What’s the Inverse of a Photographer?

If you are ever trying to find my house and, after arriving, you are able to walk from your car to the front door without seeing a dead animal, usually a mole, you are at the wrong address. Those of you who have Jack Russell Terriers will understand why this is so. Shown below is the torso of the current cadaver in my yard (cropped so as not to be too upsetting). Observe the tube-like body and the lack of … anything other than fur, a stubby tail, and vestigial back feet on that body.

Because I see them so often (like it or not), I think about moles. They are weird. The following is from Wikipedia:

“The mole will also occasionally catch small mice at the entrance to its burrow. Their saliva contains a toxin that will paralyze earthworms, allowing them to store their still living prey for later consumption. They have specially constructed larders for just this purpose; some such larders have been discovered with over a thousand earthworms in them. Before eating earthworms, moles pull them between their squeezed paws to force the collected earth and dirt out of the worm’s gut.”

And from the University of Michigan’s Zoology site:

“Fossorial moles have evolved notable specializations for their underground lifestyle. Their bodies are fusiform, the eyes are tiny (and sometimes covered by skin), the legs are short, and external ears are lacking. The forelimbs are rotated such that the elbows point dorsally and the palms of the front feet face posteriorly. This orientation lends power to their digging strokes. In addition, the forelimbs are short and strong and terminate in formidable claws. The fur of moles is velvety and can lie equally well in any direction, which allows easy movement in the burrows backward as well as forwards. Like shrews, moles have relatively high metabolic rates and insatiable appetites. They are active at all times of the day and night.”
[Ciszek, D. and P. Myers. 2000. "Talpidae" (On-line), Animal Diversity Web. Accessed December 24, 2007 at http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Talpidae.html . ]

“Male home range averages 1.09 hectares whereas female home range averages only .28 hectares. These moles are not solitary. Their home ranges often overlap and several individuals have been found using the same tunnel systems. These tunnels are found in two forms. One type consists of deep, fairly permanent passageways that are used as burrows and as routes to feeding sites. The other consists of surface runways used for collecting food. Winter tunnels tend to be deeper than summer tunnels. Nest chambers of dry vegetation are usually below the surface underneath a boulder or the roots of a plant. Eastern moles can dig up to 4.5 meters in one hour with their powerful forefeet. One individual dug 31 meters of shallow tunnels in one day. Special morphological developments enable the mole to burrow with such speed. Their forefeet are large and as wide as they are long. The bones of their shoulder girdles and upper forelimbs provide broad surfaces for muscle attachment. When they burrow, these moles essentially “dive” into the earth; they first thrust their forefeet into the soil and then follow with the head and body as they rotate their forelimbs and pull the loosened dirt backwards.”
[Gorog, A. 1999. "Scalopus aquaticus" (On-line), Animal Diversity Web. Accessed December 24, 2007 at http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Scalopus_aquaticus.html .]

None of the above explains how the males and females find one another and where they find the room to procreate. Maybe they have tiny underground motels.

The descriptions of moles reminds me of what people are like on the Internet; blind, busy, insatiable and full of worms. Both moles and Internet users seem to me to be the inverse of photographers — who are all eyes, highly visible, and above the earth as opposed to in it. Still insatiable, though.

These are MY Bird Photos

All of the birds that you see looking at you from any of my composites are identifiable as originating from my photos. That’s because you can see my house (the outline of the roof and clerestory) reflected in their eyes. The illustration is 2x, but it’s easy to see it without upscaling the images.

Really, Really, Really, Really Bad Photographs

It’s hard to think of anything that is worse, more boring, more uninteresting, more totally lacking in any kind of appeal, worth or use than a really bad photograph. The only thing that I can think of that comes close are those plastic tops from aerosol cans. Once separated from the can they came with, they are nearly as worthless as a bad photo.

I’m sorry to say that the vast majority of the really, really, really, really bad photographs that I have seen fall into the ‘fine art’ category. Even the worst snapshot usually has some interest for me — there is something there to look at.

