Here is the second in William Mortensen's 1934 series of Venus and Vulcan as published in the San Fransisco journal Camera Craft.
Reading through this I remember there's always been a rather significant gap in how people view the world between those who perhaps "think too much" and those who "just want to be." The ideas and presentation of William Mortensen must have been important only within certain narrow social/cultural fields.
------------------------
A sort of Hamlet-neurosis that prevents them from making up their minds or arriving at any useful course of action seems to grip most photographic beginners when they at last hold in their hands the earnestly desired and long dreamed of camera. In their fond imaginings they had glimpsed themselves producing (with a simple turn of the wrist)
prints of supernal loveliness which were instantly accepted for the London Salon and hung amid universal acclaim. But when the passionately coveted camera is at last a reality, the nasty thing leers at them with its glass eye, and they suddenly realize that they haven't the vaguest idea what they want to take pictures of. In the very young such indecision is perhaps to be expected, but many photographers old enough in their craft to know their own minds show evidences of the same malady of uncertainty, and give themselves over to futile dilletantism, dillying with still-life and dallying with landscape, and, in a word, rapidly getting nowhere. Even the sincerest worker will, in his candid moments, admit to spells of doubt and confusion, when his purposes and plans seem all awry and his well-ordered world a chaos. It was in such a moment that I once imagined a picture in the grand style (possibly a mural for a Camera Club) that might be called
"The Frustrated Photographer'' a huge monumental figure of a man standing on the curve of the world; in his hands, a camera; on his face, an expression of bewilderment and desperation. Surrounded by a world teeming with people, colours, shapes he stands appalled and utterly at a loss.
The world is a confusing place to live in, no doubt about it. People, things, shapes, colours, smells, noises, blazing light and bewildering darkness are all scrambled up in it, and there are times when it seems to make no sense at all. The artist, perhaps more than any other person, is aware of this chaos in nature, and, more keenly than any other person, he desires order. Fundamental to all art is a sanitary impulse to tidy up this disorderly world, and give it sense and meaning and direction. Herein the artist and scientist are as one, for they both seek to arrange nature into comprehensible patterns, or at least to find a few points of reference amid the uncharted, whirling confusion. The sources of material that I am going to discuss provide such points of reference, whereby the storm-tossed pictorialist, floundering in the flux of existence, may be able to orient himself.
There is one type of photographer who is aware of no such need of orientation, because he meets confusion with confusion, chaos with chaos. No heavy consciousness of purpose weighs down this happy mortal who whatever snapshoots as he goes. Sunsets, old shoes, beautiful faces arouses his interest for the moment, he squanders film upon with hap-
hazard,, uncritical enthusiasm. Good pictures are no doubt sometimes obtained by this method, thanks to the occasionally beneficent operation of the usually hostile laws of chance, but to discuss it here would be of no more avail than suggestions on how to win at roulette. Genuine artistic activity is invariably based on plan and channeled to a narrow choice of subject matter.
"But," protests the frustrated photographer with a slight quaver in his voice, "how can one make a choice amongst all the profusion and confusion of things?" The answer to this, as to some other pressing problems, is to let nature take its course. The initial choice of subject matter is usually not something that should be made, but something that makes itself A normal mind generally exhibits a predilection toward a single clearly defined type of subject matter. Realization of this fact will serve to eliminate a great deal of the prevalent photographic neuresthenia.
The number of fundamental types of picture-minds, as indicated by their instinctive selection of material, is not large. Let us, to make the matter clearer, consider a concrete instance. Imagine, if you will, that five photographers are observing the scene in the Grand Central Station during a rush hour surely a subject full of complication and confusion. What picture material will they find there? ... Their choice of subject matter will fall probably into one of five categories. One of them might see in the crowd nothing but faces young or old, tired or eager, resigned or rebellious and among them one face would standout, vivid and significant, and demand to be made into a picture. Another of these five gentlemen, being of a poetic temperament, would be sensitive to the emotional tone or atmosphere of the scene. He might conceive of a strained, taut figure set against a background of hastening crowds, to be titled Rush Hour. For the third photographer the human values would predominate. Here and there among the multitude he would observe little dramas in progress joyous meetings and saddened partings, newcomers bewildered in the throng, and disappointed watchers. The fourth photographer, however,
gives little attention to these things. He notices rather the interesting patterns made by the crowd as it swirls and eddies, or the design of shadows cast by the sun slanting through the great windows.
