Failing Upwards
Think of the way a train slows to a halt. The brakes are applied as the metal wheels fight to cling to the metallic track and the system aggressively combats the kinetic energy of a heavy and speedy mass. This is how I perceive the so-called death of photography. I am often plagued by the idea that there is nothing truly new and original that can be done with the photograph. Everything that could be photographed has been photographed and the only sense of originality available for withdrawal is our own perspective on the world, but that in itself is being stripped away by the forces of social media and the ideas of trends. The world is so focused on crazes and beating all the dead horses over, and over, and over again. In my gullible perception, photography has become either a trendy collection of mundane and overly produced images or a set of complex and over-thought messes of subliminal ambiguities. I am not, in any way, separate from having contributed to either of these groups of images.
With the help of this course, I realize how unproductive and naive this outlook is. While it is not totally untrue, this course has provided me with countless examples of exactly how photographers and artists are met with obstacles and how they genuinely and innovatively overcome them with impressive and ingenious methods. Be it technical hurdles like faults in sensitivity to light frequencies combatted with Gustav Le Grey’s multiple-exposure compositing, or the ability of artists like Juliet Margaret Cameron to go against the grain and redefine what proper photography is, there is arguably nothing more valuable in the world of art than being forced to compromise.
If there is anything I feel that I genuinely need to understand and that I currently lack an understanding of, it is the complete and utter necessity to fail as an artist. I recently came across Dan Harmon’s advice for writers and artists to sit down and prove that they “suck”. He explains that when one tries to prove that they’re good, what will they write? Nothing. However, when one tries to prove that they suck, they will write everything. In doing this you write exponentially more than one whose goal is to prove that they’re good. There is no potential to learn if you confine what you do to the boxes of what will work. What will work is limited to what has worked in the past. Daguerre never would’ve discovered the Daguerreotype without having failed repeatedly, and never would’ve continued that cycle had he been satisfied with the way things worked in the past.
Fan Ho is a big inspiration in this sense because of the deal of criticism he received for his work. He never let it bother or change the way he made photographs. He was satisfied doing what he loved and produced some remarkable images.
I honestly can’t even comprehend how often photographers must’ve failed when the medium was first being explored; how many remarkable images were lost due to failed exposures, accidental light leaks, and darkroom mishaps. It is truly remarkable that the medium exists because it required that these early photographers push through their failure without the knowledge that it would, in the end, work out. Honestly, when put like that, I couldn’t be prouder to follow in these pioneers’ footsteps.
Near the start of the semester, I was made aware of my predisposition toward images of the 20th century. In my past studies of art and photography, I think I built a bias that favors the photographers I am most influenced by without consideration for those artists’ influences. This resulted in a narrow view of the photography I considered when I went out to make pictures. Once I realized this fault, I began to understand how incredibly fast the photographic medium turned to artistry. I had these images in my head of how 19th-century photographs looked and never really considered how innovative and experimental photographers were at that time. That was until I began to understand how photography was invented.
Looking back into the 1800s with the idea of photography as a slowly unraveling system of inventors putting pieces together to form the early medium, I saw how its advent was simply an experiment. The lack of understanding of how light transfers information and how that information can be recorded onto a light-sensitive material fostered the early medium that allowed practitioners like Gustave Le Grey to compromise where he found faults in the medium and make some truly remarkable work. His understanding of the way in which different frequencies of light are captured and recorded onto a surface allowed him to experiment with some of the earliest forms of compositing. I have always revered Ansel Adams’ work but understanding Le Grey’s process really gives insight into Adams’ photography.
Learning about the earliest forms of light-sensitive material was indeed captivating but arriving at the introduction of the collodion process captured my immediate mental gaze. When I end up in pits of despair the medium of photography is particularly forgiving because of its intrinsic emphasis on technique. When I can no longer muster up any creativity, I can focus my efforts on the technical. I have been itching to experiment with this process. The main reason for my own personal preference with film photography is the requirement that the photographer slows down. This lethargy slows more and more as the format’s size increases, and right now there is little that sounds more refreshing than a process that takes 10-15 minutes of complete presence to produce an incredibly sharp collodion positive. Moving on from technique, the next aspect of my practice that will inevitably be affected by this course is the idea of progressiveness within the medium.
Jack Lowe
I have always admired the heavy work of artists like Francesca Woodmen and David Wojnarowicz because I see such a large gap between the work they produce when compared to other artists from the 20th century. While there were many artists exploring identity and obscure philosophies like existentialism, I have yet to find any who truly explore the ideas like these artists. That was, of course, until I dove into 19th-century photography. Among the most startling are niche genres like Hidden Mother Photography (c 1860-1900) and various hand-colored images like a man with slicked hair holding a violin, (1875). The eye-opening absurdity of these works is truly startling and inspires awe when comparing them to contemporary artists. It really begs the question of what it is to be progressive in a medium. Contrary to what I might’ve thought, there was nothing slow about the invention of photography and its progression. If anything, the medium is only beginning to screech to a halt in the contemporary era like the way painting began to be perceived as dead.
Up until this point, I have only really begun to understand black-and-white photography in my practice. While I have begun to dip my toes in the realm of color photography it does not seem to encompass the same effect that my monochromatic work does. I often find my color photographs lack the same readability as my black-and-white work because of the complexity of color. This dichotomy grew more interesting when I discovered the comparative work of Elliot Erwitt.
He would travel the world with two cameras around his neck- one holstering black and white film and the other color. He began to record the world moments apart in two frames and juxtapose the divergence via the differences in film. These diptychs provide such a unique method of understanding the moments he’d record. This method, in a way, transcends the basic philosophy of photography’s ability to capture only one moment in time and persuade the viewer to read that moment in two incredibly different ways. I particularly love his images from the Wedding in Siberia. I believe I will always continue to experiment with color photography but not without a subliminal longing for the simplicity and captivating way we understand black and white photographs.
Another artist that up-ended my understanding of color photography is the work of Richard Mosse. Mosse utilized a particularly unique film stock known as Kodak’s Aerochrome to photograph an ongoing conflict of the Congo. He used an infrared film stock to document the conflict and frame it in a way that makes everything seem incredibly surreal. The photographs are truly stunning, but the way Mosse used the film and colors to shame the viewer into understanding the happenings as surreal and other-worldly when everything occurring has just been ignorantly marginalized. Mosse uses color in an incredibly inspiring manner, and I would love to someday discover a method to use it as a similarly effective tool.
What a strange semester it has been. I’ve learned an incredible deal about myself, artistry and photography, but in some senses, felt a type of regression in my own practice and use of the medium. While I have gained an abundance of knowledge about historical photographers and processes, I think the most important take away from this course is the necessity to continually move forward with the idea that all photographers in the past have worked to support me and allow me to do what it is I am doing now. They provide the inspiration, the knowledge, and the notion that it very well is possible to succeed.
