Photographers on Photography, How the Masters See, Think & Shoot. 2018, Edited by Henry Carroll, Laurence King Publishing Limited. London. ISBN:978-1-78627-318-5
I recently took this book out of the library, and I found it very interesting. I have copied passages for future reference. This book was very well illustrated with example photos of the artist’s work.
Here we have a selection of quotations, photographs and interviews that offer telling insights into the minds of masters. Serving as brief introductions to the big ideas, these collective viewpoints form a thought-provoking photography primer that will enrich your understanding of the medium you love.
Aimed at the critically curious, think of this book as an extension to my, Read This If You Want To Take Great Photographs series. While that offers a foundation for the technical aspects of photography, this offers an introduction to the more philosophical. Expect different opinions ranging from the personal to the practical, the esoteric to the enlightening. These varied voices come from all genres and eras and include reflections on contemporary concerns, as well as some timeless statements from the old masters.
Absorb, question, agree or disagree with what they have to say (and what I have to say, for that matter) to piece together your own distinctive philosophy of photography. So dip in and out when in need of a creative pick-me-up, or simply turn the page to start on an ever-deepening journey into the most enigmatic art of them all.
‘People ask, “What camera do you use?” I say. “You don’t ask a writer what typewriter he uses.”’ Man Ray.
‘A photograph is usually looked at – seldom looked into.’ Ansel Adams.
‘Photos don’t get better when they’re bigger.’ Hellen van Meene.
Size has a profound impact on how we relate to photographs. Size has a profound impact on how we relate to photographs. small enough that it fits into a wallet or so big that it fills an entire wall. How, then, do photographers know how big or small to print their pictures? Hellen van Meene, reminds us that a photograph’s size is an extension of its concept.
Influenced by the ‘quietness’ of Dutch painting, van Meene uses natural light and domestic settings to photograph adolescent girls who appear lost in thought. She then prints her photographs small (around 28 centimetres/11 inches) because she wants to draw us in, she wants us to physically stand closer, she wants us to have a private encounter so that we feel the introspection of her subjects. If her encounter so that we feel the introspection of her subjects. If her photographs were larger, we would interact with them very differently. We would need to stand back, it would be hard to take everything in all at once and the viewing experience would likely be shared with others; the physical photographs themselves would conflict with the subject matter and the meaning or mood the photographer is trying to convey.
‘The more conscious I am of why I’m taking it, the less successful the picture turns out to be.’ Fay Godwin. Even for landscape photographers like Fay Godwin, who have time to slow down and contemplate what they are seeing, it seems that overthinking is best avoided. I imagine the only thing running through Godwin’s mind in the lead-up to this exposure was, there’s something about that mountain, there’s something about that cloud. This is often the level at which a landscape photographer’s conscious mind is operating, because to capture that elusive something means trusting, rather than questioning, their intuition.
Perhaps it was only afterwards in the darkroom that Godwin could fully articulate exactly what she was responding to at the time of exposure. In this case, it was the contrast between the mountain – dark, solid, permanent – and the cloud – white, weightless and ephemeral. Yet when it becomes apparent that the mountain is, in fact, flat, the billowing cloud lends it the perfect peak. The something that Godwin saw was two opposites of nature that, for a few moments, became totally dependent on each other.
‘It’s way more important to know how to take a picture than to use a camera.’ Olivia Bee.
‘There are no rules. But sometimes you need parameters.’ Todd Hido.
Here, Todd Hido reminds us that too much creative freedom can lead to incoherence, while too tight a brief can be stifling. For his ‘Landscape’ series, Hido made painterly photographs of beautifully bleak roadside scenes shot through the misty windows of his car. Photographing through the moisture blurs the boundary between what’s near and far, between what’s inside and outside. The glass acts as both a window and a screen, creating images layered with metaphorical clarity and confusion.
‘What’s the point of taking a nice picture?’ Maisie Cousins.
