Clock of Jean-Claude Lemagny

[amolitor]

I think the OP is wrong on that point

The context for a photograph need not be the body of work it was made in. Someone might hand you a fistful of snapshots and say "these are pictures I found lying on the ground in NYC over ten years". A picture might turn up in a manual for tractor, or on a cereal box. It might be accompanied by words, or not.

Consider, say, Weston's pepper (#30, isn't it?)


Considered in the context of Weston's work, it is one thing. Perhaps it's an exemplar of Weston's mastery of the vaguely erotic play of light on sensual curves, reflective of his own appetites, or whatever. Shown in a class on contact printing, it becomes something else. If you stick it up in a forum, and say "I think Weston is super over-rated" it's now just a flashpoint for fisticuffs.

If you just stick it up in a forum without much comment, what then is it? Do I remember seeing it on the wall and consider it that way? Or from my class on printing? Or from the other forum where there was the big fight?

I realize that this IS a forum, about photography, and that people are therefore deeply interested in the idea that it should be a good place to show off pictures. After all, many people are here, and doing just that. I happen to think that's not true, though.

[elliot_n]

A nice story I want to share as well: (also from this nice booklet)

The parable of the hunter.

The traditional photographer believes there are meanings in reality as the hunter knows there are rabbits in the field.
It comes to him to hunt, to aim, to shoot, to bring home the loot triumphantly.

The innovative photographer knows that the rabbits do not really exist, that it is his own mind that sticks meanings to reality.

And this summarizes perfectly what I believe is the difference between stifled by genre and definition and liberated by unchaining ourselves from the latter.

To contrast with this, the encyclopaedia article I linked to concludes with the following quote from Jean-Claude Lemagny:

It is certainly clear that in the eternal struggle between reality and the idea of it that one constructs, reality must conquer the idea and only that which Zarathustra calls 'the sense of the earth' deserves to triumph.

I like this

[Ivophoto]

I think the OP is wrong on that point

The context for a photograph need not be the body of work it was made in. Someone might hand you a fistful of snapshots and say "these are pictures I found lying on the ground in NYC over ten years". A picture might turn up in a manual for tractor, or on a cereal box. It might be accompanied by words, or not.

Consider, say, Weston's pepper (#30, isn't it?)


Considered in the context of Weston's work, it is one thing. Perhaps it's an exemplar of Weston's mastery of the vaguely erotic play of light on sensual curves, reflective of his own appetites, or whatever. Shown in a class on contact printing, it becomes something else. If you stick it up in a forum, and say "I think Weston is super over-rated" it's now just a flashpoint for fisticuffs.

If you just stick it up in a forum without much comment, what then is it? Do I remember seeing it on the wall and consider it that way? Or from my class on printing? Or from the other forum where there was the big fight?

I realize that this IS a forum, about photography, and that people are therefore deeply interested in the idea that it should be a good place to show off pictures. After all, many people are here, and doing just that. I happen to think that's not true, though.

All valid points.
I said earlier it would be necessary to introduce the principle ‘viewers projection’ but that was snowed under other replies.

[Ivophoto]

To contrast with this, the encyclopaedia article I linked to concludes with the following quote from Jean-Claude Lemagny:

It is certainly clear that in the eternal struggle between reality and the idea of it that one constructs, reality must conquer the idea and only that which Zarathustra calls 'the sense of the earth' deserves to triumph.

I like this

That doesn’t mean the battle shouldn’t be fought. After all, reality gets fat and boring if not challenged.

[amolitor]

I used to worry more about things like "viewer projection" but I mostly have set those issues aside for now.

There's artist intent, there's the experience of this viewer, and of that viewer. There's what an experienced critic sees in the picture, and what a naif who sees it only as a snapshot sees in it, and so on.

These might all be different, but I have come to believe that if we are open and forgiving with the pictures, if we sit with it for a little while and let the damned thing be itself, we'll mostly see similar things in it, and get some sense of what the artist meant. Sure, the artist might have failed, the picture might read as quite different from the intent. Sure, random people looking at it might well tend to fall into two or three radically different camps.

