Smiling is Not Art

No smiling please - we're artists

Instead of me blathering on about the High Art Nude photography today, I’m going to ask you – my trusty readers - to enlighten me for a change (this is a cunning plan to get you folks to do all the hard work!)

I was talking to an artist acquaintance of mine recently (a portrait painter not a photographer) and he was talking about the difficulties involved in pleasing clients. In particular, one of the most common complaints from his clients is that he always refuses to paint them smiling. “You can’t smile in a portrait,” he said. “It’s trite. Smiles are only for photos.”

“Nope, not true,” said I. “Models can’t smile in fine art photographs either. We usually have to look sultry or stay expressionless, and that’s if we even get to show our faces at all.”

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Iveta - with very standard "fine art nude" expression

And it’s true. It’s rare that I see a fine art photographic print (whether portrait or figure nude) where the model is smiling. That’s not always the case of course, but mostly. I’m not including outtakes either – yes I know that your models have immense fun and that shoots are always hoots, but let’s face it guys, how many prints do you actually SELL of happy, giggling models?

And what I want to know is why is it that fine art photography is so devoid of humour? Now I'm not daft (well, not normally!) and I do know that it’s all supposed to be about lighting, form and shadow but what the hell is wrong with interjecting a bit of positive emotion into the image? Would a happy model affect the lighting? Would showing the model’s face – actually smiling - make the image less erotic, less psychologically deep, less atmospheric, less ANYTHING in fact? I think not. What’s wrong with a bit of happiness now and again? Why does showing the photographic subject displaying (positive) emotion mean that it is not commercially viable Art? Why does emotionless anonymity sell and joyous expression not? Do collectors really prefer to hang faceless bodies on their walls? (Please note that I’m not being deliberately provocative here - well maybe just a little, but I really do want to know.)

Maybe I should start a “Happy Nudes” campaign? At least it would reflect the truth of making art – that it is indeed a heckuva lot of fun.

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Why does smiling change the genre?

P.S. If you would like to see a stunning fine art nude photo that really does make me smile with delight, see Michael V’s latest shot here. Isn’t she radiant?

The Little Finger

“Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
Oscar Wilde

Last week Rich was asked to run a photography course. He gets requests like this from time to time and although he likes being asked (good for the ego and all that) he always politely declines. Much to my dismay, about eighteen months ago he made a conscious decision to stop teaching at the local camera clubs and not to run any more local workshops. I do understand that his refusal is based on principle and as his partner it is important to be supportive of one’s spouse, but the trouble is that I’m a bean-counter by trade and therefore my priorities are somewhat different to those of real (starving) artists. I just see that we have bills to pay....and in such circumstances I think that money should come before principles. Mostly. (No I can't believe I said that either - but I really do have a lot of bills you know.) Needless to say the photographer of the house disagrees - rather strongly, if I'm being honest.

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Now I know a huge number of you folks are accomplished photographers who have received formal training from courses and indeed many of you run your own workshops too, so I definitely don’t want to upset any of you. There are a large number of eager photography students out there who glean a huge amount of knowledge from workshops and courses and I am of the opinion that a good teacher can bring on a student’s photography in leaps and bounds. I’ve discussed all of this with Rich and in fact he went on several workshops himself in the early days of taking up digital photography again. So why is he so vehemently against them now? Why won’t he assist in replenishing our sadly depleted coffers by responding to the demand for his tuition services?

The problem is that Rich thinks that after you’ve been taught the basics of how to use a camera, then courses do more harm than good. He tells me “Cartier-Bresson never believed in them, and neither do I.” He refers of course to Cartier-Bresson’s opinion that learning photography is simply “teaching how to use your little finger, that’s all.”

Rich thinks that once you have mastered the basics of photography, then no amount of courses will help. In fact they can do the exact opposite. Some courses waffle on about the history of photography, some (particularly fine-art courses) concentrate on developing style over substance and some teach Photoshop at the expense of shooting the image right in the first place (i.e. on camera.) He believes that a good photographer only becomes such by learning how to “see” the subject, and he says that this type of learning cannot be taught by any course. Seeing comes from within and it only comes with (a lot of) practice. He also thinks that courses take away the fun of discovering how to do it yourself. As he often says to me, “If you want to be a photographer, just pick up a camera and shoot. And keep doing it over and over, forever. It’s that simple.”

Maybe Rich and Cartier-Bresson are right. All these courses can be discouraging; they teach you how to photograph like everyone else rather than developing your own style. Photography should be a burning need from within to shoot, an art of capturing something hitherto unseen and expressing it in the way that you uniquely perceive it. Your images should be inspiring, uplifting, the essence of who you are. No course can teach you that. So why not keep photography simple? Why take overcomplicated historical and technical courses which take you off on tangents and distract you from learning what you really need to know about photography – that which is within yourself?

Perhaps all you really do need is your little finger.

(The problem being, of course, that little fingers don't pay the bills.)

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Our model today is the lovely Clayre McKinnen

Living Photographs

From the stone age humans have had the urge to make pictures, to realise the miracle of making marks on a two dimensional surface which communicates to the viewer how we see the three dimensional world. Through the development of basic drawing and painting skills, and eventually through the use of a mechanical tool called a camera, man has followed his inner urge to recreate the real world on a sheet of paper, to simply record the truth of reality.

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A good photograph is one which LIVES. In other words it springs out at you, stirs your emotions and engages your imagination. It may be a technically imperfect snapshot or an amazingly composed and sophisticated piece of art – in fact this is a personal judgement because a photograph may be alive for some and dead for others - so all you can do as a photographer is to make images that live for you, and let that be enough. Even when you have become an accomplished photographer you will still produce fifty dead photos for every live one. But eventually you WILL produce an image which has a life of its own.

Something marvellous happens when eye, brain and camera (seasoned with a large dose of luck) fuse together to create a live photograph. Never ever throw your live photos away, regardless as to whether they are technically perfect or not. Your photo has stirred emotion, it has spoken to you and to your viewer, so it has earned the right to survive because it now has a life of its own.

There is only one route to becoming a good photographer: practice. All of us vary in our ability to co-ordinate brain, eye and camera and most of us struggle to learn composition and form. It doesn’t come naturally – photography requires many years of constant dedication and daily effort in order to perfect the craft. No-one can call himself a photographer unless he practises regularly.

Whether it be capturing the perfection of a beautiful woman, or recording something as mundane as an insect feeding on honey-water, I defy you to look around and find something which is not worth photographing. And as you continue to practice, your photographs will reflect both your developing skill and growing passion, so that before long your images will begin to achieve that special quality that marks the trained photographer: they will speak to the viewer. And very occasionally, for one perfect moment in time, you will create a photograph that will truly be alive in every way that matters.

The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.

Brooks Atkinson

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Honey B

Painting v. Photography

Because I visit a lot (and I really do mean a LOT) of art exhibitions in my spare time, I often end up chatting to artists about photography. Most of them (usually painters) look down on photographers, and nude photographers in particular, not merely because they think nude photography is all about nekkid-chick-worship but also because they think snapping a nude photo is easy-peasy. To them, photography is not “art.” It’s a short-cut, a cheat, and the resulting image doesn’t “come alive” in the same way that a painting does. To them, any photographic skill involved is only about selection and manipulation, whereas painting is the art of creation from nothing to a totality.

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Hmm…well let’s look at this argument a little closer shall we?

I will admit that photography is a short-cut of sorts, when compared to a painting. It’s faster, for one thing, and when a photographer shoots a nude model, the transition from three dimensional form to a two dimensional surface has already been made for him. Unlike painting, a photographic artist does not have to wrestle with the twin beasts of perspective and foreshortening because he has a mechanical device which does it for him. However that mechanical method has limits. Without skill in the craft of photography, the resulting image will end up as nothing more than a dull surface of homogenised coloured dots: empty and banal.

The painters I was talking to did not understand the concept of photographic skill.

“It’s not just a case of “click the shutter and you’re done,” I told them. “Creating an outstanding photographic piece demands thought, calculation, experience, control and above all, instinct.”

