Digital BW, The Print

Harry wrote:

 > Someone (I wish it was me, or at least that I remembered who) said
 > that we photograph to learn how to see.
 >
 > Harry

I always told my students that if they wanted to learn to see, then  
photography is the wrong medium. Photography is all-inclusive,  
indiscriminate. It grabs everything in sight without stopping to  
look, something that bothered the early users of the medium.

Consequently it tempts the photographer to be similarly  
indiscriminate, and just shoot away, hoping for a good result. I  
think that it was Lee Friedlander who said that photography is a very  
generous medium, because it gives so much without any extra effort,  
but of course few photographers are prepared to admit that much of  
the content of their photographs is there by pure chance and not by  
intention.

If you want to learn to see things critically, analytically, then  
there is no better way than learning to draw (most photographers  
don't want to know this of course). Producing an image, even badly,  
by manual means imposes a discipline that in photography is simply  
not required, and so never learned. Many of the most famous  
photographers have been equally skilled at drawing and painting -  
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Charles Sheeler, Irving Penn, and many others.

Many years ago, when as a student I did a full-time course in  
photography, we spent the whole of every Monday morning for the first  
year doing life-drawing. This was so revolutionary, and so effective,  
that the effects on my eyes and brain remain decades later.

Jack's original question "why?" is a good one and needs to be  
considered by anyone who teaches, or is planning to teach  
photography. And, of course, by anyone who studies it. But I would  
suggest that, as a starting point, you could do worse than consider  
the collection of quotations at the end of Susan Sontag's "On  
Photography". There's plenty of material here for students to think  
about and discuss. And of course there are plenty of biographies and  
autobiographies by and about photographers. But I can't think of a  
better, more unpretentious or more concise answer to your question  
than the title of Irving Penn's book of photographs from 1965:  
"Moments Preserved".

David


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