Nice pictures, the kind we see in fashion and lifestyle magazines, are not challenging. They tend to reinforce stereotypes and tell us things we already know; this place is beautiful or that person is pretty. For Cousins, this approach to photography is unhealthily inoffensive and misrepresentative of who or what we are. In particular, her stance against conventional niceness in photography is a rejection of how women have been represented in the past. Rather than aim to idealize individuals for their surface beauty, Cousins reminds us that we are all products of nature. Regardless of looks, you, me and Taylor Swift are just lumps of meat kept alive by an acidic concoction of bodily fluids. If that’s the undeniable truth, then what is the point of taking a nice picture?
‘I’ve come to believe that beauty can be a very powerful conveyor of difficult ideas. It engages people when they might otherwise look away.’ Richard Misrach.
Beauty and photography have a complicated relationship. There are photographers who are content to make pretty pictures that are appreciated momentarily for their surface beauty. Then there are other photographers, like Richard Misrach, who use beauty to ask more of their audience. Yet this is difficult territory because, if handled wrongly, the seductive look of a work can add a layer of superficiality wrongly, that dilutes its meaning.
Misrach’s ‘Desert Cantos’ series is undeniably beautiful. His compositions are classic: he photographs when the light is best and his large prints are pin sharp and rich with detail. However, he overlays this aesthetic on subject matter that would typically challenge our notions of beauty. Here we see the wreckage of what looks like an American school bus in a desert landscape. But this isn’t the aftermath of a homeland attack. In a perverse twist, the only aggressor here is the US military, who used this symbol of American values for target practice in the Nevada Desert. For Misrach, the most effective use of beauty is to reflect on ugliness.
‘Photographing people is a collaboration, a threesome even. The camera being the third party.’ Harley Weir.
Few inanimate objects have such a dramatic physical and psychological effect on people as the camera. It’s like a gun in that respect, loaded with the unseen eyes of an audience, eyes that will ultimately cast judgment in one form or another. It’s not surprising, then, that a photographer like Harley Weir, who takes intimate photographs of women, is well aware of the camera’s voyeuristic connotations and the effect this has on her subjects. It’s something we can begin to feel here, when looking at this photographic ménage à trois.
With her clearly defined shadow being cast on the model, Weir puts herself in the picture and becomes very much part of the performance. This splitting of the photographer’s presence, or position, heightens our awareness of our own gaze. We’re no longer passively seeing through the eyes of the photographer and instead observe both parties in front of us, while at the same time finding ourselves between them. There’s a peculiar sense that we are ‘the third party’. Rather than seeing through the eyes of the photographer, it’s as if we are in, or we are, the camera.
‘Things usually don’t develop quite as imagined, but that often leads to the best work.’ ESTHER TEICHMANN
‘When you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts.’ Garry Winogrand. use a recently coined term, presenting ‘alternative facts’ is what photographs and photographers do best. For instance, what does Garry Winogrand’s photograph show? A relaxed young couple holding two chimps? Or an anxious, mixed-race couple holding two chimps?
Winogrand knew exactly what he was doing when he framed this couple. And ‘framed’ they were, because Winogrand was making a statement that his subjects were not necessarily party to in real life. In this case, he exploited the frozen moment and isolating nature of the frame to create a contentious image that raised difficult questions about race.
Winogrand himself was not being judgemental. His intention was to shift the role of judgement to the viewer by making them reflect on their own gaze and social prejudices. And remember this was 1967, a time when interracial relationships were still ‘noticed’. Especially by the playfully provocative eye of a photographer like Winogrand.
PHOTO Central Park Zoo, New York City, 1967. https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/104B11
‘When a person looks at a photograph you’ve taken, they will always think of themselves.’ Jason Fulford.
These pictures from Jason Fulford’s playfully titled book Raising Frogs for $$$ show specific subjects, yet it is left up to us to ascertain their possible meaning and connections. It’s like a game in which players draw on their own personal history to make sense of the clues they are offered. Ultimately, this means the photographs have no they are offered.
