Vichiousfishes' photostream

When thinking of photography what comes to mind is when Elvin Jones was asked about his work with Coltrane on "My Favorite things" he is quoted as saying "you's gots to willin' ta' die wit a mudda fuga."

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On Photographing the Stage.

I'll never work in film. One day in my academic career I went out looking for something more fulfilling to pass the time aside from drinking and jerking off between homework assignments. I had noticed an ad in the college paper about a film club getting started on campus and figured it would be a good chance to learn more about lighting theory and production. I walked home the three blocks to my apartment that night, under a cool early spring breeze with that previous notion in my head.

What bothers me about film production is that the complexity of making several teams, tumescent themselves, together to create one frame of exposed film a few hundred times a minute just brain-fucks me. For stills, we get the makeup and location together, (effectively) press a few buttons and great art is guaranteed, provided you, the photographer didn't eff it up. It is your work, the blame or the honor is yours due to the fact that the entire product was always yours from the start.

In the theater I find the efforts are well spread. I write this next piece less an education in drama theory, nonetheless, there are four main parts of a stage production: the artistic side, writing/directing; the technical, lights/set design; the production, actors/music; and what I am most familiar with, the PR, front of house and advertising. In this latter subsection of a stage production the still photographer has an inherent and equal role. The end product does not depend on him, rather he is representing the production on behalf of the audience. They will anticipate and remember it by his hand, while the experience was theirs.

Given this position, there are cardinal rules every photographer of the stage must follow. His photographs must answer to the ego of the lighting director, the writer, the actors, the costume designer and the makeup artist. Not to mention his direct superiors in front of house. The photographer is an artisan in the traditional sense of being a servant, painting an alter piece at the call of the Vatican. His discretion is the skill which he brings to his role in the production. The photographer's feelings must react to the drama and unfold with it as the audience would. He must also bring the very basic skill of a still photographer, the ability to then equate these feelings in a given single frame.

The cardinal rules of stage photography are 1) Never use flash. A small proscenium can use more than 100 lighting instruments which a full time lighting designer spent months hanging and focusing. This is to create mood and tell the story. Then the photographer can come in and override that work in a fraction of a second. 2) Never represent the play as it will not be. That is if an actor is not wearing a mask or holding a prop, that photo can not be used. These complications are common even after the photocall, but one must make those decisions if a particular shot is good enough for the application and if the missing element is miniscule enough to be omitted without notice of those involved. 3) Do not take a photo as the audience will not see it. You may be granted access to the wings or even to meander down stage at times but this is not how the play was meant to be seen. Sight lines are an overlooked vocabulary word in drama 101 classes but it pertains greatly to this. A director makes his choices about blocking for the practical purposes of being able to see the show as well as the artistic side of the composition of the stage. Taking pictures from an appropriate sight lines is an offence to the director himself who is likely also your contact!

The stage has a long standing tradition of photography. It requires a team effort in which all personal sensibilities are valid. The ego is checked and balanced within the gentlemanly exchange of ideas. The courtship of the camera with the drama itself as a reified entity is what makes good pictures. And the ethereal presence of the theater is why these photos have to be made. I will never work in film because the role of the camera is brutish. It becomes a phallus, the exchange is meant for the camera as end-user as far as anyone involved can phathom; and the quality of that depends on the performance of the photography department, DP to gaffer and all homogenized egos in between.

-Addendum. I write this to preserve the traditions of the photographer, and the woodcutter before him. With the concern over economic efficiency and false prophet of the pocket digital camera I fear these traditions will be lost to the ages. The way political upheaval made people not worry about learning to make concrete brought a great civilization from the point of building the Coliseum to crude stone walled brutes, so bloated they just fall down, 15ft thick at the base; I fear the gentle elegance of a photograph will be lost to the family snapshot. If nothing else I quote Joel Meyerowitz on his thoughts about the Aftermath project: the record has to exist. I do it perhaps not so much for the eulogy of the given show, but of photography.


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Photographic Approaches; Addendum to Andreas Feininger's Photographic Seeing.