These four, if they had their cameras with them, might conceivably get their pictures on the spot. But the fifth man, who is of a philosophic and speculative turn of mind, gets his ideas there and produces his pictures elsewhere. For him a picture idea would take the form of a proposition, such as: "We are too much in a hurry," or "People should travel more."
To demonstrate the first he might produce a cartoon-like composition of huge hurrying feet, crushing down populations and cities, spurning everything in their insane haste to get somewhere else. For the second proposition he might aduce an illustration of a lovely lady reclining at ease in her luxurious Pullman drawing-room while the miles slip by outside. Such a picture as the latter he might (if his instincts were commercial as well
as philosophic) dispose of to the New York, New Haven and Hartford for a tidy profit.
Despite the infinite variety of nature, these five types of picture minds fulfilling themselves through Personality, Mood, Drama, Pattern and Propoganda are fundamental enough to cover practically all pictorial activity. Artists who have accomplished most will be found to have expressed themselves along one of these lines. The eclectically minded butterfly who flits from flower to flower may entertain himself a great deal, but the person who discovers and sticks to his natural predeliction for picture material will go much further.
The various schools of photography that were discussed in the last article would of course deal with these five sources of material in their respective characteristic idioms. Let us examine these sources somewhat more in detail, noting the possible Realistic, Non-realistic and Meta-realistic interpretations of each.
Assuming for the moment that our frustrated photographer has overcome his frustration to the extent of fixing on personality as the phase of pictorial expression most congenial to him, he is apt (if he is like other mortals) to be still subject to doubts and confusions. He is confronted, for instance, with Mary Jones, a definite personality. The camera is set, the light is right, Mary is waiting: what is he going to do? Two general courses are open to him. He may, in the first place, render Mary Jones as Mary Jones: a faithful likeness, in other words, save for a possible tactful subordination of Mary's grosser physical blemishes. If Mary Jones is a personality of outstanding strength the resulting picture may turn out to be a very interesting and vital thing. If she is not, it will be just another "camera portrait," of no interest at all except to Mary and her admiring friends.
On the other hand, he may see in Mary Jones, not the accidental things that distinguish her from Gwendolen Chumley, but the important eternal things wherein Mary and Gwendolen are the same. She becomes significant, not as an individual, but as a manifestation of the Eternal Feminine. He may visualize her, perhaps, standing amid the growing grain, deep-breasted and broad-thighed, as Ceres, mother of harvests. Or as "Mystery, Babylon the Great," whose sins were written on her forehead. Or without allusion, simply as a woman. Such universal large conceptions would call for broad monumental treatment. He would eliminate everything accidental and contemporary in costume, head-dress and pose, and strive for the utmost simplicity of line and mass. He would take advantage of the facility for control afforded by such processes as bromoil
transfer and paper negative, and would utilize the resources of "projection control" for selective simplification, elimination, or distortion, in order to purge his conception of mere personal and individual implications. Working along these lines, he might well find the abstract qualities of the nude adapted to his purpose. But if his interest lay in the direction of faithful likeness, he would not, if he were a person of any taste, resort to the
nude; for it would immediately raise questions as to the propriety of Mary Jones thus exposing herself, and introduce numerous other considerations, all non-aesthetic.
He might also make the experiment of photographing Mary from various strange and unaccustomed camera angles, but in so doing he would reveal that his preoccupation
was with pattern rather than personality.
The first mentioned method of rendering Mary Jones is, of course, the realistic one, and the second, which interests itself in personality as type rather than individual, is the non-realistic, creative interpretation. It is in the field of sincere, direct portraiture that the greatest opportunity of the realist lies, an opportunity that he, oddly enough, has rather neglected. Of course, and here is the sticking point, the sole strength of such portraiture depends on the strength of the subject, and without the interest of a rarely dominating personality it degenerates into either a conventional camera portrait or an unpleasantly detailed topographical map of skin imperfections. It might appear that personality could not possibly come within the purview of the Meta-realists, but they have touched on it by inference and satiric implication. I have seen a quaintly comic photomicrograph of a bug that in charm of personality and thoughtful quality of expression far surpassed many a countenance seen on the screen.
