|
| EMOTION — in BLACK & WHITE and COLOR |
People reading newspapers in doorway
“The
purpose of
photography,” Eli Siegel explained, “is to create an
emotion about the world through what has been carefully seen and
selected.” I have learned that emotion has to do with every technical
choice photographers make—from deciding what to include and exclude in
the viewfinder, to selecting a moment that we hope conveys eternal
meaning.
The best technique depends on emotion that is fair to the subject. For
example, while I wanted to take photographs, I also had a desire to
tamp down and arrange my emotion, and this adversely affected the
quality of my work in at least three ways: First, my compositions could
be static, lacking in motion and spontaneity. Second, while I was bold
in approaching people to take candid photographs, I was reticent about
wanting to know why I was affected by them, and so the resulting
photographs were usually heavy-handed, lacking subtlety of emotion or
humor. Third, the prints I made in the darkroom were too dark and
muddy.
As I studied Aesthetic Realism, my deepest desire—to be fair to the
world—was encouraged. I noticed a change in my photographs. There was a
better relation of spontaneity and organization. The shots I made of
objects had more life, even a touch of humor now and then. And most
importantly to me, I became aware of subtleties of emotion in people I
hadn’t wanted to see before. Emotion wasn’t just crude, it had shades
of light and dark—and these gradations began showing up in the
expressions and gestures I captured, as well as in the greater tonal
range of my prints.
|
Young couple on street, NYC
Aesthetic
Realism taught me that human relationships—which I once
mocked as a confusing mess—are a subtle drama of nearness and distance,
to be found, for example, in a group of people reading newspapers in a
narrow doorway, or in a young couple on a New York City street.
|
Discarded automobiles, Hoboken, NJ
A poem I
care
for and that inspires me is “The Lesson of Art” by Eli
Siegel:
Within debris
Is symmetry.
I had these lines in mind as I walked around the Hoboken Autobody
looking at vehicles in various states of decline. And then I saw this
one bright car with doors, hood, and trunk thrown open on diagonals. I
positioned myself so that it would fit neatly into the semi-circle of
wrecks in the background with their crumpled metal and lively colors. I
wanted to join these forms—so surprising and orderly—with the people
who might have owned them, and so I topped the frame off with the more
rectangular shapes of the homes in the distance.
|
Clouds and Buildings, NYC
I know
from
personal experience that when you are “self-centered” it
dulls your perception because you are only interested in how things are
related to you, and not the meaning they have for each other. This
attitude handicapped me as a photographer, because for one thing, it
made it hard for me to relate a foreground element to its background in
a meaningful way. As I learned that I would really take care of myself
by being interested in what is not myself, I went from tunnel vision to
a wider perspective.
For example, I got excited when I saw these
mobile, soft clouds in the background drift over hard, fixed buildings
in the foreground. I photographed them with a 35mm wide angle lens
because I wanted to exaggerate the curve of the clouds and the angles
of the rooftops so that they would seem to meet in a friendly fashion.
|
|
|
