Putting it all together

[cyrus]

OK so I've been shooting film for a few years (mostly MF but gradually getting there with LF t00) I have the technicalities OK, and I have a few good shots that wouldn't look terrible if framed, etc .

So, putting aside the technicalities, how do you turn your photos into some sort of comprehensive "body of work"? - some common thread or theme that is at least somewhat exclusive or characteristic to YOUR particular photography?

[Frank Petronio]

I just keep shooting and editing. The best work is still the best work years later.

Taking on a project with boundaries and rules usually helps focus an artist so that some work gets done. Limiting geography, materials, choices, etc.

Another thing that I like to do is to say "OK, one afternoon, one shot" and just try to get one really nice image in a limited amount of time (same goes for the Photoshop editing afterwards -- set a time limit.) Back in the day I used to use boxes of Polaroids working on studio shots -- and boxes of paper in the darkroom -- and could easily build a single image out into days of work. But it is much more realistic to say "this is worth 3-4 hours of my life" and stick to it.

Finally, sell off your extra equipment to fend off indecision. One camera/one lens. That will quickly help you develop a "body of work" with a consistent point of view. Maybe it is harsh, but think of all the great photographers who used just one camera/one (normal) lens.

If you can do one good picture in an afternoon, then you can do nine more in nine more afternoons. So in the course of a season (or whatever) you can be very productive.

I also like travel. I just shot for 36 hours in Nashville, some of the work is on my website. It was a good constraint.

[Christopher Perez]

Set boundaries for yourself by defining a series of projects.

Work to complete a project (including printing/mounting/distribution) in as short a time as possible. Start by selecting a subject/project that piques your interest the most. Work it. Set a goal of 12 to 20 finished images. Go onto the next well defined/bounded project.

[Brian Ellis]

Many projects didn't start out that way. Instead the photographer made a lot of photographs of various subjects over a period of time, sometimes years, and when going back through them found a common thread that could be used to create a project. That's probably not the ideal way to do it but it's how many projects have been put together. I don't know how many photographs you have but you might try spreading them out, putting them in stacks grouped in some manner or fashion (e.g. subject, lighting, colors, whatever) and see if you perhaps have at least the beginning of a project on which you can build.

[cyrus]

Agreed to all - but there's more to a body of work than just a common theme, isn't there? Atget's Paris was not just a bunch of photos of Paris, there was a particular style that makes his photos identifiable as an Atget, and I suppose historical-cultural significance to his work that sets it apart from everyone else who took a bunch of photos of Paris, right?

Course, perhaps it is true that he started out just photographing Paris, and it so happened that his photos turned into a body of work after many years and some promotion by Abbott... that would suggest that bodies of work are sometimes created spontaneously rather than deliberately, over a course of time as Brian says...in which case the best thing to do is take lots of photos and then let someone else put it all together after I've kicked the bucket!

On the other hand, O Winston Link's body of work was deliberately developed with a common theme of steam trains, and more specifically, the steam train as the symbol of the passing away of "old" view of the US which was dominated by small towns with drive-in theaters and main streets etc...

[Rory_5244]

Great advice from Frank P.

[PViapiano]

Brooks Jensen talks a lot about projects, common themes, presentation, etc in LensWork and has been discussing these issues for a long time. I highly recommend a subscription as well as the back-issue CD they offer. Probably the most inspiring photography magazine out there...even if you never looked at the portfolios, and that's saying a lot!

Paul

[Ron Marshall]

Brooks Jensen talks a lot about projects, common themes, presentation, etc in LensWork and has been discussing these issues for a long time. I highly recommend a subscription as well as the back-issue CD they offer. Probably the most inspiring photography magazine out there...even if you never looked at the portfolios, and that's saying a lot!

Paul

I second the LW subscription. It has helped me to focus somewhat on what I want to accomplish with my photography.

Paul, how is the quality of the images and production of the backissue CD?

[Eric Biggerstaff]

Photograph what you love to photograph and then you will create a solid body of work.

But it takes time! Lots and lots of time in fact, if you want to create a body of work that speaks to your vision. Also, vision reveals itself slowly and we have to take a lot of photographs to find the few gems so be willing to go through a lot of film and invest the time needed.