On the other hand, the vast majority of the really, really, really, really magnificent photographs that I have ever seen also fall in the fine art category. As a percentage of the whole, there are very few such photos in either category, but those that I like (and I am biased toward art as opposed to journalism), are interesting for their beauty as opposed to their informational content. [In the illustration, the bars go all the way to the edge of the image. I should have outlined them; the white end doesn't differentiate from the background.]

Documentary photographers and photojournalists, please note that the chart does not reflect my opinion of your work. What you produce is an almost insignificantly small percentage of the non-art photographs in existence (relative to the billions of snapshots out there). On the other hand, of that tiny percentage of white on the chart, obviously about 99% goes to the documentary photographers and photojournalists.

Audio Analog

The obituary* in last week’s Economist (magazine and online) was for Karlheinz Stockhausen, an experimental musician. The lead paragraph includes the following:

“Other children had teddy bears and dolls; but Karlheinz Stockhausen had a little wooden hammer. As he toddled round the run-down family farm in the hills near Cologne, he would hit things with it to see what sound they made. Each note, he established young, sent him a different message. No plink or plunk was quite the same as any other.”

I didn’t use a wooden hammer, and I didn’t really start (not counting my box brownie) until mid-elementary school, but what I did then with my first SLR felt very much like the visual analog of  ”hit[ting] things to see what sound they would make.” I don’t think I was unusual in this; surely any creative child with a camera does such.

The article goes on:

“The result of his labours might be mere background noise, but he liked even that, especially if it could be run through big loudspeakers to a baffled audience.”

Along with:

“In the late 1960s he found jazzmen and rock bands—Miles Davis, Frank Zappa, the Grateful Dead—quoting him and even sitting at his feet when he lectured at the University of California.”

Do the two last quotes above strike you as a good parallel to the contemporary photography favored by art galleries and collectors? The incomprehensible art and his narrow appeal — primarily to those who considered themselves to be the current musical elite.

How about the response to Stockhausen’s work quoted below as an analog to that of the traditional/film purists to current trends:

“… Sir Thomas Beecham, asked if he had conducted any Stockhausen, said no, but he thought he might once have trodden in some.”

* The weekly obituary in the Economist is, to the type of reader that likes that magazine, the equivalent of the funny papers. One goes there first for light diversion. It’s the last non-advertisement text page in the magazine and it (text and photo) always fills one page. There is always only one (such an honor for the lucky recipient) and it is rarely the one that you might have expected from amongst the week’s selection.

The B Word

In an earlier post, I talked about the Contacts video series that I am watching (or trying to; it’s painful). It’s a series of 3 DVDs that gives a 12-18 minute segment to “the greatest contemporary photographers”. Each photographer talks, in voice-over, about his work as his images are shown.

In the the section of Roni Horn, she says the following about a series of her landscape images that is being shown on screen:

“It has a kind of end-of-the-world feeling mixed with extreme purity … [she sort of stutters here for a second]… a kind of … b***** …. just raw b*****.”

The pictures were, in fact, b********.

This kind of language and pictures do not belong on a video devoted to “the greatest contemporary photographers”. I realize that, in the privacy of their own homes, people can find this kind of stuff on the Internet, but, as long as they do it in private, it’s none of my business.

I will admit that many of Ms. Horn’s images were properly un-b******** and his commentary, for the most part was admirably inane. Nevertheless, there is no excuse for using the B word anywhere near the subject of contemporary photography.

[Please note that Bernd and Hilla Becher are on this DVD. I really like their work, and their voice-over commentary was not only relevant, and rational, it was downright interesting. They are exempted from all my commentary on this video series.]

Shadow Tint

The pictures of an orange in the previous post were taken before dawn. The first picture, below is the same orange, same setup, but taken after sunrise with skylight coming through the windows behind it, and with all interior lights turned off. The long expanse of windows creates a series of overlapping shadows with only a narrow section in the middle being, cumulatively, strong enough to register as dark relative to the ambient room light (from other windows in the house).

In the next picture, I have turned on the same overhead lights that were on in the previous post. I want you to notice and think about the tint in the windows’ shadows versus the tint in the shadow from the interior light’s shadow. Remember, the shadow is lacking the light that is causing it. (Look closely; you should see one as yellow while the other is blue.)

