.c.miller@gte.net), September 28, 2000.


Is there any photograph which stands out in your mind which has nothing but subtleties? A photograph which is recognized outside the art/university clique?

As soon as you start ruling out any particular group of viewers, you may as well skip the question. The "art/university" clique, if it can really be defined, is as valid a group as any other.

To answer your question, what immediately came to mind was the exhibition put together by Minor White called "Octave of Prayer," a spiritually-oriented show. Many of the images take quite a bit of study before their subject becomes real.

Many of Meatyard's photographs escape the "immediacy" response. Subtle, and deep. Unfortunately, this is probably why, in this television age (and it has had a tremendous influence on perceptions of images), Meatyard is unknown and his work almost impossible to find.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), September 28, 2000.



Ge orge Eastman House, Meatyard archive

I took a quick look at both Minor White and Meatyard on the web. Know what? A heck of a lot of those adhere to the "one" rule! From what I browsed through, I'd say the vast majority. Fact is, that basic concept has been in use throughout art for millenia upon millenia. Engraving, sculpture, painting, and yes, now photography.

One concept. One obvious concept. One focus. One subject. As subtle as a bar fight. As quiet as a straight-pipe Harley- Davidson. As gentle as a kick to the head with steel-toe boots.

Television culture? Bah, humbug. It's just the basics of having a good image.

-- Brian C. Miller (brian.c.miller@gte.net), September 28, 2000.


Fuzzy vs. sharp (Mark Finhill) meet: what makes a good b + w photograph? (simon vigar)

-- Christian Harkness (chris.harkness@eudoramail.com), September 28, 2000.

My reference to Minor White was for an exhibit he curated. He may have been a famous photographer, but I don't find his work very interesting, unlike his curating. The Octave of Prayer exhibit was published by Aperture and turns up regularly in used book shops.

The Meatyard selection at the Kodak site is very limited, but I would certainly take issue with your description of the photos. Many of them are quite complex and non-obvious.

Graham Clarke states it well (far better than I could) in his book The Photograph from the Oxford History of Art series, in this quote from Victor Burgin:

The intelligibility of the photograph is no simple thing; photographs are texts inscribed in terms of what we may call "photographic discourse," but this discourse, like any other, egnages discourses beyond itself, the "photographic text," like any other, is the site of a complex intertextuality, an overlapping series of previous texts "taken for granted" at a particular cultural and historical conjuncture."

Clarke goes on to use several of Diane Arbus' photos as examples, with a quite detailed analysis, which shows despite an apparent simplicity, the photos are about far more than what is called the "one rule" (and remember, all rules exist to be broken), being instead quite complex and deep, without any apparent single subject.

I would use one of my own photographs as an example - click here for an image that has at least five subjects, one of which may be more obvious due to its larger presence, but all of which are embodied in the photograph.

I highly recommend Clarke's book (which is available in most libraries), it explains how photographs are way beyond this "one rule" concept.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), September 30, 2000.


From your caption, Jeff: "...but when I see the stuffed-in look, I just have to shoot."

One subject: "the stuffed-in look"

Hoo, haw, you have genuinely brought a smile to my face! ROTFLOL! Five subjects, indeed! :-D

What you have tossed up is what I term as "art-speak" and "art-fart", aka, "The Emporer Has No Clothes," aka, "Lookit that crazy nekkid white guy!" A snappy quote I've seen: "A picture is worth a thousand words, a slide show is both." From that quote I derive the following: "A lousy picture needs a thousand words to cammoflage it."

Seriously: I make my decisions about photographs based on what I would hang on my wall, and look at year after year. Two years interest, minimum. I have one which has been hanging up there too long. And I was looking through some of my stuff tonight thinking, "Good, bad, bad, bad, bad, good, ..." When I see something of mine that stinks, I don't defend it. I face up to it, it stinks. And I think of why it stinks, and how I can do better the next time.

For the 1999/2000 new year's eve celebration, I attended a church service which had an interesting guest: a Buddist priest. He said that one of the most important things we can do is remove dellusion from our lives. It is easy for us to create for ourselves a world of illusion, to limit our sight, to ignore what is there, and pretend what isn't there is reality. From Plato's Replublic: people in a cave, chained down facing the wall, watching shadows dance, and calling the shadows reality. I liken the art/university clique to those people in the cave, who have chained themselves down to stare at a wall with dancing shadows they call art.

