"After Photography" by Fred Ritchin

Amazon

Looking at my blog you would think I barely read any books on photography, not the case, almost all the reading I do these days is on the subject of Photography, I just don't get around to writing about it as often as I should.  Partly laziness, partly a difficulty in summarizing and expressing my thoughts about what I read.  I have a tendency to read a lot of material rather superficially forming a progressively composite view of how I understand what I have read.

I am also blessed with little or no memory for details, hence my original choice of Mathematics and Physics from A-level through to Ph.D., very little to actually learn but a great deal to understand.  When I was 26 years old, if asked I would describe my profession as a Theoretical Physicist, I was employed by the then Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) as a research fellow at Imperial College.  Theory was my meat and drink, I spent my days reading papers, developing ideas and then implementing them as mathematical arguments or computer simulations.  As time passed I realized the computing side was more my thing than Physics and I stepped away from my academic career into the commercial world of the computer industry.

I have regrets, very little I have done since has challenged or stimulated me as science once did.  On the other hand the change in career led me to Germany, to the love of my life, Heidi, and eventually to this study of photography.  The OCA has put back into my life the love of learning and the challenge of solving problems for the sake of it.

BUT, as a former theoretical scientist, I am finding photographic theory very difficult to read and to comprehend.  With Physics there is a complex language, but a logical flow of ideas from postulate to conclusion.  In art theory there is an awful lot of discussion, frequently in opaque language, without any hard conclusions.  Everything is an opinion and if built upon evidence, that evidence tends to be other opinions.  At no point is there a beginning or end.   This is not in of itself right or wrong, it is the practice in art theory, however, to the student schooled in the logic of mathematics it is very difficult to organize as a personal thought process.  My inability to process abstract ideas coupled with a very poor memory makes this an almost insurmountable problem.  Oddly I am very good at general knowledge quizzes  none of my neighbours will play Trivial Pursuits against me any more, I even beat them playing the German version, and I don't speak German.  They tried getting me drunk, I just got better at remembering odd bits of information.  Somewhere all of this is stored, it is my index system that seems to be broken.

Recently I ordered a few books on photographic theory and criticism, including the rather dry "Criticizing Photographs" by Terry Barrett and a couple of books by Roland Barthes and Robert Adams.  I am currently reading "Why People Photograph" by Adams having chickened out once more from tackling Barthes and really enjoying it, very refreshing and to the point, review to come soon.  Among that order was the book about which I am writing this blog entry.  Ritchins takes a philosophical look at the impact of digital technology on photography and how it is changing or might change the medium.  First off this is a very accessible and readable book, the ideas are well put with an appropriate level of discussion.  He asks many questions and provides if not an answer at least his won thoughts about what might happen.

It has prompted a good many thoughts for me about the medium I am studying and where I sit within that world.  The essential premise of the book is that digital photography is a completely new animal, almost without relation to what came before it, in a sense he suggests that in the 21st century digital is to analogue what photography was to painting in the 19th.  I am not so sure.  I think he is mixing digital distribution with digital photography.  Almost all of the points he makes are about how photographs are used rather than how they are created.  The use case he describes is equally true for modern analogue photography in which almost all images are scanned to digital prior to being printed.  Once in the digital domain an analogue photograph is no different to a digital one.

A digital sensor is different to an analogue one, physics versus chemistry, however, at the most basic level both do essentially the same thing, they each measure the numbers of photons striking a 2 dimensional point in space.  Each then translates that into a meaningful signal, whether that is a flow of electrons or the number of atoms shifted from one state to another, it is still a measurement of photonic energy per square millimeter   Analogue has the virtue or vice of being more random and that the response function of the "sensor" is non-linear, but this is not something that cannot be simulated in Digital to the extent that the unaware could not tell the difference.