For Fulford, a photograph is similar to a psychologist’s ink blot because, right after we interpret the literal aspects of the image (which in these photographs are the sky, tree, chairs and so on), we enter into a second, much more personal reading. This second reading is informed by elements such as our memories, personal experiences, tastes and cultural background. In other words, the first reading is based
‘Let there be no doubt about it, photography is easy. Anyone can take a Photography is the easiest art, which perhaps makes it the hardest.’ Lisette Model.
Let there be no doubt about it, photography is easy. Anyone can take a photo. Anyone can take a good photo. Anyone can take a great photo. That’s if we assume, as most of the population does, that a great photo should be in focus, well exposed and show a pretty subject. Lisette Model, however, didn’t subscribe to that definition of ‘great’. Her gritty street photographs taken in the 1940s were direct and in close, depicting working-class and destitute subjects that polite society of the time preferred to overlook. With full and characterful compositions that captured tender, expressive and socially pointed New York moments, Model achieved the hardest thing of all with the easiest of arts. She showed how a medium so adept at recording the surface of society can, in fact, be used to reveal the humanity of what lies beneath.
PHOTO Sailor and Girl, Sammy’s Bar, 1940. https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/106F9A
‘The photography most respect pull something out of the ether of nothingness.’ Paul Graham.
A black man mows the grass as it starts to rain. Canned goods sit on sparsely stocked shelves. A stranger walks down the street en route to nowhere. A blazing sunset. People wait for the lights to change. A bird flies overhead. An elderly white woman collects her mail at the bottom of her driveway. A Hispanic man walks past a cat. And then points to something. Black kids play basketball on a suburban street. The moon rises over a gas station.
These are some of the photographic glimpses Paul Graham offers us in ‘a shimmer of possibility’, a photo essay about modern America that weaves together unrelated encounters and observations. Counter to photography’s usual function, Graham doesn’t point his camera at anything that would appear worth remembering, such as this sequence which fixates on a man taking a cigarette break. However, by peering into this ‘ether of nothingness’, Graham reveals a prosaic profundity that memorializes moments that we can all relate to. The kind of everyday moments when something or someone, for whatever reason, catches our eye. The moments that we mull over as we walk on by or stop to observe a little longer. The moments that we then file away in a messy corner of our mind called ‘Reality’.
Las Vegas, from the series ‘a shimmer of possibility’, 2005. https://www.paulgrahamphotography.com/a-shimmer-of-possibility
‘You don’t want to feel the artificiality of the image, you want to believe in it.‘ Viviane Sassen.
Ambiguity with its foothold in reality rather than artifice is exactly the line that Sassen likes to tread. She doesn’t use digital post-production gimmicks, the kind that cause a photograph to slip into fakery or total invention, and instead creates visual intrigue through the purest of means: the quality of light. We are purposefully kept at a distance and unable to form any kind of relationship with the people in Sassen’s pictures and yet, through the purity of technique, we’re offered a way of reaching out to them.
Kathleen, from the series ‘Flamboya’, 2000. https://www.vivianesassen.com/works/flamboya/
‘If you always use the same “signature” style, you end up putting too much of yourself there, while covering up the subject itself.’ Laia Abril.
For many photographers, particularly those working commercially, establishing a signature style is vital. It forms their brand and when that brand becomes so recognized, shoots become as much about the photographer as the subject. That, to put it bluntly, is great for business. However, in less commercial areas of photography, such as fine art, some photographers think about style very differently. And for Laia Abril, developing an overt signature style is something she purposefully avoids.
‘If in your heart of hearts you want to take pictures of kitties, take pictures of kitties.’ Alec Soth.
Alec Soth doesn’t take pictures of kitties. Probably because, in his heart of hearts, he’s not all that interested in kitties. He much prefers photographing strangers and the unfamiliar places he encounters on the road.
‘Probably one of the worst things to happen to photography is that cameras have viewfinders.’ John Baldessari.