“Maybe,” conceded the painters, “but photographs still lack the emotional depth and artistic personality that a painting gives you.”

So how does the photographer regain that three dimensional depth, that artistic intensity, excitement and LIFE that comes from painting a live subject? How can he create an image which reflects his own artistic vision, which reflects what he was feeling and visualising at the time he captured the image? How can he reflect his personality, passion and subjectivity in an image in the same way as a painter does?

The answer must lie with the skilled photographer’s composition and manipulation of light. To give a photograph similar levels of emotional intensity as a painting, the image creator has to view himself not as someone who is capturing a moment in time, not merely recording what is already there. No, the photographic artist SEES (and my “sees” I mean “understands and perceives”) much more than that. He has to go beyond using the camera as a mechanical tool. He has to learn to paint in light.

Anyone can learn to use a camera. Quite honestly, it’s not that hard to learn form and composition either. Indeed it’s perfectly possible to become a pretty competent photographer after studying and practising taking photographs for a few years. However learning how to use a camera is merely the means by which a photograph is constructed; whereas (like an artist) the skilled photographer uses the light information that the brain receives from the eye and turns it into something much more.

Light is the first thing we see when we open our eyes. It is our primary means of establishing a relationship with the world. In the same way that an artist has to learn how light works before he can paint a picture, the photographer has to learn how light can be used to manipulate how his subject appears, in order to realise the vision in his head.

IMO, photography and art share more similarities than my snobby painters would care to admit. Both are art, even though the tools may be different. Although one type of artist uses a paintbrush and the other uses a mechanical device, the tools are secondary and to some extent irrelevant. It is the finished image which matters first and foremost, and the emotion reflected therein. The camera is merely a tool which is at the service of a photographer’s sight. The pinnacle in technique for both painter and photographer is when that tool becomes secondary to the sight. The tool is thus merely a means to an end. Like a painter, the skilled photographer is unaware of the camera because he is so absorbed in visualising and creating the end image. So when his hands move unconsciously to take the picture, it means his eyes, his brain and his mind are free.

Is the resulting image “true art?” Well, yes, IMO it can be. A photograph doesn’t have to be merely a recording of something which is already there. However, it does have to accurately reflect the artist’s creative vision. It has to be a truthful kind of beauty.

The very highest point attainable in photographic art is when the unaided photographer, occupying the same ambience as the subject he is studying, has the skill to push beyond the mechanical language of the camera and use the additional tools at his disposal (light, space, composition, form) to portray a final image which has meaning to both artist and viewer. Only then will the photograph move from two dimensional to something more, because he has made the image come truly alive inside the viewer’s mind.

And it is at that point where photography stops and art begins.

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Photographs are of Iveta

Photographing A Thought

Whilst on my extended bloggie break, I found myself preoccupied with a question: Is it possible to photograph a thought?

I researched the matter in depth but came up with precious few answers. Thought-Photography is nigh-impossible, although many have tried. In 1933 a physicist called Nikola Tesla announced “a tremendous new power which was about to be unleashed.” He declared that he would soon be able to photograph thought, which he believed would bring about a total social revolution. He was convinced that “a definite image formed in thought, must by reflex action, produce a corresponding image on the retina,” which he believed he could read by use of an artificial retina which would receive and record the image of the object seen, and then photograph it. Needless to say, his experiment was a spectacular failure and Tesla died several years later, his ambitions unfulfilled.

By happenstance (or our weird sisterly psychic connection), a month or so after I read about Dr Tesla, our very own Dr L asked her bloggie readers to interpret her expression in a gorgeous portrait photograph of her by Andre Roussel. Because art (and portraiture in particular) is forever subjective, most of the commenters were unable to interpret her thought correctly (in fact, she was impatiently thinking about her overdue lunch.)

Unbearable Lightness by Andre Roussel, Montreal

Having discussed Thought-Photography with Rich at some length, he reckons that the problem is that in order to tell what someone is thinking, you have to first interpret their expression. This is not a straightforward process because people’s expressions are ambiguous. Study after study shows that a person’s perception of an expression is based upon what the viewer has seen moments BEFOREHAND. There are only a certain number of human expressions and as humans have evolved, expressions have always been interpreted in the context of the actions that precede it. They don’t in themselves have an intrinsic meaning when abstracted from events. So expressions don’t necessarily convey a thought, they just express emotion.

To understand a thought, it must be preceded by an event. A filmmaker has an advantage here because he can create a series of events which may be very subtle but which allow the viewer to correctly gauge an expression and thus the thought behind it. On the other hand, artists and photographers have to resort to props, or what Rich calls “tricks”, to transmit the context of the model’s expression and thus convey the thought to the viewer. In order to be successful, these tricks have to be very obvious. Subtlety doesn’t work.

In the case of a pure art nude portrait photograph, where there are rarely any props, I would therefore argue that it is nigh impossible to photograph a single thought and accurately convey it to viewers. As Dr L’s excellent photograph demonstrates, expressions are misleading (even basic ones like hunger) and viewers will naturally project their own feelings, interpretations and biases into a single picture. The model is thinking what we subconsciously want her to think, but we don’t really know the truth behind “the look.”

Perhaps this is the very reason why portraits remain so alluring, because they have that element of mystery. It’s the classic Mona Lisa question – what was she thinking? (Iksodas does this style very well.) The problem is that with art nude portraiture, we will never really know, and I must admit that this conundrum frustrates me. I WANT to know! Which is precisely the point of the photograph, I guess. The element of mystery is the hook which reels the viewer in.

I have no profound insights into Thought Photography to offer you, other than I wish I knew a sure-fire method of accurately capturing thought in a single frame. Perhaps this is beyond the capability of the camera as a tool. Maybe the apparatus is too limited, or perhaps the whole portraiture process is too easily influenced by viewer subjectivity to ever reliably convey real thought.

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Ivory Flame by Rich

One last (rather peculiar) nugget that I want to leave you with today is the story of the only proven occurrence of Thought Photography.

In 1973, Lawrence Fried, the then President of the American Society of Media Photographers, photographed Uri Geller in a controlled experiment which aimed to prove that Thought Photography was possible (although not in the same way that I am referring to above.)

In the presence of two assistants and a New York Reporter who acted as witnesses, Fried put a lens cap over his lens and covered it with double layered duct-tape to make it entirely light-tight. Geller then held the camera in front of his face with the lens facing him and then repeatedly pressed the shutter. The resulting film was then immediately developed (still in the presence of witnesses.) The resulting photographs were slightly out of focus but the images clearly showed Geller himself, taken at the exact spot where the photograph had been conducted.

So…the moral of the story is that Thought Photography IS possible. The model just needs to be psychic. Or a genius. Or crazy. Or all three.

Feel free to try this experiment at home with your highly psychic models. Do let me know how you get on, won’t you?

Evaluating Your Work

Last post for a wee while, I'm afraid. Real-life is getting in the way of bloggie-life and the day-job looks like it will suck up most of my time for the forseeable future. So be good, all of you and in the meantime I'll leave you with these thoughts...

It would be easier to produce really good photographs if we could see what we are doing. But we can’t see them, not objectively anyway. The problem is that we can look at our photographs on the screen every day without ever managing to see them clearly. IMO, the main problem is that humans have evolved in such a way that they primarily notice novelty. Our danger or pleasure mechanisms are only stimulated if something stands out from the background dross – if we notice something different. If you look at the same thing over and over again (whether it be your own work, or the plethora of b+w fine art nudes available online today) then if your brain is seeing the same old stuff day-in-day-out, you won’t be able to appreciate how your own work is changing. You won’t recognise or appreciate the detail or nuances in a particular photograph, and you certainly won’t be able to evaluate your body of work as a whole and assess how it is coming along.