But the processes we use to grasp the picture will tend to be much the same, and the conclusions we reach will tend to cluster around a small set of possibilities. There will be interesting things to be learned in what the differences between what different people get out of it, but those are easily looked at and don't need to overturn the applecart entirely. And, more importantly, they're going to happen picture-by-picture, book-by-book, show-by-show. There's no sense getting fussed about it until there's some actual pictures in play, and some actual people who have reacted to them and have elected to sit down and talk.

As an aside, I went off to Seattle and spent a weekend in a book making class a while back. They had a ton of books lying around to leaf through. There are basically three groups:

1. Greatest Hits monographs. This is basically a sarcophagus for pictures. Very little text, maybe an introductory essay at most. Then page after tedious page of white borders and centered prints, without much connection from one to the next. It is like a very boring museum show, except worse because the pictures are very small and you have to flip around to compare one to the next.

2. Three columns of text, very small pictures inline. Exceedingly tedious academic drivel. Sometimes this stops after far too many pages, and then we have a ponderous page reading THE PLATES followed by far too many pages of item 1 above.

3. Everything else.

Types 1 and 2 are very popular, and I dare say that lots of people like them a lot. Heck, I own some of them Evans "American Photographs" is a sort of sample of the form, except that it happens to be very well sequenced and organized. It's still a chore rather than a delight.

These are terrible ways to present photos. The concept, of course, if that "the pictures speak for themselves" but for the most part all we're hearing is the blood rushing in our own ears in the dead tomblike silence of the goddamned white borders and academic droning and the stupid stupid dead dry captions that suck the last hint of air out of the room.

[Ivophoto]

I used to worry more about things like "viewer projection" but I mostly have set those issues aside for now.

There's artist intent, there's the experience of this viewer, and of that viewer. There's what an experienced critic sees in the picture, and what a naif who sees it only as a snapshot sees in it, and so on.

These might all be different, but I have come to believe that if we are open and forgiving with the pictures, if we sit with it for a little while and let the damned thing be itself, we'll mostly see similar things in it, and get some sense of what the artist meant. Sure, the artist might have failed, the picture might read as quite different from the intent. Sure, random people looking at it might well tend to fall into two or three radically different camps.

I’m not going to elaborate directly on the books, that is part of another very interesting discussion how tho exhibit visual art.

About viewers projection and the creators intention.

When I was in the third year photo academy we had a lector who claimed to have a mental disorder. He claimed he was not able to combine his sensory experiences with what he saw in a picture. Hence not able to project.
If that was genuine or not, I don’t know.

When we had the daily photo pow how and placed an image on the table and one by one told what the image did to us, he shook his head and repeated his mantra: ‘it’s not in the picture, it’s in your head’

I admit it changed the way I look at images. After a few months, most students pushed back and questioned why a viewers projection should not be part of the image. Up to today I ‘m not sure if the lector didn’t play a game with us....
In the same year I visited a locally well known exhibit of mixed art and landed in a small exhibition of contemporary paintings.
I was looking to a huge conceptual piece, the curator came to me and asked me what I found about it. I said I tried view it without projection. The curator looked into my eyes (It was a beautiful mid 40 lady, btw) and asked why I would ignore my projection.
“If you buy this, and hang it in the house, you better have a pleasant projection, otherwise it isn’t for you”
I had a long conversation with here and she explained about art that stands on its own, and art that counts on the viewers projection or the cerebral effort of the viewer.
That’s where I got interested in images not standing on themself.
I like images that are not ‘complete’ without out the viewers interpretation or depending on other context offered aside.
The clock deals with this differentiation.

[Rob C]

Personally, I think that there are two good ways of seeing photographs: framed on a wall; printed large in a well-printed book. Never printed across the gutter as a double-page spread.

I have sympathy with Andrew's complaint about the drivel that people write in those books, especially as the writers are often the reason the books are printed at all, because without their more famous names on the cover, the snapper would have even less chance of touching a nerve with the public, and zero of enticing the moths out from their wallets.

The very best monograph that I have is by Jeanloup Sieff, a Taschen production simply named for the man. It was his last work. In it, he writes his own story and it is fascinating, especially as the wordsmith(ing?) is so refined - it's in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese - so kudos to the people responsible for the translations from, I guess, the French.