A good example is the work Ray McSavaney is doing with the Anasazi ruins, he has been working on the project for about 25 years now and is still going.

Many photographers never work on a specific theme while others really enjoy the process of working on a defined project. I think it depends on your personality. Success can be found in either method as the end is the same, a body of work that defines a particular vision on the world.

So, my advice is to not hurry, pick a subject or subjects that are important to you, set aside some creative time each week if possible ( I try for one evening a week to photograph and one evening for darkroom work that is done after the kids are asleep), show your images to people who can provide constructive and informed feedback, and most importantly - stick with it!

Good luck and I know you will be successful.

[Christopher Perez]

Without noodling this thing to death...

I propose that if you do one project on a theme that really attracts you (lighting, subject, form, whatever)... produce to completed finished material 12 to 20 prints... sit back and really look at those images... being brutally honest about what you are looking at... solicit feedback from people you trust (if your ego can handle it)... that "your" view of the world may be identifiable... and that you will then be able to decide how next to proceed.

Repeat this process. Sometime later, look back and view your work as a "body".

The process cycle time may be as short as your time/energy/enthusiasm can drive.


...there's more to a body of work than just a common theme, isn't there?...

[paulr]

Agreed to all - but there's more to a body of work than just a common theme, isn't there? Atget's Paris was not just a bunch of photos of Paris, there was a particular style that makes his photos identifiable as an Atget, and I suppose historical-cultural significance to his work that sets it apart from everyone else who took a bunch of photos of Paris, right?

Right. And even more than that. You've asked a huge question ... one that i don't think gets asked enough. My advice is to be wary of any simple answers. A solid body of work is much more than just your best pictures. Or variations on a theme or subject. It's not something that will automatically happen by going out and pointing at things that interest you, unless you're unusually gifted in this area.

A photographic body of work is like any other large, creative work--a novel, a feature film, a symphony ...

These are all complete works. They're not just collections of parts. The whole is always greater than the sum of the parts. The larger work is about something apropriately large in scope--something impossible to fully explore with a smaller work. It gives a sense of completeness. It introduces ideas, develops them, and somehow feels whole by the time you've gotten to the end. Which isn't to say that it answers all of the questions that it raises (or even any of them), but that it explores all the ones that it raises; it raises the right ones; and it illuminates what had previously been hidden, in a way that ultimately satisfies.

I doubt there's a formula for how to do this. Great artists seem to approach it differently. I do think you can learn from looking at bodies of work of those with a masterful sense of editing and sequencing. Books are a great place to go. Because of its permanence, the book has been the medium on which people have spent the most time editing and crafting. A few examples worth studying are Robert Frank's The Americans, Stephen Shore's Uncommon Places, Eggleston's Democratic Forest, and Strand's Time in New England. Of these, the Frank book strikes me as the crown jewel of sophisticated editing and sequncing. But all are diffferent and great in their own ways.

Don't confuse something like a well edited commercial portfolio or selection of variations on a visiual theme for a complete body of work. Always keep in mind the grand form of the novel or the symphony--every part being essential, no essential part missing--and the incredible value of pacing, order, sense of time, tension, quiet, intensity, and relief.

All this coming from a guy who's still trying to figure out how to finish a project.

[PViapiano]

Ron,

The quality of the LensWork back-issues CD is excellent. Issues #1-50 are on the CD as separate PDF files, complete with every page in the printed mag.

They are NOT scans with smudges and stray pixels, but look as good as the original pages. The photos look great at 100% and are not pixelated. I wouldn't recommend printing them, but for viewing on a monitor (I have them all loaded in my laptop, makes for a great reading reference/resource when traveling) they're great!

I also highly recommend LensWork Extended CDs...multi-media versions of the bi-monthly magazine, with more photos by the featured photographers, videos, audio interviews and commentary and more!

[Ron Marshall]

Ron,

The quality of the LensWork back-issues CD is excellent. Issues #1-50 are on the CD as separate PDF files, complete with every page in the printed mag.

