[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
the picture was constructed in that way.
Actually, this is a good exercise for photographers. Look at your own
pictures, as well as the images by others, and not only attempt to shift
their elements to create a visually more satisfying result but also ask:
would the image have been better if photographed just a fraction of a
second sooner or later, and would the image be improved if I had moved
a little to the left/right/up/down/closer/further back?
By asking these critical questions (and answering them truthfully!)
about each and every exposed frame, the photographer gradually
develops the instinct for what makes a good picture.
The good photographer also has a finely developed instinct, which again
arises from continual use of the camera and critically comparing expectation
with result, about the difference between seeing and photographing.
There is a good deal of sense in the old adage that a fine photographer
is one who knows what not to photograph. Many subjects might look
impressive to the eye but do not translate into a flat image on a piece of
paper. I cannot think of a photograph, for example, which comes close
to matching the visual awe experienced at the Grand Canyon. Every
photographer has had the experience of looking at contact sheets and
wondering now why on earth did I take that frame? The photographer
must think photographically, previsualising the end result as a picture
after is has been translated and scrambled by the photographic pro-
cess. What you see is not the same as what appears on the print.
The fine photographer often utilizes this disparity between seeing and pho-
tographing. In other words he/she sees a photograph, an arresting image,
in commonplace subject matter which would be ignored by lesser photogra-
phers. If the viewer had been standing alongside the photographer at the
moment of exposure there would have been no doubt as to the nature of the
MERIT, AND WHY IT IS SO RARE " 53
subject or situation. Yet the viewer would not have seen the photograph.
A great number of interesting images in the history of photography have
been based on the disparity between reality and the picture. As Gary
Winogrand explained, he made photographs in order to see what things
looked like when photographed.
A variation of this theme is that photographers often exploit the believabil-
ity of photography and a known lie. This causes a visual jolt, the image
equivalent of the punch line of a good joke, or a clever aphorism. An
example would be the photograph, by Cherry Kearton, of a man carrying
a cow on his shoulder with all four legs of the beast stiffly pointing to the
sky. The absurdity of the situation is striking; the photograph proclaims
validity yet the mind refuses to accept the veracity of the image. (The
explanation in this case is that the cow is a hollow hide in which the pho-
tographer can crawl and photograph birds surreptitiously).
Presumably, this photograph was deliberately made in order to pro-
duce a sense of strangeness in the minds of the viewers. The photogra-
pher saw, at the time of the exposure, the oddness of the situation and
decided to record it. But so many photographs produce this effect inad-
vertently that it almost rises to the level of a characteristic common to
fine photographs. Certainly, in so many pictures, it is an important,
even crucial, element in their success.
You are right. In these cases the effort to capture the real has slipped into the
surreal. Photography is particularly and peculiarly prone to producing these
slippages in which a prosaic document of something, extracted from its original
context, acts as a trigger to unexpected and even disconnected emotions.
One of the most potent images in my personal memory-bank is a prosaic
industrial photograph taken inside a doll factory in 1918. It shows rows of
unfinished dolls inside a metal oven in front of which a worker is aiming a
spray-gun at a doll held in his other hand. It is by an anonymous photogra-
pher and I presume it was made as part of a series to illustrate how dolls are
made. But irrespective of this original purpose it is a most disturbing image, to
me. I saw it on one occasion, over thirty years ago, and it is still haunting me.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]