The Online Photographer

[Bloviation Alert! "Open Mike" is the all-purpose Editorial Page of TOP, so Mike can dump out one little corner of what's cluttering up his brain. It appears, with ironfisted rigidity, on Sundays.]

Just so we're clear, the previous post was a "color vs. B&W" post, not a "digital vs. film" post. It's important to know which fight we're in.

Passions for digital vs. film seem to still run high, and I didn't think that was worth arguing over even back when it was relevant. Why do we have to decide one or the other? I didn't get that then and don't get it now.

Mikelike digression starts here. (If you'd like to skip it, scan down to the header that says "Digression Over, Safe to Return.")

To my mind it has something in common with GOAT arguments. (I always thought it should be GOATUTN, "greatest of all time up till now," but never mind.) There is a swampy little node in the (mostly male) mind that needs a hero to worship, and the hero must be...well, first, must be chosen, or, shall we say, anointed...and then defended, as the best, the ultimate, the greatest, the most glorious, etc. And it must be indisputable—which of course means it gets disputed ferociously and neverendingly. Sides are chosen. Views radicalize, and then calcify. We must assert the good of our side, which is all good, and vilify or condemn the other side, which is all bad. All very satisfying to the primate brain, apparently.

Human beings are really really good at two things: forming alliances between groups, in order to fight; and splitting groups into two sides, in order to fight. Mikhail Gorbachev presciently predicted our present divisions here in the formerly United States, back when the USSR and the Berlin Wall fell, because he knew that without an "Evil Empire" to oppose (the term is Ronald Reagan's), we would be at each other's throats ere long. And so it has come to pass. I don't know if you know this, but B&H Photo and Adorama, the two biggest mail-order retailers of photographic equipment in the United States a good chunk of the last 50 years, were founded by two men, Herman Schreiber and Mendel Mendlowits, who are reportedly related by marriage. They originally worked together, or so I've heard, but had a falling out. Echoing, perhaps, the schism between the Teitelbaum Rebbes in Szatmárnémeti (Satmar in Yiddish, now known as Satu Mare, Romania) in the early 1900s. And before someone dredges up the discrimination lawsuits against B&H, which happens every time I mention B&H, consider that part of the mission of B&H is to support the Satmar Hasidic community; so you can perceive that they have a struggle on their hands trying to find the right balance between their conservative and strict religious values, their loyalty to their religion and community, and the values expressed in the laws of New York City, New York State, and the United States of America.

(I wrote another long digression about all that, but I edited it out. If the pen is mightier than the sword, then the red pencil is mightier than the pen.) (I need to stop writing with so many parentheses.)

By the way, B&H was winning the B&H vs. Adorama battle pretty decisively at one point, but then B&H decided they were doing fine on their own and didn't need to align with a little online bookselling startup, so Adorama got in on the ground floor with that online book merchant—which went by the then-rather-incongruous-seeming name of Amazon—and the battle was renewed. But employees of both companies, I'm told, ride the same busses into the city from their communities, and put aside their business competition in their families and neighborhoods.

Anyway, I don't know if golfers or baseball fans or soccer fans or fans of other sports do it too, but, in basketball and tennis, the GOAT argument is discussed so much that onlookers might be misled into thinking it's important. That little gene that makes men want to follow a hero leader (the word Muslim, which dates from 1615, means one who submits, or follower, and the word Fürer [ü can also be spelled ue] simply means leader in German). That primitive little whatever-it-is in our brains makes us want to argue: is it LeBron or Michael, or Kareem or Wilt, or Kobe or Steph, or Bird or Magic? On and on it goes. It makes humans happy to fight, as far as I can tell.

Recency plays a big part, such that, in tennis, it would have to be one of the Big Three—that would be Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic, if you don't follow tennis. Novak has the best stats, but then, Bill Russell won the most NBA championships and he's not considered the GOAT. It's easy when the choice is clear—Michael Phelps was the best swimmer, Ronnie O'Sullivan is the best at snooker—but not so easy when the choice is not so clear. In tennis the hero-worshipers choose Djokovic, but that causes a problem because a lot of people don't like Djokovic. He's not thrilling, just relentless. For most of the middle part of his career he outworked and outlasted opponents with superior fitness. He had luck in avoiding injuries and was filled with an all-consuming determination to earn glory for himself. All of which is something, but maybe doesn't automatically make him the GOAT. But try telling that to his worshipers.