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The trouble with being human is that the familiar rapidly becomes the background, which is why we love to buy new things of course. We buy a fancy new camera and we are excited by the fact that it is different, sharper, bigger, more powerful, cooler. We imagine that the quality of our photography will be transformed forever by this splendid new machine. And certainly the next few shoots will have an added lift. Our photos will look better to us and the quality of prints will have improved, as will the photos we look at on screen too, although our computer monitors have such low resolution that we won’t in fact, see any difference, despite the fact that we think we do. Yes indeed, as a result of this shiny new “thing” our art will seem more profound, we will feel that we are really getting somewhere and that our photography has leapt “to the next level.” But slowly and inexorably we stop noticing it. And then we long for another new "thing" to improve our work.

What we are, in fact, longing for is not a shiny new camera. What we are searching for is to be able to SEE something new and different in our body of work. We have a relentless appetite for “different” because we are wired that way, but instead of maxing out our credit cards on gadgets that we can’t afford and won’t make much difference anyway, rather we need to see our photographs differently. We need to learn how to step back and analyse our body of work as a whole, to evaluate the design, to see the Big Picture.

How do we do this? Well, I guess everyone has their own ideas. One trick that has been suggested is to go back to basics and analyse your images as if they were taken by a student and you had to teach him how to improve his technique and advise on his creative vision. Brooks Jensen has also suggested doing a small project based on a particular theme. There’s nothing like concentrating on a new and highly specific project (perhaps for the purpose of producing a series or a self-published book) to cause you to see your work in a more objective light and to really stimulate those creative juices.

Many photographers suggest that objectivity on one’s own work can be achieved by making high quality prints. No, looking at your images on screen is not sufficient. Rich has found that printing say, thirty of his best photographs and evaluating them for the purpose of an exhibition is a real eye-opener. Similarly trying to select his nine very best photographs and arranging them for an examination by the Royal Photographic Society was both a humbling and enlightening experience. He saw strengths and flaws that he hadn’t seen before. The process of imagining how an examiner would see his work really brought home which parts of his work were weak and which he needed to develop further, and as a result of this process he knew which direction his work should go in the future.

Many folks reading this may wonder why a photographer would wish to go to such trouble to see things they’d rather not see. But creating opportunities to see your own work freshly doesn’t just show up problems. It also takes you away from the relentless preoccupation with wanting “more” and suddenly returns you to the beauty of your own photography.

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Images are of Ivory Flame

The Creative Self

I've painted by opening my eyes day & night on the perceptible world, and also by closing them that I might better see the vision blossom and submit itself to orderly arrangement.

Georges Henri Rouault

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Some of you who have spent many years photographing nekkid chix will have experienced that slightly altered state of consciousness that comes when you really get involved with what you are doing. You become unaware of the passage of time and conscious thought disappears. Some photographers call this their “inner muse” talking to them, some call it “creative vision” or “inspiration” or “photographic nirvana” but basically this meditative state you’re in is where the artistic right side of the brain is working overtime and takes over the brain processes, pushing out the left half of the brain (which governs logic and analytical skills) in order to achieve that zen-like state of losing yourself in your work.

This process isn’t just about mere concentration or losing track of time. It’s about much more than that. This is about tapping into your creative juices and letting them…er…burst forth, to the extent that whilst you are “under the influence” you lose all awareness of the real world and enter an entirely different realm – that governed by your subconscious “true self.” At the end of the session, when you come out of your trance and see the results of what you’ve created, if you have utilised all those pert little right sided brain cells to their full potential, then you will really see a huge difference. You will have produced better work than you ever dreamed possible. Why? Well because – if only for a moment - you were one with who you really are.

Freud (yes I know you all hate him, but bear with me please) believed a true artist could reach into his 'preconscious', which means he could look at his own deepest psychic depths and then transform these elemental forces into art. He thought that art was a way of linking fantasy and reality, and that true creatives retain a childlike ability to tap into the unconscious, the very deep parts of the personality that most of us lose touch with as we grow up and get 'civilized'. Modern psychiatrists call it “accessing the right side of the brain.” Theologians use a different language: they call it “touching God.” Take your pick. The language which describes this process may be different depending on your beliefs (or lack thereof) but the effect is the same.

If you achieve this altered state of awareness often enough, then you will actually succeed in retraining your brain. This has long term beneficial effects because you will learn to see the real world in a completely different light (pun intended.) As an artist your mind becomes increasingly centred and trained to notice details that you’ve always missed before. You feel at one with your work, but it’s more than that. You are “transported” to another realm. You are alert but free from anxiety. The senses are heightened, everything seems brighter, richer, beauty seems more real. The artistic true self has suddenly kicked in and you have suddenly learned to see a whole new dimension which you hadn’t known existed before. Such a state of intense awareness is an amazing freedom. It’s difficult to put into words how it feels but it’s almost magical, sort of like being high but without having to pop a pill first.

By now you’ll either: a) be nodding knowledgeably because you actually know what I’m talking about b) be thinking I’m on the wacky-backy again, or c) you’ll be saying “Wow, Lin, this sounds really rather awesome. How do I do this? How do I kick-start my sleepy little right- brain cells and find my inner muse/divine inspiration/creative higher self/inner-God/ preconscious/weird psychotropic mental state and produce the art of which I’m truly capable?"

Well, despite what all those religious retreats or money-making “tap into the right side of your brain” courses will tell you, I’m sad to say that there is no tried and tested method which works for everyone. We’re all different. A very talented painter I know does it through meditation and wacky backy, a writer friend of mine does it through prayer (which isn’t so different from meditation but without the drugs bit), my own dear photographer (the jammy sod) can flip a switch in his head and do it whenever he wants whereas I, on the other hand, struggle desperately and get “there” much less often than I’d like.

The best advice I am offer you is this:

Pay attention to your teacher. That means YOU. Go with your instincts and above all be honest with yourself. Trust the way you really feel other than how you think you should feel. Then relax, pick up your camera and let those creative juices flow. And if you keep on trying and get really, really lucky, then you just might – if only for a moment – find your true inner creative.

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Images are of Pirate Maiden

The Needs Of The Many

This is the second part of my essay on Photography, Fantasy and the Modern Woman. The first part of this post can be read here

“It is logical. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

Spock (on entering a deadly radiation chamber which killed him)
Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan

It won’t surprise any of you to learn that in the late 80’s and early 90’s I was a stark raving feminist of the most extreme kind. Feminism was mandatory for university students in those days. We eschewed women’s magazines (I never recovered from this – I still hate them) and I used to have long, passionate highbrow debates on why pornography was degrading to women. To university feminists any pictures of naked women depicted in the modern media classified as porn, so I loathed all forms of nude and especially glamour photography in those days. Both me and my group of eco-friendly, vegetarian, bra-burning friends were all convinced that pornography should be censored (and preferably banned outright) because it led to social and economic subordination of females.

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In the early nineties many twenty-somethings like myself steadfastly believed the propaganda published by the women’s movement. It was because of all those girlie magazines and the pervading culture of porn that women were always perceived to be secondary to men. It was tremendously difficult in our western patriarchal society for women to achieve genuine political power (Mrs Thatcher being the rare exception) because they were usually perceived by men to be fantasy objects. Pornography perpetuated the institutionalisation of male supremacy because it encouraged men to see women as sexual fantasies. Men treated women according to the way they imagined them as being, and because this was accepted as normal behaviour in society, it followed that indirectly pornography defined who women should be.

On the basis of this argument, pornography didn’t free women, it took away their liberty. It denied them the right to achieve freedom in economic and social circles because it recreated them in men’s minds in the shape of male fantasies. Worst of all, women bought these fantasies and took them to their hearts, aided and abetted by the modern media. Pictures of airbrushed gorgeous models in glossy magazine adverts simply made matters worse, because they reinforced the idea of “the perfect woman” in women’s minds. Women’s magazines were thus an extension of the pornographic fantasy-land, cleaned up and sanitized to appeal to the female gender, but no less of a corrupting influence on women’s identities. We all strive to look as sexy and attractive as possible in order to compete with each other, as well as for the purpose of appealing to men. We all fall for the myth of perfection.

