Robert Walker

[Ivo_B]

Robert Walker is one of the Painter / Photographers who introduced color as an (if not the most) important element in street photography. I find his work inspiring and together with Gruyaert and Eggleston he was a game changer in his era.

Interesting text:

Color is Power


extract of the article

...
In 1975, the American photographer Lee Friedlander was invited by the Optica Gallery In Montreal to give a workshop on street photography.
I registered for the course on a whim rather than out of any deep interest. During this period, I was also introduced to the work of the masters of the genre: Eugene Atget,André Kertész, Walker Evans, Robert Frank,William Klein and Gary Wynogrand and as the workshop progressed, my fascination with this form of photography turned Into an obsession.

A few months after the workshop ended, it occurred to me that I should immediately switch to colour. I intuitively felt that the creative possibilities of black and white were being exhausted. I have not taken a black and white picture since. At that time, there were few colour photographers to emulate, but at least I had my limited knowledge of painting to fall back on, so I approached the medium with an abstract sensibility. When I chose a subject to be photographed, I would completely ignore the literal elements and concentrate on balancing colour and form. If I learned anything from my early days as a painter, it was to be able to look at the entire picture plane as an abstraction and not be seduced by the drama of the subject matter.[/i]

Check out his work: Robert Walker

[Telecaster]

In particular I like the part about abstraction. Nearly all my favorite photos work as studies of geometry and/or tonality apart from any consideration of who/what the stuff in the frame is.

-Dave-

[Rob C]

Robert Walker is one of the Painter / Photographers who introduced color as an (if not the most) important element in street photography. I find his work inspiring and together with Gruyaert and Eggleston he was a game changer in his era.

Interesting text:

Color is Power


extract of the article

...
In 1975, the American photographer Lee Friedlander was invited by the Optica Gallery In Montreal to give a workshop on street photography.
I registered for the course on a whim rather than out of any deep interest. During this period, I was also introduced to the work of the masters of the genre: Eugene Atget,André Kertész, Walker Evans, Robert Frank,William Klein and Gary Wynogrand and as the workshop progressed, my fascination with this form of photography turned Into an obsession.

A few months after the workshop ended, it occurred to me that I should immediately switch to colour. I intuitively felt that the creative possibilities of black and white were being exhausted. I have not taken a black and white picture since. At that time, there were few colour photographers to emulate, but at least I had my limited knowledge of painting to fall back on, so I approached the medium with an abstract sensibility. When I chose a subject to be photographed, I would completely ignore the literal elements and concentrate on balancing colour and form. If I learned anything from my early days as a painter, it was to be able to look at the entire picture plane as an abstraction and not be seduced by the drama of the subject matter.[/i]

Check out his work: Robert Walker

He does what he says he does on the tin.

Whether or not that has produced great images is another matter. Some are very nice and some horrid. Of course, as with his own statements, this view is based on personal likes and dislikes.

Suggesting b/w has run out of power is almost funny.

You should be the first to tell him so.

[RSL]

Suggesting b/w has run out of power is almost funny.

Not just funny. It's hilarious. A very large part of the power of photography is in its graphics.

[Ivophoto]

Not just funny. It's hilarious. A very large part of the power of photography is in its graphics.

The implementation of color doesn’t excluded graphics.

[Ivophoto]

He does what he says he does on the tin.

Whether or not that has produced great images is another matter. Some are very nice and some horrid. Of course, as with his own statements, this view is based on personal likes and dislikes.

Suggesting b/w has run out of power is almost funny.

You should be the first to tell him so.

I don’t think it is a question if b/w was out of power. That is not what he said imo. Enfin,I don’t understand it that way. He said he believed the b/w possibilities where exhausted. I understand he meant: exhausted to do something new, stretching the boundaries of photography. And he probably got a point.

We can elaborate endlessly on the esthetic quality of his work, what I find interesting and useful for me, in my vision of photography, is how he abstracts the purely visual experience above the literal content.

I find this a very defendable approach. Same happens over and over in other art forms.

[Rob C]

I don’t think it is a question if b/w was out of power. That is not what he said imo. Enfin,I don’t understand it that way. He said he believed the b/w possibilities where exhausted. I understand he meant: exhausted to do something new, stretching the boundaries of photography. And he probably got a point.