Shadow Anatomy

I have explained why shadows are the way they are in earlier posts. This time, I’m going to give you pictures with added text to describe what was not obvious from the images. Think about what you see.

Before I start, do this. Take your index finger and point it straight down so that it is almost touching any flat surface near where you are at this moment. Look at the shadow cast from that finger. Think about why the shadow or shadows have gradations in edge blur from near to far and why they fade from near to far. Look at the shape of the shadow. In my picture, below, I have removed my hand so all you see is the shadow. There are two overhead light fixtures, one near and one far as witnessed by the two shadows.

Now, for a full shadow dissection. First, I have put an orange in the same spot as I had my hand in the previous. There are two overhead lights with diffusion covers that make them, effectively, quite wide sources. Behind (to the rear/left) is a row of windows which are reflecting light, but not transmitting it – it was before sunrise when I took these pictures. The third shadow that you see (blue arrow) is caused by (blockage of) light reflected from the window which is nearest the light source (not nearest the orange). The pink arrow points to the darker area where the two main shadows overlap. Remember, that only happens if the shadows are from different light sources. Overlapping shadows from a single light source do not cause any increased loss of brightness where they overlap. The red arrow is indicating edge blur. That’s caused by the angular width of the light relative to the object and increases as the shadow falls farther from the object casting the shadow. To understand edge blur, thing about light ‘arrows’ drawn from one side of a light source versus light arrows drawn from the other side of the light source. Think.

In this next picture, I have blocked direct illumination from the farther light fixture. Everything else is the same. Again, the blue arrow’s shadow is from bounce from the window. No, it’s not a really skinny shadow; its right edge falls outside the main shadow. On that side, it is effectively blown out by the relative brightness of that light.

Now, below, I have blocked direct illumination from both of the ceiling light fixtures. I blocking the far one with my body and the near one with a black notebook held up high above the orange. With that brightness removed, you can clearly see the full shape of the shadow from the bounce from the window nearest the bright light, and you an also now see, faintly, two shadows from the windows that are nearer to the orange (remember, there is a row of windows running across behind the orange (its on a counter-top).

Finally, I have moved the black notebook down so that it blocks not only the nearest ceiling light fixture, but also the bounce from the window nearest that light fixture. You should be able to see, very faintly, the shadows from the other windows which are farther from the light source, but nearer to the orange.

For extra credit, go back to the second picture and think about why the lower part of the orange which is in shadow (self-shadowed) is strongly brighter than the upper part which is in shadow, but only on the right side. Then go to the third picture and think about why the lower left of the shadowed orange is somewhat brighter than the lower right and much brighter than the upper right.

You Can’t Tickle Yourself

I don’t know if this applies only me, or only to those who have spent a lot of time under a cover cloth, photographing with large format cameras, but what I see in the viewfinder or on the ground glass is, at some level, a different place from what I see, from where I am, when not looking through a camera’s lens.

I notice this, very particularly, when some part of myself comes into view while I a looking through the viewfinder. For example, I am shooting the base shots for the Nowhere series with a 24mm lens, on a tripod which puts the camera about fifteen inches from the ground. Because of the wide lens, the toe of my shoe sometimes gets into the frame, by mistake. Even after I have recognized it as my own foot, it remains, somehow, disconnected from ‘me’. I take my face away from the viewfinder, and, yes, there it is; my shoe on my foot. Put my face back to the camera, and its a foot from nowhere. The foot “in there” is not part of the body “out here.”

Similarly, when shooting little things such as berries or acorns for use in composites, I will put them, one by one onto a table setup under the camera. To center each item under the camera, I will look through the viewfinder and, with my left hand, move the thing to where I want it. That hand, my hand, as it moves the object around, does what I want, feels like its mine, but, as I watch it through the viewfinder, does not seem connected to ‘me.’

This is not the same as the disjuncture you may feel when looking in a mirror. Reflections are backwards, and in a different line from object to eye. When looking through the camera, I am looking at the same thing as when not looking through the camera. The only difference is the passage through the ‘black box’ — which leads me to believe that it’s a purely automatic psychological effect, built up over years of mentally transforming what I ‘get’ through the camera into a picture, a composition, a rectangular, autonomous slice out of time.