Now this was a theory which was mooted in 1992, and it is no less relevant today. In the photographic world we depend on perpetuating these fantasies for our very livelihood. Glossy photographs of beautiful women put bread on our table, or at least they used to before the government started censoring them and regulating what we could do. And so we rail bitterly against the removal of our own fundamental liberties and against our photographic art being censored. We all wonder if our photography will survive? In both Britain and America these new laws are an insult, an oppression, a fundamental violation of everything we stand for.

“It’s an outrage! What about our rights? Our freedom of expression?”

Well now, hang on a minute. What about the liberties of women?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that it is well established in first amendment case law that some speech has the effect of silencing others. Our governments therefore have a duty to balance the rights to freedom of speech with speech designed to stop others from being heard. However those feminists in 1992 theorised that a woman’s free speech can be silenced indirectly by images that change the viewer’s perceptions of her fundamental character, her desires and even how she sees herself. Anything that does result in shaping who she is as a woman and how others see her is therefore fundamentally wrong because it effectively takes away or changes her free will and silences her.

So is it possible that in some ways nude and glamour photography does silence women because it changes how they see and value themselves, as well as how society as a whole sees them? Is pornography (however artistic) partially responsible for women’s inability to achieve absolute equality in society? If so then our governments have a powerful justification for censoring images of women (although granted that sneaking legislation through under the guise of protection of children isn’t the most ethical way of achieving such equality.)

If we are a society which protects free speech at all costs, then doesn’t it follow that some types of censorship are justified, particularly those that promote absolute equality and justice? Should some freedoms (for example, the right of a small sector of male photographers to create nude photographs of women) be sacrificed in order to protect the rights and freedoms of all women? How do governments find the right balance?

Should the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?

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Images are of Iveta

You'll all be unsurprised to hear that Rich described this post as "well written but flawed." I told him that he'd missed my point that these arguments were around in 1992, some seventeen years ago. What goes around, comes around. These very same feminist theories were once again resurrected a couple of years ago as an justification for supporting increased censorship of the plethora of nude and pornographic photographs on the internet, although this is actually the first time that members of our governments tried to enshrine them in legislation.

How Low Can You Go?

I’ve been reading some rather pretentious literary web sites which spend a great deal of time pontificating about “high art.” The terms "high art" and "low art" have always struck me as pretty meaningless. IMO, trying to classify art as “highbrow” or “lowbrow” seems an entitely subjective process and ultimately rather pointless in this modern day and age. We've evolved beyond such nonsense, surely?

The notion of brow levels came about in the early 1900’s when free public schools first started. The sudden growth of education and the spread of literature resulted in the creation of the first national newspapers, which caused great outrage amongst both artists and intellectuals who argued that all these popular rags did was to reduce literature to the lowest common denominator. Baudelaire even referred to newspapers as “satanic.” The arguments continued to rage until eventually English culture divided into two: highbrow and lowbrow. Each individual fell into one of the two classes, depending on his personal taste and choices in books, art and hobbies. If you liked popular “mass” culture, this meant that you were lowbrow. The chasm continued to widen until journalism and popular culture became poles apart from “high art” and literature, never again to merge.

Nowadays most of us only know the differences between high art and low art by the reputation of the medium. Broadly speaking sculpture, painting, music, poetry, cinema and classic English literature all fall into the “high art” category, whereas tattoo art, children’s stories, comic strips, video game design and so forth would all classify as “low art.” Some modern art critics argue that with the growth of technology and the modern media, the distinction between high art and low art have now become permanently blurred. Some computer games, for example, can now be so sophisticated that they contain a detailed plot and character development, just like a good novel. At what point does the medium cease to matter, and when exactly does lowbrow evolve into highbrow?

IMO, nowhere do these abstract lines between high and low blur more than with the nude photographic medium, largely because it is very difficult to objectively catergorize images of naked women.

High art is seen to be spiritually moving, sophisticated and philosophically challenging, so when does a photograph meet this specification? Low art is a derogatory term which can be classified as popular culture which may be visually entertaining, but which is nevertheless intellectually sterile, nothing more than commercial pap to feed the masses. So what kind of nude photograph would satisfy this definition? Which type of nude image is high culture and which is popular culture? Is it really as simple as:

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High Art? (B+W fine art nude, Ivory Flame)

vs.

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Low Art? (Colour erotica, HoneyB)

Which image is high art, if any? Which of the two is deeper, more exciting, more sophisticated and philosophically challenging? The medium is the same, so what’s the difference?

I would suggest that the difference isn’t merely to do with lighting and composition. IMO it largely depends on intent. What type of emotional reaction did the photographer want to generate? What was his creative vision? What market was the photograph aimed at? Or does it purely come down to personal taste? So if we use these criteria then the first image is more tasteful, non-sexual and more likely to stimulate the intellect and is therefore more towards the "high art" category, whereas the second largely stimulates the male groin, and would be lower - very low, in fact, which is a shame because I actually prefer the second above the first, although I can't for the life of me figure out why? Maybe I'm just a lowbrow kinda girl?

Frankly all this categorization seems like blatent snobbery to me. IMO, classifying a particular type of nude photograph as “high” or “low” is pure pompous elitism. Isn't black and white “fine art” photography nothing more than lowbrow with different packaging, nekkid chix re-invented and re-wrapped for the titillation of the very same supposed highbrow intellectuals and art critics who would otherwise condemn all nude photography as non-artistic?

Maybe we haven’t really grown that much in a hundred years after all.

Photography, Fantasy and the Modern Woman

(George: you wanted to see an example of "the posts that never made it" - here's one. It's a bit lengthy though!)

Forget world recession and the dawn of a new age, the most important global news item on the planet last month was what frock Michelle Obama was wearing. The entire future reputation of the United States of America hung on this single fact. Oh yes indeed, let’s ignore the fact that the new First Lady graduated from Princeton and has had a dazzling career…I mean, like…who cares!?! But did you see those fantastic Jimmy Choo’s? Which new designer was she wearing? And how often does she work out so she can stay so slender? It seems that although we are happy to judge Mr Obama by his intelligence and wisdom, we are still unable to drag ourselves out of the middle ages and judge a woman by anything other than her appearance.

Throughout history, women have always been judged by their looks. Nowadays, thanks to the modern media, this has become increasingly the case. Needless to day, this patriarchal-driven discrimination does not apply to men. Guys can get away with scruffiness on the basis of genius. For example, consider computer geeks, engineers or scientists: for them, personal appearance is irrelevant because they are judged by their brains not brawn. Even Obama himself has looked decidedly tired and worn on occasion, but it doesn’t matter because his exceptional intelligence excuses any occasional lapse in appearance. Alas the same could never be allowed to apply to his poor wife. From now onwards, if she ever steps outside the White House in jeans and a pair of slippers, sans make-up, her future would be permanently in ruins. So much for cultural evolution. Despite the numerous women’s rights movements, brilliant academic females like Michelle are still judged according to their appearance.

Those jeans didn't go down too well last time (Photographer: Emmanuel Dunand)

I sympathise. The truth is that if you want to be taken seriously in your profession, then you have to look the part. People judge women according to how they see them. For example if I go into a city business meeting in jeans and trainers (yes I’ve actually done this) then other people look through me as if I’m not there. I’m judged sloppy, unattractive, less intelligent, and I’m dismissed and ignored (the same does not apply to guys, incidentally.) However if I go to the meeting in a smart suit with high heels (I hate heels) then people take notice. I fit the mould – I am accepted as an intelligent female, and I am included. Elegance and style matter in the boardroom, they matter absolutely everywhere.

Nowhere is this emphasis on appearance more visible than in our photographic world. It is a central tenet of the entertainment industry. When was the last time you saw a female celeb in jeans at an industry knees-up? Heck, the poor souls get slammed by the press if they pop out to the corner shop looking anything less than perfect, and yet the male equivalent gets away with it all the time. The ports of the best photographers on MM are crammed full of beautiful people dressed up to the nines, each worthy of appearing in many thousands of stylish magazines. In fact, this is their very goal – these models are elegant illustrations of our obsession with appearance, with our mantra of “image is all.”

