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Form, content and emotion: Sean Reid's interview with Ben Lifson


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Mitch, thanks very much for the excellent thread. I think your Matisse quote is excellent...but, most importantly, I think your statement "It seems to me that a good photograph works the same way as a poem, in that the meaning also comes from the form" is spot-on.

 

The photographers I most admire seem to be the visual lyricists who are able to gently wrap content, spontaneity, form, emotion and knowing into their instantaneous view of a moment.

 

Kurt

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Funny, a long posting that I wrote earlier today, to try to bring this thread back to what I originally wanted to discuss, didn't show up!

 

 

Mitch,

 

we have been facing a technical issue today which amongst some other problems caused a lot of posts to vanish.

The provider is working to get this resolved...

 

best - Klaus (mod)

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The whole arrangement of my picture is expressive. The place occupied by the figures or objects, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything plays a part.

 

It seems to me that a good photograph works the same way as a poem, in that the meaning also comes from the form.

 

I think those 2 quotes say a lot about photography. I like very much the poem analogy I hand'nt quite thought of it that way. I've always thought of photographs as 1 frame movies. There is a strong narrative element in photos even when it is unintentional, but it is not one narrative. There is the narrative of the subject, the photographer and each viewer. We are genetically wired to construct some story and order from the image although it might have nothing to do with the original scene. In this sense I find Winogrand's quote of the photograph being a new fact very appropriate.

 

The interaction between composition, gesture, emotional content and implied action makes the image compelling (or not). We are especially attuned to eyes, hands, interactions between people those elements prominent in an image get our brains involuntarily working out a story line. Even something outside the image like a caption or a title can change the way the picture looks to us as we are always looking for context and patterns. I submit the attached images as examples. They will be read in very different ways by different viewers, most of which will have very little to do with the actual event captured. The composition and cropping impact the emotional content and narrative in a big way and if done effectively will transcend the actual event and subject.

 

"The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1826)

 

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Hi Mitch,

 

You wrote:

 

"The first was Shakespeare's Sonnet 129, which shows the best example I know of form expressing content in literature, with the language running riot in the expression of the idea of lust:"

 

Absolutely, and so too with all good poetry:

 

We real cool. We

Left school. We

Lurk late. We

Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We

Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We

Die soon.

 

- Gwendolyn Brooks

 

You followed:

 

"And the second was the following quote from Matisse:

 

It seems to me that a good photograph works the same way as a poem, in that the meaning also comes from the form."

 

Again, I think that's absolutely true. And most people's models of visual form come from certain movies, televisions, magazines - the sources aren't always great. That's one reason I keep encouraging the idea of looking often, broadly and deeply at painting. Our medium, while interesting, is still very young.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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A small tangent ... because of the overwhelming din of noise created by the net, visual stimulation, access to digital output, advertising, news media and pace of life ... is it more or less difficult for people to appreciate photography? Certainly, it must influence content and form ... but, is photography as a whole, now kitsch?

 

Kurt

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Sean,

 

I don't follow your response to me. I hope you will explain because I'm always interested in your opinion. There clearly is a "Rule of Thirds." You can look it up, so do you mean it's a worthless convention?

 

There are certain forms that are conventions. When we change and play with them, we are playing with the viewer, or readers expectations. There is no art that can be free of what went before, free of the conventional forms internalized in the audience.

 

There may be an inborn basis of certain forms as I think there is a genetic basis for beauty. Fast clear streams, and good open views have survival value, as do symetrical faces.

 

Fun discussion.

 

Best, Mitchell

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Sean,

 

I don't follow your response to me. I hope you will explain because I'm always interested in your opinion. There clearly is a "Rule of Thirds." You can look it up, so do you mean it's a worthless convention?

 

Hi Mitch,

 

It's not even a worthless convention. Its something that someone dreamed up in an effort to over-simplify the highly complex question of how one creates strong form. Its an idea that exists as a bad concept but it does not exist visually as any kind of rule. The fastest way to see that is to visit a museum like the Metropolitan and try to apply it to the paintings there. That test will give the concept the fast death it deserves.

 

Form is very difficult and no two artists master it in exactly the same way. Much of it can't be put into words but one can start to absorb its strengths and variations by constantly emerging oneself in strong art. The visual influences that most of us, unintentionally, absorb every day need strong and regular antidotes.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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A small tangent ... because of the overwhelming din of noise created by the net, visual stimulation, access to digital output, advertising, news media and pace of life ... is it more or less difficult for people to appreciate photography? Certainly, it must influence content and form ... but, is photography as a whole, now kitsch?

 

Kurt

 

Not all of it.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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Mitch

The rainbow caper comes ito it with that quest at the back of the mind of many a photographer..........to take the ultimate image that decisive so called speck of time.

With something like that overiding the subconcious it leave very little for being involved with the present...........

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...There are certain forms that are conventions. When we change and play with them, we are playing with the viewer, or readers expectations. There is no art that can be free of what went before, free of the conventional forms internalized in the audience.l
Mitchell:

 

I think you're using the word "form" in a different way from the way I have been using it: see the definition I gave above. You're talking of forms more in the sense of "genres" it seems to me, and that is why you're conflating forms with conventions.

 

—Mitch/Bangkok

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Hi Mitch,

 

It's not even a worthless convention. Its something that someone dreamed up in an effort to over-simplify the highly complex question of how one creates strong form. Its an idea that exists as a bad concept but it does not exist visually as any kind of rule. The fastest way to see that is to visit a museum like the Metropolitan and try to apply it to the paintings there. That test will give the concept the fast death it deserves.

 

Form is very difficult and no two artists master it in exactly the same way. Much of it can't be put into words but one can start to absorb its strengths and variations by constantly emerging oneself in strong art. The visual influences that most of us, unintentionally, absorb every day need strong and regular antidotes.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

Sean, I think you're adressing "Mitchell" here, not "Bangkok Mitch" — doesn't have the ring of "Tokyo Joe", does it?

 

—Mitch/Bangkok

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Sean, I think you're adressing "Mitchell" here, not "Bangkok Mitch" — doesn't have the ring of "Tokyo Joe", does it?

 

Right - Mitchell. We need to assign new names so we don't get mixed up <G>

 

Bangkok Mitch could be a character who gives Mister Magoo a strange and dangerous spin.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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Mitch,

 

I can't seem to find where you defined form.

 

I think "the visual shape or configuration of something" or "arrnagement of parts" are on the right track. And, I certainly think by those definitions lots of coventions exist. Just as there are sonnets and hiaku in poetry, there are compositions that we've seen over and over again in photographs. Sometimes done with great originality and freshness, sometimes not so much. And then there are more or less new forms.

 

Echoing Winogard's remark is "a poem doesn't mean, it is."

 

Best,

 

Mitchell

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Sorry Mitchell, the definition was in the long post that disppeared. Basically, I wrote, in more longpwinded manner, about form being the shape of objects in the picture and the design of the whole picture: what HCB called the geometry of the picture. When you speak about conventions I think your going a step beyond the more narrow concept of form to which I was referring.

 

—Mitch/Bangkok

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268776@N00/

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