Showing posts with label Pictorialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pictorialism. Show all posts

Monday, January 21, 2013

The Black Hit Of Space

Mornin' Varmints - well, what a snooze that was!
Ar yes m'dearios. Me and Mog finished off 16 stone o' Turkey leftovers on Boxing Day, settled ourselves down for some well-earned shuteye and the next thing we knew it was the 4th o' January!
"Well," I said to Mog -"Happy New Year to you, old friend."
"Happy New Year Cap'n," he said back.
That's weird I thought, he couldn't talk before we went to sleep.
I did wonder whether it were something we ate that was affecting me hearing, so I asked him,
"When was ye born me old soak?"
and he said,
"That's no' clear to me Cap'n. I can only remember the sack and the water."
And I thought, that's good enough for me. If it were my ears playing me up, he would have said something like the 24th o' May.
So I believes him.
Imagine that.
A talking cat.
I'm not going to let too many folk know though - there's a ton of people would pay a pretty penny to own one.


***


Been out all night, I needed a bite
I thought I'd put a record on
I reached for the one with the ultra-modern label
And wondered where the light had gone
It had a futuristic cover
Lifted straight from Buck Rogers
The record was so black it had to be a con
The autochanger switched as I filled my sandwich
And futuristic sounds warbled off and on

(The Human League - The Black Hit Of Space)



***


This week I genuinely wasn't going to write anything - call it Post Festive Disorder (PFD) - I didn't get half what I expected done, but I did have a fantastic time, which resulted in me indulging in one of my favourite pastimes ... reading. Lots.
Anyway, I got to Thursday morning this week and a little demon appeared on my shoulder and said 'You know, they're waiting . . .', so I thought Och bugger it and started. So this week's FB will be a little less heavy on the writing being as I've only had a couple of days to get it together - my apologies, but, given my subject matter it seems very pointless to regurgitate potted histories as the world is littered with them . . so here goes.
There's a dirty word still bandied around photographic circles.
It's pretty seedy and in fact, even though (and despite) the fact that it gets mentioned more now that it has been in the past hundred or so years, it's still a bit iffy. 
People get uncomfortable.
They stretch their collars, shuffle their feet and cough.
It is an unmentionable.
However, for myself I will stride into the arena, wearing my frock coat and winged collar, pommandered hair set nice and solid, moustache waxed to perfection and say, to me, there's never been a movement like it.
It was born from passion and enthusiasm and ideas of lofty artisticness way above its station.
It lived briefly like a Mayfly, wings glittering above the fast running waters of life in a dance of beauty, and then committed suicide. 
And when this tradgedy was all but enacted? What happened then? Why, its corpse was buried in a pauper's grave and its memory trampled and left to be picked over by dogs.
Sounds melodramatic eh? Well it sort of was like that.
And to what do I refer?
Brown paper bag ready?
Pictorialism!
Ah the Gods - PICTORIALISM!