Where I do agree with Ritchin is that once an image enters the digital domain from wherever it originates it is transformed into something other than a photograph.  The ability to embed further information into the photograph, the ability to link context to image, the ability to distribute almost without limit, all make digital a far more democratic medium than analogue.  Above all digital is highly accessible, everyone in the developed world and increasingly the developing one has a camera embedded in their phone with the ability to create and transmit images in a fashion that even 5 years ago could not be comprehended.  Controlling photographic record by governments or corporations is no longer practical.  Abu Graib and other recent occurrences such as the British soldiers who photographed themselves murdering a prisoner illustrate that even that most secret and controlled of government bodies, the military, is now transparent in their actions.

It also changes the very nature of what it is to be a photographer, the torrent of vernacular images created and uploaded every day to the social web questions the value of the news photographer, a search engine can probably do a better job of recording events than sending a single person with a camera.  Ritchin points out that most so called news photography today is of pre-organized events created for photographers.  He illustrates this with two photographs of a group of US soldiers "invading" Grenada.  In the first shot  distributed as "news", soldiers are hitting the deck weapons ready hiding behind cover with a helicopter hovering in the background.  In the second, a different angle shows the same soldiers and a row of 10 or so photographers crouching in front of them capturing the "action" shot.

Where I started to lose a little faith with the book was when he started to use Physics to illustrate the difference between digital and analogue.  He used the change from Newtonian mechanics to both relativistic theory and quantum mechanics as a parallel.  I disagree on almost every level with this.  First of all Newtonian mechanics is still as valid and useful as it ever was, it is simply a macroscopic approximation that averages across micro and nano scale behaviours.  The introduction of relativistic theory did not invalidate newtonian physics it extended an existing theory.  It is also a bad comaprison with Digital as relativity is an analogue theory, it deals with time which has no quantum nature and gravity which does, but only at a scale we cannot yet effectively probe.  Time is non-linear as is space and both are affected by gravity, this is the general theory of relativity, however, neither have a digital analogue.  he is on safer ground with quantum mechanics, but again this theory did not invalidate what came before it extended it and fitted into a continuum of theoretical physics.  This makes the parallel to the idea that digital is fundamentally changing photography very weak in my view.  I don't disagree that digital is changing photography, however, keep physics out of it.  Analogue photography is no less a product of quantum mechanics than digital photography.

A really great book, with truly thought provoking ideas.  AND one that brought my first academic love into collision with my current one.  Even though I disagree with the parallel made thinking and writing about it was invigorating.  It might not help me to understand photographic theory, but it is a start.

"The Ongoing Moment" by Geoff Dyer

Amazon

A learning outcome from the Leeds weekend was the development of an interest in the psychology of photography, with a realization that I know sod all about the subject.  Over the weekend both Freud and Jung were referenced but without me being able to appreciate the comments. This combines with a growing need to deepen my understanding of how people look at photographs and how elements within a photograph influence the reading of the text of the image. In my early naivety about image making I thought it was all about the intent of the photographer, that this established the meaning of the photograph.  Both through further reading, but also the personal experience of looking at photographs, I realize that this is only a part of the story.  But to what degree does the context in which the photograph is viewed and by whom it is viewed affect the reading?  Photographs with their supposed connection to reality are often mistakenly seen to be carrying a literal and fixed meaning, a moment of history ossified  by the click of a button.  However, this is evidently not true, social documentary photographs of 1930's poverty shook people at the time and now often evoke a sense of nostalgia for simpler times.  However, what is this process of viewing and how does the mindset of the viewer change the experience.

To that  end I requested advice on a good introductory text that ideally addressed the psychology of photographs or even simply a good overview of the field.  The reply from Jose Navarro on the OCA student website was to read this volume, a good recommendation, but one that answered a different but related question.  I was looking to understand the psychology of the consumer, whereas this book firmly addresses the psychology of the producer. Dyer weaves a narrative through the 20th century history of predominantly American photographers and how they influenced each other.  He does this by reference to certain key themes in photographs, often mundane yet powerfully linking.  These include blind beggars, hats, gas stations, doorways, even broken down park benches.  He explains how these metaphors for societal change have fascinated photographers and created strings of images that feed upon one another, visually linking a group of practitioners many of whom never met one another.  Interesting anecdotes pepper the text, particularly Alfred Stieglitz's sex life,  perhaps here is the link to Freud, much of the motivation seems to be sexually driven.

