So yea, I've been slipping my 10+ year-old 8 megapixel (huge when I bought it) Canon point-and-shoot into a backpack pocket and taking pics when fancy strikes. I'm not doing anything by doing it. It might be something like a last hurrah, similar with music and playing bass along with K-pop tunes for ear-training less than 2 hours everyday for the past two years, revisiting it as something I "used to do" while letting go any idea of it as a part of any identity. It's just something familiar and not a function of ego and as soon as it's not fun, I'll stop.
I've also found myself perusing photography books in the libraries and bookstores. Not sure why, perhaps for inspiration for what I'm not doing, but also investigating what it was and why it once was something I did. I discovered several photographers that I'd never heard of, despite them being apparently famous. I'm also fascinated by the text and commentary accompanying these books as they look into the psychology and character traits of the photographers, suggested by their photographs. Stuff that I recognize in myself or not, stuff that I agree with or not, but agreement or not it's all out there and valid or not. Quite frustrating, actually.
I guess the bottom line for me is that it's just personal, like this blog, and not for anyone else. It's just what I'm finding out about myself.
Ansel Adams writes in his autobiography: Photographers who frequently travel photograph with less than full knowledge of their subjects. I believe one must live in a region for a considerable time and absorb its character and spirit before the work can truly reflect the experience of the place. In my own case, hasty visits have usually resulted in inconsequential images; perhaps an occasional flash of insight, or a remembrance of an earlier place or time helped in visualizing a photograph.
Me, I've lived in Taiwan for over 13 years and I haven't absorbed the character and spirit of this place. I lived in San Francisco 11 years and didn't absorb the character and spirit of the place. So what is he talking about? That was it for him, that was important to him. Me, not so much. I'm a permanent outsider and I shoot as an outsider, never absorbing the character and spirit of a place. I actually identify more as an exile.
Or not (Josef Koudelka became an exile from his native Czechoslovakia a few years after the Soviet invasion in 1968):
"I didn't want to have what people call a 'home.' I didn't want to have the desire to return somewhere, I needed to know that nothing was waiting for me anywhere, that the place I was supposed to be was where I was at the moment. I once met a great guy, a Yugoslavian gypsy. We became friends. One day he told me, 'Josef, you've traveled for so many years, never stopped; you've seen lots of people and countries, all sorts of places. Tell me which place is the best. Where would you like to stay?' I didn't say anything. Just as I was about to leave, he asked again. I didn't want to answer him, but he kept on insisting. Finally he said, 'You know, I've figured it out! You don't want to answer because you still haven't found the best place. You travel because you're still trying to find it.' 'My friend,' I replied, 'you've got it all wrong. I'm desperately trying not to find that place.'"
If I posit myself as an urban hermit, I pale to his example. I'm stuck in neurotic, useless routines and my "best place" is my apartment where I'mmeaninglessly complacently doing nothing for nobody, and which becomes a prison or a deeply egoistic sanctuary. There's no hint that he'd read even a word of Buddhism or Zen or enlightenment, but he was kinda living that path. Of course I don't know what drove him, but for my purposes I wish I could be like that.
Or not (Josef Koudelka became an exile from his native Czechoslovakia a few years after the Soviet invasion in 1968):
"I didn't want to have what people call a 'home.' I didn't want to have the desire to return somewhere, I needed to know that nothing was waiting for me anywhere, that the place I was supposed to be was where I was at the moment. I once met a great guy, a Yugoslavian gypsy. We became friends. One day he told me, 'Josef, you've traveled for so many years, never stopped; you've seen lots of people and countries, all sorts of places. Tell me which place is the best. Where would you like to stay?' I didn't say anything. Just as I was about to leave, he asked again. I didn't want to answer him, but he kept on insisting. Finally he said, 'You know, I've figured it out! You don't want to answer because you still haven't found the best place. You travel because you're still trying to find it.' 'My friend,' I replied, 'you've got it all wrong. I'm desperately trying not to find that place.'"
