Gary Winogrand

[stamper]

I don't know if this link has been posted on here before? If so then I think it is worth repeating.

http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2012/08/20/10-things-garry-winogrand-can-teach-you-about-street-photography/

quote

why photographs don’t tell stories, and how photographers mistake emotion for what makes great photographs.

unquote

Two very interesting statements and a few more to be read. An eye opener for me.

[tom b]

I've just been posting on my Facebook page how I miss my editors.

Garry Winogrand!

Cheers,

[stamper]

This is a nice clip of the man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RM9KcYEYXs

I realise this thread won't be new for many on here but it is new to me.

[spidermike]

An interesting couple of links, Stamper. Thank you.

I was interested in the comment

Szarkowski wrote quite eloquently how Winogrand was less interested in photography, and more interested about living and capturing life.

It reminded me immediately of a similar comment by Thomas Shahan who turns out some stunning macros of jumping spiders using an old Pentax K3 and home made flash rigs. He said that photographic gear doesn't interest him at all, it is merely a tool to capture the images and share the wonders of the world very few see.

Perhaps too many of us have our priorities wrong (including me at times).

[stamper]

Yup. It is all a learning curve.....or at least it should be.

[Gulag]

i dont think the blogger understands Winnograd and his street photography AT ALL.

[RSL]

Have you looked at "the blogger's" pictures? I think he understands it quite well.

[amolitor]

Last time I checked in on Eric Kim he was doing front and center portraits of street characters. Diane Arbus style but more ordinary.

Has he updated his style again? He's always struck me as a thoughtful but kind of clueless guy.

But if you're thoughtful for long enough, sometimes you figure some things out.

[RSL]

I assume that by "blogger" you're talking about Stamper.

[Gulag]

Have you looked at "the blogger's" pictures? I think he understands it quite well.

Let Winnograd speak for himself instead.



Now back to my early statement. Does he really understand Winnograd?

[RSL]

Yes, Garry had a lot of problems and his was not a particularly happy life.

[Gulag]

Yes, Garry had a lot of problems and his was not a particularly happy life.

If one wants to be creative,  he must remain unhappy.  Unhappiness is the first requirement for any creative career.  A corn-fed hog enjoys a much better life than a creative writer, painter or musician.

Zizek famously says, "Happiness was never important. The problem is that we don’t know what we really want. What makes us happy is not to get what we want. But to dream about it. Happiness is for opportunists. So I think that the only life of deep satisfaction is a life of eternal struggle, especially struggle with oneself. We all remember Gordon Gekko, the role played by Michael Douglas in Wall Street. What he says, breakfast is for wimps, or if you need a friend buy yourself a dog, I think we should say something similar about happiness. If you want to remain happy, just remain stupid. Authentic masters are never happy; happiness is a category of slaves."

[spidermike]

If one wants to be creative,  he must remain unhappy.  Unhappiness is the first requirement for any creative career.  A corn-fed hog enjoys a much better life than a creative writer, painter or musician.

That doesn't even make sense.

[Gulag]

That doesn't even make sense.

Of course it doesn't make any sense to any decorators.

[jjj]

 

Of course it doesn't make any sense to any decorators.

People are creative for all sorts of reasons. Anyone who tries to pin it down to something singular like unhappiness is the one who does not understand creativity.
And very probably conflating themselves/their way of working, with everyone else's.

[RSL]

+1. Glad we agree on something, Jeremy.

[Gulag]

People are creative for all sorts of reasons. Anyone who tries to pin it down to something singular like unhappiness is the one who does not understand creativity.
And very probably conflating themselves/their way of working, with everyone else's.

Andy Warhol famously said "Making money is the best art" and his painted soup cans and dollor signs can be sold at millions a piece. After all market confirms his creativity, why any creativity must come from misery,  suffering and unhappiness? So I guess we live in an epoch in which creativity can only be measured by its exchange value.

On the other hand,  I do understand for most people happiness is beyond reach. Fulfillment is found not from daily life but in escaping from it. Since happiness is unavailable, the mass of mankind seeks pleasure. Please pass me more Soma.

[Telecaster]

Eeeww…the dogma in this thread's air is so thick it's starting to condense on the walls. 

-Dave-

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

If one wants to be creative,  he must remain unhappy.  Unhappiness is the first requirement for any creative career...

Does Neuroticism Give Rise To Creativity?

There’s evidence to suggest that people who score higher on measures of neuroticism also score higher in creativity... And now, say a team of researchers who study it, there’s now good brain science to back the theory up.

[Rob C]

Does Neuroticism Give Rise To Creativity?

That's a very good link you gave us, Slobodan. I certainly recognize a lot of the symptoms within the self, even if I don't feel I'm actually that creative; more do I feel I have an ability to take something pretty from the moment, assuming always that the moment allows me that. It's why I was ever drawn to model work, and why I saw the huge importance of the right model from the very beginning of my photographic life. Success in making those kinds of pictures comes from (for me) the interplay of the two minds; having a third party present at a shoot is, again just for me, similar to what I imagine it must be like to go on honeymoon with friends. I'd rather pass! In contrast, standing alone before a scene means there is nothing human with which to interact, backing up again my feeling that all my landcape attempts have been nothing more than sets for absent models. A mindset, no doubt.

It seems to suggest to me why I now find, starting off at home with an idea to go out and shoot a specific thing, seldom brings any reward.

Happiness? My philosophy is this: life is a straigh-line graph, and the moments of up are happiness, and the dips sadness. I don't believe it's possibe to live normally, permanently, in one or the other of the blips: to do so would remove your ability to realise that you were, in fact, on either a crest or deep in a ditch; you would then, deprived of relativity, believe that what the majority enjoys as normal is, actually, one of the extremes. Perhaps that actually explains a lot of what goes on around one.

Beyond that, I also believe that a lot of the thing has to do with roots. Not for a moment do I believe that the very noticeable abundance of very talented Jews in the art world is accidental, any more than that it's as simple as a plot by the art world to keep the rest of us out.  I think it stems from something to do with genes, from generations of life experiences and possible avenues of escape from some of the same. Adversity makes you feel.

Rob