Equivalence: The Perennial Trend

[Struan Gray]

I suspect Stieglitz chose 'Equivalent' over 'Evocation' or any other option precisely because it sounds less vague and woolly.

My evidence is only anecdotal, but my grandfather, who was born in 1902 and in the 1920s was starting life as a physics and maths teacher, always emphasised 'equivalence' as a mathematical concept. This was a time when a great deal of 'airy-fairy' pure mathematics invented in the late C19th turned out to have applications in the new fields of quantum mechanics and relativity. The idea that disparate branches of knowledge were linked by a formal equivalence was explicitly stressed in secondary and higher education - in Britain, at least.


I've been grieving over the death of the author, and have decided that said death was but wishful thinking. If art were delivered through a wormhole or portal – as some art of the ancient past – then authorial intent is erased, but anything else is made and experienced as part of a society, and an economy. Photography is not experienced as images flashed onto our retinas at random, but comes with literal and metaphorical frames. Reviews, galleries, interviews, 'likes', and even discussions on LF.info, all contribute to our understanding and enjoyment of a given work. If we are not sure why a photograph looks the way it does, the natural tendency is not to throw up our hands and bemoan the impossibility of even imperfect communication, it is to go and ask the photographer what the hell they thought they were up to.

I do like serendipidity. I love landscapes, but I often draw most inspiration from painters and photographers who are not best known for their landscapes. Several times I have been to blockbuster shows at major art museums, only to find that my favourite work is not available in any other form, online or offline – often it's not even in the catalogue. So I appreciate the value of the viewer's privileged position, and am at least partially immune to crowd sourcing my own aesthetic judgements, but I am still approaching those works via the sacralising environment of an art exhibition, with the full weight of canonising authority there to back up my supposedly independent taste.

[paulr]

The death of the author is hardly without controversy. My feeling (to paraphrase Twain) is that its death has been exaggerated. Except in this case it's not ironic, because we're talking about an idea (authority), not a biological organism (an artist). So death can be a matter of degree.

I don't think anyone's saying that an artist's stated (or conjectured) intent is uninteresting, or even that it isn't potentially helpful. I'd even accept that the artist's perspective is a privileged one, since it isn't like anyone else's. But none of this actually grants it authority—claim to the one true interpretation a work.

[Struan Gray]

I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but... do many artists these days actually even attempt to define how their work should be approached, let alone insist on a single 'true' interpretation?

My feeling is that ambiguity is the new orthodoxy. Determining how a work should be approached seems to be done most by choice of venue for showing it, not through explicit assertions of authority.

But perhaps I'm just surrounded by limp-wristed Euro types :-)

[Miguel Coquis]

A short youtube where Ansel Adams mentions with great simplicity how Alfred Stieglitz answers about creative photography and equivalence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT-G42cskH4

[Holdenrichards]

So impressed with this thread, this is the next level work. You know how to use your camera, your development and printing techniques are sorted. You can start responding with the camera, instead of merely recording. It becomes more improvisational the more skilled you become, because technique is assured. Great read, thanks for the link. The images in this thread are first rate. The very first image of the web, window and world is nothing short of a complete revelation.

[Heroique]

So impressed with this thread, this is next level work. You know how to use your camera, your development and printing techniques are sorted. You can start responding with the camera, instead of merely recording. It becomes more improvisational the more skilled you become, because technique is assured. Great read, thanks for the link. The images in this thread are first rate. The very first image ode the web, window and world is nothing short of a complete revelation.

Sheesh, let's just forward it to the United Nations to help ease world tensions!

[paulr]

I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but... do many artists these days actually even attempt to define how their work should be approached, let alone insist on a single 'true' interpretation?

My feeling is that ambiguity is the new orthodoxy. Determining how a work should be approached seems to be done most by choice of venue for showing it, not through explicit assertions of authority.

But perhaps I'm just surrounded by limp-wristed Euro types :-)

There are limp-wristed American-types, also ... they just aren't as well dressed.

Ambiguity is a big deal, but is perhaps too broad to be an orthodoxy. This whole thread is technically about ambiguity. Any time a sign is "overdetermined," meaning, pointing to more than one thing, you've got ambiguity. Metaphor, symbol, subtext, even puns: all ambiguity. It's not a postmodern or even a modernist phenomenon. Shakespeare was the great master of it, and William Empson in the 1930s its best known navigator.

I think trouble (and bullshit) emerge when we confuse ambiguity with vagueness. It's easy to see these ideas as (ahem) equivalents, but they're in fact opposites. Vagueness suggests an underdetermined sign—one that points nowhere, even if it suggests otherwise.

Think of ambiguity as something that points simultaneously to a number of different, but discrete and defensible meanings. While vagueness is something that may seem meaningful, but just sends you out into to the desert to fend for yourself, wondering if maybe you're the only one who's missing the point.

[Peter Lewin]

I think trouble (and bullshit) emerge when we confuse ambiguity with vagueness. It's easy to see these ideas as (ahem) equivalents, but they're in fact opposites. Vagueness suggests an underdetermined sign—one that points nowhere, even if it suggests otherwise.

Think of ambiguity as something that points simultaneously to a number of different, but discrete and defensible meanings. While vagueness is something that may seem meaningful, but just sends you out into to the desert to fend for yourself, wondering if maybe you're the only one who's missing the point.

Seems to me that this thread continues to circle around on itself. It started with many references to the two primary sources of Equivalences, Steiglitz and White. Stieglitz's original Equivalences, I believe, were his cloud pictures, which I would consider "vagueness." I'm sitting with Minor White's "Mirrors, Messages, Manifestations" in front of me, and the majority of what we would all agree are Equivalences are pictures of almost unidentifiable rock strata, ice and water abstracts, and similar - again, to me at least, almost the definition of vagueness. Perhaps I'm missing the distinction you are drawing between ambiguity and vagueness.

Another way to look at it is the distinction between abstract images and those with an identifiable subject. The abstracts have to be considered vague, since they are nothing but patterns. The images with an identifiable subject are more likely to be ambiguous, due to symbols and metaphors. But this thread can to some extent be divided into two schools of thought: those who argue that an Equivalence has to be abstract, and those who argue that any image which gives rise to metaphor, symbolism, or other cultural artifacts can also be called an Equivalence. Which again leaves me confused about your distinction between vagueness and ambiguity in the context of Equivalences.

[jcoldslabs]

I was digging through my scanned images trying to find a shot that exemplifies White's notion of "equivalence." I think this one qualifies, in that the shape of the light is rather blatantly suggestive of something other than doors and carpet, and, uncharacteristically for me, I had this duality in mind when making the image.* Does it succeed based on White's definition? I really don't know.




Jonathan


*This image is not large format, but I hope the moderators will allow it for the purposes of this discussion since it is the most illustrative example I could find.

[Miguel Coquis]

[QUOTE=Peter Lewin;1177970]Seems to me that this thread continues to circle around on itself...
Meanwhile, creative camera work moves as perpetuum mobile.
Besides the endless comments, some have chosen to "say" with grey tones (including black and white) and to "play" low, middle and high keys light intensities through their photographic production.
Some photographs can represent outer/inner visual process, all together in a particular intensity producing physical, emotional or intellectual reaction in the viewer.
One can be more or less aware of energy moving during a lecture, it is also possible to recognize different qualities of attention (...what kind of attention, now ?).
When trying to maintain alive the dynamics (symbiosis) between real, symbolic and imagined, and sharing with others, perhaps one is getting a taste of "equivalence"