Category: Photography

Area 44

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date April 4, 2004

Today was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, and I headed to Area 44 to see if the dogwood were in bloom yet.

Found plenty of blooms, but no dogwood.

I won’t go to Area 44 in the summer because the ticks are so thick there, but I wanted to catch the dogwoods this year. I walked along the trail, facing into the sun, but couldn’t see any blooms. When I turned around, silhouetted against the dark blue sky, I could see hundreds of trees with new barely new buds. I couldn’t see the dogwood because the light was in my eyes. Next week, though, the area is going to be thick with blooms.

On the way back, I was amused to see the remains of an old property sign in the stream that cuts through the conservation area. It’s not unusual to find all sorts of things in the waters of Missouri because of flooding.

Anyone want some prime Missouri flatland? Near the water.

I’m still taking photos. I’m just not particularly worried if they’re ‘commercially’ viable. Which means I don’t have to lug around 20 pounds of camera equipment, and take photos other people want.

Just me and my digital, looking for neat opportunities.

Photography Writing

Walker Evans: I am a writer

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date April 3, 2004

I am not a Walker Evans expert, but from my recent readings about him, I sensed there were three significant events in his life that shaped the man, and subsequently, the photographs we’ve come to cherish.

One of the events I briefly mentioned in the last Walker Evans writing, and that was his search for a particular style of photography. Rejecting the existing photographic styles of the time– which either disregarded the strengths of the camera in favor of artificially created scenes, or sought to tug emotion from the viewer–Evans sat in a library looking through all 50 issues of a the photographic journal, Camera Work until finding what he was looking for: Paul Strand’s photograph of a blind woman, shown below.

In this picture, Evans saw an uncompromising realism unfettered by any emotional hooks. There was no attempt to make the woman into something either to be admired or pitied; nor was there an attempt to make a ‘pretty’ picture, or a noble one. Combined, this realism and lack of emotionality formed the basis for Evans’ own style of photography: unsentimental, realistic, and unstaged. In other words: objective.

A search for objective truth in art wasn’t unique to Evans–many of the creative people of that time shared this philosophy about their work. But objectivity was almost an obsession with Evans, and we can trace the roots of this to his upbringing and the second pivotal event in his life: the separation of his parents when he was in his teens.

Evans came from a relatively affluent family, and his father was a prominent marketing and advertising man, a profession Evans was later to term one of the bastard professions. His mother was from a wealthy family, and liked nothing more than to be a figure in society.

Evans had an relatively happy childhood until they moved from his home near Chicago to Ohio, when his father got a new job. It was in Ohio that his father began an affair and subsequently left his mother. Evans, already lonely from the loss of his childhood friends was left confused and unsure, and the previously outgoing boy began to draw inwards, away from his contentious family.

His mother, whose world was drastically upset, begin to live vicariously through her children, determined that they were going to have happy, prosperous lives (with her a central part in each). She was, in many ways, an outwardly sentimental woman, but at the same time, she was not demonstrative or terribly affectionate.

Within the Evans family, before and after the separation, sentiment was both an artificial promise and a means to an end. Through his father, Evans saw sentiment used as a tool to lure people into buying a product or service: after all, what better way to build a successful advertising campaign then to incorporate images of cute babies, small puppies, and happy American families. From his mother, Evans perceived sentiment woven into a complex fabric consisting partially of denied security and affection, a great deal of manipulative guilt, and even some frustrated sexuality.

Though it’s not as fashionable to lay praise for a person on their early childhood experiences, it’s difficult to deny the impact Evans’ parent’s separation, and their behavior both before and after, had on his search for both objectivity, and anonymity, in his work.

To get a better understanding of Evans’ objectivity, compare his photographs of sharecroppers during the Great Depression with those of another very famous photographer of the time: Margaret Bourke-White.

A month before James Agee and Walker Evans took off on their trip that would result in the book, Now Let Us Praise Famous Men, Bourke-White took off for similar reasons with the well known writer, Erksine Caldwell.

Margaret Bourke-White was not a person who waited for a photograph to happen. Whenever they arrived at a potential scene, she would direct the people, telling them not only where to stand but what type of emotion to display on their faces. From Belinda Rathbone’s biography of Walker Evans:

White relied on Caldwell to guide her to the people she wanted to photograph, but once there she went to work “like a motion picture director”, remembered Caldwell, telling people where to sit, where to stand, and waiting for a look of worry or despair to cross their faces. Under her direction, passive, weather-beaten, and cross-eyed sharecroppers were turned into characters in a play, playing themselves.

