Mechanical
Analogue
There are many misconceptions about modern photography. Roland Barthes
said that a photographic image is a message without a code. He regarded
photography as a mechanical analogue because in front of a photo the
feeling of denotation by the viewer is very strong.
This is not true! In the late 1940s Aaron Siskind
initiated a series of photographic still life of fish heads, rope, and
other commonplace objects. It became clear that subject matter was now
secondary, and abstraction most important. And it is no doubt that
nowadays abstract or non-representational photography is very popular.
What is beauty?
Another misconception is the definition of beauty. photography has
remained largely outside the mainstream of postmodernism. Stanley
Bowman said that many photographers exist outside of the mainstream
because galleries and museums play it safe, displaying and collecting
works more closely related to the traditional sense of beauty, such as
landscapes or portraits.
In 1915 Edward Steichen photographed a milk bottle on
a
tenement fire escape, an early example of a quite different idea of a
beautiful photograph. And since the 1920s, ambitious professionals,
those whose work gets into museums, have steadily drifted away from
lyrical subjects, conscientiously exploring plain, tawdry, or even
vapid materials. Susan Sontag said, "To photograph is to confer
importance. There is probably no subject that cannot be beautified."
Machine-gun
Photography
The third misunderstanding is that photography is a high tech and
expensive art. Although photography is a matter of both art and
science, the former is no doubt more important than the latter. For
example, photographer Annie Brigman was a terrible technician. Her
prints show large areas of carelessly retouched negatives and even
casual pencil work on the prints themselves. In spite of that, her
photographs are extraordinary beautiful because her hasty prints carry
dreamy and mysterious effects.
If you read photography journals such as Popular
Photography, you will be shocked by those high priced and
fancy equipment--Bogen tripod, Nikon auto-focus zoom lenses, Cokin
filters and so on. It seems that only a rich man can be a good
photographer. Moreover, in movies and TV programs, the stereotype of a
photographer is that a man carries a camera, point to the model and
shoot pictures like shooting a machine gun. You may ask, "God, how can
I afford so many rolls of film?"
Actually, all special visual effects of my photos
were
made by very simple and cheap methods. Moreover, I never shoot pictures
like operating a machine gun. I rely on careful planning and
implementation instead of luck.
Many masters such as Ansel Adams, Henri
Cartier-Bresson, and Man Ray objected the machine-gun approach to
photography. Henri Cartier-Bresson said that it will burden the
photographer with useless recordings which clutter his memory and spoil
the exactness of the reportage as a whole. When Man Ray took portraits,
he usually made just three to four shots.
In short, photography is an art of mind, not an art
of
money or high tech. For Ansel Adams, simplicity is a prime requisite.
He asserted that the beauty of a great photograph does not lie in the
assortment of facts about negatives, materials, papers, developers--it
lies in the realization of the photographer's vision. Henri
Cartier-Bresson holds the same opinion: A photographer "must be on the
alert with the brain, the eye, the heart; and have a suppleness of body
... in photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject."
Conclusion
I have discussed what is not the right way of photography. Then, what
is the authentic essence of photography? What contribute a good photo?
Arthur Pope said that the artist should never write about his art--the
artist speaks in terms of his medium. Ansel Adams also said that he
cannot tell what a great photograph is. He can answer best by showing a
great photograph, not by talking about one.
Another main point that I want to explain is that
good
photographs may match the 'hot thinking' of modern people. Mass
communication scholar Marshal MacLuhan said that in the print media
age, people's thinking pattern was 'cold'-only one thing at one time.
In the visual and audio media era, 'hot thinking' became more
significant-more than one things at one time. Harold Rosenberg also
pointed out that many works by modern artists are no longer a subject,
but an event--the art is not still. It is changing all the time. For
example, a sculptor may install electronics on the statue to make it
sparkling.
A still photo is one thing at one time. Thus, some
photographers tried to break through this limitation. Since the 1970s
multi-media presentation became popular. Nowadays the Eagle computer or
the Arion dissolve control unit can program many slide projectors for
one show. Computer imaging is another new direction of photography.
After the artist digitized images of photos into the computers such as
Amiga, Chyron and Quantel, he can animate it or program a TV show. The
audience's response to those is of 'hot thinking'. Can you see this
attribute in my work?
