I am a photography curmudgeon, bad-tempered and disagreeable with a personality that makes Alfred Stieglitz look like Charlie Brown. I dislike today's photography! A hard statement but a true one about a medium I once loved, an art and craft that intrigued me, helped clarify the world for me from the smallest details to the largest, helped me to see what exists and not what I think exists. With photography as an art the world was my pallet. I needed only to compose it within the camera, be aware of the highlights and shadows, the gentle curves of the human figure, the juxtapositions of objects, the lines of rivers or fences or buildings making their way through the scene, the gentle balance of rocks against trees or men against women, all framed to my satisfaction. Sometimes I viewed the world as shapes not as "things." A headlight became a circle, a window a square, a shadow a depression. At other times the scrutiny of the subject as subject became a priority. A belt buckle grew vivid in every detail, the smallest scratch apparent. The veins in a rose shown perfectly clear. I am sure that Edward Weston did not spend days photographing vegetables, especially peppers, because they were vegetables. He was photographing shapes and lines and light, something beyond the subject..
Some knowledge was involved to photograph well but nothing an interested person could not learn himself or through trial and error and comparison to other decent pictures. As a photographer Andre' Kertez once said, "All you need to know about photography is what is printed on the box of film." I needed to know how aperture and shutter and ASA/ISO worked together and how to push film through underexposure and over development, and to develop for contrast, acutance, grain, and to use this knowledge to my advantage. I learned to listen to other photographers but never to believe them without experimentation or to let their thoughts become my thoughts.
While shooting a jazz festival at Port Townsend, Washington, I listened as a photographer from the Seattle P.I newspaper explained that you could not take any pictures in the clubs because there was too little light. How ridiculous! He was trapped in some kind of rule regarding exposure. A picture can be taken anywhere without a flash as long as there is "some" discernable light. I spent the evening photographing in the clubs and one of my shots was used as a CD cover photo and the series printed in a local paper. All you need to get an image is to get enough light onto the emulsion of the film by either the aperture (size of the opening to let light pass through the lens) or by shutter (time the shutter remains open to let light onto the emulsion.) What the P.I. photographer probably meant was the pictures would be blurred because of the slow shutter speed. That would have been true. One simply needs to think around the problem and visualize the picture differently. I used the camera shake to enhance the pictures rather than to distract from them. He was trapped by something he had heard or had read.
Long hours in the darkroom were often a delight, and equally as often sheer drudgery. The feel of the developer slippery on my fingers resembled a magic potion as the image started to emerge. Chet Baker or Miles Davis played from the corner of my red painted darkroom, reminding me of the time I spent on R&R in Hong Kong. Seeing the picture in the light brought delight and I enjoyed the challenge of shifting contrast and dodging and burning until the image started to glow. I might spend all evening to get a single acceptable print. The feeling of satisfaction was overwhelming and I might even drive around town to show my other photographer friends.
I enjoyed exploring and often bursting many of the conceptions about photographs, the biggest being "A photograph is worth a thousand words." A photograph is the exact opposite of prose and carries no words. The meaning of prose is in the prose itself. "The man felt lonely." The reader knows how the man feels, he need add nothing more, no surmising, no guessing if the statement is true or not, no reason to speculate why the man is lonely, no second guessing. People who do not understand writing, often-literary critics and teachers, often do not understand this. If they did they would quickly be out of a job. William Faulkner, when asked the significance or meaning of a sentence like "Joe Christmas was lonely" often replied, "I meant that Joe Christmas was lonely." Joe Christmas is a character from his novel Light in August. If he felt more information was needed for the reader he would have included it even if it took a sentence of several pages. The meaning would always be in the words.
A photograph has no meaning in and of itself. It is a captured piece of time, often a fraction of a second piece of time. It is a stolen instance void of understanding. A picture of Joe Christmas would show a black man. The sad expression on his face does not mean he is sad. We know nothing about him except exactly what we see. Anything more is added by the reader, not by the picture.
