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Author Topic: Discrepancy  (Read 2865 times)

-Tom-

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Discrepancy
« on: January 14, 2014, 12:22:54 pm »

Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Discrepancy
« Reply #1 on: January 15, 2014, 10:51:19 am »

Well seen.

I think that the gritty message would be even grittier in b&w. Perhaps even doing reverse vignetting (i.e., lighter edges, darker center) to balance the unbearable lightness of being of that stone pillar in the middle?

amolitor

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Re: Discrepancy
« Reply #2 on: January 15, 2014, 11:18:21 am »

This is well done. You could fool with colors, and Slobodan's ideas are always worth a careful think, but basically it's a fine picture that says what you want it to say.
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brandtb

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Re: Discrepancy
« Reply #3 on: January 15, 2014, 12:45:15 pm »

I would suggest to you that meaning or in this case a forced irony can't make an image something it's not.  So, what the image IS.  Centrally it is of a very cheap and poorly designed gate pier with some mustard yellow painted concrete at its base (all uninteresting)...and it's surrounding foliage taking up nearly 3/4's of the frame. Only very very partially in view are a car (nearly "unrecognizable" or indistinguishable" and uninteresting) end not even enough to tell us is this real luxury car? Lastly your figure ("unrecognizable" or indistinguishable" and uninteresting) could be anybody...someone taking out the trash, a workman throwing something away...almost anybody - doing anything...and anybody's guess. Tom, there is no good image here...unlike the other you posted of the apartment building which has some very nice qualities. I'll pass along an anecdote. Once I asked the NY gallerist Tom Gitterman (prev. of Howard Greenberg) to review some new work. He said fine, but 'don't sent any text or titles or anything'...I started to say but, but...and he stopped me and said 'don't send anything but the pictures'. It is one of the more important lessons I've learned...and always worth reconsidering. /B
« Last Edit: January 15, 2014, 12:57:44 pm by brandtb »
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Discrepancy
« Reply #4 on: January 15, 2014, 01:28:09 pm »

... not even enough to tell us is this real luxury car...

A car with 4.2 liters engine is a luxury car.

Quote
... your figure ("unrecognizable" or indistinguishable" and uninteresting) could be anybody...someone taking out the trash, a workman throwing something away...almost anybody - doing anything...and anybody's guess...

Really!? I took me a single glance to recognize a guy who goes through trash in search of food or valuable items. Seen way too many of them in my life. You must be really lucky or privileged if you haven't, or if you can not instantly recognize the type.

By the way, this particular image does not need any title, at least not for us who can instantly recognize what is going on. Also, you are perfectly entitled to think (and say) that it is not a good picture. However, your post exudes certain absolute certainty that borders with off-putting and patronizing. In my humble opinion.


amolitor

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Re: Discrepancy
« Reply #5 on: January 15, 2014, 01:29:32 pm »

The fact that it could be something else is, I think, largely irrelevant. Any picture could be pretty much anything. If we make the simplifying assumption that the photographer had something in mind, then we should probably spend a little effort looking for it. This picture rewards effort, to my mind, and that is a good thing in a picture.

That said, we always walk a narrow path between being too obscure, and being too obvious. I like pictures, and I like looking at them, and I enjoy trying to puzzle out what the photographer had in mind. Others, less so. So, to please me you arguably have to be more subtle, more obtuse, whereas to please others you need to be less so, and still others probably want your pictures to be even more opaque.

I personally had no trouble seeing what this picture was about, and I had no trouble suspending my disbelief enough to imagine that I was seeing a luxury car and a poor man. Whether that's really a luxury car, and whether that's really a poor man, is irrelevant to me. The picture is clearly intended to illustrate the contrast between a poor man and a luxury car, and I was willing to accept it as a depiction of that (whether fictional or literal, I don't much care).