Paradoxically, John Baldessari is suggesting that cameras can blind the user rather than help them see because the act of looking through the ‘view’ ‘finder’ becomes an exercise in conformity. With its neat, readymade frame, we are encouraged to find familiar subjects that can be easily organized in accordance with the rules we are taught. And, as illustrated in this playful work, it can be absurd to evaluate the visual language of photographs in terms of rules.
Like something we might encounter in a photography textbook, the image is accompanied by the annotation ‘wrong’ because the subject, Baldessari himself, is standing in front of a tree so that it appears to be growing out of his head. We could, however, think: ‘Aren’t the flattening effects of a photograph amazing. It gives us an entirely new perception of space!’ In an ironic masterstroke, Baldessari creates an enduring artwork using visual language we’re taught to reject, highlighting that there are no absolute rules when it comes to filling our viewfinders. Or, to put it another way, the only ‘wrong’ is to attempt to be ‘right’.
‘I try to take photos like an alien.’ Lars Tunbjörk.
It takes a special set of eyes to make somewhere so ordinary appear so outlandish. When Lars Tunbjörk photographed offices around the world, he homed in on the idiosyncratic details under desks and the mountains of corporate clutter surrounding chaotic workers. His pictures make the employees appear as if they are caught up in a madcap world of administrative duties. As they dash around the office and organize papers on the floor, there’s a sense that the ‘living they are feverishly chasing has inadvertently led to their entrapment.
This ‘alien’ quality that Tunbjörk described is a skill that stopped him from seeing too literally. For him, objects and actions just existed or occurred and did not need to be assigned meaning. This less literal approach to vision allowed Tunbjörk to see in more abstract terms. * It created a disconnection between the eyes and the mind, which exposed all kinds of eccentricity in the everyday.
‘My photographs don’t go below the surface. They don’t go below anything. They’re readings of what’s on the surface.’… Richard Avedon.
‘Being photogenic has nothing to do with looks.’ Dana Lixenberg.
In Photography, ‘photogenic’ refers to the physical appearance of a subject. In biology, ‘photogenic’ refers to an organism that emits light. I’m sure Dana Lixenberg would prefer the biological definition because it sums up exactly what she’s saying here: that truly photogenic subjects are not the ones who display surface-level beauty like those featured on the cover of glossy magazines. They are the ones who emit another kind of energy. Something less physical, less mainstream. Something that goes way beyond the superficiality of a subject’s ‘looks’.
Here, there’s so much energy, or charisma, flowing from the subject of this photograph, J 50, a resident of an LA housing estate called Imperial Courts. While J 50 is striking, Lixenberg is feeding off much more than what she looks like. Rather, the photographer is constructing the portrait around the subtlety of tones, textures and body language. These are the complex and ephemeral qualities that keep us looking. These are the qualities that make J 50 radiate something that’s more akin to the elusiveness of light.
J 50, 2008, from the series ‘Imperial Courts’, 2008. https://www.imperialcourtsproject.com/portrait/j-50-2/
‘It cannot be too strongly emphasized that reflected light is the photographer’s subject matter.’ Edward Weston.
You could say that Edward Weston’s range of subject matter was about as broad as a photographer can get. He trained his lens on deserts, flowers, water, shells, vegetables, people, architecture, nudes and even toilets. Yet you could also say that Weston only ever photographed one thing. In fact, you could say that all photographers only ever photograph one thing: reflected light.
We are taught that an object’s physical shape and colour dictate what it looks like. Photographers like Weston show us that this is not the case; reflected light is what gives an object its form, texture and colour. In this image of a simple attic room corner, the light abstracts the surfaces to such an extent that our eyes can change the physical geometry of the architecture around the figure. Because Weston didn’t see physical subjects as fixed or constant, he was able to reveal the abstract beauty that exists all around. For him, everything succumbed to the morphing powers of light.
‘Usually, the subject matter of the image is not the subject of the work.’ Roni Horn.