Am I joining the argument myself? Sorry.

For the record, here's what I think: it's not about a GOAT. The greats in any sport are a pantheon, a "hall of the gods," lower case letters intentional. If there's any argument, it's who belongs in the group of people who are among the greats. I'd argue for Oscar and Hakeem to be included. I'd argue for Jimmy and Pete and Andre to be included. At the level of all-time greatness, you cheat yourself if you try to name just one. Different great players have different styles, personalities, skills, gifts; they each make their own mark, contribute their own innovations (Kareem's skyhook). They play differently. They might have peculiar weaknesses (Shaq's freethrows). They are sometimes definable by metrics and stats (Wilt), sometimes by championships (Bill Russell), sometimes by influential style (Dr. J), sometimes by a shortish period when their brilliance burned bright (Pistol Pete in college), sometimes by will and determination and toughness in the clutch (Michael and Kobe and Bird), sometimes by court awareness and effectiveness (Dončić and Jokić).

Digression Over, Safe to Return. (Okay, it continues a little bit maybe.)

In photography, there's a big split between what you choose for yourself and what you can appreciate in others. I had to confront that early, because I had to write about others but I was also a photographer myself. I learned to separate the two things. Many people find richness in not separating the two; they might be landscape photographers and not only love landscape work by others but also find lots to learn and enjoy in painters, too. If they're really committed to landscape, they might not have much use for Man Ray, John Gossage, vloggers like Eric Kim or Kai Wong, Cindy Sherman, etc.

And that's fine. But while it's important to notice things about yourself, and important to explore your own taste, and important to know what you love, still, it's not a contest. I love B&W but I do not hate color or color photographs or, especially, color photographers. I loved film but I shoot digital; I don't mind people who switched to digital early or late or quietly or loudly, and I don't mind people who hang out on analog forums and argue about developers. I don't argue with people who are fine printmakers or just put their work on Instagram, or who collect view cameras or do street photography with outdated digicams. Or people who have worked for a lifetime, or people who do one big project and move on. I have nothing against Holgas or Instax, portraits or porn, the newest Leicas or old view cameras, commercial photography or personal art, museum darlings or uncool amateur shutterbugs. Name it, I'll look at it, if it's good enough. Photography is the ultimate field for the dyed-in-the-wool empiricist. You can always look at it and see what you think.

So in my mind, it's not one thing fighting against another thing, with the need being to pick a winner. It's more a question of nuances: how the things are different and what can we learn from understanding the differences. In my view, we lost some things when we turned away from film. Yet we gained a lot when we turned to digital. Now, AI is coming along, and people publish and share very differently, on social media. It's more interesting to understand what has changed, what we lose and gain, what the differences are, large and small, and what the effects are on how people relate to pictures and the world.

Regarding sharing differently, I absolutely loved the comment the other day from Greg Heins. He said that a friend of his teaches photography at a prep school, and that there is lots of interest in traditional film photography—but when the teacher pulls a print out of the developer and puts it on the viewing board, all the kids whip their phones out and take pictures of it to send to their friends.

Kimfluence*
As far as acceptance and investigation of art goes, probably one of the best examples, for me, has been my friend Kim Kirkpatrick. He was a disc jockey who had a famous show on radio station WHFS in Washington, D.C., that covered new music. And I mean new. He was never happier than when he played music no one had heard yet by bands no one had ever heard of. While he has always been quick to move on and discard the past—he had a magnificent record collection that included some exceedingly rare vinyl, much of which got sold to finance his first camera equipment—I imagine he kept his favorite record store in business for a few years there—he is also very good at learning new things he doesn't understand. He'll listen to any new genre, no matter how weird or rare or uncool, until he understands it. Once he thinks he has a handle on it, he'll move on. He grew up hating classical music—as a kid he was into the Velvet Underground, not Vivaldi—but when I put all my Beethoven CDs into a big disc storage book, he asked to borrow it. He and his daughter listened to Beethoven for weeks. Eventually, once he felt like he grokked what Beethoven was up to, and that he could distinguish the good from the not so good, he returned it.