In 1973 Feininger lists the three approaches from the attitude of the photographer as; the unsophisticated-natural approach, the scientific-objective approach and the expressionistic-subjective approach. These are estimated as the real, the unreal and the hyper-real, respectively. The natural being how a person sees with their eye and attempts to capture that same seen on film, disproportionately unsuccessfully as a matter of the differences in how human eyes and cameras "see." The objective approach is identified by its unemotional, documentary nature: the scientific document as it were. The subjective approach consists of but not limited to the "artful" sensibility of an image capturing media. This is defined by the use of the abilities and limitations of the media to make a statement and "express (the photographer's) personal view of the depicted subject" (Feininger, p. 120, 1973).
Given the changes in the world of photography, social environment and ways of thinking in the past 37 years, entering a zenith of change with the introduction of digital, I propose a new set of approaches to photography; the Conscience, the Metaconscious and the Unconscious. These can be estimated as; in the world, of the world and out of the world, respectively.

The conscious approach is defined by the photographer being adeptly part of the world he or she photographs. The view is that of the insider. It was first introduced to the greater world By Larry Clark and his book Tulsa (1971). However this was not an unheard style of long before this publication by such photographers as Henri Jacques Lartigue. The camera is not an intrusion to a person's life. It is inclusive to their lives. In this approach the viewer is being brought into the environment by the photographer, this is the viewer as photographer. He or she acts as a conduit on the part of the later viewer. These pictures tend to be emotional, intimate and reported as they are seen, somewhat homologues to the naturalistic approach described by Feininger. These principals are most robustly embodied by the Lomography style seen today.

The metaconscious approach is one of the photographer being outside of the subjects they photograph. His of her job is to look upon the world and see it for what it is in reality to the best of their estimation of such. This is a more traditional approach first popularized in America by the works of Garry Winogrand and the Americana photographers such as Stephen Shore. The photographer is looking at the world as a picture book and taking pages out of that book to show others. This book being the real world that he of she is physically a part of while not interacting with beyond his or her position to document it. These pictures take on a analytical feel. This approach denotes the photographer as viewer of the subjects he or she documents. The principles of this approach are most robustly embodied by the street style of photography.

The unconscious approach does not engage the world at all. This is somewhat homologues to Feininger's objective approach. These are well staged documents meant to most effectively describe the object in their true, unemotional actuality. This can be seen in scientific documents, found object, still life or macro photography.

It is important to note that every approach described here can be subcategorized as artistic or realistic. That is, either depicted as they are estimated to have been seen by the naked eye or purposely distorted for "artistic" effect. The unconscious approach can also be artistically distorted for example when done with street signs,. The dead-pan juxtaposition of the world as it is falls under that approach, such as a can of cigarette butts under a "no smoking" sign.

The primary reason I feel a need to make a new distinction between the approaches to photographic attitudes is the ever increasing popularity of the digital media. With the very real opportunity for anyone with a few hundred dollars to contribute to the world of photography, I feel the distinction must be made between those who see the world and those who are part of the world; as both take on a duty to record it from their own perspective. Both are valid approaches, however the difference being from what one true and utter reality a person sees it from; the the viewer as photographer or the photographer as viewer.

Clark, L. (1971) Tulsa, New York: Grove Press.

Feininger, A. (1973) Photographic Seeing, London: Prentice Hall.

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An Essay on the art of Photography.

With the fair in town I went out to take some pictures. This summer has been a little boring as some plans fell through so my days are spent on photography forums typing furiously at children to be more creative with their pictures. Just a note, an over edited macro eye did qualify for finals at the photography competition at the fair, yuck. But as I was walking around looking for my shots I noticed a change in my own perspective of the world. I ask you this, what is photography but as way to record one's perspective of the world? A photographer is someone who endures working against machines and media to bring their mind to physicality for others to see. And insomuch, my vision has changed.
On the opening day of the fair my flickr stats have been overrun by Google searches and my pictures from the event last year being looked at. Looking back exactly one year at my work of Martin Parr inspired documents of everyday life and obvious influences from my studies in the gospel according to Meyerowitz I see a vast difference in how I personally see the world and my photos. Passing people at benches and food stands I walked by, not photographing them because I do not see them anymore, the way I may have before. The world (or this town, at any rate) was new and exiting and the "heart of small town America" was walking by my window every morning and evening in droves, fat, drunk and happy. However after one year here this has become my town for the time being; and my "visual description" of it would be like asking a fish "how's the water?"
As for the children, the world of internet photography is inherently overrun by macro eyes, converse shoes, duck-faces in the mirror with the pop flash, pets, moms, little sisters, stoned friends, feet in sand, feet in puddles, feet crushing kittens, feet being licked, Brazilian women pooping on eachother, two lemons and pinch of salt. (Or something like that). And as a naturally curious photographer and science-ticion I couldn't help but wonder, why?
Putting two and two together I have come to the conclusion that it's just the mind of a child. My world as a 20-something stinkin' yank in the real America was to bring the lost face of the country to the larger masses. Logically the small towns have more people as a collective than the cities do, but the cities have the advertising agencies and therefore the power. My vision that I want to record on to media for you all to see now has grown or at least altered to... something else. To see it in the moment would be difficult. To pretend to know what it is would be foolish. But this is my art and I make the effort to allow it grow with me. Making art for who I was a year ago would not be making art. Making art for the sake of what has been denoted as making art or otherwise qualified by outside forces is not making art in actuality. That, my friends is why macro eyes suck.