This is not surprising; it’s probably what every beginning art teacher tries to get his students to do. What is surprising, to me, is the literalness, the physical-ness of my behind-the-scenes translation of everything received through the lens to some sort of disembodied picture neverland.

Which led me to wonder, how truly does my brain separate the me visible through the lens from the me that is standing behind it? If I were looking at my bare foot through the camera and a hornet stung me on my big toe, would I immediately connect the bee that I was watching with the hurt that I felt? How to test this?

Of course. The tickle test. It’s common knowledge that you can’t tickle yourself. So, I tried it. I looked through the camera as I tickled my own feet. Though the tickling hand still looked disconnected, I’m happy to report that I did not succeed in tickling myself.

[Are these not two of best obscure words ever? Knismesis and gargalesis.]

Bedrock

As promised in the previous post, here are photos of the bare rock in the mountains around me, taken fresh this morning just for you. First, you see the view from below the bridge that goes to my house. On the left is close and the right is far. Yes, the mountains seen behind the bridge are that steep around here (not typical of the Blue Ridge in general). Also, we have had a major drought this year, so the amount of water is much less than normal.

Next (below) I was standing on the bridge, shown above and, on the left, looking upstream, and on the right, looking downstream. That stream continues up the mountain for almost half a mile, all of it bare rock with endless waterfalls before it flattens out in the large bowl-like valley above.

History

The following quote from yesterday’s selection from Rudolph Arnheim’s “Parables of Sun Light” was not included there because his separation of ‘history’ from ‘time’ bothered me:

“The giant white pine in the Idaho forest goes back to the days of Christopher Columbus. The five hundred years of its life have been filled with catastrophes, wars, revolutions; but untouched by any of them, the great tree has risen perfectly straight, like a temple column, not in history but in sheer abstract time.”

I wondered, is history necessarily limited to human events? I’m not sure you can define any material object without reference to at least its generic history. In that vein, I thought about the things that I use in my composites.

The stone background seen behind many of my arrangements, as well as the individual small stones are all taken from the land on which I live. That stone is part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which have a fascinating geological history if you can find a good source on the subject (the link given, ironically, does not give any description of the sequence of events that shoved the earth’s crust upward and the subsequent slide back into the ocean — and under History, they start with the arrival of white men on the continent).

There are an enormous number of large, bare rock areas in my immediate vicinity, mostly around stream flows, but also on the mountainsides. They are here because of hurricane Camille. When that storm passed over Nelson Countyin 1969, it dumped about 30 inches of rain in less than five hours onto the mountains. The soil, down to bedrock, became liquefied and the whole thing — trees, boulders, dirt, houses, people, slid down the slopes into the flat runout areas in what is called a ‘debris flow’. Here in Nelson County, 153 people died in that one night.

I was not here; I was a little kid, and lived about thirty-five miles north at that time, but still, nearly forty years later, you can see the scars on the mountains and in the steeper stream-beds. (I’ll get you some pictures in the next few days.)

As I was looking at the photographs taken at that time, I realized that I was assuming those pictures were true. I am also assuming that you will believe that the stone in my pictures are indeed the stone that I have described. It therefore occurs to me that what the anti-manipulation crowd is arguing about throughout the photography world is not reality (by which they mean real = Truth with a capital ‘T’; in philosophy-speak, it’s universal, and necessary) but history (which is truth with a small ‘t’; contingent and particular).

This distinction makes a huge difference to the debate. What are the starting assumptions (without which we can’t reach any conclusions)? I don’t think anybody will argue that history is True with a capital T. Some are more accurate than others but … Rashoman comes to mind.

On the other hand, I will certainly admit that a manipulated image breaks history. It is not ‘true’ in the sense that it came from that contingent and particular sequence of  happenings that are considered to be history. It is my opinion, however, that art, including manipulated photographs intended as art, can be True in expressing that which is universal, and necessary.

Notice in the linked Wikipedia article that history only includes that for which there are material records; anything before that is called pre-history. “All events that are remembered and preserved in some form (that cannot be invalidated as unhistorical /remains amenable to historical discourse) constitute the historical record.”