Fine-art photographers are often drawn to a subject not for what it is, but for what it can represent. Roni Horn’s work, which includes photography, sculpture and drawing, focuses on elements from nature as a means to reflect on history, cultural identity and a sense of place. Her series ‘Some Thames’ features photographs of the River Thames. Each composition is a close-up of the water’s surface, which varies in appearance from placid to choppy, from cool blue to shimmering gold. It’s the same river, it’s the same water, but no two images are alike. Here the subject matter of the photographs is the river, but the subject is London, an ever-flowing city of poverty and wealth, tradition and diversity, culture and crime.
Of course, we can see these as just pictures of water. But where’s the fun in that, because to limit our imaginations in such a way is to close ourselves off to the possibilities of photography, a medium that transforms reality into a two-dimensional world rich in metaphor and meaning.
‘Metaphor should only bubble to the surface organically and even then it’s a good idea to keep a big stick around to beat it down.’ Ron Jude.
For Ron Jude, metaphor is something that can flirt dangerously close to cliché. The problem for photographers, however, is that the line between originality and obviousness is extremely fine. What might seem like a clever and insightful visual association when shooting can feel a touch trite in the flow of a final edit.
With that in mind, constructing a series like ‘Lago’ that involved visiting his youth and photographing the well-trodden deserts of the American West would have been like tiptoeing through metaphorical quicksand. Yet Jude manages to avoid any hint of clunky symbolism. His compositions tend to concentrate on singular subjects in the landscape, making them feel dislocated: broken fences, discarded tyres and blocks of concrete. As such, none are burdened with needing to be ‘deciphered’ or assigned specific meaning. Within the ebb and flow of the series, no single image carries the weight of being overly significant. Instead, from one to the next, the photographs operate as open-ended observations where metaphor gives way to mood.
‘Photography is a way of owning an object that you actually can’t own.’ Penelope Umbrico. For Umbrico, photography isn’t just about preserving memories. It’s also a way of claiming ownership of what we are seeing. When standing in front of the Grand Canyon, for example, putting a frame around the landscape and taking a photograph helps us to make sense of the sublime. It’s an attempt to contain the uncontainable, to fathom the unfathomable. No longer does it exist ‘out there’; it becomes the wallpaper on our phone, the banner to our social media pages or the canvas print that hangs above our sofa. Somewhere in this process of ‘ownership’ is also a subconscious act of defiance. These epic entities, which are far older and far more significant than us, threaten our sense of self. So to snap them is to conquer them.
‘Photographs are only able to speak in the past tense.’ Ryūji Miyamoto.
At 5:46 am on 17 January 1995, the Japanese city of Kobe was shaken to its foundations by a violent earthquake. The quake lasted just 20 seconds and in that time, 6,434 people died and much of Kobe was reduced to fire and rubble. Ryūji Miyamoto’s photographs of the aftermath show contorted buildings collapsing in on themselves. Devoid of people, the structures appear like tombstones memorializing a devastating moment in history.
There is a doubling up of ‘the past’ in Miyamoto’s photograph. Firstly, the subject matter makes us aware of an event that has taken place; here the subject is the past. Then, there is the photograph itself. All photographs are records of what has occurred. As soon as one takes a photograph, that moment slips from present to past. In reality, this building would have continued to crumble until it was knocked down, but here it is, unchanging and existing outside of time. In that respect, photographs are physical manifestations of the past. They are little objects (or bundles of data) that preserve moments from the fragility of our fading memory. Because they allow a direct channel into the past, you could say that time waits for no one, unless time is photographed.
‘I’ve always felt that our relationship to photography was conditioned by an underlying sense of loss.‘ Bill Henson. The sense of loss that Bill Henson feels is for the intangible world of silent stillness that exists within a photograph. Not only is a part of silent stillness that exists within a photograph, like a window that can be looked through but never opened. This sensation is something we can feel when looking at Henson’s photographs of teenagers floating above city lights and isolated in blackness. The subjects are suspended in an otherworldly photographic space. As people, they are themselves at a point of transition between youth and adulthood. A point where knowledge and self-awareness inevitably lead to its own loss, one that we have all experienced – the loss of innocence.