Banner For The Photo-Secession


The greatest, most profound and beautiful photographic movement there ever was.
Lambasted, criticised, cynicised, ignored, Pictorialism stands large in the history of photography as a beautiful jewel.
Strangely I would say these days that is it arguably more important than Ansel Adams and Group f64. How's that for radicalism.
All of your realist movements of the 60's? As nothing.
All the shite that passes for 'art' photogaphy these days? Total bollocks.
You see, somehow, it has transcended its lowly grave and ascended to the heights.
Pictorialism, [which I am sure would be to the surprise of Mr.Alfred Steiglitz (its driver and mentor)] has become something other. As a movement I feel that there has never been another as profound or influential.
You see friends today, Pictorialism is all around us.
It's in films, on television, on posters and in magazines.
It influences and drives like never before, partly I believe because it saw the way naturalistically.
Think about it, and the world isn't really hard-edged at all. Centrally to your eyes it is, but the periphery? Blurred. And that blurriness and softening of image in the majority of Pictorialist photographs is incredibly naturalistic.
I think it is almost why the images speak so well.
Yes a lot of it was done to mimic 'painterly' techniques, but when photographers are already dealing with absolute realism, why not try and show it in a way that could be considered more 'arty'.
The Pictorialists were working with uncoated lenses, and there is a tendency nowadays to believe that lenses from that time (late 19th early 20th Century) were somehow not very good and soft.
This is a misconception.
Most of the greatest leaps in lens design happened in those times.
Ancient lenses can be softer, however they can also be as crisp as you like. There are incredibly wide variations in them, however Pictorialists, semi-eschewed the standard ones in favour of 'portrait' lenses (so called because they were able to soften an image to make it look softer. It was never good as a working photographer to have your customer's blemished skin shining out of a photograph) which when turned to landscape and still life and figurely photographs rendered things deliciously soft.
Pictorial pictures mostly exhibit a beautiful depth too, which somehow, to my mind, sends them over the edge from being a photograph. They are so very natural looking, possibly because my eyesight isn't what it was, but maybe that naturalness is apparent because of their lack of definition. Its the reason I suppose why all hard-edged CGI images in films look somehow so wrong, and why ordinary non-super-imposed filmwork looks so right.
Soft images are laughed at today, they are.
They are seen as being 'Romantic' in a brutal world, but to this I say what is wrong with Romanticism?
God knows the world is difficult enough - if a photograph can touch your soul because it is soft and ethereal looking then all the better.
Of course I am tarring every Pictorialist there ever was with the 'romantic soft image' brush - it was in reality a little like this, but then on the other hand you have Steiglitz's 'The Steerage' - as modern as you like. And of course, the nail in the coffin, Paul Strand's disturbing and harsh and beautiful 'Blind Woman - New York 1916', published in 'Camera Work' the journal of the Pictorialists and as loud as any death knell you could wish to hear.
I could go over this forever, however it is digressing from Pictorialism.
I won't write a potted history of it - pointless - there's loads of stuff on the web.
What I will say is that it repays studying. In spades.
From Clarence White to Paul Strand, from Annie Brigman to Edward Steichen and Frederick Evans - names that have greatness hewn into them.
To be honest I could have chosen twenty images to illustrate this, however I will just go with one which I believe to be the greatest . . but then that's just me.
Clarence White's 'The Orchard 1905' could have been top (it is an image laced with meaning drawn deep from Christian spirituality, and for all its carefree appearence, it is as set-up as a photograph could be) however it isn't.




Clarence White - The Orchard, 1905




To my mind the finest thing ever published in Camera Work, and that is a tall order, is something so old it is modern. It is so poetic, it is a script waiting to happen. Like all great photographs, it tells a story, and can also inspire a story in your head.
Are you sitting down?
Probably my favourite photograph ever is by a man called Mr.George Henry Seeley.
It is called 'The Firefly'. 




George Henry Seeley - The Firefly, 1907




It was made in 1907.
I love this photograph.
It is about as perfect as a photograph can get.
Yes it is soft focus. Oh God isn't it beautiful?
Compositionally, I don't think you could do better actually.
The curve of the bowl leads your eye in.
The woman (his sister I believe) is beautiful in a timeless way.
She could be from now.
She could be from the Dark Ages.
She has the headpiece as a prop, but again, date it . .
And there, she is holding a firefly, its tiny light like a jewel in her hand. The flare from the uncoated lens aids the whole feel of melancholia and age. It exudes carefulness in its composition, but also an instantaneousness, like she has run up to the camera and is saying 'See, brother, see what I have found!'
It is also as modern a photograph as you could ever want to find. I think it actually sets the bar. 
Can you imagine photographs like this in Vogue? I can.
If you are at all interested in looking at more images, then, if you can find it, the Taschen publication 'Camera Work - The Complete Illustrations 1903-1917 [ISBN 3-8228-8072-8]' is to be highly recommended.
If you can find the hardback (for less than the price of a car) all the better as the paperbacks have a tendency to split, due to their massive bulk!
Anyway, from beauty it is a trip back to earth, with an image that is no less profoundly moving, but very different.