Take W. Eugene Smith's picture of "Tomoko in her Bath." We see a rather young misshapen girl being held slightly out of the water by an older woman. The girl is deformed, shriveled limbs, distorted face. The woman looks down at her. Light comes from the window behind and lies beautifully across them. It is a remarkable picture of light and dark and perfect balance between the woman and the girl but without narration what do we know about it? Nothing. Who is the girl and what has happened to her? Is she in pain? She doesn't look in any discomfort but maybe it does not show. Is she in water or is it some kind of medicated bath? And what about the woman? Is she the mother, a caregiver, some relative who has taken the place of the mother who has been killed or has left the family out of shame? We know nothing about the picture apart from visual denotation. What we see is what we see and all we can do is to accurately describe the picture. Any other information comes from the viewer - and they often have much to say.
Because the picture usually comes with written comments - in a book, (about the town of Minimata, in Japan, and the poisoning of the water caused by the Chiso Corporation therefore poisoning the people) a newspaper article, a captioned poster, the viewer can now add all kinds of speculation. None of it need be true because it does not emanate from the picture. Pictures convey very little that is why captions accompany most of them. Without words there is no understanding beyond light and form.
The point is, one took satisfaction in the knowledge of photography. To be successful one actually had to understand something about it and be able to utilize that information. I suppose that is why I have learned to hate modern photography. Today, a person needs to know nothing to take a successful picture. I you can hold a digital camera in the general direction of something that might be a subject, and push the shutter release, you will walk away with a decent picture. It will be focused, properly exposed, clear and bright. If your composition is not the best there are computer programs that will adjust the composition for you. And a darkroom? Forget it. Sit down with the latest version of Photoshop and punch a few buttons. Push the automatic adjust button and contrast color and exposure are corrected. Wish you had taken the picture in black and white? Tap another button and there it is. Throw in some special effects just for fun; maybe add some words or pieces of other pictures to get a work of art. And yes, to do it right you probably need to know much more than the past photographers of film. What boors me is that the photographer no longer does the work to get a decent picture. He basically tells an electronic assistant to do the work. It is like me telling my hired hand to adjust the exposure, ISO, lighting, shutter, aperture; to tell him to make any adjustments for a blur or pan or stop action picture; to move the camera components around for a great or shallow depth of field shot by moving an indicator to the little flower or the mountain or the face or someone running.
More people than ever are taking decent pictures and remain ignorant in doing so. Life becomes diminished and very soon, boring. Just because you want to be a good photographer does not mean you should be a good photographer just because you bought an intelligent robot to do your thinking and your work. It grates on me to know that people can have what they want, without any knowledge, just because they can pay for it. The lack of knowledge in the world is becoming depressing. In my last years of teaching we were told that it is a new world, a technological world. Students no longer need any knowledge about anything; they only need to know where to get it. I got into trouble for requiring my English students to memorize a poem. Memorizing anything was out, backward thinking, the waste of a mind. I asked administrators, and students, how they could tell if someone was intelligent? Of course it was by what they knew, what they had memorized and could regurgitate. I was always honest with kids. When they asked, "Why do we need to know this stuff?" I said so they would look bright at a cocktail party. Knowing what Byron said about love is much more impressive than saying, hold on a minute while I type in love on the computer and see what comes up. It was about that time I quit teaching and returned to writing and to photography.
Digital photography is a great boon to working photographers, those who need to turn put pictures as quickly as possible, and especially to advertising people where manipulation is a tremendous asset. Remarkable images can be accomplished. But is it photography?
There - was however, a road out of this predicament for me - a return to the past - way past. Today these photographic processes are called "alternative" processes, a strange misnomer. They are the processes that started photography. Each "new" development was an alternative process. I wanted the feel of involvement in the art starting with the camera.