I also own some Steidl productions but though very well printed, they are all far too small and make me feel cheated. Art by the kilo complex? No, seriously, it's insulting to have to admire stuff too small to give emotional depth. On art by the kilo, Newton's mini-Sumo threatens to dislodge my shelf, and I bought it because I refused all the other Newton books, and realised that the original, gigantic Sumo production was going to be the epitome of his life's work, probably covering in one space all the fragmented stuff I didn't want to buy before.

The physically huge Annie Leibovitz Life of a Photographer 1990 - 2005 is as huge in disappointment to me: mostly her private snaps and not very good at that. My equally weighty Peter Lindbergh A different Vision On Fashion Photography is a mixed bag of stuff that looks far better on the monitor. As ever, I think his "making of" videos are more interesting than the actual stills that get used.

Thinking about this, and also about Ivo's deep interest in everything peripheral to (perhaps more so than in the pictures themselves?) photography, drives me to the idea that perhaps images are simply way overrated by us people, that the public has it right: they are just mementos at best and advertising probably owns the best non-personal ones. Crowd-sourced sense contains more common sense?

As so often happens, and I recognize it in my paragraph immediately above, I see once more that Terence Donovan was inescapably right about the amateur's dilemma.

[Ivophoto]

Personally, I think that there are two good ways of seeing photographs: framed on a wall; printed large in a well-printed book. Never printed across the gutter as a double-page spread.

I have sympathy with Andrew's complaint about the drivel that people write in those books, especially as the writers are often the reason the books are printed at all, because without their more famous names on the cover, the snapper would have even less chance of touching a nerve with the public, and zero of enticing the moths out from their wallets.

The very best monograph that I have is by Jeanloup Sieff, a Taschen production simply named for the man. It was his last work. In it, he writes his own story and it is fascinating, especially as the wordsmith(ing?) is so refined - it's in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese - so kudos to the people responsible for the translations from, I guess, the French.

I also own some Steidl productions but though very well printed, they are all far too small and make me feel cheated. Art by the kilo complex? No, seriously, it's insulting to have to admire stuff too small to give emotional depth. On art by the kilo, Newton's mini-Sumo threatens to dislodge my shelf, and I bought it because I refused all the other Newton books, and realised that the original, gigantic Sumo production was going to be the epitome of his life's work, probably covering in one space all the fragmented stuff I didn't want to buy before.

The physically huge Annie Leibovitz Life of a Photographer 1990 - 2005 is as huge in disappointment to me: mostly her private snaps and not very good at that. My equally weighty Peter Lindbergh A different Vision On Fashion Photography is a mixed bag of stuff that looks far better on the monitor. As ever, I think his "making of" videos are more interesting than the actual stills that get used.

Thinking about this, and also about Ivo's deep interest in everything peripheral to (perhaps more so than in the pictures themselves?) photography, drives me to the idea that perhaps images are simply way overrated by us people, that the public has it right: they are just mementos at best and advertising probably owns the best non-personal ones. Crowd-sourced sense contains more common sense?

As so often happens, and I recognize it in my paragraph immediately above, I see once more that Terence Donovan was inescapably right about the amateur's dilemma.

I own several Steidl productions as well and I’m happy I was very selective in my choice.
Election Eve and Los Alamos (Eggleston)  are beautiful pieces. Not all Steidl productions are of that quality.

Yesterday, by coincidence, I bought Annie Leibovitz at Work. I like the book, pleasant reading, good quality paper, small but nicely printed photos and not unimportant, the book smells good.

Another book I bought second hand from a guy who didn’t have a clue is Nudi from Paolo Roversi. Magnifique.

Totally different are the Taschen publication of Lachapelle, but the production somehow suit the work.

About my deep interest in the, as you call it, periphery of photos. This came after coming to the conclusion you make in your second last paragraph. It is additional to my deep interest in images on their own.

I think, Rob, we are much more aligned than what can be understood from Forum guff.

[Ivophoto]

(Side note)
Wide gamut Monitors are a quit good way to look at images. HQ beamers on black diamond projection screen are very nice to.

[amolitor]

I think projection in that sense is absolutely the key.

