Contemplative Photography: Color Assignment 1

The work begins in Chapter 5 with a focus on color. The challenge is ignoring colorful objects, to avoid the process of labeling in order to concentrate on color.  

I did two walk-arounds on campus on two different days, one inside, one out, each about 45 minutes.  I did this during exam week when there were few students about, so it was easy to move slowly and look without being interrupted or worrying about being seen.  

I noticed that while color by itself may be visible, it is nearly impossible to photograph.  An image requires texture or form, and what most often makes a color attractive is contrast - one color against another.  

If you shoot nothing but color, you end up with color swatches.  

These and future images can be viewed in an album at Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/80283129@N03/albums/72157663263927130

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The Practice of Contemplative Photography: Beginning

Karr, A. and Wood, M. (2011). The practice of contemplative photography. Boston: Shambhala.

This book has been in my collection since about the time it was published in 2011.  I started doing some of the practices before signing up for the MA Buddhist Studies and the BA Photography.  The former is now all but finished and the latter has become less appealing and may be put on hold, if not abandoned entirely.  I would like to continue to develop photographically, and as the contemplative philosophy mirrors my current conception and practice, this seems like an avenue worth pursuit.  CP may also allow me to explore Buddhist connections to the visual arts, about which I have collected a good bit of reading material.  There is also the possibility of joining CP workshops and developing the practice through community practice.

But first things first.

Exercise 4: What is a photographer?

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.  

Exercise 3: Establishing Conventions

This appears to be a discovery exercise, a chance to look at a variety of images to discover for oneself the techniques and presentations in landscape painting of the 18th and 19th centuries.  The notes call for using an internet search engine to locate twelve examples, about which we are to discuss the commonalities, and where possible to note the origin of the painting and its intended function, namely public or private exhibition.  

I looked at approaching the task through Google Image and a search parameter of [18th 19th century landscape painting], but the results are somewhat hit and miss in terms of size of image and background information.  I turned instead to online galleries and found two perfectly suited:  

Exercise 2: Photography in the museum or in the gallery?

Krauss, R. (1982). Photography's Discursive Spaces: Landscape/View. Art Journal, 42(4), p.311.

I’m glad this was an article and not a book as the text was not terribly reader-friendly.  The argument here is whether pre-photographic art discourse categories are relevant to photographic discourse, with particular emphasis on 19th and early 20th century examples.  Where painters referred to landscapes, for example, 19th cent photographers most often used the term view, a word Krauss finds uncomfortably laden with commercial connotations.  She wonders if the word artist is capable of describing what she might call photographic dabblers, people with extremely abbreviated careers and no long term commitment.  What does oeuvre mean, she asks, when your output amounts to less than a handful of images, or, in the case of Atget, a library of over 10,000?  While she concludes that Atget was a subject of the state cataloging system he sought to fill,  she is mute on her own cataloging imperatives.  Perhaps Szarkowski’s comment, quoted by Krauss, is truer than most, that Atget and his work (and by extension the idea and practice of photography) was many things, and that all ideas to encapsulate him and them are at best partial.  

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Exercise 1: Preconceptions

This first exercise asks us to sketch a landscape, but as I suck at drawing (one good reason for using a camera), and as the point of the exercise is to examine assumptions about landscapes, I thought I’d discuss one of my recent images.  

The shape of the picture is rectangular.  The camera is at head-height, perpendicular to a road.  A pole is positioned in the vertical center bisecting the image.   There are five horizontal bands, from bottom to top:  sand, road, sand, buildings/vehicles, sky.  The top and bottom bands are approximately equal height and a similar blue-gray. The evenly spaced bands and the center pole form a cross and thereby four smaller rectangles. Three other poles and two palm trees serve as vertical counterpoint and produce symmetry.  The diminishing size of the poles and trees as they appear at greater distance from the camera provide evidence of perspective.  There is one bit of movement, a person striding down the road to the left of the center pole, his movement complimented to the right by a left-leaning pole and a frondless palm tree.  As for mood, I’m not sure how to describe it.  It’s not warm or lively or inviting;  more clinical, perhaps.  It relies more on form than content.  

The exercise also calls for some discussion of why I have enrolled on this course and what I hope to learn.  Some of the background to this has been discussed in a previous post, so I’ll move right on to answer the questions.  I’m doing Landscape because it seems to fit best the kind of work I’m doing now, though I suppose that work could be framed as well as documentary.  I’m less interested right now in working with people, which would be required of documentary, and even less interested in spending all my time on the computer for Digital Image & Culture.  Landscape allows me the opportunity to get out and explore, which is just what I need right now and of which I can take good advantage during this most temperate of seasons in the UAE.

As for what I hope to get out of the course, I’m not really sure.  Perhaps a better perspective on my work and an excuse to travel farther afield to do so.  

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Starting Landscape

I began this blog without having registered for a class, waiting for results from P&P before making a decision about whether to continue to Level 2 studies. I’m not sure what waiting will accomplish, but I have felt some concern about whether an academic approach to photography is a path I wish to continue walking. The academic investigation of art feels somewhat forced. There doesn’t appear to be much beneath the surface beyond opinion. The writing is often opaque, even pretentious, and the discussions seem to lead back to little more than personal taste. There is also the issue of whether we’ll remain in Dubai for another year and the cost-benefit calculation of registering for another course that will be interrupted by a move to a new country and a new job. None of those issues has yet been resolved, but it seems I may need a practice of some kind to keep me anchored. Part of not becoming anxious about the future is being absorbed in the present. So why not photography, especially as I am engaged in continuing personal practice? I thought to start with Documentary, but reading Bate and looking at my recent work it seems Landscape might be a better fit. Having just finished a year-long anthropology project for a Masters in Buddhist Studies, I’m not terribly eager to get involved again so soon with another community. Right now I like the work I’m doing because it involves exploration, bicycling through the city’s neighborhoods to document the usual and unusual, without having to befriend anyone or take anyone along with me. I’ve downloaded the sample Landscape course materials from the OCA website, which amounts to the Introduction and Part One, and made a start on the course without registering. Once Mutsumi and I make a decision about Dubai, and my grade for P&P comes in, I’ll make a decision about registering. In the meantime, there’s no reason I can’t get a head start.

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