Bourke-White even went so far as to arrange objects in a scene, for which she was scolded by her co-author (and husband), Caldwell. Unusual behavior considering the following quote:

I feel that utter truth is essential,” Bourke-White said of her work, “and to get that truth may take a lot of searching and long hours

Bourke-White would enter churches during services and start taking pictures, once going so far as to climb in through a window one time when she found the door locked during a service.

Evans, on the other hand, was reluctant to intrude. Rather than ask to enter a church, he would take photos of the outside. He wouldn’t touch any objects within a scene, and when taking pictures of people, he would allow them to pose themselves, or he would wait to take the picture until their initial stiffness from being in front of the camera wore off.

More importantly, he refused to make the people into objects of pity, which, after all, would imply sentimentality. If Bourke-White’s photos inspired one to want to change the fate of the people, Evans inspired no such humanitarian impulses. One never feels guilt, when looking at an Evans’ photo. Or pity, or humor, or desire. All one feels is interest, admiration, sometimes astonishment…and a little envy, but that doesn’t arise from the subject.

So what was the third event that was so significant in Evans life? Well, in actuality it was a non-event.

When Evans was a young man, he convinced his family to send him to Paris to study the language and literature. At that time, photography was only a hobby for him, he wanted to be a writer. And there was no better time for an aspiring writer to be in Paris, with the likes Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot, Dorothy Parker, Ezra Pound, and someone whom Evans admired above all others, James Joyce, living there.

Evans would hang out at the book shop where Joyce would appear every day, watching other young men and women seek Joyce’s company, to shake his hand and try to engage him in conversation–an impossible task with the monosyllabic Joyce. The shop owner offered an introduction between Evans and Joyce, but Evans shied away from his chance to meet his hero, something that he’d talk about for many years into the future.

When Evans returned to New York at the end of the year, photography gradually overcame his interest in writing, inspired in part, I believe, by James Joyce. After all, what could Evans write that had not been written by others such as Joyce? And how could he shine in a field as luminous as this? All those who write experience these moments of doubt when we read another’s writing that is so brilliant that we are left feeling humbled and inadequate. Humility, not to mention being second, third, or even tenth best, is not something that Evans would have lived with, comfortably.

But the camera, the camera now, that was fresh territory. And with the camera he could grab his quick sketches of life, in pictures rather than words. Whatever interest he had in writing, could not sustained with his growing passion for photography.

Evans would later say:

Oh yes, I was a passionate photographer, and for a while somewhat guiltily, because I thought that this is a substitute for something else—well for writing, for one thing. But I got very engaged and I was compulsive about it too. It was a real drive. Particularly when the lighting was right. You couldn’t keep me in.

I can agree with Evans, that photography can quickly become a substitute for writing. One image can so easily convey information that may take thousands of words to do, and less eloquently.

A few weeks ago, when I started digging more deeply into Walker Evans’ life, I was asked by a magazine to provide a portfolio of photos, including any better quality digital ones. I asked Charles, a photographer who has worked with magazines in the past to give me advice on printing the photos, which he was very generous to provide. He also shared with me anecdotal stories about photography students preparing their portfolios, each professionally printed and bound

But I looked at my little digital images, all of them at 72 DPI, and my slides, and my nice, but not great inkjet printer and asked myself, “What the hell are you doing, Shelley?” just about the same time I read, …I was a passionate photographer, and for a while somewhat guiltily, because I thought that this is a substitute for something else—well for writing, for one thing….

And it is thankfully, and with relief that I gave up the nonsense about being a stock photographer for magazines, or an art photographer, or any kind of professional photographer, and return to what I love: writing. Because I am a writer.

People Photography

Walker Evans: Objective purist

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date April 1, 2004

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I recently finished a wonderful biography on Walker Evans: Walker Evans: A Biography by Belinda Rathbone. Some critics have said that the book reads a little too matter of fact to be interesting, but that’s a perfect type of biography for a man like Walker Evans–an objective biography for an objective man.

In the book I discovered that Evans was born in St. Louis, though he didn’t live here long, moving to Chicago, and eventually ending up in New York. He came from a dysfunctional family, was himself married twice, had numerous affairs, almost always with married women, and preferred rooms decorated in black, white, and gray. Additionally, I found out that he was not a particularly good student, kept flunking Latin, and always saw himself as a writer. Even after his photographic career was established, he saw himself as a writer, an interesting fact which I’ll get into in more detail in a later essay.

From the start, Evans rejected much of the contemporary style of photography that was prevalent in his time (and to some extent, still in vogue today). One style of photography popular with art photographers at the time was called pictorialism and rather than utilizing the power of the camera to capture images as is, featured created images that were contrived rather than found. You still see these types of photos today when a woman or man is posed holding an apple, looking pensively off into shadows, staged next to a carefully undecorated and plain white wall.