One can get pedantic and note that a photo is just tone and color smeared on a flat thing. You have to "project" to even see that it is a picture of a dog. The people who would say that are the same who would insist that "all photographs are manipulated because neither a RAW file nor an exposed film have a visible image" so I am distinctly not saying that.  A photo of a dog is a photo of a dog.

But to derive any meaning from it, to feel something, there is always the interplay of mind and picture. The dog's posture droops, and you feel sorry for the dog, that is projection. Why? I cannot fully explain why I think "the dog" is not reasonably considered as projection, but the dog's mood is. The line is surely blurry. But consider that the dog's posture could be an accident, perhaps the happy dog was simply snapped as it changed position, creating the illusion of a drooping, miserable, dog. Perhaps "projection" is, in rough terms, our interpretation of whatever is left ambiguous by the picture, or something like that.

But as a sort of contrapuntal point:

Photographers in general have something of an obsession with "the good pictures" and we all more or less agree on what they are. For 25 years or so I could "see" them and approve just as much as the next fellow. These "good" pictures are the basis of the monograph, and many a gallery show. I still "see" them, I just don't care any more. Consider the attached picture. I consider this as a more or less "good" one.

Take a look at it.

...


Ok. I shot this as a parody of a style. It happens that I was walking under an overpass and noted some shadows, and said to myself "self, at about 5 those will be strong diagonals" and so I went back at five and spent a few minutes snapping pedestrians. This was the "best" of the lot in the photographer's-notion sense. Since then it has been passed around a little and has met with moderate approval. A great deal of "street" photography I see out there is presented as shot on the fly, but is very obviously shot by setting up and burning frames until the shadow play moves on. Anyways.

As photographers we project certain things onto this thing. We see the strong graphics, the strong range of tones, the aptly placed human figure. It reminds us of other "good pictures" that we have seen. This form of projection is NOT really about interpreting the ambiguous, it's something else.

But you know, it's not much of a picture. It's just some guy walking under an overpass. The real world depicted is almost completely void, and I defy you to project, to interpret, or otherwise extract anything of any meaning or power from it. The picture is utterly weightless. Anything you do manage to extract from it is going to be ALL you. I put nothing in to it, and I discern nothing in it. There isn't even any ambiguity to be resolved, it is precisely what it appears to be.

I could go shoot 50 more of these things, and then write an essay about solitude, or the inhumanity of the built environment, or some similar bullshit. But it would still just be a guy walking under an overpass.

My next step is to start carrying around a print and asking non-photographers what they think of it. I suspect, but do not know, that the strong graphics will appeal to many people, but they will tend to recognize it as a snap of nothing and will try to find a polite way to say that to me.

[faberryman]

Ok. I shot this as a parody of a style. It happens that I was walking under an overpass and noted some shadows, and said to myself "self, at about 5 those will be strong diagonals" and so I went back at five and spent a few minutes snapping pedestrians. This was the "best" of the lot in the photographer's-notion sense. Since then it has been passed around a little and has met with moderate approval. A great deal of "street" photography I see out there is presented as shot on the fly, but is very obviously shot by setting up and burning frames until the shadow play moves on. Anyways.

As photographers we project certain things onto this thing. We see the strong graphics, the strong range of tones, the aptly placed human figure. It reminds us of other "good pictures" that we have seen. This form of projection is NOT really about interpreting the ambiguous, it's something else.

But you know, it's not much of a picture. It's just some guy walking under an overpass. The real world depicted is almost completely void, and I defy you to project, to interpret, or otherwise extract anything of any meaning or power from it. The picture is utterly weightless. Anything you do manage to extract from it is going to be ALL you. I put nothing in to it, and I discern nothing in it. There isn't even any ambiguity to be resolved, it is precisely what it appears to be.

I could go shoot 50 more of these things, and then write an essay about solitude, or the inhumanity of the built environment, or some similar bullshit. But it would still just be a guy walking under an overpass.

My next step is to start carrying around a print and asking non-photographers what they think of it. I suspect, but do not know, that the strong graphics will appeal to many people, but they will tend to recognize it as a snap of nothing and will try to find a polite way to say that to me.