As I have blogged before, IMO photographers perpetuate this philosophy – overwhelmingly they choose to photograph women who conform to the modern industry standard of what “look” is judged to be beautiful. Modern people photography is therefore less about the individual subject but more a record of our culture, our emphasis on style, our obsession with judging the female of the species by her appearance. As this is a patriarchal society, this is somewhat inevitable, I guess. Most photographers in the entertainment industry are men, and let’s face it, this is what guys are hard-wired to do. And anyway, this dogma is part of the shoot specification – this is what the shooter is hired for. The MUA and stylist use their years of professional training and the photographer must tailor his best lighting skills to create the appearance of perfection and modern beauty. Even though the model might look rather plain and ordinary away from the camera, this is totally irrelevant, because for the purposes of the shoot, she must be transformed.

It is the photographer’s job to sell the fantasy that every woman could and should try to look equally physically perfect and well groomed. In every magazine feature or advert you look at, the model will always look flawless, because how else can they sell the end product?

"Don’t you want to part with a week’s salary for this fabulous perfume ----daaaahling ? And if you do my dear, then you too will look as gorgeous as Nicole Kidman…and you too will find happiness, self-worth and be the perfect woman. You CAN be the Barbie doll you’ve always wanted to be, if only you buy this perfume. Go ahead, live the dream…"

So when you look at a photograph of a beautiful woman in a magazine advertisement or feature, you see a fragment of how we ordinary folk would like to see the world. Because the photograph is so crisp and detailed, it is like glimpsing a slice of real life, but the trouble is that like any art-form, such constructed photographs are not real. They are created in a studio by a photographic team purely for the purpose of perpetuating a myth…the myth that appearance is a better way of valuing a woman rather than what’s inside her head.

Because our modern society defines itself via photographs, we are increasingly moving towards believing our true identities should be like these constructed images. The fantasies have been absorbed into our psyches, and they are corrupting our ability to think as individuals, not to mention the potential damage to our self-worth. We are perpetuating the practice of judging women by their appearance because we are copying the imaginations of the original photographers and stylists who invented the thousands of glossy photographs we see every week. We see the world through rose-tinted-glasses and we think it is real. We want it to be real. The more photographs which are produced over the years, the more society depends on them to define its reality, the more appearance matters, and the more we women are expected to identify with and adhere to these glossy fabrications that we see every day in the media.

Because of our entertainment “biz”, these fantasies, these unreal, superficial constructed identities have permeated who we think we should be as women. The fantasy has become reality. Photographs in the media dictate how we are expected to look and behave, and they strongly influence the way we think. Like millions of other women, my smart-suited successful day-job persona, my constructed identity, “who I am seen to be” and even how I feel about myself are all reflections of the ever-evolving photographic landscape. Photographs are way more than mere recording devices. They shape our past, present and future on both a cultural and individual level.

Never underestimate the power of the photographers. It is they who will decide who we will become.

And as for your dear First Lady, those photographs of her in her pretty Isabel Toledo dress and Jimmy Choo pumps will be remembered long after her lofty career achievements are forgotten.

Learning to See – Again

Over Christmas I've been festering away about a recent discussion (for that read "argument") about art and craft on the excellent Studio Marcotte Blog.In particular, Jimmy's comments on that post gave me serious pause, and I've come dangerously close during the last few weeks to wondering if I've been talking total tosh for the last three years.

I cringe when I think about how much time I’ve spent on here blogging about Art with a capital A. As artist and photographer Kim Melia von Seidl wrote, the word is incredibly over-used, particularly within the photographic sphere. So should I abandon my blogging about photographic art? Should I simply call it plain “photography” instead?

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Now I'll be the first to admit that the majority of photographs do not qualify as artistic, nor are they intended to. The primary purpose of photography is to capture something which already exists. To do this well requires a considerable amount of technical skill and expertise (Jimmy D often refers to the photographer as a craftsman) but this is not necessarily the same as art. An artist goes a lot further than this because his purpose is to create rather than to merely record. Sure a camera is a machine which provides an accurate mirror to the world, but like a paintbrush, it is merely a tool. It does not of itself create. You, the photographer, create, and the images you produce are a subjective reflection of your thought processes. Simply put, your photographs are unique to you and only you, because they reflect how you see.

The role of the photographic artist is to look for something deeper than what ordinary people see. IMO, this is where the artist takes over from craftsman. What makes Art (and I use the term somewhat cautiously) is when the artist reflects what ordinary people cannot see. As Brooks Jensen said, they “make the invisible visible.” Photographic artists are not unlike seers, who seek to provide an insight into a particular subject, thereby revealing a new truth which was previously unknown to the viewer.

O.K. you say, “But it’s all been done before. There’s too much out there that’s just the same. Everyone’s a photographic artist nowadays, so the label of Photographic Art is now meaningless.” As you know, I used to think this, and I’ve recently whinged about it a fair bit too. However, I’ve since read a bit more, thought a bit more and realized that cynicism was simply getting the better of me. I had become jaded, numbed by the hundreds of images I was looking at every day. I began to think that all art-nude photographs were largely the same, mere duplicates of each other based on a single theme. The genre was spent. One B+W studio nude was the same as the next. Art was an exhausted term.

Quite clearly, this was total nonsense. The fault was actually in me, the viewer, not the photographers. I was simply failing to “see” that particular photographer’s image, I was failing to understand the message within the photograph, because I couldn’t be bothered to spend enough time studying that one image in enough depth. It’s easy to click on an internet image, flick your eyes over it, think “very nice” and then click on another. That’s the problem with Deviant Art, MM and other online forums – it’s just too easy to get seduced by the thousands of photos uploaded every day. After a while, they all look the same.

However if you spend, say half an hour examining a high quality print of that one single image, then my guess is that you’d have a completely different view of what that image means. You’d be able to interpret its message, you’d understand the photographer just that little bit more, and I’m betting that the image would stay in your mind for quite a while. It might even fall into that all elusive category: Photographic Art (although that depends on your subjective judgment of what constitutes art anyway and whether that image makes your personal grade.)

It strikes me that I’ve spent far too much time inside the last year criticizing the modern internet photographic age for too much volume over substance, and yet the fault lay squarely with me for not shrinking my world and the number of photographs which I looked at. I didn’t spend enough time choosing to study a few particular photographers and their work, I allowed myself to get numbed by the masses. This is not the fault of the photographic “artists”, it is the fault of me, the viewer.

I intend to correct my error during the next year. My new year’s resolution is to simplify, to downsize what I look at. Quality before Quantity. My photographic world will shrink considerably, and I suspect that as a result of this, my vision will improve and I will be able to see more clearly again.

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Images are of Althaia

A Year of Perpetual Drama

Writing is not about words. Painting is not about pigment. Music is not about tones. As long as photographers insist that photography is about photographs, the art is limited and self-containing.

Brooks Jensen

It’s about this time of year that we all look back over the last twelve months. We count our blessings, scrutinise our mistakes (and then write them off as experience) and savour the fact that we made it to the end of the year with our sanity intact.

It’s certainly been interesting watching the adventures of the nude bloggie community. Because of The Golden Fluffies (later this week, if anyone is remotely interested) we’ve been reading huge numbers of photographic blogs every single day. It’s amazing how immersed you get in the lives of bloggers, and it’s certainly been fun watching these artists grow and develop. The number of photographers and models who blog has grown exponentially during this year, and for that reason (as well as all the prohibitive regulations next year) we’ll shortly be calling it quits on the annual awards and significantly shrinking our daily blog roll. Sorry folks, but that much reading can seriously interfere with one's sanity. We need our lives back!

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Anyhoo, what has this year been like for us, blogs aside?

Rich:

Well, this has been the year that Rich temporarily gave up photography (or at least took a serious break) due to a phase of arty existential angst because of the exponential rise in identical nude photographs on Deviant Art. Not a growthful experience. He describes D.A. as the McDonalds of the art world: fast food art without culture, ultimately bland and tasteless when eaten to excess. Our Rich is not one for following the herd. He likes to stand out from the crowd (or at least as individual as is possible nowadays) so finding endless copies resulted in him pulling out of photography to get his mojo back (and yes, I’m still waiting, although I deeply suspect that the delay in mojo-return is now mainly financially induced.)

