I had never heard of De Zayas until being assigned this essay. It seems he was from a wealthy family, well educated, and capable of international travel in the early 20th century. He first made a name for himself as an illustrator with a hugely popular exhibition of caricatures of NY’s glitterati. The exhibit was held at Stieglitz’s gallery 291, which resulted in the two men forming a close relationship, with De Zayas subsequently scouting talent in Paris and establishing a career as an art critic and NY gallery owner. Geoff Dyer could have been writing of De Zayas when he said of himself: “not taking photographs is a condition of writing about them.”
This essay was composed in 1913 during a two-year stay in NY that saw De Zayas produce his last major piece of illustration. He had only a couple of years previous published the first interview with Pablo Picasso, whom he had met in Paris, and whose work is referenced in the work under review here. For an essay on art, it’s not entirely opaque. It feels like a part of a larger conversation to which we are not a part and therefore requires a bit more attention than a piece written for a general audience.
His argument seems to be grounded in ideas not uncommon to the modern age, in which “the human brain has become perfected under the influence of progress and civilization.” At this time, “science [has] convinced man that the comprehension of the primary causes is beyond the human mind; but science [has] made him arrive at the cognition of the condition of phenomenon.” In this world there is no longer a place for god and thus no longer a place for traditional art, whose purpose has been “the substantiation of the religious conception.” Such art has been dead ever since “observation replaced impression,” a practice that has perhaps had its most powerful effect when turned on itself.
The more analytical man is, the more he separates himself from the subject [himself] and the nearer he gets to the comprehension of the object.
The practice of science, in other words, made god and imaginative interpretation superfluous. The trend in art, as in science, has been to reduce interference of the self in order to more perfectly understand the object, or in the case of art, to reproduce form.
A few practitioners, such as Picasso, play around the decaying edges, but even here the practice is afflicted with intellectual self-consciousness, what De Zaya refers to as “analysis.” While progress has left the “savage” behind, he is to be admired for having practiced an unmediated form of expression free from the burden of analysis. The only way forward is through photography, which, when used properly, reproduces form free from interpretation. The assumption here is that the end of visual arts, the forward movement in its development, is the faithful reproduction of form as seen by the human eye. As a culmination of scientific progress, photography is not a new system for representing form, but the negation of systems of re-presentation, an “experimental science of Form.”
De Zayas then argues for a type of spiritual photographic practice in which the photographer gives up all sense of self-identity in the reproduction of form.
In order fully and correctly to appreciate the reality of Form, it is necessary to get into a state of perfect consciousness. The reality of Form can only be transcribed through a mechanical process, in which the craftsmanship of man does not enter as a principal factor. There is no other process to accomplish this than photography. The photographer - the true photographer - is he who has become able, through a state of perfect consciousness, to possess such a clear view of things as to enable him to understand and feel the beauty of the reality of Form.
Where we once believed that art was impossible without the “hallucination of faith” or some kind of “philosophical autointoxication,” with photography form can at last express itself free from the imagination.
But when man does not seek pleasure in ecstasies but in investigations, when he does not seek the anaesthetic of contemplation, but the pleasure of perfect consciousness, the soul of substance represented by Art appears like the phantasm of the Alma Mater which is felt vibrating in every existing thing, by all who understand the beauty of real truth.
In re-presenting form, the photographer liberates the viewer to experience his own emotional response to form, rather than his response to the artist’s response.
Finally, De Zayas recognizes that while photography presents us with the power to “penetrate the objective reality of facts,” it can be used as well artistically “to express a preconceived idea in order to convey an emotion.” While he equivocates in the final paragraph, admitting that “it would be difficult to say which of these two sides of Photography is the more important,” it seems clear where his allegiance lies.
I find myself sympathetic to his argument and the idea of photography as the practice of responding to the seen, rather than that of creating the imagined. I’ve run across references to this kind of practice. Dyer writes of one of the great photographers of the 1930s:
Dorothea Lange also believed that ‘to know ahead of time what you’re looking for means you’re then only photographing your own preconceptions, which is very limiting.’ As far as she was concerned it was fine for a photographer to work ‘completely without plan’ and just photograph ‘that to which he instinctively responds’.
Minor White was a student of Zen and while he doesn't use any Buddhist or religious terms or argue from analogy, the process he describes appears to be meditative and mirror to a degree the Zen aesthetic traditions; that is, an emptying of ego in order to permit clear seeing, to allow one to move and act spontaneously to the surrounding conditions. In other words, to allow the moment to express itself, rather than imposing ideas on the moment. The photographer approaches his work by asking, “What shall I be given today?”
He then establishes a blankness of mind.
“...this is a special kind of blank. It is a very active state of mind really, a very receptive state of mind, ready at an instant to grasp an image, yet with no image pre-formed in it at any time. We should note that the lack of a pre-formed pattern or preconceived idea of how anything ought to look is essential to this blank condition.”
He looks for other words and metaphors to explain this blankness.
“A mind specially blank—how can we describe it to one who has not experienced it? “Sensitive” is one word. “Sensitized” is better, because there is not only a sensitive mind at work but there is effort on the part of the photographer to reach such a condition. “Sympathetic” is fair, if we mean by it an openness of mind which in turn leads to comprehending, understanding everything seen.”
“Perhaps the blank state of mind can be likened to a pot of water almost at the boiling point. A little more heat—an image seen—and the surface breaks into turbulence.”
There is little to suggest how one establishes this state of mind, though he does offer at least a clue.
“Possibly the creative work of the photographer consists in part of putting himself into this state of mind. Reaching it, at any rate, is not automatic. It can be aided by always using one’s camera for serious work so that the association of the camera in one’s hands always leads to taking pictures.”
This thereby creates “ the sensation of the camera dissolving in an accord between subject and photographer.”
The key to the practice of contemplative photography is to recognize that seeing and thinking are very different. Thinking relates to the world through ideas and mental images. Seeing perceives things directly, just as they are. Clear seeing is not covered over by thoughts of beautiful and ugly, good and bad, worthwhile and worthless.
Flashes of perception are simple, vivid, and direct experiences. They are clear seeing (or hearing, smelling, tasting, touching). In contemplative photography the power of the final photograph comes from joining clear seeing with simple, straightforward expression.
Here we see a practice in which the photographer, the ego, as it were, is invited to step out of the way, to experience what De Zayas refers to as “perfect consciousness.”
I could go on but I think I’ve said enough for this “exercise.” Perhaps there will be a chance to revisit these ideas at a later time as the course progresses.
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De Zayas, M. (1913). Photography and Photography and Artistic Photography. Camera Work, 41.
Dyer, G. (2005). The ongoing moment. New York: Pantheon Books.
Minor, W. (2006). The Camera Mind and Eye. In: C. Traub and S. Heller, ed., The Education of a Photographer, 1st ed. New York: Allworth Press.
Seeingfresh.com, (2015). The Practice in a Nutshell | Seeing Fresh: The Practice of Contemplative Photography. [online] Available at: http://seeingfresh.com/about/the-practice-in-a-nutshell [Accessed 1 Dec. 2015].
Wikipedia, (2015). Marius de Zayas. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marius_de_Zayas [Accessed 1 Dec. 2015].
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