This longing for a reality that appears so real, but remains out of reach, stirs an emotional bond that no other visual art form can achieve. That’s why, for Henson, photography is the undeniable medium of melancholy.
‘In the days when men were burned at the stake for practising “black magic”, the photographer would have been an undoubted victim.’ Alvin Langdon Coburn. Coburn made his statement just over a hundred years ago, following the introduction of the small and easy-to-use Kodak Brownie camera. He saw that when photography became a medium for the masses, its uncanny powers of representation and creative potential started to be taken for granted. What was once an art practised by skilled professionals had become a frivolous pastime practised by the people. Like a voice from the grave, Coburn’s statement serves as a reminder that photography, with its ability to ‘capture light’ and ‘freeze time’, is a form of magic. And every time we press the button, we are all, in effect, magicians.
‘If I don’t kill you, I can’t move on.’ Ishiuchi Miyako. ‘Shoot’ a picture, ‘fire’ the shutter, ‘capture’ the subject, ‘load’ the film. Peel back photography’s innocuous mask, and underneath you will find an art form pulsating with aggression. This violence goes beyond mere terminology. The concentrated act of looking that photography so demands is, in itself, aggressive. We all know what it’s like to be on thereceiving end of someone’s prolonged gaze – we become their prey. Conversely, we all know what it feels like to spy on someone prey. Conversely, we all know what it feels like to spy on someone from afar – we become the hunter.
‘There is a hidden promise built into the act of making a photograph.’ Broomberg & Chanarin. Trust. That underlies the hidden promise that Broomberg and Chanarin refer to; trust that the photographer will use the gift of the subject’s image for good. Yet as two artists preoccupied by the ecosystem of how photographs are made and disseminated, they know how easily this promise is broken. No matter what the original intentions of the photographer or subject, the lifespan of a photograph is long and changeable, and the reasons that led to it being taken can be stripped away. I wonder if Mr Mkhize asked Broomberg and Chanarin about their motives. I wonder what they told him. Because in offering up the gift of his self-image, he has inadvertently made himself entirely vulnerable.
‘Still photo snapshots are the most powerful weapons in the world.‘ Eddie Adams. by Eddie Adams on a humid day in Saigon, this iconic photograph shows General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing Nguyễn Văn Lém, the leader of a Vietcong terrorist cell. Unaware of what was about to unfold in front of the camera, Adams fired his shutter as the general fired his bullet. Lém died instantly, yet the moment of his execution ricocheted around the world, confronting people with the brutality of war in their homes and around their breakfast tables. It was a photograph that refused to be ignored and one that stirred enough public opinion to help bring an end to the Vietnam War.
Yet what is it about this photograph that makes it so powerful? What quality does it hold that affected so many people? The words used by Adams offer us a clue. He doesn’t just say ‘photographs’, he says ‘still photographs’. We can’t deny that the moment captured is shocking, but it’s the stillness of the photograph itself that makes what we are seeing so incendiary. The photograph insists that we linger on a single, brutal moment. Without sound, without movement, it distils the war into something that slots easily into our consciousness, like a ready-made memory. And once in our minds, there it remains, relentlessly unchanging. Saigon Execution, 1968. https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/1098KF.
‘Photography acts like the kiss of Judas: false affection, sold for thirty coins.’ Joan Fontcuberta. Like the disciple Judas Iscariot who eventually betrayed Jesus, photography may serve you as a friend, but its tenuous truths should always be questioned. Joan Fontcuberta has spent his career reminding us not to put too much faith in photographs. For instance, this picture titled MN 27: VULPECULA (NGC 6853) from his ‘Constellations’ series, shows what appears to be the night sky full of distant stars. However, the only signs of life here are, in fact, splattered flies on his car windscreen. Playful, yes, but this makes Fontcuberta’s work no less profound.