He’s also erm…expanding into shooting deeply uncool short horror movies, which I am apparently required to write scripts for. So far this has resulted in much disaster and great hilarity. I am terrible at script-writing. TERRIBLE! But it is a humungous amount of fun trying to produce anything at all, so no doubt we will attempt to create scary zombie shorts (mini-movies) with deeply naff* scripts and peculiar CGI special effects next year some time. Mind you, a single short five minute zombie movie takes absolutely ages to develop and shoot, so we're not expecting the final results any time soon. (And before you ask, Fluffytek is supposed to be about beauty, light and form, so it's unlikely that I'll be blogging about it here.)

(*Our resident artiste deeply objects to the term “naff” so please substitute the world “artistic” where appropriate.)

Lin:

This is the year I was nuked, of course, which in turn means it was the year that Brooks Jensen saved my (photographic) soul, and inspired me to study photography in depth. It was the year I quit modelling (no I don’t miss it) and the year I discovered that I should be writing rather than being an accountant (I’m working on it.) I also lost my memory (twenty years snuffed out) and yet still found happiness and freedom because of the love and help of my family, as well as through the support of a great community and a growing passion for photography.

So this year, our annus horriblis, our year of hardship, where we nearly lost both our day-job business and were subjected to more stress than ever before, has nevertheless been an enlightening year. At the very least, we have learned the value of taking one day at a time as well as discovering a deeper appreciation of photographic art. Photography is about so much more than photographs. If we have realised nothing else this year, then that is a fundamental truism.

It has been a good year. We could not ask for more.

If you think back, and replay your year - if it doesn't bring you tears of joy or sadness, consider the year wasted.

John "The Biscuit" Cage, from Ally McBeal

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Images are of Iveta

The Outsiders

A few weeks back I was mentioning to a very old friend that I wrote a photographic art blog. All well and good until I mentioned that it featured (tasteful) nudes. Note: I did stress the tasteful bit. This friend refused to ever speak to me again. I have lost several other close friends over the course of the last three years for the same reason. Yes, they all looked at the blog, yes they read it, and no matter how artistically I dressed it up, that was IT. I had crossed the line, and there was no going back. From that point onwards, Rich and I were, and now always will be, pornographers.

*Sigh*

Here we go again.

I am sure most of you have been through this many times before. It’s no big deal, right? Who cares what other people think? WE know it’s art. Sod everyone else! We have our little corner of the photographic world, we all support each other. We outcasts know the truth, even if no-one else is intelligent enough to recognise it. Nude photography is Art with a capital ‘A.’ it’s not our fault if the general public are too blind and repressed to realise that. Just ignore them. These so-called “friends” were never real friends to start with, otherwise they would accept us for who we are.

Yeah right.

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Why do we do it? Why do we buck the trend and continue to rebel in the face of so much disapproval? Is being “out there on the edge” all it’s cracked up to be?

After nearly three years immersed in the photographic world, we are now so used to seeing nude photographs that they have become natural to us. Unremarkable. I am now so completely unfazed if the subject of a photograph is naked that I actually expect it. Nude images long ago lost their capacity to shock me, yes even really graphic ones.

Only a couple of years ago, seeing a photograph of a woman tied up would evoke a powerful emotional response in me. (I never was very good with coping with bondage.) These days, because of the circles in which I mix, such images have become curiously tame. I now look beyond the nakedness. I look for the photographer’s message, the emotional content, the lighting, the composition. I analyse, I dissect. I don’t see a nude photograph the way my non-photographic friends do. What I receive to be a normal artistic subject (i.e. the image of an unclothed female) the squeamish general public see as radical, rebellious, shocking, exhibitionist, pornographic, repulsive, perverted.

To be honest, when people judge Rich’s photography this way, it still really upsets me. His work is beautiful (or at least that's his intention.) Why can’t outsiders see that? Why are we perverts because we photograph people with no clothes on? Why are nude photographers automatically shocking, smutty and unclean? And what does it say about Rich and I that we now consider all types of nude photography – art nude, glamour, bondage, fetishism and so forth - as normal? We view the different nude photographic genres as we would a particularly attractive shade of wallpaper: Different, interesting, decorative, pleasing to the eye, but no longer shocking or offensive. No, never that.

We do not consider ourselves to be pornographers. We are not obsessed with sex or porn. We are ordinary people. So who are the real Outsiders here? Us (for being rebels?) or the “normal people” who consider our photographs to be aberrations, perversions, no more than pornographic smut to be deleted if the images are accidentally discovered whilst browsing online?

Are we really that Dirty?

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Images are of Ivory Flame

Endurance

“We dream of hope. We dream of change. Of fire, of love, of death. And then it happens. The dream becomes real. And the answer to this quest, this need to solve life's mysteries finally shows itself. Like the glowing light of a new dawn. So much struggle for meaning, for purpose. And in the end, we find it only in each other. Our shared experience of the fantastic. And the mundane. The simple human need to find a kindred, to connect. And to know in our hearts... that we are not alone.”

Mohinder Suresh, from the t.v. series “Heroes.”

Change.

Most people fear it. Some enlightened folks welcome it. Personally I’m in favour of a bit of both. To me, it’s all about faith. Not faith in some abstract deity, but faith in people, in friends. When the shit hits the fan, as it has so frequently done in the last few months, real friends rarely let you down.

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Images are of the very beautiful Alexis Summers

What is this leading up to, you’re probably wondering? Well, suffice to say that for a while now, I’ve been working on the next few weeks’ blog posts. The articles have absorbed a great deal of my time, and have been upsetting and difficult to put together. More about that next time. But for now it’s the weekend! Time to relax, sip a glass of decent chardonnay, to think about life, the universe and everything, and to step back from the crap and remember what’s important.

(Caution!!! Oncoming pop-psychology-pseudo-religious-mushy-crap. If you hate this type of talk, abandon this post now and come back next time for hard-hitting- reality-biting-photographic-journalism. Everyone else – indulge me please! I need a warm ‘n’ fuzzy ramble right now.)

Yesterday I indulged in a spot of Christmas shopping. Woollies (one of the main UK Department store chains) has gone bust and they had a mammoth closing down sale, so I nailed most of the Christmas shopping in one, and then zoned out on a cup of Christmas-flavour coffee at Starbucks before polishing off the rest of the Yuletide purchases. The U.K. High Street was distinctly bereft of Christmas cheer. There were plenty of shoppers, but they weren’t talking much. Just people silently going about their business. Few of the shops were playing Christmas music, and so we all shopped in silence. The atmosphere felt odd. Very odd.

When I met up with my yummy mummy friends we talked in hushed voices, as if someone had died. We talked about the recession, about taxes, about how much less we were buying our kids this year, and how it would be good for them to learn the real value of money. There was little talk of Christmas itself, and yet it was still there, bubbling away under the surface. Despite the economic calamities, the kids are still wide-eyed with anticipation and excitement, and their enthusiasm is touching us all, making us realize what the world should be like at this time of year, even though the reality is very different. Most parents I know have already put their Christmas decorations up. Early for this part of the country, yes, but people are quietly defiant, fighting the recession, daring fate to ruin Christmas. We don’t care if we are broke or we are about to lose our jobs or the world has gone to hell. Christmas will come anyway. We have our families, we have each other. Nothing else matters.

As it’s the season for all things Christmassy, we’re also being subjected to large amounts of yuletide festivities, whether we like it or not. Hogwarts has four big religious-Christmassy events in the next week alone, and my daughter’s school has another three in the following week. I’m in church more than I’m at home at the moment, and it’s not through choice, I can tell you that much. Normally I use the church time to write blog posts (yes I’m obviously going to Hell as I write about nude photography in church – if Hell actually exists of course) but a recent sermon by an eminent Bishop actually tickled my fancy, largely because he talked about money (a matter very dear to my heart, as you’re all aware.)