The second style popular at that time was modernistic photography, subjects of which are best described by a quote from M. F. Agha, art director of Conde Nast:

Eggs (any style). Twenty shoes, standing in a row. A skyscaper , taken from a modernist angle. Ten tea cups standing in a row. A factory chimney seen through the ironwork of a railroad bridge (modernistic angle). The eye of a fly enlarged 2000 times. The eye of an elephant (same size). The interior of a watch. Three different heads of one lady superimposed. The interior of a garbage can. More eggs…

One can see why Evans rejected both pictorialism and the modernistic photographic styles, but he drifted about for a time, trying to establish what type of photography he wanted to do.

It was after seeing a photograph by Paul Strand, of a blind woman with a hand lettered sign reading “Blind” hung around her neck that served as Evan’s inspiration. As Rathbone wrote:

The picture implied an encroaching crisis of the American dream of prosperity, but it showed no obvious emotion. The fact that the photographer had stolen his photograph was pointedly expressed by the stark sign hanging around the woman’s neck, as if the subject had come with her own caption. Was the portrait cruel or sympathetic? It was the fact that it was neither, that it appeared not to reveal the photographer’s feelings at all, that intrigued Evans.

…that it appeared not to reveal the photographer’s feeling at all. If there is any key to Evans, it is contained in that one sentence. In all of his photos, not once does he impose his view, his thoughts and feelings, between the subject and the audience. He disdained photos that deliberately attempted to manipulate the viewers emotions; particularly those that used sentiment, which he considered contrived.

The distinguishing component of all Evans’ work, was his objectivity.

But Evans wasn’t just known for his objectivity and his excellent eye for an image — he was also known, or should I say, not known for his grasp of the mechanics of photography. He would ruin several images by his somewhat haphazard lab skills, and lose other images because of under or over exposure. It was not through knowing the mechanics of photography that Evans achieved his work; it was through his exceptional ability to see an extraordinary image from every day things; and then to patiently stalk that image, returning day after day, if needed, to capture it on film. He would never change the scene, or add or subtract elements from it. This, to him, would be completely dishonest. The most he would do would wait for a different light, or if he were taking photographs of people, wait until they were either unaware of the camera, or had relaxed from being in front of the camera.

Needless to say, Evans was almost always late in delivering on his assignments, and drove more than one person to distraction by his exacting nature. Lucky for us, he was not a conciliatory person.

In fact, one of my favorite Evans photograph (another one I can’t locate to reproduce here) was a somewhat blurry photo of Evans’ second wife, Isabelle Boeschenstein, wearing evening dress, hair in her face, lighting a cigarette at what looks to be some kind of gathering. It was not the photographic quality of the image that caught my eye; it was how much information about the woman was captured in that one simple photo. It is astonishing.

Evans did not rely on photographic tricks to make his images, and rarely did more in the darkroom then crop shots. But he was obsessed with how they were presented at shows, usually asking to hang his works himself, with no one else present. For the first edition of Now Let Us Praise Famous Men he was determined that the images for the book be perfect, and worked almost daily with the engraver to make minor adjustments to correct an engraving until it reflected the image he had of it in his mind. From Rathbone:

The wrinkles on the Burroughses’ bedsheets did not show up clearly enough; could he make them sharper? Could he show more clearly the tear in the pillowcase? Could he bring out the texture of the wooden wall and the objects around the fireplace? Could he soften the lines on Allie Mae’s face, sharpen the creases on Bud Fields’ overalls? Under Evans’ scrupulous direction, several of the plates had to be made over again entirely, while small imperfections in others were painstakingly corrected.

The engraver was too helpful at one point, and removed dead bugs from a photo of a bed, and Evans refused to allow the image be used as it was, and the fleas had to be added back in.

This reminds me of earlier discussions about the purists view of photography. Despite the care taken with the engravings for the book, Evans did very little with the actual images himself. Because of this, and his belief in photographs reflecting the image as taken–the true image–we would consider Evans a purist. I’m not sure what he would make of today’s digital cameras and Photoshop, though I have a feeling he would like the camera. So much easier to take those unexpected, hidden photos.

Earlier I published a link to a baby squirrel image that had been rescued from a mediocre photograph through the use of Photoshop. I have no doubts that this is not something that Evans would do.