If I posit myself as an urban hermit, I pale to his example. I'm stuck in neurotic, useless routines and my "best place" is my apartment where I'm
Garry Winogrand was similarly an enigma:
. . . preferring to spend another day shooting rather than processing his film or editing his pictures. No prints existed of many of the best photographs he made in his first decades, and he left behind over sixty-five hundred rolls of film from his later years that he had never processed, or that he processed but never proofed, and whose content he had therefore never seen . . . and though his negatives and proof sheets . . . were numbered, there was no indication where one year ended and another began or where in the world Winogrand was when he exposed any given roll of film.
. . . preferring to spend another day shooting rather than processing his film or editing his pictures. No prints existed of many of the best photographs he made in his first decades, and he left behind over sixty-five hundred rolls of film from his later years that he had never processed, or that he processed but never proofed, and whose content he had therefore never seen . . . and though his negatives and proof sheets . . . were numbered, there was no indication where one year ended and another began or where in the world Winogrand was when he exposed any given roll of film.
That leaves me aghast 😱, as I'm the complete opposite with all my proof sheets and files meticulously numbered and dated. Is that a reflection of ego? Was his M.O. a function of non-ego? Not necessarily, probably not, who knows? But he was a photographer who didn't seem particularly interested in the photo. Was it that he was more interested in the process rather than the result? Was it not even that but the energy of being on the city streets and the flow of humanity and snapping photos in some ineffable effort to capture or see things that are otherwise fleeting and unnoticed?
To be sure, I couldn't shoot like he did, getting in close and shooting without permission or respect even. I recently watched a YouTube video of a Hong Kong/Londoner (his accent sounds too British to be Hong Kong British English) named Kai who was shooting like that in Taiwan and it just seemed rude and disrespectful, often confirmed by the videoed subjects' alarmed reactions. I'm not criticizing it, and the photos themselves were quite good. They did what they did to get their shots, I'm just unwilling to go there and would therefore never get those kinds of shots.
To be sure, I couldn't shoot like he did, getting in close and shooting without permission or respect even. I recently watched a YouTube video of a Hong Kong/Londoner (his accent sounds too British to be Hong Kong British English) named Kai who was shooting like that in Taiwan and it just seemed rude and disrespectful, often confirmed by the videoed subjects' alarmed reactions. I'm not criticizing it, and the photos themselves were quite good. They did what they did to get their shots, I'm just unwilling to go there and would therefore never get those kinds of shots.
Back to Winogrand, Ansel Adams, an early advocate (and perhaps paragon) of photography as fine art, would never entrust someone else to print his negatives without meticulous instruction on how he wanted it. That's another school of thought, where the artist's vision is emphasized. There's no art in shooting and then leaving printing or editing, which to Adams is interpretation, to someone else. There's also nothing wrong with that, either. Frustrating, see.
I found a Pablo Ortiz Monasterio monograph in the library that I think is a limited edition. It was printed on a specially selected Japanese paper that Ansel Adams would've appreciated. Adams was also concerned about reproductions of his work and that they reflected the quality of his original prints as much as possible.
Needless to say, all of these monographs are incredible and thought-provoking. There is a ridiculously broad range of even just street photography that is legitimate and valid, despite conflicts and contradictions and arguments for or against whatever. Like for me, context is important. Photography involves a mix of abstraction and reality. The image is actually quite abstract, which is why I always flipped black & white images unless there were words prominent that would call attention to that fact. There's the confinement of the frame, there's the loss of the depth dimension, there's the loss of color, and flipping the image was one more degree of abstracting the image; another way of saying what I saw didn't look like this at all. Context emphasizes the reality; this happened at an identifiable location, facing a certain direction with elements that were observable in the real world. Others may hate that and want to just appreciate the image on its own if it's worth it. It's like songwriters who never say what a song is about because once they do, that meaning is frozen and no one else can interpret it and give it meaning for themselves. Fair 'nuff, but out of all the descriptions, analyses and critiques of photos and photography, ain't nothin' gonna stop people shooting the way they do.
I'm under the description of photographers who try to be anonymous and discrete. Composition is important, but sometimes varying degrees of speed and spontaneity are necessary. If people are in the shot, their attention is not drawn to that fact. I'm not aggressive and in-your-face like Winogrand or that Hong Kong Kai guy. No doubt mine is a very common, pedestrian approach.
