Writers & Calligraphers, Photographers & Darkrooms

[tim atherton]

I recently came across Brooks Jensens (of Lenswork) "audio" blogs

http://www.lenswork.com/lwb.htm

Some interesting stuff

Some of my favourites:

Writers and Calligraphers, Photographers and The Darkroom

For writers, the art is in the message, not in the hand written document. Is this not also the case in photography?
http://www.lenswork.com/blog/050512.wma

and

Photography and Fiction
It is a sort of blasphemy to propose a mix of photography and fiction -- but maybe there is some reason to rethink this.
http://www.lenswork.com/blog/050511.wma

among others

[Kirk Gittings]

Photography and Fiction. Interesting, it bears somewhat on the discussions in the East Coast esthetic thread. Duane Michaels comes to mind as someone who blends fiction and photography in a narrative sense at least. In large format I think Joel Peter Witkin usurps that notion of illustrated fiction with the titles of his images, but it is merely a clever trick with no real intention.

[Mark Sawyer]

"For writers, the art is in the message, not in the hand written document. Is this not also the case in photography?"

Arguing by metaphor is much more tenacious than arguing by logic. The original vision is the message. For some writers, disembodied words carry the vision. For some photographers with concern for certain aesthetics, an original fine print is necessary. For other photographers, newspaper-quality reproduction is not only sufficient, it is the ultimate goal. And hell, some are happy if they remember to turn it in to Wal-Mart for processing before they lose it and it goes through the laundry...

Just goes to show, you never can tell...

[Struan Gray]

I have often thought that 'Fine Art' photography was like the publishing of limited edition handmade books. Calligraphy probably stretches the analogy to breaking point, but is does make the distinction clear.

I think he's just plain wrong about the Madonna, or at least too narrowly focussed on fine art black and white American photography. Quite apart from my personal favourite image, Eugene Smith's "Tomoko Uemura in her bath", you only have to look at advertising and she's everywhere. Then there's David LaChapelle. And Thomas Kinkaid.

I do think that allegory, and particularly visual allegory, have declined in the West. Once-familiar refrains like St. Jerome or Death and the Maiden now have to be explained, and even though most can spot a BVM-in-blue at a hundred paces, few can say what all those wild strawberries and goldfiches are doing cluttering up the margins. But these sorts of referents are alive and well in Asian photography and in many of the photographs I have seen from E. Europe and Russia, and if the Da Vinci Code is anything to go by, there is a market in the West too.

[Struan Gray]

And another thing: have Brooks Jensen and Garrison Keillor ever been seen in the same place at the same time? Hmmm....

[Carl Weese]

The photographer Nick Nixon is also a teacher and lecturer. When I heard him lecture, his most often repeated refrain was "all photographs are fiction"--and he's right.

It's really just a restatement of what Magritte meant by the painting of a pipe with smoke curling out of the bowl that he titled [trans] "This is not a pipe." Of course not, it's a painting.

[Matt Mengel]

I'm at work and there's arule about no audio, so I cant listen to the links. That being said, I'd like to reecomend an interesting book.
Caught in the Act: The Photographer in Contemporary Fiction edited by Barry Munger.
It is a series of short stories that have a photographer as the main charachter. I believe the authors are all different. I realize this thread is more about the photgraph as fiction rather than the writing about photographs but there are some really great stories in this book. Any photgrapher/bibliophile should check it out.
Matt

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

For writers, the art is in the message, not in the hand written document. Is this not also the case in photography?

The first thing that came to my mind was the US declaration of independence. A beautifully written document with an awesome message. The two whether in writing or photography are not mutually exclusive and I would have thought this is what we essentially strive for. So there here is my two minute "sound bite" response...

[paulr]

not trying to muddy the waters with yet another analogy, but ...

a good friend of mine is a high end audio fetishist (i'm more like a dabbler).
he can't understand why everyone who likes music doesn't want it to sound amazing and lifelike ... why so many people, musicians included, are content to listen on the boom box that's shoved in the corner.
It struck me that it was like the difference between people who are into literature and people who are into rare books. Someone who just wants to read tolstoy is happy with the paperback--it's just a vehicle for the words as far as he's concerned. He isn't shopping for the esthetic experience of the book-as-object.

if seems to break down to a difference between the content of the medium and the esthetics of the medium. both are always there, but both are not always of equal importance in a work, or of equal importance to a viewer. i can't imagine there's a right answer, but i think it's important to recognized the difference, and be able to understand these two qualities for what they are.

[Aaron van de Sande]

For writers, the art is in the message, not in the hand written document. Is this not also the case in photography?

Let's take this analogy further. Word choice, grammar, and spelling are all unimportant as long as the message gets across.
Anyone that enjoys reading knows that this is wrong. Same thing for photography.