Sorry I couldn’t come up with a visual… I just couldn’t think of anything to do for it.
John Szarkowski discusses the process of how the photographic image does not tell a story whether by itself or in a series together. Szarkowski talks abut the individuals who were engaged in photography being that they used it not as their profession but in a way to experiment and cultivate their understanding and remembrance of certain times and places. It is not until the very end of this article that he hints on several artists who attempt to actually create narrative solely though their images.
In the photographic history many people used this medium not to tell a story but like the Brandy group to show a story, not in the narrative way, but to visually tell the viewer what is happening somewhere else. These types of stories were intended of single instances of time and place not to be tied together with other images around them. Szarkowski uses technical aspects in producing photographic art: frame, vantage point, etc. as a way to break down what a photograph is. In this manner he examines the disconnection that the viewer perceives when looking at an image since the viewers idea of what he/she is looking at is simply an images taken with a camera and then showed to them in this forum. These breakdowns reinstate the idea that the photograph tells as much of a story as it leaves out. Another point Szarkowski examines in the life-ness of the photograph vs. the subject itself. We typically see the subject in the image as the subject in real life, but through this life-ness, the length of life of the photo, we can see the ageing-ness in the “real” subject when the ageing in the image subject does not exist calling upon the image’s falseness in representation. This same can be said with all visual art, yet no other visual art is considered real interpretation of the subject.
I do not agree with this notion that an image cannot tell a story. I see every image as revealing one sort of story, well minus some contemporary images and from other periods. I do understand this lack of narrative in the meaning that it is a unified understanding, but on an individual basis we all construe our own story that correlates within each image. We begin to look at the image as a whole connect all the people and items in the image and from there let our minds run rampant with ideas. This is what is wonderful in this medium that we are given a possibly realistic representation of what we know in our vernacular, we can connect with the subjects and instate our own known uses that we have had with the subjects. Even portraits of people we are not personally familiar with have this connection with us, yet for them it is in their gestures and stances that we know and not their bodies as a whole.
Szarkowski discusses trends and hobbiests and specific artists who have knowingly tried and those unknowingly tried to use the photograph to tell a story, but he doesn’t examine everyone as a whole. Looking at all the photographs ever taken, impossible but I would love to have this access; you can conceder this group as a story, maybe not of the people or the world, or anything that broad, but simply of the photographic art. This maybe obvious but it is a story.
Clement Greenburg discusses the role photography has in story telling and the absence of it in reference to the image. In this article Greenburg is not saying that the photograph is just a story and not a picture, but rather that the art is not the picture but the story. He discusses that the story becomes the art and that the composition, aesthetic, image, etc. are second nature and refer to the story by the photographer. Greenburg brings to light many wonderful “photographers” one in particular Eugene Atget. Atget was an artist who used photography not for its photographic reference to it being art, but a record for painters and other artists to use the images for their medium. Edward Steichen referred to photography as a historical medium for his work using it to reference past works or art and in this he was never intending that his images were his own but of the histories.
Both of these artists were not intending to create the picture for the pictures sake but for other reasons. Cartier-Bresson is another example who took images in the decisive moment and wanted to show the move and nature of the world. He is to well noted for his interest not in the printed image, but in the exposed image. The image on his negative was the main thing Bresson desired in regards to photography.
This text with reference to the artists Greenburg used I agree with him, but on the wider scope of the photographic profession there are a lot of problems with his thesis. There is so much more that goes into the photographic process that as a medium as a whole one will find many people with similar sights, but these people will always be different from others. And in considering both articles together I would have to say this medium of photography has to be split into various formats of the image, print, concept, as well as genre and many more. Photography is far too wide a medium to have one generalized view to, and anyone who believes to summarize the medium otherwise is wrong in my mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment