Digital BW, The Print

"Consequently it tempts the photographer to be similarly
indiscriminate, and just shoot away, hoping for a good result."

Not when you're using an 8x10 camera and not when film costs $4 a sheet. 
: - )

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Stone" <David.Stone@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, June 29, 2007 11:18 AM
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: why do you take/make pictures


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


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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