No, if Walker Evans wanted a photo of a baby squirrel, it would be because he discovered the baby squirrel by accident one day and was struck by the image for some reason*. He would then get someone to hire him to take photographs of Native American wildlife, and would use the money to purchase new camera requirement, and probably to take other images in the neighborhood–the broken fence, the lost cat notices on the telephone poles, the old woman buying tomatoes at the market. He would then set up his camera by the baby squirrel’s hole, and if the baby didn’t oblige with the proper image one day, he would return the next. If a week goes by without the image, and by then the squirrel was too old, Evans would return the next year, much to the consternation of his employer (who he would still charm, even while irritating).

But by the time he was done, you’d have a rich, fascinating image of a squirrel, sitting in a hole of a tree, the grain of which would stand out in the image, almost as if the image was three-dimensional. The light wouldn’t be the proper light, it would be the perfect light, and the squirrel wouldn’t be enticed to pose–it would be acting as a baby squirrel acts, normally.

And it wouldn’t be a photo of an adorable baby squirrel, eliciting cries of, “How cute!” It would be a photo of a rodent.

*I doubt Evans would be interested in a photo of a baby squirrel.

Photography

Photography as Maze

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date March 31, 2004

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Towards the end of 2001 I started posting photos from my walks or explorations of my neighborhood, using my new digital camera. And though I was pleased at the photos of Yosemite Park, or the Embarcadero and the Golden Gate or Bay Bridges then, I am not as content with them now. Whether this makes sense or not, they fit me then, they don’t fit me now.

Odd thing is, I see scenes from my memory, that I regret I didn’t photograph: the homeless lady dressed properly who made her home on the Embarcadero benches by my condo; the boats nestled among the bridge bases; the graffiti covering the abandoned warehouses, and the birds among the tall grasses along those fingers of the Bay that stretched inwards.

Still, there were a few Muir photos I like.

Photography is learned, and our skills grow over time, as we learn the tools and techniques–like climbing the steps in the path in the Muir photo. What I’ve come to discover, though, is that the art of photography is more like a maze than a simple path.

Burningbird Photography

Transitions

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date March 29, 2004

Spring didn’t gradually intrude this year; it exploded in a verdant flood, blossom-bedecked and ready to roll. The bird tree on the corner, visible from my window went from naked limbs and buds to full flower to green leaves in just a matter of a few days; the fields have already greened, and it’s only March. That’s what heavy rains and unusually warm days and nights – almost sultry– will bring.

The last few days have brought our first thunderstorms but even so I can still get out for my daily walk. Rains here fall as if they mean it, and then the clouds break apart and you can get out for a time before they regroup for another go. Even then, as warm as it has been you can get caught in the rain and rather than be cold and damp and clammy, it’s a wonderful feel on your skin; my hair is never better then when it is wet by the rain and dried into a soft, curly mess. Must be the acidic precipitate.

I have been playing with new site designs in preparation for moving Burningbird to a new weblogging tool. I’ll make the design in Movable Type since I am most familiar with that tool’s tags, and then when I have the design I like, I’ll just incorporate it into the new tool, whatever it is (still trying a few new tools). I’m using the Tin Foil Project site for experimentation, and rather like the newest incarnation, which probably breaks several design rules but I don’t much care.

I won’t be migrating the existing Bb pages to the new tool. I thought about it but decided to just leave the pages as is and call it my “Movable Type” period, like my previous “Radio” period or “Blogger” period, or even my now gone forever “Manila” period. I like idea of showing a clear transition between site lives, rather than use technology to pretend as if nothing ever changes. Just think of the confusion I’m saving those poor souls who look up “comment spam” and “Movable Type” in some search engine and come to my pages on these topics, yet I’m not using Movable Type?

For me at least, I have found that the tools I’ve used, and the discussions of what is or is not facilitated can have subtle and not so subtle impact on what I write and it’s only fitting that when I put aside one I do so as an artist puts down a well worn brush: with reverence and gratitude for past creativity, but also a feeling of relief and anticipation. Adapting to a new environment is easier when one doesn’t have to haul behind old baggage.

Speaking of adaption, I watched the movie “Adaption”– based, loosely, on the book “The Orchid Thief” by Susan Orlean– this weekend. It was an interesting movie, very creative and well acted, and I liked the not so sly dig at Hollywood with the twist on the title, Adaption. The screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, uses all variations of this word in his script: from the orchid’s adaption to the environment to people’s adapting to loss and disappointment, and, lastly, to Hollywood’s adaption of books in order to make them more palatable to audience’s demand for overt emotionalism in the movies.

This is about orchids and loss, passion and disappointment, he says. We don’t want to add in scenes about drugs and sex and car chases and death, he continues, as he proceeds to do just that; but so obviously and blatantly that rather than lose the book in the story he carefully frames it so it stands out from the medium’s demands.