For me, every good print I make has one subject. The description for each picture truly reads, "...". The concept is clear, the subject is clear, words are extraneous.

If someone reads something else into it, that is their own perception. Here's something I read about Escher: A woman phoned up Escher, and told him that one of his prints represented the perfect representation of reincarnation. Escher replied, "Um, sure, if you say so."

Read a book to explain a photograph?? No way! You can read and pontificate as much as you like. I'll go photograph and print.

-- Brian C. Miller (brian.c.miller@gte.net), October 01, 2000.


This really wild conversation proves a theory of mine (well, it proves it to me) that art really happens in at least two "places", once in the head of the artist and once in the head of the viewer. That Brian sees "one" point... or none, and Jeff sees layers of potential meaning says way more about them than it does about the art they are both looking at...

Brian, all the images you invoked as examples of singularly focused efforts, are of incredibly complex subjects. Hell, just the Oswald image is incredibly controversial. What are we seeing there, the assasin of JFK, or not? Who is Jack Ruby? Why is he shooting LHO? And then consider a photograph of a baby, what will she become? Pamela Anderson or Mother Teresa?
-- tom meyer (twm@mindspring.com), October 02, 2000.



Tom: The Ruby-Oswald photo has just one focus, doesn't it? There is one concept there, in sharp relief: the instant of a murder.

The participants are secondary.

If you had absolutely no idea who the people were in that photograph, would that make it any less dramatic? Not for me.

(I always thought it ah, unique, that both Kennedy's murder and Oswald's murder were caught on film.)

As for the baby: speculation, pure speculation.

The mind generates ideas. It constantly produces a fountain of its own thought, churning and churning.

Here you take the merest mention of a photograph, and begin speculating about it. You think about the adult the baby may become, instead of the baby the adult has forgotten. When was the last time that adult laughed as that baby laughed? When was the last time the adult cried as that baby cried? When was the last time that adult was as free as that baby?

Of course we bring our ideas with us when we view anything. One person's trash is another person's treasure. One person misses a photograph, another makes a photograph. Art, business, society. Everything is viewed from within our personal universe, a universe which is truly of our own devising.

-- Brian C. Miller (brian.c.miller@gte.net), October 02, 2000.


"If you had absolutely no idea who the people were in that photograph, would that make it any less dramatic?'

Dramatic? i.e. "Striking in appearance or effect"? In appearance perhaps not, in effect, it would make a huge difference. I believe the greatest content of a photograph is not always conveyed by its objective attributes. Portraits merely show what a person looked like, but we always find some intangible quality that is more impressive than the part of their hair or the color of their eyes in a "good" portrait that will stand the "test of time"... t

And you lost me Brian, with "the baby the adult has forgotten", you're going a little farther than I did/do. "When was the last time the adult cried as that baby cried?" ahhh... I'm not sure how you'd get here from a picture of a baby, unless you were a really unhappy adult. But I think you're starting to prove my point (?). The unclaimed baggage of each veiwer will determine the one (or many) points that any particular image may make.

-- tom meyer (twm@mindspring.com), October 02, 2000.


"But I think you're starting to prove my point (?). The unclaimed baggage of each veiwer will determine the one (or many) points that any particular image may make."

Bingo! If you had absolutely no baggage, then the photograph must stand on its own merit. Otherwise the mind, that messy thought machine, will hook onto the fuzziness in the image, much like Velcro. Then the photograph by itself is truly not an expression of something else, but a snare for the recesses of your mind. A baggage hook.

As a pointer to baggage, I note that you focused on the adult & baby analogy part about the "crying", not on "happy" or "free". Isn't happiness and freedom more important than tears?

So once you ditch the baggage (view from outside the mind), what does the picture actually hold? Only the obvious. A baby. Or in the Ruby-Oswald photograph, a guy being murdered.

That's why, (for me, anyways) photographs such as a portrait must not only show a subject to their best advantage, but to convey something about them as they are, possibly even of where they are going. So the concept within the photograph must be sharp.