Although I have used the latest cameras over the years - Hasselblad, Pentax 645, several view cameras, Nikon F, Nikon F3, Nikon F4 and 5, D2x, D 90, and now a D 700, I have remained basic with my personal work. Today I use a Nikkormat with a broken meter. I have never used a light meter for my work. W. Eugene Smith was said to never use a meter and, since he was one of my early heroes, neither have I. I have poked a hole into a piece of tin and taped it over a larger hole in the body cap and use it as a pinhole camera. I also carry three lenses, a 10mm, a 35mm, and an 80-300 zoom. Every photographer should know the sunny 16 rule that states to get the proper exposure you set the shutter to the nearest speed of the film, and the aperture at f16 on a bright sunny day. As the light diminishes you open the aperture to accommodate. It takes a bit of time to judge the light but you will if you practice. Once you have a starting aperture and shutter speed you can change them to take the kind of picture you imagine.
People often ask me the proper shutter speed and aperture for a given ISO film on a certain day, I replay, "There is none." You can use any number of settings and, they do not necessarily have to be "correct." What is correct depends upon the picture want. Perhaps you would like your picture darker then the general accepted exposure, or lighter. Again, these people have been caught in misguided beliefs. Art has no rules providing you understand how the medium works. Know it, then, if you like, work around it to express your vision.
I also own a 4X5 Crown Graphic, a real beater, taped and screwed together with no ground glass. I would like a better one but for now it works. Having a different size and type of camera causes me to think differently. One might assume that with a large negative I might be producing grand vistas like those of Ansel Adams. Actually no. My 4X5 negatives are always contact printed, as is most of my personal work. I take grand vistas but they are never printed larger than 4X5. Smaller prints feel more personal to me. Rather standing back and aloof from a print, the viewer must get closer, more intimate. I think people see smaller better. Our range of focused sight is only 3 degrees. For a larger print one's eyes must roam over a larger area and I think they miss many details. I don't know if it is true but it makes sense to me. It might also be a rebellion against photographers who sell prints by size rather than by quality.
These days most of my photography is done in Vietnam, a country and people I love. All developing is done in my room at the Prince Hotel in Hanoi. I travel with a small stainless steel developing tank, a bottle of Rodinal, and a jar of Sodium Thiosulfate crystals for fixer, all easily carried wherever I go. I enjoy loading the film into the tank in the bathroom, adjusting the water temperature by running it over my hand, measuring the Rodinal using a shot glass, dropping the sodium Thiosulfate into an empty coke bottle. The hotel get 62 cable channels, including HBO, from around the world and I develop the film while switching between different news programs from Vietnam, the U.S., Australia, France, Britain, and several others. (The Vietnamese pay $2 a month for cable) I hang the film with clothespins on a string tied between the doorknob and a tripod on the balcony and enjoy a good smoke and a drink of whiskey as I watch the lights of the city and the people scurrying about in a frenzy of activity.
Ansel Adams would have enjoyed today's digital cameras. He always looked for something new in the medium. Edward Weston? I think not.
Like any artist, I try to look at myself objectively. I worry that I have gone the way of many older people: crabby pains in the behind, set in their ways, resistant to change, refusing to learn anything new. I do not think I am there. I appreciate many devices that make photography easier. All my film is scanned on an Epson V700 photo scanner. It does not presume to make decisions for me and it does a great job. My photos are now all printed digitally. I can do that while still listening to Miles Davis. What I resist is the overwhelming pressure to let others make my decisions, to have others attempt to convince me that they know best, that they know the correct way, the proper exposures, exact compositions, pre-determined depth-of-field, or "the" appropriate shutter speed for action shots. I resent people trying to run my life. I am always open to change as long is it is for the better, a decision best made by me and not by some marketing group telling me it is better.
And yes, like many people still able to think, I am a crabby pain in the behind.
I am the author of 11 books including my latest, "First a Torch" about the Viet minh victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu. You can read excerpts from several of my books at http://junglesnaps.com/
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