The book deals with why and how notable photographers created what they did and what motivated them to do it in the first place.  The focus on common themes and the way in which each photographer added their personal stamp to that subject addresses one of the problems I wrestle with as I progress, how to do something original.  I, and I think many other students, still fixate on subject matter, however, what the book illustrates is that style is more important in defining the output of one photographer versus another.  Subject is important and differentiates, say, a social documentarian from a landscape photographer, however, within a given domain it is the how and not the what that establishes a photographers signature.  Over time subjects remain remarkably fixed, we return to them again and again, but it is how we return to them that counts!

To conclude, the book does not really address my starting question, i.e. how the reading of photographs is influenced by the reader and how this reading has changed with the evolution of society.  What it does is to answer another question that has been in the back of my mind for some time, is a unique subject needed for unique photography?  Clearly the answer is no.  Indeed there may be immense value in looking for subject matter in the canon of photography, but working in my own style.  Just need to develop that style!

"A Short Guide to Writing about Art" by Sylvan Barnet

Amazon

Writing my Landscape essay this year proved less difficult than I had expected, although I prevaricated for months before finally sitting down and writing the first draft.  This should not be too surprising, I have written final year degree papers, a Ph.D. Thesis, numerous scientific papers, and a bunch of marketing crap I would rather forget.  However, to date almost all of my writing has been technical and essentially based upon the idea of presenting a thesis (or theory) and then progressively substantiating that proposition with scientific evidence.

Writing about art is a very different activity, requiring alternate approaches and strategies.  When I wrote about Gursky I tried to imagine myself as a feature writer for a broadsheet newspaper, writing an in depth review of an artist.  I essentially posed a question in almost tabloid fashion and then set out to explain why this was so, ending with another open question.  Evidently this worked, my tutor was quite happy and no revisions were requested, both surprising and very relieving.

So far so good, but I do recognize the need to further improve my writing and in particular my organization of material that I include in essays.  I also need a better understanding of the different approaches to writing about art, criticism versus research, comparative studies versus single artist retrospectives.

"A Short Guide To Writing about Art" by Sylvan Barnet has provided many of the answers I was seeking.  This very well structured and remarkably readable book provides a straightforward guide to all forms of writing.  The book encompasses critical essays, single work critiques, comparatives,  exhibition reviews, catalog entries, and research papers.

Barnet illustrates the text with example phrases, paragraphs, even complete student essays.  This enables a potentially dry subject to come alive and gave me the opportunity to see quality essays written by other students.  A key challenge of remote learning is the lack of an easy path to compare ones own work with that of other students.  With our photographic work we have forums such as Flikr that hint at what other students are doing, there exists no such thing for written work.  I think I heard of a plan by the OCA to exhibit some of the better student essays as a reference point, but see no evidence so far.

In addition to a clear guide to writing the author also provides a brief introduction to the major themes in contemporary art writing, essentially setting out a series of possibilities upon which an essay might be based.  These themes also serve to provide a potted guide to the key issues in art and I have to admit I found them both illuminating and entertaining.

Throughout the the author provides a set of essay dos and don'ts, touching on grammar, punctuation, style, 1st versus 3rd person, paragraph design, and capitalization guides to artistic terminology.  She goes a step further and also addresses cultural issues that need to be treated sensitively such as gender, race, sexuality, and even the perjorative use of the word primitive when applied to Tribal art.

Overall this is an excellent guide to the process of writing about art, in my view it contains the essential knowledge needed for writing an OCA essay.  I can only wish I had found the damn book before writing about Andreas Gursky.  This small volume is set to become a well used reference book as I work towards the 3rd year courses.