The concept that the photograph conveys without regard to the viewer's associated baggage is what I call the transcendental concept. The concept transcends any hooks which the mind holds, and exists beyond its reach.

Quick summary:

With a sharp concept, the photograph transcends the mind.

With a fuzzy concept, the photograph ensnares the mind.

-- Brian C. Miller (brian.c.miller@gte.net), October 02, 2000.


I see your point Brian. The Oswald shot is something like a spontaneous Edggerton photo, but instead of a bullet in an apple it's a bullet in Oswald.

Well, I don't think that a bullet in a guy is anywhere near as interesting as a bullet in the guy that may have shot the 34th President of the USA... or not. And just who, and why is that guy shooting him?

I don't think a human exists that has no baggage. There is no quick summary (from me)... t

-- tom meyer (twm@mindspring.com), October 02, 2000.


and my mind seems more like teflon than velcro... t

-- tom meyer (twm@mindspring.com), October 02, 2000.


I thoroughly enjoyed reading this discussion. Thanks!

To put in MY 2 cents, I think Brian's points make more sense and are more helpful to me as a beginner photographer.

--LMW

-- Leanne Wheeler (leannec@iserv.net), November 20, 2000.


a month later, and I haven't changed my mind... how unusual...

As for happiness being more important than crying, I don't agree with that either. And the ratio of crying to happiness in most people's lives, is heavily weighted tward the crying side. I suppose it's the Buddist in me that recognizes misery as a garanteed experience in life, but happiness as icing on the cake, smaller in proportion and therefore, so much the sweeter...

While Brian's point's may be more relevant to a beginner, my ruminations may prove useful later on... t



-- tom meyer (twm@mindspring.com), November 23, 2000.


"The concept that the photograph conveys without regard to the viewer's associated baggage is what I call the transcendental concept."

any photograph that conveys without regard for the viewer's imagination (baggage, point of view, interpretation, whatever you want to call it) is what I call boring, or forensic...t

-- tom meyer (twm@mindspring.com), November 23, 2000.


From LensWork magazine, No. 32, Nov-Dec 2000.
Interview of John Wimberly by Bill Jay.

BJ: ... It's that ability to see and then rewrite what you see in terms that people can relate to and understand that makes a great piece of art.

JW: Oh, absolutely. The childrens' nursery rhyme Row, Row, Row Your Boat comes to mind. You know, "Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream; Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream." As a children's nursery rhyme, it's very accessible and yet it contains some of the most profound truths that are available to human beings, as far as I am concerned. You can take it on any level you want. You know the stream is the Tao, for instance, and proper attitude is joy and yet it is just a little nursery rhyme. I love that sort of thing.

BJ: Age old wisdom is sometimes the most difficult to see. ...

Fascinating interview. I recommend it highly for everyone.

"Wake up, Neo. The Matrix has you."



-- Brian C. Miller (brian.c.miller@gte.net), November 25, 2000.

I went looking for more "boring, or forensic" photographs, and I found out that this is what somebody awards in prize money for such photographs:

13. For a distinguished example of
breaking news photography in black and
white or color which may consist of a
photograph or photographs, a sequence or an
album, Seven thousand five hundred dollars
($7,500).
14. For a distinguished example of feature
photography in black and white or color,
which may consist of a photograph or
photographs, a sequence or an album, Seven
thousand five hundred dollars ($7,500).

Joe Rosenthal got one of these for his photograph of the Marines planting the American flag on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima.
Robert H. Jackson got one for his photograph of the murder of Lee Oswald by Jack Ruby.

So truly "boring, or forensic" photographs are worth $7,500.
I wouldn't mind making a photograph that "boring, or forensic" myself.

Bring on the boredom! It's real life, and there are awards for it!



-- Brian C. Miller (brian.c.miller@gte.net), November 26, 2000.

Some members of the Alabama State Legislature stood and cheered when it was announced that JFK had been shot. Many older Japanese citizens may have different feelings about the American flag being raised on Iwo Jima, than the average American white eyes. Point of view.

forensic: : relating to or dealing with the application of scientific knowledge to legal problems . Hardly a valid descriptive term for the above stated examples.

And I never said you couldn't get paid for being boring. It can actually pay quite well. Because it's BORING... t

-- tom meyer (twm@mindspring.com), November 28, 2000.


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