I haven't seen Kim in person in almost 32 years, but we've been in touch all along, first by phone, then by email, and recently by text. Despite the lack of face time, I consider him one of my best friends.

A few days ago we got to talking on one of those channels about a Canadian band from the early '80s called Martha and the Muffins. The name was a reaction to the aggressive names punk banks were picking back then. They had one big hit, a song called "Echo Beach."  Here's the vigorous youthful version from back then. It sounds pretty dated to me now; my continuing affection for it is now partly or mostly nostalgic. (Kim doesn't do nostalgia.) Shades of Eric Clapton and the two versions of "Layla," early and late, however, Martha and the Muffins did a more mature, gentler, more elegiac version of "Echo Beach" for the song's 30th anniversary. I just discovered that, and I like it better than the original. I only knew "Echo Beach" and "Women Around the World at Work" because Kim, back before anyone else was listening to them, put them on a mixed tape for me. And don't get the wrong picture from that—"Echo Beach" on a mixed tape was just one band out of a thousand and one song out ten thousand that Kim spotlighted over many years. "Women Around the World at Work" is the MatM song I liked best, with its gorgeous sax solo that segues into a guitar solo that Kim once said was "27 seconds of perfection." [See his response below.]

It turned out that Kim had gotten to wondering, a few years back, what happened to the band. When he discovered that they had been busy putting out many albums over many years, he responded by listening to all of it—everything they had done—before concluding that he personally doesn't have any interest. That's Kim. He doesn't just listen to one song by a band before drawing a conclusion. Or ten songs. When a particular kind of thrash punk started up in Washington years ago, typified perhaps by the band Fugazi, Kim listened to nothing but that kind of music in the darkroom for weeks. When I asked him why he liked it, he said something like, "It's not that I like it. I have to listen to it until I get it." I asked him how he knew he was getting something, and he said that it's usually because he can start to tell what of it is good and what isn't. That's Kim.

Anyway, that's the model I aspire to for investigating or accepting art. I never come up to Kim's standard, but I constantly remind myself to try. I keep trying. Because I have strong tastes of my own, for myself, doesn't mean I can't continually try to stay open minded to new work, and dispassionately try to "get" what other people are doing—even when I don't like it. Nobody's perfect, and most people will fail at this one way or the other. I know I do. But I think it's good to try.

Mike

*I have another big, thick, fat book of CDs marked "Kimfluence," full of music that Kim influenced me to buy. He's made me hundreds of mixed programs of music over the decades, first on tape, then on CD-R, then on the web. His program now, with Bob Burnett, is C60Crew on MixCloud, if you want to listen. "Adios, Nonino" is Bob's and "California (All the Way)" is Kim's.

Additional comment from Kim Kirkpatrick: "Bit of an off the cuff reaction from me, but here I go anyway.

"I played that new version of 'Echo Beach' two or three times when I ran into it. I think it is a mildly interesting variation, but only because of the original song. It is too repetitive and too long to hold my interest. I do appreciate their tasteful attempt to make it fresh, and perhaps more aligned with the band members' maturity. They slowed it down and dropped the driving forcefulness in favor of more atmosphere. I wouldn’t want to fault them for that, and surely would have hated a regurgitation of the original 30 years later.

"I followed them through the first five albums from 1980–1984. Personally I thought they faded a bit in quality by the fourth release, but I can be ruthless with bands I really love. Some fans were clearly still with them, because they kept releasing new material through 2017, and a live album in 2020 from a show in 1983.

"By the way, the 'original' you posted is not the first version. The YouTube link is 5:28 in length with no vocals until 2:00 minutes in, and the original single was 3:38. Maybe it was an extended dance version with nothing added but a longer intro. While the material after 1984 was not of lasting interest to me, they did evolve and change their sound. I appreciate that, vs. releasing more of the same.

"The guitar solo on 'Women Around the World at Work' still sounds concise, powerful and focused to me, so yes, perfect. It also has a 'sixties sound to me which was the beginning of my music exploration. Similarities to Jorma Kaukonen from the Jefferson Airplane or John Cipollina with Quicksilver Messenger Service. Perhaps a lot to lay on a 27-second solo, but while it has that flavor, it is more than a repeating of the past."

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