Digital manipulation and image sharing mean that we are now generally more aware that photographs bend the truth. Yet even so, we still find ourselves playing their game. From the simple act of using photographs to ‘construct’ our identities online to willingly believing the images that our preferred news outlets feed us, we knowingly take advantage of, and fall victim to, the half-truths told by photographs. For Fontcuberta, we have become trapped by the communication tool of our time, which begs the question: If we entirely reject photography’s links to truth, what will it become and what meaningful role, if any, will it play in our lives?
‘Isn’t it remarkable how photography has advanced without improving?’ Charles Sheeler. Charles Sheeler made this remark to Ansel Adams on leaving an exhibition in New York. It’s not known whose exhibition it was, but it seems clear that it didn’t suit the tastes of the two veterans. Maybe for Sheeler, a photographer who strived for clarity and precision, the work was a bit too gimmicky in its use of modern techniques.
In terms of ‘advancement’, Sheeler must have been referring to technology and how this constantly leads to better cameras and processes, and how this makes photography ever-more accessible to all. Yet paradoxically, it would seem that all the technological advancements do not necessarily lead to ‘improved’ (or better) photographs and photographers. Sheeler’s image from 1927 is a case in point. It’s an exquisite depiction of space. Look at the precision of the framing, the distillation of the complex subject matter, those soft plumes contrasted with the ridged steel and the intriguing perspectival play of those intersecting walkways. Photographs – even those taken today with the most advanced cameras – don’t get much better than this.
Of course, now more than ever, what is considered ‘good’ and ‘bad’ both in terms of cameras and photographs, is highly subjective. So perhaps it’s best to move on from Sheeler’s provocative statement by simply saying: discuss. Criss-Crossed Conveyors, River Rouge Plant, Ford Motor Company, 1927. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/265132
‘Photography was destined to be involved with death.’ Nobuyoshi Araki. In the years after his wife’s passing, Nobuyoshi Araki photographed the ageing and eventual death of his beloved cat, Chiro. When we look at this sad series of Chiro growing weaker and weaker, we feel death all around. This feeling doesn’t just arise from the subject matter; it comes from something else, something within photography itself.
If we were to describe, for example, a corpse, we might say that it is absolutely still and absolutely silent. We might also make the observation that it holds an uncanny resemblance to the living observation that it holds an uncanny resemblance to the living person – it is that person, but at the same time it isn’t. Those same observations could be made about someone as they appear in a photograph. In other words, photography takes the life out of living subjects and renders them into ‘corpses’.
Stillness, silence and a trace of what once was – these are inherent traits of photography, traits that for Araki will always carry an undercurrent of death. In that regard, poor old Chiro used his nine lives and then some, because he died every time Araki pressed the shutter.
‘I do not profess to have perfected an art, but to have commenced one; the limits of which it is not possible at present exactly to ascertain.’ William Henry Fox Talbot. This is the world’s earliest surviving negative. Made in 1835 by William Henry Fox Talbot, it depicts the fine detailing of a lattice window. Today, due to its fragile state, the negative is sealed inside a box because, if it were to be exposed to light, its image would fade to nothing in a matter of minutes. Who would have thought that light, the raw ingredient that gave birth to it, would eventually be responsible for its death? But then again, photography’s story has, and always will be, hard to predict.
It’s fitting, then, that even Fox Talbot, one of the key inventors of photography, wasn’t quite sure what he had created, because we’re still trying to ascertain its limits almost two centuries later. As a medium driven by technology and creativity, photography is constantly on the move and its social functions changing just when we think we know it, it repositions itself and morphs into something new.
Yet if we think about it, photography hasn’t changed all that much, because its most magical quality, that thing separating it from all other art forms, remains the same: whether taken on film or with a phone, whether hanging in a gallery or saved on a computer, a photograph is captured light. For that reason, the ghost of photography’s enigmatic origins will continue to haunt every film grain, every pixel and every line of code for a long time to come.
shauncn512659 Context & Narrative 