It is quite clear that other people are unwilling to so suspend disbelief, though, and that's good information too.
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brandtb

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Re: Discrepancy
« Reply #6 on: January 15, 2014, 02:29:31 pm »

Andrew, I think that's very well said...especially your last sentence.  I would add though about your comment that the image is
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clearly intended to illustrate the contrast between a poor man and a luxury car
to me again ....requires to much "imagination". To wit, the poor (?) man. I'm not sure how one tells he is a poor man...those are almost the exact clothes I wear when I'm in my woodshop or working out in the field. Old denim jeans, a long sleeved shirt, some type of work vest and some knock around thick soled shoes. So he looks me when I'm working. An aside, I have no idea what he's doing - I have to "put things" (?) in various dumpsters from time to time... like hundreds of thousands of other people near where I live. A bag on the ground...nothing about it that says anything.
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Discrepancy
« Reply #7 on: January 15, 2014, 02:33:28 pm »

Brandt, stop digging (when in a hole, etc.).

WalterEG

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Re: Discrepancy
« Reply #8 on: January 15, 2014, 02:38:11 pm »

None so blind as those who will not see.

Maybe the guy is looking for his Rolex that got put out in the garbage?  Naaah!
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AFairley

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Re: Discrepancy
« Reply #9 on: January 15, 2014, 02:54:34 pm »

My critique on this is that apart from the irony/juxaposition/whatever, it is pretty much completely lacking as a photograph, i.e. in terms of compositon, color/total dynamics and so on.  There's nothing wrong with having subtext in a photograph, but the photograhp has to be able to stand on its own without the subtext IMO.   Compare the composition of Lange's "Migrant Mother" with some of the snaps of homeless people that occasionally show up on this site.  http://www2.ivcc.edu/rambo/eng1001/lange.htm That's an example of what I'm talking about.
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brandtb

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Re: Discrepancy
« Reply #10 on: January 15, 2014, 03:02:12 pm »

Alan, I think that is what I was getting at and is spot on...
Quote
it is pretty much completely lacking as a photograph, i.e. in terms of compositon, color/total dynamics and so on
...it takes more than a "tacked on narrative/title" to make up for what is actually in the frame or in this case not. Lange, Rosskam, Evans and many others a great place to start. (side note when I saw that cheap fake-nice pier...first thing I though are the hundreds like it in middle-class Englewood, NJ) /B
« Last Edit: January 15, 2014, 07:24:00 pm by brandtb »
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RSL

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Re: Discrepancy
« Reply #11 on: January 15, 2014, 03:05:51 pm »

By the way, this particular image does not need any title, at least not for us who can instantly recognize what is going on. Also, you are perfectly entitled to think (and say) that it is not a good picture. However, your post exudes certain absolute certainty that borders with off-putting and patronizing. In my humble opinion.

+1. And there's nothing humble about my opinion.
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Discrepancy
« Reply #12 on: January 15, 2014, 03:07:38 pm »

... There's nothing wrong with having subtext in a photograph, but the photograhp has to be able to stand on its own without the subtext IMO...

That is an interesting view. Take subtext from a social-commentary photograph and what is left? Pure esthetics? Shapes and forms, composition, beautiful tonality? It would be great if all that is combined in single shot, but that is not the purpose of photography as a social commentary. Even Lange's photograph, stripped of its human element and story, would not leave much else.

AFairley

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Re: Discrepancy
« Reply #13 on: January 15, 2014, 03:29:50 pm »

That is an interesting view. Take subtext from a social-commentary photograph and what is left? Pure esthetics? Shapes and forms, composition, beautiful tonality? It would be great if all that is combined in single shot, but that is not the purpose of photography as a social commentary. Even Lange's photograph, stripped of its human element and story, would not leave much else.

I agree that great art is not the purpose of photography as a social commentary, but surely we aspire to more here at Lula! 

As a thought experiment, take the Lange photo and substitute for the destitute migrant and her dirty children, a middle class housewife and kids in the same pose and light.  The photo will still "work" because of the dynamics and balance of the composition, even without the pathos that has been removed, so I disagree with your assessment of the Lange photo. 
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Rob C

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Re: Discrepancy
« Reply #14 on: January 15, 2014, 03:44:31 pm »

That's why good ole t'n'a is so much more rewarding; especially to shoot. You know where you are with those things - usually.

;-)

Rob C
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