If our photographer seeks to express himself through the second medium, of mood or atmosphere, he will find his material most clear and unpolluted in the moods of Nature herself. Leonard Misonne finds it in still country lanes and village streets in the early morning light, and from trees, earth, sunlight and sky he builds quietly lyrical effects. Human figures and human habitations, when they appear, seems as firmly rooted in the Flemish soil as trees. Leaving the country-side for the great city, one may find impressions of power and speed and multitude such as Margaret BourkeAVhite has given in her pictures. Elementary forces - wind and waves and leaping flames - call up emotional images. So also does music, however distasteful the idea may be to those that hold that music is an absolute art. The strength and masculine stride of a Bach toccata, the lascivious musing of The Afternoon of a Faun, the solemn gothic mysticism of Cesar Franck's D minor symphony, all teem with images, and are a rich and scarcely touched vein of material for the pictorialist. "Montage" is often useful in the creation of atmosphere of a sophisticated, synthetic type, building up an emotional impression by
means of a related series of super-imposed images.
The strict realist expresses a pious aversion to mood as a photographic material, although it occasionally appears, in an accidental fashion in his pictures. Mood is too evanescent and fleeting a thing to interest much the classically minded, but it is the very breath of life to the Romantics: they are most sensitive to it and best understand its use. Boecklin among painters and Misonne among pictorial photographers supply notable instances of the romantic interpretation of mood. In their handling of strange and delicate atmospheric effects the meta-realists reveal with particular clearness their close sympathy with the Romantics.
The third photographer, who picks drama as the field of his endeavor deals with human qualities, not static and composed, but in action and reaction, coping with problems, struggling with opposition, meeting obstacles. These struggles and problems and their emotional over-tones constitute drama. No other field of pictorialism is so wide in its appeal: it caters to every taste, from the lachrymose sentiment of the well-known
chromo, "The Doctor," to the stark horror of Goya's close-ups of war. In no other field is bad taste so blatantly exhibited, and no other offers such challenge to the genuine imagination.
Drama may appear in either of two ways, explicitly or implicitly. In the first case one has to do with a more or less literal representation of a scene, a pictorial anecdote or "story-telling picture." Outstanding examples of this type are furnished by Hogarth in his "Rake's Progress" and "Marriage a la Mode." Instances of the successful use of this sort of drama in pictorial photography are exceedingly rare, though unsuccessful instances crowd every amateur competition. Drama of the second type, the implied, deals not with overt actions and confrontations of opponents, but with suggestions, masked emotions, power held in restraint, moments heavy with potentialities and reminders of storms just past. Thus there is drama in character portrayal; for character is the cumulative result of accomplished struggles. It is this dramatic perspective that distinguishes great portraits, such as da Vinci's drawing of himself as an old man, and Titian's portrait of Sixtus X. In the meeting of drama and personality is one of the richest opportunities of the pictorialist.
Drama of the direct explicit sort, and also the implied drama of racial character, lend themselves to reatment in the realistic vein, as is clearly demonstrated in Anton Bruehl's photographic records of Mexico. To both the classic and the romantic variants of the non-realistic method drama is a congenial medium. The Romantics especially, with their exuberance and feeling for contrast, find in drama, either of the explicit or implied kind, their fullest and most characteristic expression. A weird and strange sort of drama is certainly possible to the meta-realistic manner, though I have seen no instances of it.
The fourth of our photographers in the Grand Central Station, as you may remember, was attracted to the patterns created by the swirling crowds and the designs of light and shadow. Other themes likely to attract the lover of pattern are still life, architecture, and formal landscape. The most effective presentation of pattern is in terms of rather
neutral subject matter: the introduction of the human element usually detracts from the pattern-interest. For the photographer, at any rate, the "abstract design" and "absolute pattern" so dearly beloved by theorist and aesthete are non-existent. The camera dictates that you must have subject matter of some sort. Even the geometric arrangements in mothballs or sugar cubes, so much in favor a year or so ago, have their perfectly concrete subject matter. Pattern manifests itself in two ways: as inherent, or as created. That is, the devotee of pattern may either take it as he finds it ready-made in accidental
arrangements and in nature forms, or he may work freely with his material, shaping it into patterns, building still-life arrangements to fit a decorative scheme, or by "projec-
tion control" distorting forms into a preconceived significance. The use of "camera angles" is a special case of created pattern: in seeing a familiar chair, for instance, from an unfamiliar angle, you are for the first time cognizant of it as a shape, a mass and a design, instead of as a humble, utilitarian piece of furniture.