They are NOT scans with smudges and stray pixels, but look as good as the original pages. The photos look great at 100% and are not pixelated. I wouldn't recommend printing them, but for viewing on a monitor (I have them all loaded in my laptop, makes for a great reading reference/resource when traveling) they're great!

I also highly recommend LensWork Extended CDs...multi-media versions of the bi-monthly magazine, with more photos by the featured photographers, videos, audio interviews and commentary and more!

Thanks Paul. Every issue I see the CD advertisement and wonder. Good point about it being a good travel reading resource, I'll have to try that.

[cyrus]

These are all complete works. They're not just collections of parts. The whole is always greater than the sum of the parts.

Thanks Paul I think that last sentence says it all. I see a lot of photographers obsessing over technical quality and presentation but they don't seem to stop to ask themselves "What does this photo - and the rest of the photos I've taken during my life - SAYING?"

[Brian Ellis]

"Maybe it is harsh, but think of all the great photographers who used just one camera/one (normal) lens"

I can't think of any. Who were they?

[Mark Sawyer]

A photographic body of work is like any other large, creative work--a novel, a feature film, a symphony ...

Symphonies are written in movements, which are much more analogous to portfolios; a group of related portfolios would make a whole photographic symphony...

Nit-picking, I know...

I think the thing that finally ties it all together is the individual photographer, his concerns, his eye, the "style" he develops, his choices in what materials to use and how to use them, all that he brings with him to the photograph, because this is what the viewer ultimately takes away from the viewing experience, seeing something through another's eye, thinking of it with another's mind, feeling with another's heart...

It takes some time, usually, for a photographer to know and become comfortable with himself enough to let these things flow naturally, the way music flows from a pianist's fingers. But the discoveries and rewards along the way can still be lovely and meaningful...

[Jack Flesher]

"Maybe it is harsh, but think of all the great photographers who used just one camera/one (normal) lens"

I can't think of any. Who were they?


Henri Cartier Bresson, Richard Misrach and Edward Weston to name a few...

[Andrew O'Neill]

Pick a project. Stick with it until you fell you've exhausted it. Print up a portfolio of the best. After you have worked on a few projects, and have portfolios of them, pull out the best ones from each portfolio and place them side by side...you will be suprised to see "you" coming through...if not, keeping doing the project thing. Sometimes I have multiples projects going on...right now (well, for the past 4 years) I have been focusing on old outback churches, the dry country (Fraser/Thompson area in BC), and old buildings downtown Vancouver.

[Frank Petronio]

Atget, Robert Frank (Leica-era), Ralph Gibson use(d) one camera/lens for their most famous images. I suspect you'd find that people like Robert Adams use one lens for 90% of their images too. Avedon, used a 360 on his 8x10 or a Rolleiflex -- his estate closed at $65 million -- I think he could have afforded more lenses if he wanted them.

Maybe there is another corrallary to the one lens/one camera concept: That nobody has yet made a really art-ful image with a 58mm XL or a 800mm Telephoto lens. They could make a cool poster or commercial stock image, but think about the important images that stick with you throughout your photo career... nope, can't think of any ultrawides or superteles in the lot...

Outside of Bill Brandt or Lartigue, I can't think of any old-timers who used extreme lenses.

Take it another step and realize that few of the greats ever resorted to gimmicks either. There won't be any shots from a Lens Baby put in that time capsule. Nor will there be any contemporary gum bichromates either ;)

[paulr]

winogrand said something that relates well to gimmicks. he said he tried working with a 20mm lens for a while, but found that it had such a strong "look" that it made all the pictures look a certain way. and he believed that there's no one way that pictures should look. so he ditched it.

i think this points to a problem with any material or tool that imposes itself strongly. rather than serving your vision, it can end up competing with it. saying what you want to say can be hard enough without an annoying piece of gear fighting to upstage you!

[Mark Sawyer]

winogrand said something that relates well to gimmicks. he said he tried working with a 20mm lens for a while, but found that it had such a strong "look" that it made all the pictures look a certain way. and he believed that there's no one way that pictures should look. so he ditched it.

i think this points to a problem with any material or tool that imposes itself strongly. rather than serving your vision, it can end up competing with it. saying what you want to say can be hard enough without an annoying piece of gear fighting to upstage you!