We can elaborate endlessly on the esthetic quality of his work, what I find interesting and useful for me, in my vision of photography, is how he abstracts the purely visual experience above the literal content.

I find this a very defendable approach. Same happens over and over in other art forms.

Basically, we (you and I) are both saying the same thing about b&white, though I read his interpretation and use of terminology slightly differently, with the difference that you think exhausted, in the context, means something other than out of power, out of steam, nowhere left to go.

Extracting the purely visual is easy: you simply half-close your mind, keep your eyes just enough out of focus to eliminate detail, and when the colour lumping looks properly weighted, click! The difficult bit is the literal content. That takes more than the simply visual perception of blocks of colour, and forces the requirement of adding interest; in other words, you have to combine two functions, always the stumbling bock.

As you told Russ, the implementation of colour doesn't exclude graphics but equally, neither does the use of balck/white do that; if anything, doing it in black/white is even more of a challenge because the contrasts that create the tonal blocks (from greys) are both less strong and also less visibly obvious to the naked eye. In fact, a lot more difficult to discern, when you realise that a mid-green is the same as a mid-red in the altered b/w range of ultimate contrasts. Guess which appears the more challenging and skilled to catch: the obvious or the not-so-obvious?

Nope, I do not want to change your mind where we have differences, nor should I; I just reserve my slightly different view, as do you.

Rob

[Ivophoto]

Basically, we (you and I) are both saying the same thing about b&white, though I read his interpretation and use of terminology slightly differently, with the difference that you think exhausted, in the context, means something other than out of power, out of steam, nowhere left to go.

Extracting the purely visual is easy: you simply half-close your mind, keep your eyes just enough out of focus to eliminate detail, and when the colour lumping looks properly weighted, click! The difficult bit is the literal content. That takes more than the simply visual perception of blocks of colour, and forces the requirement of adding interest; in other words, you have to combine two functions, always the stumbling bock.

As you told Russ, the implementation of colour doesn't exclude graphics but equally, neither does the use of balck/white do that; if anything, doing it in black/white is even more of a challenge because the contrasts that create the tonal blocks (from greys) are both less strong and also less visibly obvious to the naked eye. In fact, a lot more difficult to discern, when you realise that a mid-green is the same as a mid-red in the altered b/w range of ultimate contrasts. Guess which appears the more challenging and skilled to catch: the obvious or the not-so-obvious?

Nope, I do not want to change your mind where we have differences, nor should I; I just reserve my slightly different view, as do you.

Rob

No issue with that Rob.

It’s effectively the marriage of color and the b/w toolbox that I find challenging.

It happened in the art movements as well.
From modernism over fauvisme, cubism, conceptual art. Even up to Kitchen Sink and social realism (where Nan Goldin was the photographic exponent) movement.

I hoped to find ground to discuss the art movement in photography.

Therefore I find it not in place to ridiculise or minimize other visual photographic expressions. (What you don’t do btw)

[RSL]

The implementation of color doesn’t excluded graphics.

No it doesn't. But many photographs in color would be improved a great deal by conversion to B&W to emphasize the power of the graphics. Color often detracts from the graphics. Then there's the problem that HCB pointed out: You can't control the visual position of colors in a photograph. Advancing colors advance whether or not you want them to. Receding colors recede whether or not you want them to. The only place you can control color in photography is in the studio, where you can decide what colors to put where.

[Ivophoto]

No it doesn't. But many photographs in color would be improved a great deal by conversion to B&W to emphasize the power of the graphics. Color often detracts from the graphics. Then there's the problem that HCB pointed out: Advancing colors advance whether or not you want them to. Receding colors recede whether or not you want them to. The only place you can control color in photography is in the studio, where you can decide what colors to put where.

Not necessarily. Interception, pre positioning, flattening perspective, incorporation of backgrounds, etc, all ways to play with available colors in the potential scene. Granted it complexifie photography, especially when one wants to go beyond Walkers vision and combine image content with color composition.

Walkers ideas are recognizable. In the classic arts, Impressionism was a counter reaction to the academically realism. Color, shadow, light overruled graphic, lines and details.  (And later details came back and so far and so further....)

I’m very impressed how colorists like Gruyaert emphasizes social situations, enforced with a sound balance of color, light and shadow in the image.

It allows to go further in street photography, leave behind the use of maniérisme and express emotion with color. Subdued tones or vibrant colorite are powerful additional composition tools when working in color.