The realists lay much stress on "texture" and "tonal relation," which are, of course, aspects of pattern. But they are interested in these things primarily as subjects for complete and veracious rendering, not for their expressive qualities. The expressive qualities of pattern are much valued by the non-realists, though the energetic Romanticists seldom find pattern sufficiently exciting to treat as an end in itself. The meta-realists. however, revel in it, and, in the few authentic examples of their work, they
have above all revealed a facility for discovering and presenting new and fantastic patterns ranging from etherial fragility to a sort of gothic grotesque.
The four types of picture minds that we have just discussed represent primary sensual and aesthetic reactions to nature. The reaction of the fifth type, the didactic, propagandizing type, is secondary and intellectual. Ideas, not sensations, are its basic materials, and the art-form is strictly subordinated to them. Two things mark the propagandist the fact that he is obsessed by an opinion, and that he wishes to persuade
you to a course of action. How shall he persuade you? Quiet speaking and subtle reasoning are of no avail. Paradoxically enough, propaganda, though dealing with ideas, must express itself in terms of action and emotion. Because of their direct sensory appeal, pictures are perhaps the most effective form that propaganda can take. Propaganda of this type impinges upon our minds at every waking hour, pictorially branding upon
our consciousness the virtues of Listerine, Fleishmann's Yeast and Campbell's Soups. The corner grocery and the Fifth Avenue shop resort to it equally. Such excellent photographers as Steichen and Bruehl have turned their hand to propaganda of this kind. The political cartoon is another variety of pictorial propaganda with which we are all familiar.
But provinces less limited than these are open to the propagandist. The whole human comedy is his. Joining with the sardonic amusement of the ironist or the moral indignation of the satirist, he may castigate human absurdities, obscenities and brutalities, and seek the reform of humanity by revealing to it its own depravity. Goya's Disaster of War and Caprichos belong to this high type of propaganda. So also do Daumier's drawings of the law courts. Pictures such as these are not purely "pictorial" in their appeal, and frequently carry a literary appendage in the form of an ironic title. But considerations of pictorial purity did not deter Daumier and Goya, nor will it discourage any modern propagandist with an idea worth expressing.
Though the realists are diligent and effective propagandists for their own method, the unliteral, "non-photographic" character of propaganda prevents them from using it in their pictures. The fact that it usually involves a symbolism of some sort, and always involves a passionately held opinion, gives propaganda a particular appeal to the Romantics. I know of no instance of propaganda in the meta-realistic idiom, but the
arresting and startling aspects of familiar things that this method discovers to us makes it peculiarly adapted to dealing with ideas.
For clearness' sake, in discussing the five types of picture-minds and their respective sources of material, I have elected to consider these types "pictorial" in their appeal,
the form of an ironic title as existing in a state of hypothetical purity. In reality, of course, the five rarely appear unmixed. Pattern will lend strength to mood, and drama and personality give power to propaganda. I have already mentioned the effective manner in which personality and drama complement each other. However, in such mixed types there is always so clear a dominance of one of the contributing elements that there is no difficulty in classification. Of the five, pattern, perhaps, most seldom makes its appearance either alone or as the dominating member in a combination. But even as a secondary element it remains powerful, and extremely rare is the picture that does not owe its qualities of clarity, strength and unity to the subtle and scarcely suspended influence of pattern.
---------------------------
Pompilius the Younger informs us that when Venus and Vulcan settled down to domesticity, Vulcan at his wife's importunity built her a five-sided tower with a room at the top with five windows in it. Venus was fond of sitting in this upper room, gazing now out of one window and now out of another. Pompilius surmises that the five windows represent the five senses, but perhaps we shall not err in suggesting that they may be construed as symbolizing the five sources of pictorial beauty. Pompilius further relates that when Venus descended from her tower she would amaze Vulcan with reports of the wonders she had seen from her windows. Once in a while his curiosity would lure him up the stair to her room, and he would peer out, blinking and short-sighted. But he
could see nothing but people and trees and mountains and things nothing at all to get excited about and presently he would snort disgustedly at women's foolishness and rush pell-mell back to his cellar and his forge; for black-smithing was his trade, and he understood it.
Photography of the present day is witnessing Vulcan in the throes of one of his periodic restless spells. The technician is tumultously invading the domain of the creative worker, deriding the latter's vision of the world, and asserting the primacy of optics, mechanics, and chemistry. Venus, though somewhat irked by the aggressive mood of her spouse, is
not unmindful of her debt to him, and so she possesses her soul in patience; for she knows from past experience that he will soon return grumbling to his endless productive labours in the workshop.
No comments:
Post a Comment