Equivalence: The Perennial Trend

[Struan Gray]

The connotative stuff might fall under the heading of what's the picture about rather than of. But even in the pure realm of of—whether we're looking more at this apple or the universal apple, is a significant question.

I think this is a perpetual tension in portraiture too, not just rocks, trees and apples.


David: I can't say I've ever had much time for animism per se, either as a motivation or as an interpretive tool. It's too open to proof by gnostic proclamation. But I do like photographs which subtly hint that there may be more going on in the world than meets the eye. I'm fond of the word 'fey' - fairies again - as it suggests a pre-romantic, conception of the landscape which avoids the usual sublime and picturesque catagorisations. To me, Fay Godwin was a master of this:

http://www.faygodwin.com/landmarks/i...s/l6(p58).html

[Peter Lewin]

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
Jonathan

Jon: I recognize the smiley, but you are really hitting on a theme that runs through this thread, that absolutely nothing is simply "what it is." Given the cultural baggage that anything carries, your cigar triggers images of Churchill and his cigar (which could lead to Karsh and his portraits), or Cuban cigars, which leads to Castro, or cigars and whiskey, a common pairing, ad infinitum. Paul in his previous post made the same observation about the multiple references triggered by a simple apple. But the difficulty this raises for me is that now everything is an "equivalence" because nothing has only a singular meaning, but then if everything is an equivalence, the concept has become meaningless.

[jcoldslabs]

Peter,

I struggle with this because I react to images (of all kinds) in a very childlike and literal way. I prefer photographs that evoke an emotional response, one that is by definition pre-cognitive. Minor White would say that this emotional response is unique to me and is therefore "Equivalent," and that's fine. But it is rare that I can put into words what that emotion is. Sometimes awe, sometimes wonder, sometimes confusion, sometimes all three at once.

Let's take Austin's door photograph as an example. When I look at that image I see a black and white photograph of a door, painted white, in bright sunlight. I find the photograph pleasing because of its straightforward and balanced composition, but it evokes little emotion in me. I do not think of other doors I have seen; I do not ponder the notion of "doorness"; I do not wonder what is behind it; I do not take it as a symbol of anything. This points to a lack of imagination on my part, perhaps. But all of these erudite discussions about the subject or object being "more than it is" or "what else it is" seem rather academic. To quote Harry Nilsson: "You see what you want to see, and you hear what you want to hear."

While I was quoting the "cigar" line in jest, there is truth in it for me. I see an apple as an apple, a door as a door, a tree as a tree. What fascinates me most is not what these subjects suggest or what they mean, but how each photographer chooses to portray them. While Austin's door photograph alone may not resonate with me, his body of work taken as a whole provides a map of his unique way of seeing the world and insight into his method of portraying it, and that is what interests me more than anything.

Jonathan

[Peter Lewin]

Jonathan: We are actually talking, in our own ways, about the same thing. Like you, most of the time (I would say almost any time the image is not abstract) I look at an image and see "the thing itself." To use the images I posted most recently, of the Freedom Tower and 9/11 Memorial in Liberty State Park, I was responding to both the visual architecture, the light, and the fact that the scene had resonance for me because of the events that both commemorate, the 9/11 attacks (I don't think I would take a picture of a random skyscraper). But I was taking pictures of a skyline, and anyone seeing the image probably said "oh, a nice image of the Freedom Tower." I don't think anyone saw an image about Islam, religious conflicts between the East and West, the Iraq War, or any of a myriad of themes I could, if forced to, overlay on the image, and certainly not what I was thinking about when I tripped the shutter. But someone so inclined could let the image send them off in that direction.

But this entire thread, about equivalences, implies that an image in which the viewer "sees a mirror of him or herself" or in some way sees more than just the image in front of them, is an equivalence. Hence my "complaint" that since any image carries, if one wants to pursue it, the possibility of multiple layers of interpretation, then every image is an equivalence, and as I said, if everything is an equivalence, the concept of equivalence becomes meaningless. For the philosophical concept of an equivalence to be meaningful, there have to be images which are not equivalences, and I essentially defy anyone to come up with an image which cannot be "forced" to work on multiple levels.

I have a vague memory about reading of a college seminar with Robert Frost, where the students dissected his poem about traveling through the woods on a snowy night. After they had found multiple insights into the "true meaning," they asked Frost what he thought. He said it was just a poem about traveling through the woods on a snowy night ("sometimes a cigar is just a cigar").

I have enjoyed this thread, because I enjoy being forced to think. But unfortunately I am ending at a point where I need someone to show me an image that does not in some way satisfy the definition of an equivalence!

[paulr]

Re: a cigar just being a cigar ...

The trouble isn't with the cigar as much as with the beholder. We humans are such active metaphor-makers. We just can't help ourselves. Contemporary linguistics and neuroscientists talk about metaphor in terms of the way the mind grapples with everything.

If you are an artist concerned with authorship, you might it find it every bit as hard to make a cigar just a cigar as to make an apple the book of mormon.

Re: animism ...

I try to keep my belief in this quiet, but know that someday after losing my keys and freaking out at them, I'll end up in the asylum.

[jp]

I have a vague memory about reading of a college seminar with Robert Frost, where the students dissected his poem about traveling through the woods on a snowy night. After they had found multiple insights into the "true meaning," they asked Frost what he thought. He said it was just a poem about traveling through the woods on a snowy night ("sometimes a cigar is just a cigar").