It is not ‘or’ it is ‘and’

It needs additional skill to make and even read color images.

I’m surprised that color photography is still in the dimple of snapshottery.

[RSL]

I’m surprised that color photography is still in the dimple of snapshottery.

I'm not surprised. It always will be as far as most people with a camera (or phone) are concerned. Oooh! Wow! Look at the colors in that! As far as I'm concerned, anyone trying to learn photography as an artform should be limited to shooting B&W for the first four years.

[Rob C]

I'm not surprised. It always will be as far as most people with a camera (or phone) are concerned. Oooh! Wow! Look at the colors in that! As far as I'm concerned, anyone trying to learn photography as an artform should be limited to shooting B&W for the first four years.

Actually, that's pretty much what happened to me when I got my first pro job. Years printing black/white, learning how to make prints of metal parts look like the parts, which since most of the time they consisted of grey jet engine turbine blades, was not too difficult after a few months of learning to forget what, as an avid am. with his own darkroom, I had imagined I already knew. Then, it was into the colour lab where the learning curve started all over again. There, it was even more critical because accuracy of matching original colours was what informed engineers down the line about what had happened inside flame tubes. Let me see the colour of your burns, dear, and Mummy will make it better!

By that time, I'd had my fill of industry and never looked back after a couple of equally boringly tedious jobs for other photographers. Apart from anything else, I realised that employment as a photographer was on the reward grade of a street cleaner - to be generous to photographers. I resigned, went solo and that was it. The world opened up.

Colour, for me, was almost invariably transparency because of the requirements of the publishing systems. Unlike in my industrial unit, nobody wanted colour print originals - thank God - unless for point-of sales display and exhibition stands, and also unlike today, once you handed over your transparency or print you were done; final step was sending in your invoice and developing a three-month patience system in your head. Thinking digital has made life easier is a friggin' myth: folks appear to work several times as long for perhaps even less return. Nothing was as sweet as typing that bill and going on to the next job - if there was one... that was ever the challenge, not the photography.

However, I think you tune your own visual  - if not quite the aesthetic - vision from looking at the work of people you admire for what they can do. They can never be copied, which would be self-defeating anyway, but nonetheless they do mould your appreciation of things visual. I do not believe they teach you anything precise, because photography is not like that, it is far from a precise, chemical science anymore, and with PS the need to know your materials and processes like the back of your hand has gone. Well, for stills at any rate - I know zero about motion.

I really believe that you can only ever be taught how to use equipment. The creative part can not be taught: if you have such a part, you have to develop yourself by yourself, and proof of this for me was that, from never having shot a fashion pic in my life, the transformation to working photographer doing exactly that was without a glitch, and as easy and natural - and without hesitation or fear - as if I'd been shooting women and their clothes all my life. The next step was even more simple: exactly the same mindset but with fewer rags.

[Ivophoto]

The requirement of sound professional knowledge should not be in question. I take that for granted.

You make a very valid point about the additional workload and required skills in this digital era. Work doesn’t stop with handing over the transparency. The color character of the image is not dictated anymore by Kodak or Fuji. There is a lot of extra work on the photographers plate. (The happy few who can afford a full staff are seldom or bankrupt meanwhile)

I had a few good colleagues/ friends in the business that you described in your last words. All earning a pile of money until internet washed out 90% of the glamour (and not so glamour ) magazine business. Result: bankruptcy

Another friend worked for a Dutch mail order company, selling kinky lingerie and battery operated apparel. He was the in house photographer. In an (successfully)attempt to turn around the financial curve they hired a big German marketing company with their own photography division. He was trilled to hear he got a contract for that marketing company. The studio was cramped with broncolor stuff, his working horse became a H’blad and he could not be happier, until he got a visit from the project manager and art director, carrying a binder full of directives how to light out a dildo and how to set up a lingerie scenery, and he better followed that manual. The truth was that those guys knew very well how to do things.

But back on topic, is photography as a technique strong enough to be the main technique for an art evolution (as painting did), or is it merely another technique to contribute to a general art movement?

Rephrase: can photography contains art movement or is photography a tool in art movement?

I suppose it is correct to say portraits, street, landscape is not an art movement but subjects.
Is it possible to do photographic portraits on a impressionist way?
Can we do street on a surrealistic way?
(Not using cheap PS filters)

...

