The Language of Photography

Archangel said:
So if aesthetics....i.e a colourful landcape shot.... is passive photography because there is no other intended meaning, and the response is passive, does this make it less successful than the example of Gibson's work for instance?........ does it even make it successful art?...... this is where the aesthetic = passive rule doesn't seem to work.

In which case maybe passive simply means 'no artistic act intended'..... or recieved for that matter........ ie. not meant to be particularly 'aesthetic' or to have an intended 'message'.
I was not positing a scale of photographic success or value, only pointing out that there are four possible permutations in the photographer/viewer relationship.
This gives some base levels for critical appraisal - remembering that criticism is often non-judgmental.
You could use the four permutations as four axes on a graph and so plot the relative positions of different types of image. More in the spirit of classification than anything else.
I use the terms active and passive to describe the behaviour or approach of the photographer/viewer.
A passive viewer would be one who makes no effort to engage with an image other than at the level of eye candy. You could use the term uncritical if you wish, but I think that one too loaded.
In the 70's and 80's the favourite descriptor was informed/uninformed. I don't like that one either.
Any one who has studied Art/Art History or something similar will appreciate that one has to actually do some work when looking at an image if one is to extract the maximum information (and thus make critical judgments) from it.
A similar argument pertains for the terms passive and active as applied to the photographer.
Of course in all cases there are differing degrees of activness and passivity.

In terms of success different rules apply depending upon your criteria.
A random snap might hit lucky and catch a landscape right. The image would be nothing more than bland eye candy - but it may well appeal to a large number of people and give them pleasure. This would count as a successful picture viewed from that point.
The photographer might have been trying to achieve something else entirely and so be dissatisfied with it, so from that PoV it is unsuccessful.
An Art image panned by the critics may still be deemed a success by the photographer.
Defining an image as successful or unsuccessful is a very subjective act.
To be objective about it one has to define the intention and intended use first and then use these definitions to gauge its level of success.
It can be seen that the happy snapper who's only aim is to get a nice picture has a higher chance of success than a photographer who is trying to convey a specific and subtle message. And this is borne out by observation.
 
Hertz van Rental said:
It can be seen that the happy snapper who's only aim is to get a nice picture has a higher chance of success than a photographer who is trying to convey a specific and subtle message.

yea i totally agree with this too, well put.

It seems in the world of art, the more questions you ask with your art work, the more chance it has of not being recieved as you intended.
Whereas a more simple question of 'is this nice to look at' in an aesthetic form, has more chance of communicating that message, thus achieving its goal.

......and this of course is the reason that all artists are either manic depressives or develope deep seated neurosis :lol:
 
OK. Let's move on.
Bear in mind the previous about passive and active - and that there are a number of things going on in the photographic process that, whilst being separate, are inextricably intertwined.

Premeditation.
The act of photography is a premeditated one, that is to say pictures are not taken without the intention of taking a picture being there.
You can go for a walk in the country and just suddenly take it into your head to sing, throw rocks or snap a branch off a tree. These are unpremeditated in that you did not necessarily go out with the conscious intention of doing one of them.
Going out and taking a picture is a different matter.
In order to take a picture you must have a camera of some sort. This indicates forward planning - 'I may see something worth photographing'.
The fact that you have a camera with you now predisposes you to actively look for something worth photographing - and this is premeditation: thinking of doing something beforehand and actively working towards it.

Selection.
Now that we have established that carrying a camera displays an intention to photograph and programs the mind to actively look for something 'worth' photographing, let us look at what we photograph.
This is a selection process.
In any given situation there is a very large number of potential photographs. Anything capable of being photographed can be photographed in a large number of different ways so in an environment with a lot of objects present the potential number of different photographs is, to all intents and purposes, infinite.
Focus, depth of field, focal length of lens, position of photographer... all contribute to the number of possible permutations.
Say you had two different f-stops available but everything else was fixed. That gives you two different photographs - with f-stop 1 and with f-stop 2.
Now you are allowed to be either standing, squatting or lying down:
3 positions = 2x3 = 6 possible permutations.
Add two different focal lengths:
2x3x2 = 12.
Black & white or colour? 24.
With flash or without? 48
And so on.
And that's before you get a zoom lens and are allowed to move around.
Virtually infinite.
Looking through the viewfinder allows us to include or exclude so we can make a visual selection and knowledge and application of the other controls allows further modification.
So out of this infinite set of possibilities what dictates our choice?
A number of factors.
Convention is one.
We are programmed with a lot of formula responses, things we are expected to do. We witness a performance and at the end applaud. Why? Because it's the expected conventional response in that situation.
So too in photography. We take photographs of certain events because it is the expected and conventional response (the wedding photograph, the graduation photograph - but we do not tend to take pictures at funerals*) and because of other cultural pressures the images follow set patterns.
To see this compare several different family albums. You will see the same pictures with just different people.
So too with a lot of other pictures.
We take pictures of sunsets and they tend to all have similarities. Often they are interchangeable. This is because we have a cultural construct of beauty and what a 'good' sunset picture should look like. We try to emulate it so that our pictures are 'acceptable' and so gain a positive response.
So we select images following the conventions of our own cultural programming modified by our personal tastes and interests.
At this level a lot of photographic considerations go out the window as it is the subject that is important, not the photograph. As long as the photograph conforms to the cultural conventions of photography for that subject, then nothing more is expected of it or is necessary.
Susan Sontag summed it up: "to most people a beautiful picture is a picture of something beautiful."

This leads us nicely on to Intention...


(* the reasons for this are worth thinking about, though outside the scope of the current thread)

PS I am aware that some of this is written in short-hand and I'm making big jumps. I can't type as fast as I think and this thread is causing me to follow some interesting concepts. I'm doing this on the fly.
 

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