I fully agree with you assessment. The image is utterly vacuous, and no amount of diagonals or solitude or bullshit in general can save it.  Good example. That being said, it is not nearly as bad as most of the dreck that passes as "street" here and elsewhere.

[Peter McLennan]

The viewer plays a significant part in the image's degree of success or failure.  What may be wild success for one viewer may be utter failure for another, even though they're both seeing the same image. Individuals are as unique as their interpretation of reality.

As a class assignment to encourage seeing, I once asked students to photograph "reflections".  The usual images appeared, some creative and interesting, some boring and derivative. 
One student submitted an image of a person walking alone on a deserted beach.  It took me a few moments to realize that the beach walker was, while walking, reflecting. Awesome!

To perhaps answer my own question, one interpretation of photograph is that the subject of the beach walker image was the person doing the walking.  The object was the need to communicate the idea of reflection.

The problem is that the English words "object" and "subject" are somewhat ambiguous.  They have multiple meanings depending on context, thus rendering the clock metaphor ambiguous, too.

[Rob C]

I think projection in that sense is absolutely the key.

One can get pedantic and note that a photo is just tone and color smeared on a flat thing. You have to "project" to even see that it is a picture of a dog. The people who would say that are the same who would insist that "all photographs are manipulated because neither a RAW file nor an exposed film have a visible image" so I am distinctly not saying that.  A photo of a dog is a photo of a dog.

But to derive any meaning from it, to feel something, there is always the interplay of mind and picture. The dog's posture droops, and you feel sorry for the dog, that is projection. Why? I cannot fully explain why I think "the dog" is not reasonably considered as projection, but the dog's mood is. The line is surely blurry. But consider that the dog's posture could be an accident, perhaps the happy dog was simply snapped as it changed position, creating the illusion of a drooping, miserable, dog. Perhaps "projection" is, in rough terms, our interpretation of whatever is left ambiguous by the picture, or something like that.

But as a sort of contrapuntal point:

Photographers in general have something of an obsession with "the good pictures" and we all more or less agree on what they are. For 25 years or so I could "see" them and approve just as much as the next fellow. These "good" pictures are the basis of the monograph, and many a gallery show. I still "see" them, I just don't care any more. Consider the attached picture. I consider this as a more or less "good" one.

Take a look at it.

...


Ok. I shot this as a parody of a style. It happens that I was walking under an overpass and noted some shadows, and said to myself "self, at about 5 those will be strong diagonals" and so I went back at five and spent a few minutes snapping pedestrians. This was the "best" of the lot in the photographer's-notion sense. Since then it has been passed around a little and has met with moderate approval. A great deal of "street" photography I see out there is presented as shot on the fly, but is very obviously shot by setting up and burning frames until the shadow play moves on. Anyways.

As photographers we project certain things onto this thing. We see the strong graphics, the strong range of tones, the aptly placed human figure. It reminds us of other "good pictures" that we have seen. This form of projection is NOT really about interpreting the ambiguous, it's something else.

But you know, it's not much of a picture. It's just some guy walking under an overpass. The real world depicted is almost completely void, and I defy you to project, to interpret, or otherwise extract anything of any meaning or power from it. The picture is utterly weightless. Anything you do manage to extract from it is going to be ALL you. I put nothing in to it, and I discern nothing in it. There isn't even any ambiguity to be resolved, it is precisely what it appears to be.

I could go shoot 50 more of these things, and then write an essay about solitude, or the inhumanity of the built environment, or some similar bullshit. But it would still just be a guy walking under an overpass.

My next step is to start carrying around a print and asking non-photographers what they think of it. I suspect, but do not know, that the strong graphics will appeal to many people, but they will tend to recognize it as a snap of nothing and will try to find a polite way to say that to me.

I hope you were joking about carrying it around seeking opinion. Why bother or care?

What you have written seems to mirror my own conclusion written over in the QV thread, about non-applied photography: it's largely pointlessly wasted effort and almost certainly meaningless.

Worse, and I didn't mention this in the other thread, it can waste one helluva lot of money better spent on something else. Can anyone really say he has not had that moment of cold and sweaty introspection when he asks himself what on Earth he is doing spending all this cash on stuff that is practically worthless in a couple of years?

[KLaban]

Rob, it's that time of year.