[Rob C]

The requirement of sound professional knowledge should not be in question. I take that for granted.

You make a very valid point about the additional workload and required skills in this digital era. Work doesn’t stop with handing over the transparency. The color character of the image is not dictated anymore by Kodak or Fuji. There is a lot of extra work on the photographers plate. (The happy few who can afford a full staff are seldom or bankrupt meanwhile)

I had a few good colleagues/ friends in the business that you described in your last words. All earning a pile of money until internet washed out 90% of the glamour (and not so glamour ) magazine business. Result: bankruptcy

Another friend worked for a Dutch mail order company, selling kinky lingerie and battery operated apparel. He was the in house photographer. In an (successfully)attempt to turn around the financial curve they hired a big German marketing company with their own photography division. He was trilled to hear he got a contract for that marketing company. The studio was cramped with broncolor stuff, his working horse became a H’blad and he could not be happier, until he got a visit from the project manager and art director, carrying a binder full of directives how to light out a dildo and how to set up a lingerie scenery, and he better followed that manual. The truth was that those guys knew very well how to do things.

But back on topic, is photography as a technique strong enough to be the main technique for an art evolution (as painting did), or is it merely another technique to contribute to a general art movement?

Rephrase: can photography contains art movement or is photography a tool in art movement?

I suppose it is correct to say portraits, street, landscape is not an art movement but subjects.
Is it possible to do photographic portraits on a impressionist way?
Can we do street on a surrealistic way?
(Not using cheap PS filters)

...

. 


Starting at the end: maybe a lot of HC-B's earlier work was surrealism via camera? I get a rising sense of nervous hysteria blending with amusement on looking at photos of middle-aged men in hats peering through holes in fences, or even of folks in mid-flight over puddles behind railway stations. Those pictures are perhaps not really all that much to do with photography per se, but a lot to do with the odd situations that people create for themselves. A certain Monsieur Hulot springs to mind

There might even be an argument for thinking that successful street may not actually depend at all on courageous acts of staring down strange people in the street, but depend more on an observation of the quirks within everyday human behaviour. I think that's something that Seamus Flynn would do rather well. If still on board, show some more, Seamus!

Street photography with an Impressionist touch, in a digital age, must almost essentially depend on filtration of some kind; with paint it was the result of a form of desertion of detail in favour of flavour; the camera - or rather its sensor - is possibly too rigidly "correct" for that. I would imagine Sarah Moon doing it in her early days with ultra-fast film, grain like mothballs, but with sensors? Stripping away content to end up with a solitary figure on a grim street somewhere may appear to pay service to Impressionism, but perhaps it's just closer to minimalism? I don't think we get very far comparing photography with painting or drawing; early photographers wasted a lot of life trying to be what the other, inescapably, already was.

Perhaps rather than an ism, what photography seems to do well, occasionally, is develop flavour-of-the-month fashions such as cross-processing was: visually odd but, for me, ultimately sterile and counterproductive. 60s and 70s fashion photography had a love affair with the 28mm and 35mm lens that, used tight on a Nikon etc. gave slightly elongated heads and figures; for a reason I no longer recall, that struck me as attractive at the time. I guess that what I may be saying is what you already have: photography varies via genre more than by mannerism of presentation.

It seems likely that a lot of the trends in photography - well, the things that appear in galleries, are really the result of a confusion in the mind of the photographer who, by virtue of the pressures and demands for novelty that an art market uses for fuel, finds himself pressured into thinking that photography depends on things other than making photographs very well. I believe that photography, straight, is so powerful a medium in the hands of a skilled photographer, that it needs gimmick like the Titanic an iceberg.

Perhaps St Ansel was a prime example of that. He developed straight photography to a very advanced degree. So did W. Eugene Smith, if you are willing to accept bleaching as a legitimate part of straight photography, which I certainly am. Perhaps what I'm slowly bringing into focus here is that photography depends on soul. Just like music, then, and is too literal a medium to bend too much yet still escape ridicule.

That said, the "bending" of photography as been a staple of advertising for a long time.

[RSL]

Well said, Rob. As HCB said: “It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart and head.”

There's another of Henri's quotes I haven't time this morning to dig out, but it goes something like this: "Everything you need to know about (the how-to mechanics of) photography is in the little book that, along with the fine leather case, comes with the camera."