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The learned Bishop observed that the recent world recession and economic calamity was an exact repeat of roughly two thousand years ago, at the time Jesus was born (and let’s not go into the dispute as to the actual date of his birth – around 6 A.D. in case anyone is remotely interested, although the dear Bishop would probably disagree.) So baby Jesus was also born in a time of economic disaster, not dissimilar to what is happening around us today. It was the financial turbulence that took Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem in the first place. The Romans were apparently experiencing a spot of financial bother, so the weary parents were required by law to return to Joseph’s place of birth, to register for the tax census. As with our own modern governments, life in those days was all about paperwork and extracting as much tax from the citizens as possible, exactly the same as is happening now. It was into this recession that the baby Jesus was born. Sound familiar? History repeats, again and again. We haven’t really advanced that much in two thousand years, have we?

Anyway, the point of my reminiscing is that sometimes we tend to forget that "gam zeh ya'avor" - "this too shall pass." No matter what crap we are going through (or on our case, about to go through,) no matter what change will come, our true faith should not be in some abstract God, or in money, or in any of our so-called heroes, it should be in the value of family and friends. It should be in the quality of our relationships, and in life itself.

The message in all of this is simple.

Endure.

I would do well to remember that more often.

Photographic Proliferation

I’ve always been a fan of The Slow Food movement. For those who haven’t come across it before, it is a gastronomic philosophy which opposes not only the current fad for endless junk food and ready meals, but also aims to change the Western culture of rushing meals, rushing life and never taking time to slow down and really taste life.

The Slow Food movement is but a small part of a much wider cultural problem: SPEED.

All too often in this modern day and age we rush from experience to experience, never stopping to appreciate the world around us, rarely pausing to draw breath, constantly rushing towards some unnamed destination that we never find because we really don’t know what we are looking for anyway. Why do we live so fast? Because everyone else does. And as humans, we are pack animals – we are genetically hardwired to follow the herd. If they rush, so do we.

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Photographers are no exception to the herd philosophy. In this modern digital age, there is more and more pressure to produce consistently top notch pictures at a frighteningly fast rate. Every photograph must be, if not high art, then at least pretty good. There is constant pressure to compete with the rest of the herd, endless comparisons between one photographer’s work and the next, the rush to shoot more, more, more, and the never ending pressure to move ever higher, climb to “the next level,” that final level of photographic perfection where a photographer is published, featured, SUCCESSFUL. Where he has “made it as a photographer.”

Quite what “making it” means, I have no real idea. To be published? Surely not, as millions of photographers are published online all the time. To be published in a magazine or photography book? Again the standard is meaningless, as magazines and the written media are in terminal decline and in ten years time, there will be very few left. Online publishing is the new publishing medium, and it has an insatiable appetite for the new. Every photographer will get published online somewhere at some point in their photographic career, every model will be seen. There is room for all. “Being published” doesn’t really mean that much nowadays as a benchmark of success.

Maybe a better aspiration would be to photograph something genuinely unique, that no-one has photographed before. The trouble is that almost all of the world has now been photographed at some point since the invention of the camera. Only the remotest areas of the wilderness remain unseen. We don’t need to physically visit a faraway place to learn about it, we simply have to Google it and find a photograph online. No longer are we pioneers of the new, because it’s all been done for us before by another photographer somewhere, somehow. Civilisation has been conquered, dissected, analysed and made available for all to view online. The world has been immortalised by photography, there is nothing left to see. So many new photographers are rushing to joining the herd at such a rapidly accelerating rate, that there is little (if anything) left to discover, there are very few (if any) questions left that have not already been answered before by another photographer who has been there before you. Aren’t we all just running around in endless circles chasing our own tails? What IS the modern photographer’s aspiration? Does it even exist?

Viewers too are suffering from the fast food digital age. Our brains are now so saturated with images and there is so much information out there online, infinite questions about the world that have already been answered by the camera, that there is nowhere left to go. Our brains are now so befuddled with information and images that we have become numb to anything new. Because the internet and digital photography have culturally globalised the world, we no longer have the skills to differentiate between the thousands of photographs that we see every week. To a large extent, they all look the same. Familiarity has lead to boredom. The photographic herd has now become so large that bulk mediocrity has flooded our existence. We rush from image to image and can’t take in any of them properly because our brains simply aren’t wired to handle that much information. It is also difficult to judge how one photograph is more novel than another because we see so many. We are rushing again – always rushing at ever increasing speeds to the next landscape, the next nude. Click here for the instant gratification. Click again for the next. This is animal pack mentality. This is our human nature. We really can’t help this because that is how our human brains are designed. We are victims of our intellectual limitations.

Instead of heightening our senses, instead of teaching us about the world, about beauty, art, and human nature, modern digital internet photography is doing the exact opposite. It is deadening our senses, making us numb to the new, stopping us caring about being explorers and innovators. The herd is being permanently damaged by its insatiable greed for more.

How can we change this? Is there some way to retrain our brains to differentiate, or are we destined to become increasingly confused and numbed by the billions of photographs that crowd our thoughts? How can a photographer break free from his herd and create something that is unique to him, a piece of work that answers some question that hasn’t already been answered before?

We need to learn to move away from living in this photographic white bread world, slow down, and learn to really taste our new gastronomic creations rather than just living off endless junk food. We need to move from fast food to slow food. The question is how?

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Images are of Pirate Maiden

Photography: An Aggressive Sport

A few months ago Rich shot a model (not the one featured below) who seemed unusually apprehensive. He did everything he could to put her at ease, and when she finally relaxed and started to talk it turned out that she was indeed nervous about shooting, not because she was inexperienced or didn’t want to pose nude, but because she was completely fed up with photographers pushing her to reveal her personality in a shoot. Past photographers weren’t just interested in what she wanted to show them, they were interested in what she didn’t. They wanted to capture “the real her.” She felt that this was outside the scope of the shoot, off limits, PRIVATE. Experiences with past photographers had resulted in such psychological pressure to expose herself that she was disillusioned with them and could no longer relax in front of the camera.

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As a model I will admit to being able to identify with this. Whereas most photographers assume that their subjects will value the photographic skill and insight into their personality, this is not always the case. Sontag once observed that photographing a person can be seen as an act of violation. “By seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have, it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.” And what if that photographic subject didn’t want to be photographed in that way? Consider a paparazzi photographer who spends his life trying to get the picture of the latest celeb. His livelihood depends on him catching a “killer shot” of the celeb in question. The more exposed and off-guard the shot of the subject, the more money he gets. He is actively stalking his prey in the same way that hunters hunt wild animals with their gun.

Think I’m exaggerating? Think that photography is forever a peaceful profession? Think again. You only have to look at the language used in photography to realise that photography is primarily the domain of men, and is consequently aggressive in nature. We talk about “loading” and “aiming” a camera, “shooting” a film (are we talking about cameras or guns here? See the parallel?) We “take” a photograph, “capture” a moment. Again, all hunting terms, all with the emphasis on taking rather than giving.

It has been suggested that photographing a subject unawares is akin to a fundamental violation, in the most violent sense possible. If you photograph someone in a certain way without their permission and when they are emotionally exposing their psyche, then you are capturing a moment where they are at their most vulnerable. This is not a gentle act. Although the photographer may only be seeking an exceptional shot of a person, unless that model has explicitly told you that she is happy for you to find that in her, then it is by default an act of unintentional aggression.

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To some photographers, such intrusions are acceptable providing they yield a strong image. Perhaps you photograph a model when she is undressing for a shoot (something which many models really hate, incidentally) or perhaps you photograph her in an outtake when she is feeling sad or pulling a goofy face. It might be an outstanding shot, but do you have the right to use that image? No, don’t quote model releases to me here. I’m not talking about legal issues, I’m talking about ethics. At what point does capturing such an unexpected moment, an unguarded expression, a moment where you discover “the real her” become an overstepping of the boundaries? When does it become a violation of privacy?

