#jessding

With many photographers, their work seems almost intrusive, as if they are viewing their subjects through a museum case, or even capitalizing on their suffering. Bruce Davidson's consciousness of his photographic subjects struck me as softer and more humanitarian, especially when he goes back years later on his own time to find his previous subjects or even their descendants. This interview reminded me of Sissi Lu, a photographer I follow on Instagram who pairs each photo she takes of an older stranger with their response to the question "What would you tell your younger self?" From the insight in Bruce Davidson's interview, I want to ask: How can photographers (professional or amateur alike, doesn't matter) engage more with their subjects to bring out their personalities and livelihoods into the photo, instead of just producing intrusive or stiff stills?

Eugene Smith's way of working with light in relation to his subjects made a pretty big impression on me. I liked that he is a fan of using naturally available light sources as well as manipulating light sources to some extent to achieve images that can also be further processed when developing and printing. I particularly liked that he did not want to over-manipulate light to make the image too staged or devoid of softness of emotion, and that he did not prioritize perfect lighting over human happenings. The last section about using discretion in tragic situations and putting away the camera instead of manipulating any light to try to get any intrusive photograph stuck with me, especially after having read Bruce Davidson's interview first. Smith's thought process about how to compensate in what areas to capture all the textures and emotions in the Spanish village deathbed photo was also very illustrative for me. This example made me think: what other tools and techniques do photographers have at their disposal to communicate emotions and feelings beyond the strict lines of a photograph?

In comparative media studies classes that I've taken in the past, we spent a lot of time discussing the phrase "the medium is the message" and what it means. In Defense of the Poor Image is the most similar reading I've done so far in this class, because it makes us focus on even the pieces of media that were not intended to be presented by the photographer, or the pieces of media that we forget about as our technology gets better and we relinquish our kilobytes of information for gigabytes and terabytes.

I also found the discussion and links between privatization and pirating of content with the poor image to be quite interesting. Of course there are very very few phenomenon you can consider in isolation, so it makes sense that the poor image must be considered along with the causes that may necessitate the poor image even when technology is improved and image quality and content is no longer bounded by technological constraints.

To be honest, I didn't see how Notes of a Native Son was related to photography at first, but Baldwin's coming-to-terms with his father's life and death as well as Jim Crow and segregation and racial relations in America still resonated with me on some level as a person of color in America. Obviously I couldn't know exactly what it was like to have my people's identity and culture so closely and painfully tied to a country that resented us, but I did resonate with feeling other. Then I realized that Notes was related to photography in the sense of self and in a sense of representation, because obviously a hint of a photographer's sense of self is left behind in every photo they take, and of course racism and exclusion still exist in photography, just as how white Shirley cards still existed through the 1970s.

Questions that I thought about after this reading were:

My favorite correspondence was the one between Ben Alper and Nat Ward, which has been happening since September 2014. It seems most correspondence pairs choose a different element from each received photo to match in the next sent photo – whether that element be light, color, shape, texture, content, or framing.

Between these first two images was a common theme of light and reflection, and between the next two was a theme of magenta and green color.

The visual elements didn't have to perfectly match either – these two shared a common idea of contrast, but with the idea of inverted colors.

These next two shared a fuzzy texture between the root of the plant and the fibers of the string.

Consecutive photographs didn't necessarily interact in only one element, either. The first two here were both in black and white, and they shared repeating geometric motifs. The next two that followed also had color and geometry as common threads, but the last one had a color gradient while the first one was still black and white. They both still shared square/tiling geometry.

Magnum Photos is a photo cooperative, which means each full member acts as a shareholder of the organization and has an equal vote on the cooperative's business. Collectively, full members also vote on what new members to accept. Magnum's significance is that it is one of the first photographic cooperatives, allowing each photographer it represents to retain full rights to the work they produce.

Among all these Magnum photographers is Sim Chi Yin from Singapore, who explores sociogeographical trends and history and conflicts in a multidisciplinary way. For example, two of her most recent/ongoing projects explore the phenomenon of land reclamation and the growing international market for sand (Shifting Sands), as well as holiday culture in China.

(at Qingdao, China, 2012. by Sim Chi Yin)

This is from a series of photos documenting the facekini, a byproduct of the (mostly Asian) aesthetic preference for lighter skin over tanner skin.