Reading: How to Read a Photograph by Ian Jeffrey

I first came across Ian Jeffrey as the author of Photography: A Concise History, a year or so ago whilst I was studying DPP.  I found his writing informative and accessible especially when compared to many of the so called introductory volumes on theory or history I had bounced off in disgust.  I was quite surprised to find that the above book was the course book for Social Documentary - a pleasant surprise.

This led me back to my book shelf and another of those books bought with great intent at the start of TAOP.  When I first looked at Ian Jeffrey's "How to Read a Photograph" I was really disappointed.  I was expecting something quite prescriptive that would tell me how to actually read a photograph and also was disappointed that the photographers featured were mostly from a long time ago and that almost all the content was in B&W.

How time changes out outlook!  In a recent posting on Flickr Dewald asked what had we learned about ourselves from studying photography, a series of amusing but flippant answers rapidly gathered.  However, one major development for me personally is that I now have a completely different view of art and in particular what I enjoy in looking at photographs.  Reading this book now was another of those journeys through photographic history, but this time with an excellent and very articulate guide.

Apart from delivering a chronology of the greats of photography, this book also reveals biographical snippets about the artists that helps to understand why they did what they did.  Why did mid-20th century British and American photography develop such a social consciousness, the emigres from fascist oppression brought with them a completely new world view: Bill Brandt, Ben Shahn, and to a degree Robert Frank brought a central European outlook to the photography of the cities of the west.  What sets this book apart from other of its ilk is the quality and quantity of the accompanying photographs, the text is a minor element, this is visual history. My primary complaint is that is stops too soon, although written in 2008, contemporary photographers such as those from the German school are absent, however, this is a minor critique.

A particular takeaway for me was the inclusion of Japanese photographers; TomatsuShomei, Nakahira Takuma, and Moriyama Daido, the first real exposure I have had to their work.  Taking them together (probably inadvisable) there is a much closer engagement with the subject, often self revelatory and very gritty.  As I work through my self study I find myself using a similar approach getting in close and not worrying about the finer elements of pixel poking.

The only beef I have with this book is the general observation that I suspect Jeffrey reads far more into the photographs than was intended at the time of the shutter press.  With some photographers I am sure there is a great deal of thought given to allegory and metaphor, however, I also think even then this happened in the darkroom not necessarily the studio or street.

Reading

A key question that I have been asking myself for the past 3 years studying with the OCA, is what makes a photograph art?  More recently I have started to question what makes anything art and have been investigating a little art history and philosophy.  Recently, however, I returned to the history of Photography and a book that arrived with my TAOP course materials.  A recent student debate over how readable "The Photograph" by Graham Clarke is sparked my interest.  I got about half way through this first time around and simply got bored, how would I take to it with the hindsight of 3 years of reading photographic texts.

I can confirm that it is rather badly written, but provides a very concise and interesting review of both historical and contemporary photography.  Clarke, like many academics, takes great joy in using 100 words where 10 might have done.  He also makes allusions that are not easily understood by a beginner to the world of photographic art at whom this book is targeted.  Reading the book was like a journey through all the key photographers whose names and images appear again and again in historical or critical texts.  The scope and coverage makes the book worthwhile, he really does address most key practitioners and movements.

Of more interest to me right now was a short volume by Cynthia Freeland, "But is it Art?", an introduction to the theories behind what makes an object a work of art.

Freeland considers the essential properties of an object defined as art, from the religious through to the highly theoretical.  A key part of the text is a discussion of how different cultures elevate objects to a status of art, even if technically art is perhaps not what they have in mind for what is frequently a spiritual object.  She also addresses controversial works such as "Piss Christ" a very large photo of a crucifix in a vat of urine.  Why is this art, it is visually interesting, but most of all it provokes thought and introspection.  The more the religious right railed against it in the US the greater it's status grew as an art form, the work created controversy and asked real questions - given that Christianity already has a body fluid obsession why so much outrage .

The concepts are well described, but still difficult to grasp, I guess I am struggling still to understand why something is art, it clearly is not a purely aesthetic consideration.  My key take away from the book is this idea that a work of art must engage the viewer and ask questions, something that I think photography can do very well.