Paul's post is worth reading, then worth reading again as a quote.

And it's also worth remembering that while sometimes something fights to upstage you, other times it sings the most beautiful harmony...

[Brian Ellis]

Henri Cartier Bresson, Richard Misrach and Edward Weston to name a few...


Edward Weston used a variety of different cameras and lenses, see the Daybooks. I thought about Carteir-Bresson but he didn't begin using a Leica until 1932 so he must have used something else before that. And just from looking at the photographs in the book "Henri Cartier-Bresson - the man, the image, and the world" it seems highly unlikely that he used only a single lens. Misrach I don't know about, I'm not that familiar with him or his work and I have no references that provide any detail about his working methods.

[paulr]

guys like weston and cartier bressson used more than one widget during their lifetimes, but they typically stuck with a single, simple setup for the duration of a project ... which in some cases meant decades.

i don't think anyone needs to look at this as a mandate to sell all your toys. but it's a gentle reminder of what's possible when you're driven by a clear vision rather than gear collection lust.

[Frank Petronio]

Yeah but you got to hand to anyone who could still make a decent picture without their Arca-Swiss/Ebony/Carbon Fiber/110XL. Cripes they didn't even have Enzio monitors back then.

[Jack Flesher]

i don't think anyone needs to look at this as a mandate to sell all your toys. but it's a gentle reminder of what's possible when you're driven by a clear vision rather than gear collection lust.


Precisely the point.

[Brian Ellis]

guys like weston and cartier bressson used more than one widget during their lifetimes, but they typically stuck with a single, simple setup for the duration of a project ... which in some cases meant decades.

i don't think anyone needs to look at this as a mandate to sell all your toys. but it's a gentle reminder of what's possible when you're driven by a clear vision rather than gear collection lust.


I think this is getting to the dead horse point. All I asked was who all these great photographers were who used only one camera and one lens. I didn't take anything as a mandate to sell any toys, nor did I question the fact that it's possible to make great photographs with a single camera and lens.

[paulr]

I think this is getting to the dead horse point.


around here the dead horse point usually marks the beginning of conversation, not the end.

;)

[Jack Flesher]

"Dead Horse Point" is a GREAT photo location! (Canyonlands NP)

:D,

[Paul Coppin]

You could make a single focused theme about someone beating a dead horse....

[Alan Rabe]

Actually Dead Horse Point is not in Canyonlands NP. It is in Dead Horse State Park. But they are next door to each other

[Jack Flesher]

Of course -- thank you for the correction!

[chris jordan]

another potentially valuable discussion gets sidetracked into stupidity oblivion

*sigh*

Cyrus, in my own limited experience on this issue, a body of work tends to find the photographer, rather than the other way around. The secret is to keep on working, and to keep on asking the question you are asking. And in the huge pile of nopes and never-minds from a year's shooting, there will be a few interesting photos-- those ones that are surprising to you, even though it was you who took the photo. There's something different about those ones, maybe a sense of newness or strangeness, or just pure luck that something happened in the frame that you didn't even see at the time. And you think, "I'm going back to that place, there is something there," and a year later you're still going back there despite whatever costs and difficulties try to get in your way. And pretty soon you find that you have a whole collection of those different ones, and they add up to something that you can't quite figure out, but there is a kind of magic in it, and other people see it too, and reflect that back to you when they look at the photos.

And the really messed-up part is, when you look closely at those ones, and talk to people about them, you come to realize something that you didn't realize earlier-- that all of them are of solitary things that no one else noticed, or all of them are dead things with a strange beauty, or all of them have the same kind of sad curve to them, or there are no people in any of them, or whatever. So you discover in retrospect that you were actually looking for this particular thing the whole time, but didn't know it, maybe as an external reflection of your own inner landscape-- a mirror of your own feelings of loneliness, or isolation, or abandonment, or alienation or whatever it is for you (and make no mistake: we all do that, and we all have it in us, however enlightened we pretend we are).

