is allegory dead?

[Jac@stafford.net]

[...] Is it (allegory) a dying anachronism because we have no cultural/educational shared understanding of the classical/mythological/religious themes/symbolism that often fueled allegory in the past? Is it too "romantic" and uncool to employ a classical/religious allegory?

In my experience education, which some would call social reality indoctrination, plus one's desire to extend what's learned increases the likelihood of employing allegory in their life and work. Sometimes we call these people Artists. (Two of my younger brothers are that way. One is a scholar and critic, the other a game designer who employs his vast knowledge of ancient mythology.) People so motivated are rare. Among photographers who employ allegory I would add to those already mentioned Emmet Gowin, Teun Hocks, and Shana and Robert Parkeharrison. It is not important that we like or respect their work, but recognize it as allegorical.

It is easy to think that Western culture before photography had a richer imagination than we have today, but I don't believe it to be true or even possible. Art was certainly the domain of the privileged/mentored craftsman. Is it different today? I do not think so. People say that mechanically enabled image-making and the Internet has democratized art, but people have always done craftsmanship (now called art, for better or worse.)

Later when I can return to the keyboard I hope to discuss the concept of 'vividness' of popular media and how it has become inflated expectations, available heuristics.
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[Brian C. Miller]

You sure got that one backwards, Brian.

Do you think that Weston deliberately misstated himself, i.e., lied his butt off? That his thought process towards the peppers was, "hey, this looks like a nekked babe! Gotta make me sum pics! Capsicum annuum, lay it on out for me! Whose yo daddy?"

I take Weston's statements as they are, and that people have projected what they thought onto them, like a Rorschach test. There is a difference between Weston's peppers and Orwell's Animal Farm. Animal Farm was meant as an allegory, and was banned in the U.S.S.R., Kenya, the U.A.E., and is still banned in North Korea and Cuba, and is censored in China. Weston's peppers weren't meant as an allegory.

It also doesn't make sense that Weston would use peppers as an allegory to represent the female nude, when he was also photographing real female nudes left and right.

[John Kasaian]

I think this is a successful allegorical photograph---
http://www.shorpy.com/node/18131

[Jac@stafford.net]

It also doesn't make sense that Weston would use peppers as an allegory to represent the female nude, when he was also photographing real female nudes left and right.

I thought it was the other way around. It was hard times and naked women were more available than peppers.

Seriously, each subject was a study of organic form. Analogy.

[Drew Wiley]

No... I wouldn't term Weston's still lifes as allegorical in the strict sense of that term. But they were certainly metaphorical for something very subliminal going on in
the back of his head. It's pretty damn obvious. His public disclaimer has no more bearing than when Georgia OKeefe made the same kind of disclaimer about her
distinctly steamy flower paintings. Perhaps allegory is the more deliberate or self-conscious mode of presentation, while a metaphor or "equivalent" or whatever can be downright subconscious or anywhere in between. But in many successful photographs it's still an important element. And a skilled illusionist doesn't show his hand.

[Brian C. Miller]

Precisely my point, Drew, the allegory has to stand apart from a projected metaphor. People consistently project what they like onto something. IIRC, there was a scene with Ingrid Bergman, that at the end of the movie she's standing at the bow of a ship. She asked the director, "What should I be thinking?" The director replied, "Nothing at all. The audience will project whatever they think is appropriate."

So therefore, it seems the vast majority of naughty-minded people project naughty thoughts onto vegetables and flowers.

For a photographic allegory to succeed, the elements have to smash through a misinterpretation of a metaphor like a Caterpillar D11 through a plastic playground set. There is no prose to spell out the allegory step by step. There may be a series of photographs, but there won't be very many. A one hour movie will use 86,400 frames, but the usual photographic series is pushing it at four. There's only so much wall space. If that movie were printed out onto 8x10s, the series would stretch for about 13-1/2 miles.

So: how would you create the photographic allegory of The Lottery?

[Drew Wiley]

Semantics, with a lot of shades of gray or grey, or greige. But to me personally, allegory implies something in either literary or visual media that has been deliberately choreographed, or edited and arranged to describe a premeditated story. ... like what Julia Cameron sometimes did with pre-Raphaelite themes. I distinguish this from a grab shot which mirrors a spontaneous mental impression, or even native subconscious reflex, like Steiglitz's equivalents or Weston's still lifes. I personally do a lot of the latter kind of photography, none of the former, but prefer things nuanced in such a manner that it's not instantly accessible like advertising photography of Wegman's dogs, for example. But this is just my take on the vocabulary itself. In other words, I truly doubt EW was trying to be deliberately horny when he set up a shot - it just came out that way, and not coincidentally. We all make our own kinds of rosarch blots - that other people tend to interpret these any number of ways, each in a different manner, is maybe evidence of a successful print.