I had that discussion at some point with teachers too. I enjoyed the poem for what it was and not what else it might have been. I've spent plenty of time in the woods at night, and it's a wonderful experience sometimes and I'd understand why someone would write a poem about it. Other people who have not personally spent time in the woods at night in the winter would understandably jump to other conclusions.

I clashed with some English teachers in school because what I got out of some books was different than what they expected students to get out of it, so they assumed I was BS'ing book reports/discussion and hadn't read.

[blueribbontea]

Probably the most mature idea ever presented to picture-making photography was the concept of Equivalence which Alfred Stieglitz named early in the 1920's and practiced the rest of his life. The idea has been continued by a few others, notably at the Institute of Design in Chicago under Aaron Siskind and Harry Callahan, and at the former California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco under the efforts of the present author. As a consequence the theory is in practice now by an ever increasing number of devoted and serious photographers, both amateurs and professionals. The concept and discipline of Equivalence in practice is simply the backbone and core of photography as a medium of expression-creation.
Minor White

The above quote from early in White's article now seems, after so much discussion in this thread a little naïve. I knew there were some excellent photographers on this forum but now I know that there are many with a talent for thoughtful reflection and solid theoretical analysis. This feels almost as if I had participated in a symposium on photographic seeing, or some such thing. Equivalence now seems a lot less an approach to image making and more a take on how we see, whether we are the picture makers or the picture readers. Especially the latter contributions seemed to be getting more clear-headed, and that the cumulative sense of the discussion leads me, in any case, to conclude that the idea of Equivalents, as presented in White's essay is much ado about nothing, as long as that discussion lays the claim that a small number of practitioners only understand and can claim the honor.

One of the things that I have always loved about photography is that I could work very spontaneously, without a theoretical framework, but rather responding somehow physically to a view through the camera's eye. That's not the only way I could and do work but it is to me very liberating to let light and the world pull me to an image.

This thread in just a few days has been both very exciting and very satisfying to me. Well done all.

Bill

[jcoldslabs]

If you are an artist concerned with authorship, you might it find it every bit as hard to make a cigar just a cigar as to make an apple the book of mormon.

Paul, I'm not being dense on purpose, I swear, but this sentence is impenetrable to me.

First, I am not an artist, but I do take photos on occasion for fun. Am I "concerned with authorship"? Maybe I don't know what authorship means. I know which photos I have taken (authored) and which I have not. There is nothing to be concerned about as far as I can tell. Am I missing something?

Second, I would not find it "hard to make a cigar just a cigar." I would find a cigar and take a photo of it. Thus, I would have photographed a cigar as a cigar, full stop. What the world chooses to make of the resulting image has nothing whatsoever to do with me.

Again, no disrespect intended, but I feel like a simpleton lost in the woods in this discussion.

Jonathan

[paulr]

I have a vague memory about reading of a college seminar with Robert Frost, where the students dissected his poem about traveling through the woods on a snowy night. After they had found multiple insights into the "true meaning," they asked Frost what he thought. He said it was just a poem about traveling through the woods on a snowy night ("sometimes a cigar is just a cigar").

We need to be careful about giving much weight to authorial intent. None of the critical movements since the 1950s pay attention to it; it's just too fraught.

Just because you made something, you think you have special authority over what it means?

Consider Friedlander's picture, mentioned above, and how much it has in common with most pictures ever made.

You also have to consider the credibility of the author's reporting. In his essay to the exhibition catalog for Alfred Stieglitz at Lake George, John Szarkowski talks at length about Stieglitz's explanations of his cloud pictures (the one's I believe were the first to be called Equivalents). Stieglitz offered five or six completely contradictory versions of the story, of his intent, and of his interpretations ... all at different times of his life, and all without any acknowledgement of changing his tune.

This is typical. Of photographers, painters, novelists, poets.

I'm interested in Stieglitz's version, because I'm interested in him generally. Not because I think his version is authoritative.

[austin granger]

Second, I would not find it "hard to make a cigar just a cigar." I would find a cigar and take a photo of it. Thus, I would have photographed a cigar as a cigar, full stop. What the world chooses to make of the resulting image has nothing whatsoever to do with me.
Jonathan

I find this statement rather amazing, coming from you! For I know of very few photographers, if any, who devote as much time (as you yourself have said) to studying the "simple" objects that you find laying about your house. It seems to me that, of anyone, you would know the best how even the most "mundane" objects can "unfold" (yes, lot's of quotes in this sentence) into something far beyond what they might have appeared to be on the "surface." I mean to say, what I've always loved about your work is the sense of wonder at the fact that these "ordinary" things are nothing of the kind; they are, all of them, loaded with the infinite! Just look at that last one of the rim of the vase-that's "a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower" right there! So yeah, I think you're being a little cagey about the cigar being a cigar, but if that's true, I do understand the impulse. There is a part of me that wants to say, looking back one more time at the door picture, "Nah, it's just a damn door." How refreshing and relieving it is, when everything returns to being just what it is! Actually, I have had this experience on occasion, where everything is simply what it is, and yet each thing is marvelous, and it's... enough, but then, inevitably, this way of being slips away, and the ideas come flooding back in. Maybe a few people will understand what I'm talking about. I've come to realize though that some people are always "in focus" with the world; their minds and the world are engaged like interlocked gears, but that is not how I live at all. I am envious of those people!