[amolitor]

Peter: I think it is arguably a measure of a picture's success that it produces more or less the same reaction in most/all viewers. Since you can steer this reaction in a bunch of ways (putting together sequences of pictures, and adding words) that is what I do. Pictures standing by themselves need to be quite remarkable (possibly too remarkable to actually exist) to produce the same reaction in everyone.

Rob: I am indeed considering dragging a print around. The work of making it actually happen may defeat me, though. I am interested in the results of the experiment, but not very interested.

[Rob C]

Peter: I think it is arguably a measure of a picture's success that it produces more or less the same reaction in most/all viewers. Since you can steer this reaction in a bunch of ways (putting together sequences of pictures, and adding words) that is what I do. Pictures standing my themselves need to be quite remarkable (possibly too remarkable to actually exist) to produce the same reaction in everyone.

Rob: I am indeed considering dragging a print around. The work of making it actually happen may defeat me, though. I am interested in the results of the experiment, but not very interested.

Give it time... you'll probably go one way or the other - no anmbiguity.

[Rob C]

Rob, it's that time of year.

You are not wrong.

[amolitor]

I can in fact rattle on about this sort of thing all day.

Here are some pictures which are neither really about the thing depicted, nor about the physicality of the photograph (that would be hard in this digital world). Maybe they sit at 12 o'clock? Maybe not. I think of them as simple representations of particularly potent symbols. The common style ties them together, and I rather think you'd have to be a bit dense not to detect that there's something going on with symbolism here. A Cowboy, A Gun, A Coin, and A Car. The cowboy is a deeply American myth, the coin has a picture of George Washington.

Individually, these photographs are straightforward, if highly stylized, pictures of specific objects. You could certainly treat them as documents, perhaps between 12 and 3 o'clock. The stylings might suggest that the photographer is trying to reach in the other direction, away from merely documenting the objects, but one by one I don't think they have much chance to succeed. One by one, they're probably just over-styled pictures of ordinary things, signifying nothing. Maybe the toy cowboy has enough mythic power to make some sort of leap. The car, coin, and gun are just things, though, surely.

Together, perhaps they lean more toward 9 o'clock, the surreal? Together, the group makes to my eye an honest run at crossing the dial and landing firmly on the left side of the clock. At any rate, it is certainly not a stretch to say that these things are trying to get at certain elements of Mythic America, and you wouldn't be wrong if you decided that.

These pictures are a distilled set of a larger thing that really hammers the connection to Mythic America to the point where it is unmissable, but as it is also political, I have edited the thing down to this symbolic set.

Notably, I think, I have engineered this sequence to cause the viewer to project certain things onto the pictures. The theme of America and of American Myth turns up after a little while, and reinforces itself. At this point you're now looking at the pictures through that lens, and perhaps you see the cowboy no longer as a weirdly lit toy but as a representation of America's idea of itself, at least a little bit (and probably not in those rather bloviating words). The car, which perhaps was just a poorly lit picture of a Toyota, becomes, maybe, a trifle malevolent.

The gun, now related to the little plastic gun in the cowboy's hand, perhaps acquires a little more sense of danger. Perhaps it feels less passive, perhaps no longer lying still but in the hand of some guy in a big hat with unknown intent. Who knows? There's a lot of connections you might make, if you're open, if you're looking and trying to make sense of these pictures. Those connections, those ideas, are all projection. Those connections and ideas are what the sequence is supposed to do, and it is those ideas and connections that draw the pictures away from documentary toward surreal and conceptual.

And so on, blah blah blah. There's a lot of words to talk about something that's barely conscious.

But as a guy who tries to do things with pictures, I'm interested in the processes.

[Ivophoto]

You are not wrong.

Reminds me to a Belgian contemporary photographer: Jimmy Kets. He works for one of the Belgian ‘quality newspaper’ his work for the newspaper is not really innovative but his other work is of another kind.