(China, 2018. by Sim Chi Yin)

This photo is from a series exploring artificial islands and other land reclamation projects. In Yin's own words:

The Salt of the Earth was a film unlike any other I've seen before. Through understanding Sebastiao Salgado's life leading to his work and his motivations and how he treated his subjects, I came to have the impression that he was one of few photographers I've learned about (before this class) that did not exploit his subjects. Rather, he used images such as his work in famine-stricken Africa to tell stories and bring awareness to the outside world about social and political issues, even risking his life multiple times for multiple years on end to complete his mission. For me, it was also cool to see how, as an economist-turned-photographer, he brought his book knowledge of the global market as background to the very human events and emotions that happen to natural habitats and their inhabitants as a result of economic exploitation.

Artistically, the way the film had Salgado's images speak for themselves, while also overlaying grayscale, stark narration footage, as well as color clips from the present day, made these images and their backstories even more powerful to me.

I chose a French edition of Lisette Model's works, titled Lisette Model (baudoin lebon Editions Léo Scheer). Here's the cover:

Lisette Model (1901-1983) was an American photographer of Austrian descent known for her honest and humanist street photography, as well as her later photos of objects that were "witness to the traces of man's existence". This shift in her work's focus was purportedly due to the despair of being interrogated by the FBI in 1953 as part of the McCarthyism witch hunt (a period of American history that was very detrimental to artists, especially anyone who dealt with social commentary). Though she was notoriously private and lived with most of her history being clouded, many more details about her life were uncovered after her death by her estate. Here are a select few of her images:

Billie Holiday, New York, 1959

I chose this image due to the starkness of the angle and the solemness of the subject matter. What a striking sight to see as the last page of this book.

Promenade des Anglais, Nice, 1934

This photo is from one of Model's first series shot while in France, which is also one of the series she is most known for. Model kept relatively quiet about her photographic activity before coming to the United States, probably due to her photos having been published in a communist-backed publication. This series of photos was published alongside a vitriolic attack on rich boulevardiers, after the largest labour demonstrations of the decade had occurred in Nice.

Rassemblement de guerre, New York. 1942

I chose this photo due to the evident emotion that Model was so adept at capturing. This photo was from a WWII rally in America.

Bowery, New York, 1942, and Lower East Side, New York, 1939-1945

These photos by themselves did not particularly catch my eye, but arranged and cropped like this, the juxtaposition of the small man in the small photo with the large woman in the expanded photo was interesting. Model captured many images of life among all classes and neighborhoods in New York.

Reflets, New York, 1939-1945

Model was also known for capturing images of objects and more anonymous evidence of life. She probably turned away from more overt social commentary during the McCarthyism years, as she and her husband were also in a financially precarious state during this time. I chose this image because photographing reflections through a window gave this image almost a haunting texture, different from the other photographs I chose that were of stark portrayal.

Champ de course, Belmont Park, New York, 1956

Again, this is from Model's turn towards photographing more objects and events, instead of street portraits.

I felt that several of Walter Benjamin's claims were poorly supported and didn't convince me at all. For example, when talking about the beginnings of photography, Benjamin claims that photos of people can carry much more emotion and nuance than paintings of people. But he only compares photos to a narrow view of portrait paintings. In my experience portrait photography is not limited to a stark full-on headshot, just as portrait painting is not limited to grim-faced, soul-less eye contact. I believe that both mediums allow for both portraiture as a record-keeping utility and portraiture as a more emotive art form.

For other claims he made, I think it’s interesting to view them in a contemporary lens as well. He references the early days of portraiture, where the tone of photo portraits were solemn and empty mostly because of the technical long exposures needed. He also discusses how business capitalized on photography soon after it was developed far enough along, and how photographs took over from miniature portrait artists at the job of capturing images of reality. Looking back at this junction point from my vantage point in time, I have conflicting thoughts about his assertions on the impact photography had on society and culture. To me, photography and painting have diverged enough to be two separate mediums of art, with neither necessarily following or being a subset of the other. Like the portraiture example but broader, I’ve seen painting and photography capture both stark records of reality as well as more surreal, less strictly faithful works that depict emotions that don’t necessarily have physical representations. On the other hand, I would think that the path of painting when Benjamin wrote this essay had not yet reached much beyond realism, so I understand the difference 90 more years of analysis makes.