So then you have a body of work, and at the same time, unfortunately, now that you have figured out the key, the project is over. So you print it, show portfolios, put it on your website, maybe have a show, etc. And now you have to start on something new, because once you know the key to that series, if you try to do it again, the results will be formulaic, boring, dead, dull, lifeless, etc. And honest people who see the new work will tell you that, and it will be something you already know yourself even though it is difficult to accept and admit.

And I must say, having produced something like seven "bodies of work" by now (five of which have never been exhibited), this process is difficult, exhausting, frustrating, and--more than anything else--frightening, because you never know when the creative thread will run out, but that possibility sits there on the horizon as dark as death itself.

And so you feel the fear, talk to your friends about it, make a sacred place for it (because it is the one reliable indication that you are on the right track), and get back to work, and so it goes.

~cj

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

another potentially valuable discussion gets sidetracked into stupidity oblivion

~cj

Well, excuse people for living! :rolleyes:

[Kirk Gittings]

Well stated Chris.

And for what it is worth.....during my most productive years, shooting b&w fine art, I only owned two lenses, a 90mm and a 210. I almost never used the 90. I don't recall feeling constrained and virtually never cropped more than a touch on the edges. You tend to learn to see within the limitations of your equipment rather than lament the lack of equipment.

[Frank Petronio]

While slow and steady prodding will usually win in the long run, you should be prepared for the magic moment when you get "hot". It is like being in the "zone" when playing a sport exceptionally well -- and everything you touch just works. It is true and it does happen. And then you can create an entire body of work in almost no time.

Of course this can also be diagnosed and treated with lithium, as there are often definite lows that follow. But I suspect that a lot of great artists were never treated by modern medicine, much to our benefit.

[Ed Richards]

You say you have been doing this a few years - is that a few years of not getting the camera out much or a few years of at least 500 sheets a year with LF? If you are not shooting much, then force yourself to start shooting at least 100 sheets a month, and I bet you will find that you have found a theme by the time you get to 1000 sheets. If you have already shot a couple of thousand sheets, then spend some time looking at your index prints of all of them, not just the keepers, and see if there is a pattern there you are missing by only looking at the keepers. You may have a theme, you just might not have taken any good examples of it, so your keepers distract you from seeing it.

[Eric Fredine]

I can't think of anything more to add to the excellent comments from paulr and Chris, but I chuckled when I read this:

So then you have a body of work, and at the same time, unfortunately, now that you have figured out the key, the project is over. So you print it, show portfolios, put it on your website, maybe have a show, etc. And now you have to start on something new, because once you know the key to that series, if you try to do it again, the results will be formulaic, boring, dead, dull, lifeless, etc. And honest people who see the new work will tell you that, and it will be something you already know yourself even though it is difficult to accept and admit.


Since I've been guilty of carrying on far too long myself - probably every time in fact. And the first time it happened was complicated by the fact that it corresponded with my move to LF. It took me a while to realize the photographs were 'dead and lifeless' not because of the equipment but because the project was finished. And the funny thing is, the reason I got in to LF was so I could do a 'better job' on that project!

Cheers,
Eric

[cyrus]

Thanks Chris

Luck does indeed have a large part in it - at least for me at my level of photographic skill (in fact, right now its probably mostly pure dumb luck~!)
Actually I notice that whenever I try going back to a place that caught my eye, for whatever reason I just can't reproduce the same environment. I've even become a bit superstitious about this - if I don't get the shot I say that it "wasn't meant to be" (which my rational mind says is a completely bonkers thing to say) but I suppose that's how I've learned to cope with missed opportunities...

[riooso]

Cyrus the people that have responded to your post are, for the most part, masters of the art. I too have the same superstition but I think that photography helps you see the details that you have seen before, but did not understand. I am an older guy who has looked at many sunrises and sunsets and have realized each is different. The moments that I have captured with LF are unique, fleeting and surprisingly difficult to recreate. The trouble that I have with taking images is that I find beauty and a strange resonence that makes me feel "obtuse" surprisingly often, even when I don't quite get it right. I wish someone could tell me how to get from the vision to the final image. Difficult, very difficult. We are, after all, capturing a moment, distorting it and putting it on our wall where it was never really intended to be.

Hope I have not been to peasant,
Richard Adams