In every shoot there is an unspoken contract between photographer and subject. Whether or not you violate that contract in the name of pursuing truth or insight is a subjective judgement and depends on the personal integrity of the individual photographer. If you do not consider it your responsibility to preserve the model’s psychological privacy, if you are only concerned with the final image regardless as to whether or not the subject is emotionally comfortable with you penetrating her psyche in that way, then at what point does the selfish pursuit of a strong shot become offensive? At what point is it a violation of the power that she entrusted to you?

Ask yourself if your work is primarily about you, the photographer, and your relentless hunt for “the one shot” that defines a person? If your photography becomes no more than satisfying your quest for “truth” (whatever that is), or no more than proving to yourself what an outstandingly insightful photographer you are, then I put it to you that you are arguably no better that that paparazzi photographing the celeb, or the hunter with the gun stalking his prey.

My own conclusion is that the ethical photographer will maintain a friendliness, openness and flexibility with the subject. He will not stalk or pursue her, nor will he abuse his power. Rather, he will openly discuss what he is looking for at the start of the shoot, and obtain her approval and consent. He will always respect her boundaries, both physical and psychological. Such a friendly relationship goes a long way towards offsetting the aggressive nature of photography.

Unfortunately this giving rather than taking isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Sometimes your intentions might be entirely honourable and you think that your subject is perfectly happy with the way you work, but you may nevertheless violate invisible psychological boundaries because your subject is too trusting, too naïve, too polite or even because she simply misunderstands what you are looking for. So you might believe that you’re not being aggressive, you might think that your model is perfectly happy with the way you shoot and values your unique skill and insight into “the real her,” but are you absolutely sure?

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Images are of Ivory Flame

Masters of Kokoro

Before photography……there was budō.

Rich and I met 23 years ago in a dojo. We were inseparable from the very first minute I stuck my foot in his groin and flipped him over my head by his balls. I guess he liked my forthright personality and my…er…strong feet.

Anyhoo, we continued our studies of all things violent for many years thereafter, primarily judo and later moving onwards and upwards to karate and then aikido (think Steven Seagal in a very bad mood) and I only stopped ten years ago because I was expressly forbidden from contact sports after my head was carved up (my neurologist opinioned that break-falling on concrete wouldn’t be good for a woman with bits of her skull missing.) There’s not a day goes by that I don’t miss it.

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Clayre McKinnen

Martial arts are much more than fighting, hence the word budō which describes the Japanese philosophy and way of life. Aikido in particular encompasses not only physical but also spiritual and moral dimensions with a focus on self-improvement and personal enlightenment. It’s not all about beating the crap out of big scary guys, you know (although that certainly has its fun moments.)

In many ways Japanese martial arts are not so different from fine art nude photography. Many of the Japanese principles and philosophies overlap and permeate our own arty world. For example much of martial arts involves learning different poses. Putting ones body into a particular position or stance is thought to both discipline the mind and be a very good preparation of what is to follow. In many ways this is similar to fine art figure modeling where models often have to hold a pose for an extended length of time and remain absolutely still for as long as necessary. I don’t know about others, but when I pose I automatically fall into a state of calm mental focus, my mind is quiet, I am immersed in the moment and I am aware only of myself and the instructions of the photographer. It’s exactly the same as when I was in the dojo all those years ago.

Our training also explains why Rich is drawn to fine art nude photography, because that is the way he thinks. He has done martial arts all his life which means that his outlook on life is very calm and disciplined, and so his photography reflects the Japanese emphasis on form, on seeing the self from the outside. The studio in many ways is similar to the dojo, simple, unadorned, without distraction, so that the only focus is on the subject. The model poses are a form of kata, moving purposely, slowly, with focus and self-awareness, not unlike a kind of ritual. Pure precision, grace and mental readiness are emphasized. The whole message is not about the passions and emotions of an individual (portrait-style), it is on that single moment of mental quietness which is found within martial arts, not dissimilar to Zen Buddism which concentrates on the enlightened moment achieved when the intellect is emptied.

Now perhaps you see why Rich photographs the way he does? This is who he is and how he thinks. His creative vision will always strongly mirror his lifetime of being trained in the psychology of Kokoro-gamae. In Japanese "Kokoro" has a diffuse but beautiful meaning which can be translated as "heart," "spirit," "soul" or “mind.” In martial arts, Kokoro-gamae is therefore the posture of the heart and mind. It is “the intention and resolve produced by the heart, processed by the mind, and revealed in one's appearance, behavior, speech, and action.” It defines who we are.

IMO, kokoro is one of the most important principles in photography. The Masters of Photography might not have known what it was called, but they knew instinctively how to use it and how important it was.

To most of you reading this, photography is not about snapping pictures. It is our way of life. A truly successful photograph speaks not just from capturing a moment in time, but also from capturing the heart. Only if the photographer reflects what is within him, how he thinks, understands and feels, can the photograph be truly successful. As with kokoro, the heart and mind must be as one. When photography is truly at its best, it touches the soul, because it comes from the soul.

May we all be Masters of Kokoro one day.

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Roswell Ivory

On the importance of sensor cleaning

When I turned on the news this morning, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the world was one again ending. Global markets and house prices were falling faster than a meteor, unemployment and public spending were rising just as quickly in the opposite direction, and clearly it’s the end of civilisation as we know it.

*Sigh*

I packaged up my daughter and drove her to school.

It was an utterly absolutely fabulous morning. Blue skies, crisp autumnal air, falling leaves everywhere. Simply beautiful. Suddenly all the doom and gloom seemed utterly irrelevant. The air seemed crisper, clearer and everything seemed so different. It was like a change in the wind, and I could smell it as tangibly as if it were clearly visible in front of me. It felt like I’d suddenly side-stepped into a parallel universe where everything seemed the same, but I knew it wasn’t. Reality just seemed different (then again, it could be my tumour slooshing around, who knows?)

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Of course the bloggie commenters in my last post were right. Photographers are generally wiser than the rest of us. Those who spend a lifetime observing others tend to have better perspective than ordinary mortals. Who needs psychotherapy when you’ve got a camera, huh?

Despite my previous doom-fest about money (which is what I’m trained to do, after all), my non-official opinion is that money is pretty meaningless. Bet you’d never thought you’d hear an accountant say that, eh? But it’s true. To me, money is just another form of energy which flows around in endless circles. The way we choose to make, spend and invest this energy is a direct reflection of who we are and how we think about life.

Most of the folks reading this are photographic creatives in some shape or form: photographers, models, writers, artists, and so forth. This generally means that unless you’re a money-focussed marketing guru like Damien Hirst, you will probably hold the opinion that photography and art largely stand outside the financial and political world. Creativity offers escape from the falling skies by losing the artist in his own imagination, thereby offering the key to a highly effective strategy for coping with the worldly crap going on around us. Spending your energies by practising your art not only affirms who you are as a person and how you want to live your life, but it also offers the best possible therapy for all your woes. With every click of the shutter you give meaning to all this craziness, you rise above the small stuff and affirm belief in the beauty of the world.

(Caution: Dodgy photographic metaphor alert! All sensible, intelligent, sane readers please abandon ship and come back tomorrow.)

When you spend every waking moment immersed in the photographic universe, all your energies are spent crafting the Big Picture, the one lifetime shot that defines you as a person. As with all photographs though, the problem is that the Big Picture often doesn’t turn out as well as the image you originally visualised in your head, perhaps because of lack of knowledge but mostly because of external influences that have compromised your vision.

Recessions, politics and even who wins the next election are all just background noise in your photograph. Noise, dirt and dust are facts of life in photography. They are always there, distorting the overall clarity of the image. How well you minimise those distortions depends on the type and quality of your imaging sensor, as well as how well you keep it clean. Novice photographers are usually nervous about cleaning their camera's sensor. Yet it’s not as hard as you imagine, especially if you have an inbuilt self cleaning sensor unit which does it automatically for you.

Alas I don’t have the ability to self-clean yet, but I’m working on it. In the meantime, I’m focussing on my big picture by spending all my energies as wisely as possible.

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Althaia

(Yeah, I really do write some total tosh you know. It’s a constant wonder to me that anyone reads it. Still, one woman’s lunacy is another man’s wisdom I guess. Or not, as the case may be.)