Innovative movie, wonderful book, and fascinating topic: orchids. So much so that I started researching orchids in Missouri and found there are 27 varieties of orchids in this state. I’ve already ordered Bill Summer’s “Missouri Orchids” from my local library, for my own photo hunt this year.

Still, you don’t have to look far to find the beautiful in this state.

I have no doubt that this lush Spring will give way to a hot, humid, and voluptuous Summer and am preparing my gear to maximize coolness while minimizing surfaces to be bit by the fauna that finds Missouri to be as tasty as I. However, I am less fearful of things that go bite in the night than I used to be.

At the Gardens this weekend, the bees were so heavy with the nectar they could barely fly, and last time I was stung by something (we thought was a bee), my arm was so swollen I couldn’t use it, but that didn’t stop me from diving into the flowering trees to try to capture the creatures at work. Not an act of bravery; somehow, for me, the camera forms a psychic shield and I’m just not that afraid – of heights, or of bees, and even dark, country roads. After all, what can happen? The most you can do from a height is fall; and the most that can happen on a dark, country road is that the light doesn’t come; and a bee can only sting you. Each is infinitely safer than our brothers and sisters, who kill with weapons and rules; and rip bloodlessly at you for no other reason than to exercise wit or practice an economy of attention.

The bee wasn’t my only encounter with weaponed creatures this weekend. At Shaw Nature Reserve I was following my favorite path when I almost stepped on a snake sunning itself on the dirt and rocks. I begged its pardon, which captured the attention of two bird watchers nearby, and we stooped over the baby snake; big, giant shadows scaring it up the hill and into dead leaves.

I whipped out my camera and took three pictures in a row, the most I can take quickly before the camera writes the images to the disc. I was only a few inches away from the snake, not that worried because I wasnt expecting a dangerous snake, and it was only a baby.

But then we saw the cute little rattle on its tail.

As I hovered with my camera over the baby, it formed itself into a coil, which I did recognize from my youthful experiences with rattlers and instinctively moved quickly away–realizing that I had seriously alarmed it with my camera. Still, I wasn’t that worried because it just a baby; but I did stop because I didn’t want to continue scaring it.

I didn’t know that Missouri had poisonous snakes, but found out it has five different types of poisonous snakes, including the Timber Rattlesnake, which I’m fairly sure is my baby; the Pygmy Rattlesnake, the very rare Eastern Massasuaga Rattlesnake, the Osage Copperhead, and the Western Cottonmouth. I’m not sure why I thought there would be no dangerous snakes here in this state. Probably disregarded the thought, and didn’t practice commen sense hiking methods because there are so many insects waiting to bite me, I just assumed that ‘biting’ was covered already.

Another interesting fact I found from my reading is that baby Timber rattlesnakes are venomous from birth, and that their venom has 12 times the concentration as an adult snake. After this weekend, I think I should keep my closeups for my flowers.

(Note: this may actually be a Midland Brown or DeKay snake, which is not poisonous. It does resemble it except for the tail, but the tail may be damage rather than a rattle. I can’t find a good photo of a baby Timber rattlesnake, and the snake seems too thin and distinctively colored for being a DeKay. Time to take some photos to the Shaw nature center office for identification. I suppose I could have picked it up and see if it bit me, and if so, whether I reacted to the bite. But I think a photo identification would be a better approach.)

That white flower is for Jeneane that lovely lady who likes the white magnolia blossom. Speaking of blossoming, AKMA came up with an interesting idea this weekend to have individual people record Lawrence Lessig’s new book on copyright. I wasn’t up for recording but I thought I would volunteer my baby rattlesnake photo for the cover of any CD made from this effort.

After all, I am an O’Reilly author, and am used to ‘animal books’. As for a description of the colophon, I would write something like the following:

Copyright, like the baby rattlesnake, seems harmless at first, but gets deadlier as it gets older.

I thought it was rather clever myself, until I found out the baby rattlesnake is deadlier than the adult. Perhaps they’d like another picture, instead. Something a little less “toothy”, such as this:

Or this:

No! I have it! The perfect photo:

However, recordings abound and a graphic has been chosen already in this snooze you loose atmosphere, which is probably for the best. I’ve never shared Lessig’s view of the uncritical goodness of the Creative Commons license scheme though I appreciate his passion and eloquence for this cause, as well as his generosity for sharing his book online. I can also appreciate the energy of the participation, as well as the sheer fun of this recording enterprise, which perhaps could turn next to so many of the books that are freely available at the Guttenberg Project.