Paul Strand - Blind Woman, New York 1916



From the last issue of Camera Work
This was really the loud clanging of the death knell. 
Steiglitz I believe realised that the end was nigh - you can't stand in the way of progress - and yet what an image to sign that warrant. 
Curiously, it is as obvious an analogy with regard to the golden, pre-WWI years and the sound of mechanised death from the Front as you could wish.
On one hand, beauty, etherealism and softness, and on the other, grim reality, indignity and the vision of a world changed forever.
In it's brief 14 year life Camera Work gave more to the world than the world gave to it.
For myself I find it as profoundly influential as I always have done.
If you wish to read further, just Google things like 'Camera Work, Photo Secession, Alfred Steiglitz, Pictorialism. The images really will work their way into your psyche. I think they can help to make better photographers of us all.


***


As usual with FB, I thought I had better do some shameless shoe-horning in of photography - so here's my pathetic attempt at emulating a Pictorialist style, with a Twin Lens Reflex!





The Woman In The Boughs




I actually am rather fond of this photograph, for a start it is my wife, so that is the best place to start.
It was made with my beloved Rolleiflex T and I was using a Rolleinar close-up set, with the focus somewhere between 10 feet and 30 feet, so totally out of focus.
Not a lot of people know that with the Rolleinars on a Rollei you can have a very subtly variable soft focus lens - at infinity things get more definition, but in the close range they are wonderfully soft, as you are using the natural lack of depth of focus you get with close-focus devices. I daresay any close-up lens used on a camera for a use that isn't a close-up would work, but the Rolleinars are something else optically.
Film was FP4 at EI 80 developed in Barry Thornton's 2 bath. The print was made on Grade 2 Ilford Galerie (my favourite paper) and it was archivally processed and then toned in Agfa Viradon for that vintage look.
We'd watched the film  'Possession' not long before that and the name of the photograph just sprang into my mind, inspired by that film.
Anyway, nuff z nuff. That's me, over and oot.
As usual, take care, God bless, and thanks for reading.

Friday, May 25, 2012

Transcendence

Greetings me Dearios - the weekend is here and the sun is splitting the sky, so why are you indoors reading this when you could be out there doing something useful with your time? 
I don't know and I don't want to know. 
You can keep it to yourself.
But if you are still indoors, and you promise to keep quiet about it, your Cap'n will take you on a trip back in time.
Sailin' the Seas of Yore with a benevolent wind at your back.


***


It is hard to imagine the difficulties faced by early photographers, and by early I don't mean the likes of me who gets up at ungodly hours most days . . . no . . . I mean back in time. Early 20th Century in particular. Users of glass plates and makers of Platinotype and Cyanotype and Kallitype prints and all these incredible words that today are by-words to the ever present and soulless inkjet print
If you only make inkjets for whatever reason, and have never handled a wet print or worked in a real darkroom even for a brief period of time, then you have never experienced magic.
But darkroom work is tough.You approach the start of a session with passion and enthusiasm and you can often leave, for want of a better Scots expression, feeling like shite.
Productivity and fun in the darkroom are solely the result of sheer hard work; blood, sweat, tears and fixer-fingers. 
But you know, to quote Rik Emmet: "nothing is easy, nothing good comes free" and whilst it is hard to produce a print that makes you want to hang it on your wall, believe me, it is really worth the effort.
I can understand what you might be thinking though, namely how can something supposed to be so artistic and creative be so difficult? 
Well for a start, photographic printing is a skilled and highly concentrated activity. Hours whizz by in a flash and you find yourself out of time before you know what you have done (if anything!).
I have lost whole days, working from the morning and still not been ready to sit down for my tea . . . yes folks, it can be that bad.
Even masters, like a favourite of mine Mr. Eugene Smith, felt that darkroom work was the hardest and least enjoyable aspect of his work, and yet, you only have to look at one of his Pittsburgh pictures to know that his struggle under safelights was helping him produce profoundly beautiful works of art.