[32BT]

I believe impressionism is very well possible with just the camera. We see great examples of that right here on LuLa using ICM, John's images come to mind, or when capturing movement, Peter M bicycle image comes to mind.

Surrealist images is a bit more doubtful. It either is already surreal as a visual scene, or perhaps it could be called surreal when it is a play on perspective, though that usually gets tiresome real quickly...

[RSL]

Before you set your mind too irreversably about HCB and surrealism, Oscar, check this: http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2017/12/25/henri-cartier-bresson-was-a-master-surrealist-street-photographer/

[Rob C]

I believe impressionism is very well possible with just the camera. We see great examples of that right here on LuLa using ICM, John's images come to mind, or when capturing movement, Peter M bicycle image comes to mind.

Surrealist images is a bit more doubtful. It either is already surreal as a visual scene, or perhaps it could be called surreal when it is a play on perspective, though that usually gets tiresome real quickly...

Regarding what shows up here on LuLa: people become stuck in grooves. When you see two shifted camera snaps in sequence, the magic vanishes into boredom. How many streaky lawns or flowers or trees does it take to establish a point, a "style" that unfortunately, is just a mechanical gimmick? I ran the gamut of Vaseline smears (sounds clinical, but wasn't) ND filter and other mechanical games, but in the end, it's the pic that took some thought, some notion of observation or surprise (to me) that brings me pleasure from my own work. Increasingly, the straight shot processed to its ultimate mood, makes me happy. Mood is really a human connection with whatever; without humanity at least looking, all those sunsets and lagoons and mighty waterfalls just are; cold fact or hot one, but remote from emotion. A rock feels nothing. A volcano doesn't even hear itself breath and snort, and has no idea how it stinks.

Surreal for me, feels that it requires the presence of a human, of at least some interplay with living tissue, for if to connect. The M. Hulot factor, if you will. Perpective, as you say, really boils down to equipment once more, and becomes so what?
 
Rob

[Ivophoto]

Regarding what shows up here on LuLa: people become stuck in grooves. When you see two shifted camera snaps in sequence, the magic vanishes into boredom. How many streaky lawns or flowers or trees does it take to establish a point, a "style" that unfortunately, is just a mechanical gimmick? I ran the gamut of Vaseline smears (sounds clinical, but wasn't) ND filter and other mechanical games, but in the end, it's the pic that took some thought, some notion of observation or surprise (to me) that brings me pleasure from my own work. Increasingly, the straight shot processed to its ultimate mood, makes me happy. Mood is really a human connection with whatever; without humanity at least looking, all those sunsets and lagoons and mighty waterfalls just are; cold fact or hot one, but remote from emotion. A rock feels nothing. A volcano doesn't even hear itself breath and snort, and has no idea how it stinks.

Surreal for me, feels that it requires the presence of a human, of at least some interplay with living tissue, for if to connect. The M. Hulot factor, if you will. Perpective, as you say, really boils down to equipment once more, and becomes so what?
 
Rob

Maybe there is more.
P.E.: Human kind left sufficient footprint to be present, even while not there. This makes it possible to smell the flesh, even when it is not in the frame.
Absence of the obvious...
Finding effective absence of human trace is a real challenge, at least, here in west Europe. This could be a nice subject of a series or even the dogma of an ism.
The nohumanism. 

We start a sub forum and get upset by all those rascals posting images not compliant to the dogma.




I guess you point quit accurate to the photographic caveats, technology is very dominant in the result (the image) and the process to create ‘easy mood’ is dominantly dictated by the adobe / Nikon / Fujifilm / Canon or even Nick/Google engineers.
I find converting to B/W a bit in the same corner.

[32BT]

I agree that a tool/technique is not in and of itself meaningful as or in a style/genre. It does proof though that there are possibilities to create impressionism without (post)filtering. Of course, to create meaningful art with a certain technique, one first has to master the technique which may involve countless images that don't seem to evolve above a meaningful level. Anybody with sufficient experience in learning knows how you eventually reach a plateau at which it takes longer to break through.

Another form of impressionism imo is the glass reflection technique that Rob seems to like both in production and consumption. I like it very much for its ability to create a layered, almost abstract impression just like a collage is a layered, abstract impression. But granted, its power is likely in the human factor that can be included.