He got an assignment to photograph the world war 1 commemorations . Each photograph he took would surely be rejected by any regular newspaper, he photographed the events from distance and included a lot of the environment in each shot. He documented the whole story in an almost cynical yet respectful way.
I met him after an exposition of his work and asked him how he got to this approach.
He said it was during the first week he was working on the series, a British couple stood behind him. And the man said to the woman: “The graves look nice this time of the year, isn’t it?”
That made him decide to approach the whole 4 years of commemorations with that attitude. And the title for his book was a fact.

http://www.jimmykets.be/series/the-graves-are-nice-this-time-of-year

[Ivophoto]

I can in fact rattle on about this sort of thing all day.

Here are some pictures which are neither really about the thing depicted, nor about the physicality of the photograph (that would be hard in this digital world). Maybe they sit at 12 o'clock? Maybe not. I think of them as simple representations of particularly potent symbols. The common style ties them together, and I rather think you'd have to be a bit dense not to detect that there's something going on with symbolism here. A Cowboy, A Gun, A Coin, and A Car. The cowboy is a deeply American myth, the coin has a picture of George Washington.

Individually, these photographs are straightforward, if highly stylized, pictures of specific objects. You could certainly treat them as documents, perhaps between 12 and 3 o'clock. The stylings might suggest that the photographer is trying to reach in the other direction, away from merely documenting the objects, but one by one I don't think they have much chance to succeed. One by one, they're probably just over-styled pictures of ordinary things, signifying nothing. Maybe the toy cowboy has enough mythic power to make some sort of leap. The car, coin, and gun are just things, though, surely.

Together, perhaps they lean more toward 9 o'clock, the surreal? Together, the group makes to my eye an honest run at crossing the dial and landing firmly on the left side of the clock. At any rate, it is certainly not a stretch to say that these things are trying to get at certain elements of Mythic America, and you wouldn't be wrong if you decided that.

These pictures are a distilled set of a larger thing that really hammers the connection to Mythic America to the point where it is unmissable, but as it is also political, I have edited the thing down to this symbolic set.

Notably, I think, I have engineered this sequence to cause the viewer to project certain things onto the pictures. The theme of America and of American Myth turns up after a little while, and reinforces itself. At this point you're now looking at the pictures through that lens, and perhaps you see the cowboy no longer as a weirdly lit toy but as a representation of America's idea of itself, at least a little bit (and probably not in those rather bloviating words). The car, which perhaps was just a poorly lit picture of a Toyota, becomes, maybe, a trifle malevolent.

The gun, now related to the little plastic gun in the cowboy's hand, perhaps acquires a little more sense of danger. Perhaps it feels less passive, perhaps no longer lying still but in the hand of some guy in a big hat with unknown intent. Who knows? There's a lot of connections you might make, if you're open, if you're looking and trying to make sense of these pictures. Those connections, those ideas, are all projection. Those connections and ideas are what the sequence is supposed to do, and it is those ideas and connections that draw the pictures away from documentary toward surreal and conceptual.

And so on, blah blah blah. There's a lot of words to talk about something that's barely conscious.

But as a guy who tries to do things with pictures, I'm interested in the processes.

Thank you for sharing this Amolitor.

This is effectively the process that helps me to understand but more important to do things with pictures. Yours last words says a lot.

Thanks again.

Last year, in the FOMU (photo museum Antwerp) I visited an exhibit about US multi nationals. Initially I didn’t find my way in the exposition. Images, articles, a lot of commercial photography.
And then a found the headlines. It was about how multinational are financed, the effect of this on local markets as another line it was explained how publicity is used to influence the buyers. And how a ‘need’ is created. Examples where given how Monsanto changed to food chain with food engineering. How Dupont used backwards engineering to increase sales by making a product (nylon stockings) not to good.
And at the end it was explained how all this was exported to Europe. (World Expo 58) and how it boosted the European continent. As a side line the effects of consumption industrie and engineered food came were discussed.

Photography was direct and indirect the basis of this exhibit, but there was so much more.
Text, extracts from historical contracts, original publicity from the fifties, video, it made a complete experience.

I photograph with projects like this in mind. I keep a number of broad themes in mind and shoot things or situations that could be useful.

P.e. I’m working on a series about the proliferation of Coca Cola.
I ‘m shooting all the phases of huge infra works who are changing my town of birth. These pictures would be laughed away here on Lula, but I’m sure that it will gain relevance over the decades to come.
Etc


Photography as a means not a goal.

....