The Online Photographer

After my previous post, where I told the story about the guy who photographed bramble, Eric Lawton wrote:

I make photographs of bramble, just as you described. I’m not sure why I do. I guess I just like how they look. I usually find other people's pictures of bramble fascinating. I also like Jackson Pollock.

I have one photographer friend who was unaccountably drawn to the guy lines that anchor telephone poles, especially if they had that protective sheathing near the ground (called "safety covers"), and especially if that sheathing was a color or was striped or something. They showed up again and again in his work. Another is mysteriously magnetized toward the juncture between exterior walls and sidewalks, especially if there is a weed or two trying to grow there. Ctein photographs Christmas lights like he's making a catalog, which I personally never "got" (to me, the attraction of lights is that they're light-emitting lights). But I used to feel a near-compulsion to photograph waterfowl and also newfallen snow, almost as if those things were an assignment or an obligation.

I recall a book dealer friend who had a large photography book collection. I asked him what he collected, and he gave a detailed, erudite answer, with many facets, and then added, with a sideways bob of his head and a half-shrug, "...oh, and of course books about New York City." He said that last in a tone which implied that everyone loves books about New York City, and that this was natural, so of course he collects those, because who wouldn't? I have one picture of New York City that I like, but it's mainly a portrait of Gordon behind his camera. I've always liked country living, and have been happiest in those interludes when I got to live in rural areas.

Why are we drawn to certain things? It can be mysterious. A bit of a discussion about Lee Friedlander got kickstarted under the previous post as well. From what little I know, the way he works is that when he realizes he's repeating certain themes, he starts throwing related prints in a box. Then when he's got a lot of pictures in any given box, he edits them and makes a book. He's published more than fifty books, including a book about all his books. Evidently his house is stuffed to the rafters with remainders of all the books, and his son Eric was selling complete sets for a while. (If memory serves. And my memory is full of holes these days. So take this with a big lump of salt.) But it starts with the recognition that something tends to draw him in. So he has a book on American monuments, and one of self-portraits, and one of pictures that include TV screens, one about apples and olives, one of pictures taken from the car, one about chain link, one of nudes, and so on. His most recent one consists of six booklets, slipcased together, of pictures of six of his famous friends, whom he photographed repeatedly over the years. I mentioned John Szarkowski (one of the six friends, by the way) the other day, the Director of the Photography Department at the Museum of Modern Art for ~thirty years. Mr. Szarkowski was also a photographer, and used to begin his standard lecture about his work with a joke that "a ladder never hurts," after showing six or seven pictures that included ladders. He was acknowledging that he was drawn to ladders. He was known to like pictures of apples, too, because he was an orchardist.

Synchronized with the sun
I've only intermittently lived in more or less rural areas, but I've enjoyed the lifestyle each time I get to live that way for a while. One of the living situations I liked best in all my life was a week-long "Freshman Trip" at Dartmouth, when we hiked every day, cooked dinner on a campfire, and slept and rose with the sun. As long as I don't have to hunt or fish for the food, that's the life. One of the first things I realized about my own photographic aptitudes was that I don't do very well in cities. The Corcoran School of Art, my beloved alma mater, was in downtown Washington, D.C., which is not a very city-like city—there are lots of parks and public spaces and greenery—but I had trouble connecting to subject matter there. We were supposed to photograph regularly, and I feel like I walked all over D.C. but didn't get much in the way of pictures out of it. Whereas when my art school class would sometimes gather for a party at our classmate Sarah Huntington's farm way out in the Virginia countryside, all of a sudden I'd see pictures everywhere.

Life as a photographer is a long process of discovering what interests you, both in the photographs you like to look at as well as the photographs you like to take. Those two things eventually begin to influence each other, too—I'm convinced that in many cases people learn to like pictures like the pictures they themselves are able to take. It's a wonderful thing when a photographer with specific or idiosyncratic aptitudes locks in on the subject he or she is best suited to by temperament, interest, understanding, and sympathy. That's when the best things happen.

Mike

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Featured Comments from:

John Custodio: "Re 'Why are we drawn to certain things? Lee Friedlander...the way he works is that when he realizes he's repeating certain themes, he starts throwing related prints in a box. Then when he's got a lot of pictures in any given box, he edits them and makes a book.' This is what Brooks Jensen of LensWork calls PBWA (photography by wandering around), which is basically going to various places and photographing whatever interests you without trying to fit the images into a preconceived concept or any kind of project. After a while, some of the images you’ve made may coalesce into a theme. I found that I was drawn to objects like monuments, statues, and other odd or interesting objects isolated in the wider landscape, and eventually made a book."

Mike replies: I like your book. I like the way you morph from one subject type to another again and again.

MikeR: "Of George Tice, he of Paterson, New Jersey fame, it was said that he never saw a water tower he didn't like."

Mike replies: George just died. I suppose I shall have to do what I am dreading and do a post of recent obituaries. It's too sad. People I idolized in my vanished youth are vanishing. The books, Paterson and Paterson II, two among many, are long out of print.

Yonatan Katznelson: "When I was younger, I liked taking pictures of pigeons. These days, I find ravens more captivating (but I still like pigeons)."