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I went to the city with Bresson in mind. I was trained in street photography as a kid in NY, now with a proper camera and some knowledge and experience I was going to do it on the streets of Portland. But I quickly learned that the city (or at least Portland anyway) doesn't take to street photography very well, at least not the same way my rural college town has. I trained myself in it's well organized corridors during my exile; to be hasted back someday to the real world as it's prodigal son. The country is about it's people. It's the faces and the humanity that makes a document of life here and how said humans... are; a very traditional subject environment relationship. The city doesn't have a humanity. At least not that it's willing to show you as you pass it by. The city is about the things and the stuff. In the city to find the humanity you have to look at what the people have done. There's a picture in here of a pair of pants, filthy and bunched up in a door way. [http://www.flickr.com/photos/vichiousfishes/4707918020/sizes/t/in/photostream/] I think that one has more of a face than anything else in the set. There were a few Winnogrand-esc shots but I don't think I'm going to use them. They just don't capture what I was trying to do.
There's an old picture of cannon balls in a field (Fenton, 1855). And it says more about what it was like to be a solider than the Death of a Loyalist Solider picture. That one has it's place in photography but it's mostly sensationalistic. The one with the cannon balls on the ground tells what it was like to be there as they fell. The Jeans in my pictures tells what it was like to be homeless in the city. I believe it shows the humanity in the man who took them off by showing that even he who has nothing still refuses to wear pants that filthy. No matter how low he is still a human.
I asked to take a few pictures of homeless people like that Life story in the 70's. but 'm starting to think the postmodernists were right. There is nothing that I can find in the human faces. I only see a representation of homeless people in any specific face, not any truth or humanity. I only see a magazine cover, not the story behind it. Diane Arbus said if you want to represent the everyman, the more specific it is the more general it will become. And the faces that the city people are willing to give me are all prepackaged. They show me what they want me to see, and that's just not good enough.
I have to get them when they are not looking and given what I just said about the postmodernist "not looking" doesn't mean spy shots or anything to do with faces. The problem is you get a sense of self-ism in the city. Not selfishness but just a general resignation that shit fucks up so what and just go about your day. Not irrational to me. A Greenpeace representative asked me to donate. For the oil spill. I said every 10 years or so there's a massive disaster that was going to and probably did ruin the earth. So what. You really can't do anything about it so why bother. That is selfism. Given that approach, I think as long as it's not in one's direct field of view it is not of themselves and therefore doesn't fall under the guidelines of representing "me" in the greater world. It has nothing o do with my face and therefore I can let my guard down and show a truth about myself for someone to capture on film. This is when they are not looking. When they go inside and you the photographer see the old ladies wind chimes and gnomes on a 5th floor balcony. The "kiss me I'm Irish" mug on a desk in an office window. These are the things that show you a little truth about someone that you can capture on film in the city.

Fenton, R. (1955). Vally of the shadow of death. Getty Museum.

Cappa, F. (1936). Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death, Cerro Muriano, September 5, 1936.


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If artwork is the ability to evoke emotion in terms that cannot be properly expressed by way of descriptive language outward, then the description must be presented in a way that the viewer can experience it firsthand where it will be presented inward; then photographic art is the medium used to present events and emotions of the physical world as opposed to other fully and meticulous mediums of which are used to present the events and emotions of the imagination. Emotions of the latter are therefore logically a skewed and reproduced rendition of events and emotions that were experience in the prior. Making photographs a more direct road to secondhand emotion in it's purest form.






Please check out this lecture by Dr. V.S. Ramachandran, He is one of my biggest influences in both art and psychology as he has managed to validate them both with reciprocity.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NzShMiqKgQ



Check out my Youtube.

www.youtube.com/user/vichiousfishes