(W.Eugene Smith - Dance Of The Flaming Coke)




On the surface you might think it is easy to produce a print from a negative, and it is.
You can make a print in a snap. You can make a ton if you like, but whether those prints satisfy is another matter altogether, and it can become a problem that can lead to all sorts of self-doubt.
The older I become, the less satisfied I get with my printing, and the strange thing is, I know that I can print very well. To get to something that is enriching and visually stimulating is hard, damn hard, and I am not going to wax too long about it at the moment because it distracts from the purpose of this FB.
The point I am trying to make is how was it possible for someone (working back at a time in the early 20th Century, when the reliability of silver gelatine photographic paper [which we take for granted] was but a dream) to produce a work of such profound beauty that I seriously doubt any of the renowned photographic artistes these days could hold a candle too it.
The photograph I am alluding too was by one Mr.Frederick Holland Day and it was made in 1907. It is called 'The Vision'.
He was one of those early workers. A collection of dreamers and visionaries, impassioned artists, but above all else photographers and craft workers. Names like Clarence White, Frederick Evans, Alfred Steiglitz, Paul Strand, Edward Steichen, Alvin Langdon Coburn, George Seeley, Robert Demachy and many others.
Names not often heard these days but giants of photographic imagery.
Although primarily associated with Pictorialism (basically and to reduce a thesis down to a few words: trying to make a photograph [a product of science] look rather like a painting [a timeless, organic human endevour]).
I feel that their output is still relevant today - indeed the influence has crept back in, as large numbers of television programmes you see these days use narrow depth of field. Camera magazines are packed with photographs taken with lens apertures wide open for that soft focus effect..
But this is moving aside from Mr. Holland Day.
He was by all accounts a remarkable and private man who has been judged mostly solely on his imagery.
He was fond of making images with nude male youths, and you can just tell when you mention that, that people will go 'Nudge nudge, know what you mean squire'.
But I'll be contentious here - I don't think he was motivated by sexuality.
He was an educator, a publisher, widely travelled and moving in influential circles.
A man who was moved by poetry and romanticism and a yearning for earlier, simpler times. I believe that just maybe the use of the male nude was a harkening back to that imagined Golden Age.
And how can I say this?
How can I claim to know what motivated another artist?
Well I think the proof of the pudding is in the eating:






It is hard to believe that an image created over 100 years ago can still affect one so deeply.
It certainly does affect me. It is profound and beautiful and has seeped its way deep into my psyche over a number of years. There is something archetypal about it, evoking a dawning age; an idealised romanticism from the deep deep past of mankind.
The photograph is one of a series based on the Greek myth of Orpheus, the poet and musician, made by Day from 1907 to 1908 and shows a close up of Orpheus' head over his stretching figure. Apparently this is a visual metaphor, referring to  Orpheus' murder by the Maenads who tore him to pieces and beheaded him. His head was said to have floated down the river, still singing.
It is a platinum print held at the National Media Museum here in the UK and was donated by the Royal Photographic Society, and appears to be a contact printed from two plates. The actual image size [71/2 x 91/2 inches] doesn't appear to conform to plate sizes, however one could assume there was some cropping of the print involved before it was mounted. 
Timelessness is the marque of great art, and I believe Frederick (hope he doesn't mind me being too familiar) has achieved it in spades. The image is perfect - I don't think there are many images you could apply that term to.
Frederick gave up photography altogether when the Russian Revolution halted supplies of Platinum and I think that says as much about the artist in him as you could write in ten thousand words.
Whilst reading up more about him I came upon some facts of note. One of Mr. Day's other asides was that he tried to educate young immigrants in the slums of Boston.
One of these was a Lebanese youth by the name of Kahlil Gibran.
That is a name that sort of stops one in one's tracks. Indeed in tootling around I found a photograph of him made by Frederick circa 1898 when Gibran would have been around the age of 15.
 


(Kahlil Gibran by Frederick Holland Day c.1898)


The dreaded Wikipedia states: "Gibran started school on September 30, 1895. School officials placed him in a special class for immigrants to learn English. Gibran also enrolled in an art school at a nearby settlement house. Through his teachers there, he was introduced to the avant-garde Boston artist, photographer, and publisher Fred Holland Day, who encouraged and supported Gibran in his creative endeavors. A publisher used some of Gibran's drawings for book covers in 1898."
It is all too easy to put two and two together and think that the 'publisher' was none other than Copeland & Day - Frederick's own publishing company, which was active from 1893 to 1899.
Anyway, you'll know the name of Gibran as the author of 'The Prophet' (published in 1923), and I think I shall leave it to him to round off today's FB.
Now you should really go outside and get the wind at your back and the sun on your face.
Take care.

Excerpt from The Prophet:

This would I have you remember in remembering me:

That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined.

It is not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of your bones?

And is it not a dream which none of you remember having dreamt, that builded your city and fashioned all there is in it?

Could you but see the tides of that breath you would cease to see all else, 

And if you could hear the whispering of the dream you would hear no other sound.

But you do not see, nor do you hear, and it is well.

The veil that clouds your eyes shall be lifted by the hands that wove it,

And the clay that fills your ears shall be pierced by those fingers that kneaded it.

And you shall see.

And you shall hear.

Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf.

For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things.

And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light.



Thursday, March 08, 2012

Up Close & Personal

Listen. What's that sound? It's like a cross between a lonely sea monster (thank you Mr. Ray Bradbury) and a fog horn, way out beyond the reef, where the dark ocean starts to shelve away to night. Yes, its the sound of another FogBlog!
On that salubrious note, I will greet one and all a jolly good morning.
Today's post deals with an oft overlooked (and much beloved by me) accessory for ye olde Rolleiflex, namely the Rolleinar. These close-up lenses were made in 3 different magnifications namely #1, #2 and #3. As close-up lenses they excel - you've never seen anything as sharp, you've never seen 'bokeh' as nice. They are extraordinarily good, and parallax corrected too. The people behind the design of the Rolleiflex really thought everything through - everything fits and everything works so well, you rarely have to think much about accessories at all.
However despite their abilities as close-up lenses, one day I discovered another use for them. Messing around, I focused in really close on something and then changed my view so that what I was seeing was something from nearer infinity, and bingo, I discovered that by racking the focus in and out on subject matter that wasn't a close-up, you had a wonderful, variable soft focus lens.
I love Clarence White's photographs, and I also have a massive respect for anything from the Photo Secession, and I found that by using the Rolleinars in this way I could achieve a faux Pictorialist effect. I think it works, if you like what you see, feel free to comment.




This photograph was taken in some woods on the edge of a caravan site we were staying at at Crocketford in Dumfriesshire; the weather had been the usual mix of shower-dodging and things were getting really stormy quite early. What I think about this photograph is that it can either be threatening or friendly.  You could get a feeling of threat from it (as in nothing is as clear as it seems; what is that shadow lurking up ahead? etc etc) but to me it is more friendly and hopefully touching on some of that Pictorialist Romanticism whilst being a tad ethereal at the same time.
Who'd have thought some densely planted Pine and Birch could have been so transformed by light.
Camera was my old Rolleiflex T, with a Rolleinar #1 fitted. Film was TMX 100 developed in Barry Thornton's 2-bath developer. It was a cinch to print on Grade 2 paper, and I printed it slightly lighter as the original lighting was a bit too oppressive.
In the words of Joe Satriani: I like it.