Why all of the photography of inanimate objects?

[Donald Miller]

I have noticed something in my years of actively engaging photography. This observation holds true for me and it seems to hold true for the largest percentage of photographers whose work that I have had the opportunity to observe. The overwhelming majority of photographs made seem to be of inanimate objects. Very little work being done of animate beings.

I question why this seems to be true. For those of us who aspire or pretend to be pursuing creativity (read that to mean "artistic") photography why do we spend such little time portraying anything about living (read that to mean humans) things, let alone anything about that which is true of us all...the universality of the human experience and condition.

I wonder if we haven't gotten trapped in a "rut" photographically. I question if we are not in some way acting like photographic lemmings. Do we have such little knowledge of ourselves, our emotional state(s) and our awareness to pursue depicting this in our photographs? Is it that we are uncomfortable approaching this depiction of the universality of the "human experience and condition" because to do so would involve removing the "mask" of our ego and that we view as being too threatening to consider? Are we so afraid of connecting with other human beings at an intimate level?

I ask those of you who may choose to read this whether we haven't gotten caught in the trap of making "beautiful" photographs. How many photographs have you or I made that speak of the matter of sorrow, joy, happiness, sadness, hope or despair?

It would seem to me that if our work is to speak to others that it would in some way attempt to communicate (read that to mean to tell of or to question) about our mutual experience.

I would appreciate your thoughts on this.

[Richard M. Coda]

"Beauty" is in the eye of the beholder. I read that somewhere :)

A true artist can find beauty anywhere... in the woods, at the sea, on an abandoned structure, in a shiny new skyscraper... the list is endless.

[Ken Lee]

The fact some find "inanimate" things, just as interesting as "animate" things, gives support to the proposition that nothing is completely inanimate.

Although we can talk about the photographer as separate from the photograph, and a photograph as separate from the viewer, they are mutually dependent, and no separation can be found.

The sorrows and joys of the photographer are already included in the photograph, just as they are already included in the life experience of person who views the photograph.

As they say in the ads for Prego Spaghetti Sauce (http://www.prego.com/prego.aspx)... "It's in there".

[Ole Tjugen]

Inanimate objects tend to move slowly enough that they can easily be photographed with a LF camera.

On the timescales I use at work, everything is transient (I'm a geologist).

[Kirk Gittings]

Great question. For me, from my website:


I have always found the greatest sense of presence in abandoned and unpopulated places. This feeling of "presence" comes upon me even in places that have no obvious evidence of past or current occupation. It is a great irony to me that places which feel so desperately lonely are also where I feel the most alive.

[Bill_1856]

Trees and other plants are living things. Even waterfalls and the Earth itself are living things in one sense.
Portraits and Nudes are particularly appropiate for LF photography, while street photography, sports and other dynamic persuits are (generally, but not always) better handled by other techniques.
I think you need to look around more at other sources.

[matthew blais]

I feel many inanimate things can have personality, a presence, as Kirk mentioned.

[Charles Carstensen]

The landscape (including the attached man made structure) is living, constantly changing, happy, lonely, joyful, hopeful, sometimes sad. I have never seen despair when photographing the landscape. Despair needs to be left for the photojournalist with another medium.

[Paul Kierstead]

The overwhelming majority of photographs made seem to be of inanimate objects. Very little work being done of animate beings.


I'm not sure if you are limiting this assertion to LF or not. If not, I think it is a pretty wild assertion that I suspect is not true, unless you are focusing on a specific genre of photography or something.

Outside of that, well, people are less patient with all my putzing around. Also, I like quiet. Also, what Kirk said.

[Jim Galli]

It's easier. We need to admit that we all gravitate to the easiest path from point A to point B. Street photography bores me. That leaves actual human interaction which for most of us is hard work. The threshold is beginning the conversation. That is 88% of the work. Beyond that point things rarely go badly. Other humans are mostly gracious. I just finished reading Don Normark's Chavez Ravine, A Los Angeles Story for the second, or is it the third time. It's remarkable on so many levels. A shy white kid walks into a mexican-american neighborhood, becomes a familiar, and makes some of the most dazzling human experience photographs I've ever seen with an $18 camera!

A beloved neice is exploring photography in college courses with her low end Canon digital SLR. She is looking for a deeper experience. For Christmas I bought her Normark's book, a Ciroflex TLR, (the camera Don Normark used!), a used Paterson tank, a half-brick of outdated Kodak 120 Tri-X and some D76 and fixer. Where she goes from there is completely up to her. One hopes.

[ic-racer]

Its safer. If you photograph animate objects you will be sued, jailed, branded, shot or maybe just have your film taken.

[Vaughn]

I'm not sure if you are limiting this assertion to LF or not. If not, I think it is a pretty wild assertion that I suspect is not true, unless you are focusing on a specific genre of photography or something...

I agree...one has to carefully limit one's consideration of what "photography" is to come up with Don's "The overwhelming majority of photographs made seem to be of inanimate objects." Easily over 90% of the world's photographs have people in them, either as the subject or part of the general scene.

And every good photograph is a self-portrait.

My subject of most of my photographs is light orientated. I do occasionally have humans in the image, but the inclusions of humans often changes the viewer's reaction to the photograph -- the humans become the center of attention (understandably, since we are a social species). Instead of the image being about the light on the landscape, the image becomes becomes about the figure in the landscape with light on it.

It is tough enough to keep one's photographs from being viewed as a travel limages... "Wow! Where is that place?!" To include a figure creates "Who is that and where are they?!" :p

Vaughn

[Bruce Watson]

Quite the human-centric view of the planet you have going there.

Charlie "Bird" Parker was an interesting and talented musician. He had an idea once -- that we all know the melodies of most of the "standards," so why play the melody? What he started doing was playing around the melody so that you heard it without his having to play it. He left the melody in negative space and by doing so started the Bebop movement in Jazz. His theory about the use of negative space is something that many photographers can relate to.

I'm with Bird on this one. We all know humanity, all the emotions, all the good, all the bad, all the destruction, all the wars, space shots to industrial mine tailings, supercomputers to mountain top removal. So why include humans in your photographs?

Yet lest you think I don't care about humanity, I assure you that I'm very interested and emotional about humanity. And I despair over our insanity in the way we treat this planet like an inexhaustible combination resource and waste dump.

In my view it all comes down to our collective refusal to take responsibility for controlling our reproductive rates. As top of the food chain, it's our responsibility to control our population; there are no real predators to do this for us. Yet we refuse this responsibility and are overrunning the planet, killing everything near us. When a country makes an effort (that would be China) they are roundly ridiculed and despised by other countries and nearly every religion. This, is just plain stupid.

My response to this insanity is to make photographs of the natural beauty around us that so many humans walk past without noticing. I do this for a couple of reasons. First is to remind me what I'm fighting for. Second, for the therapy it provides; at least someone is thankful for it and enjoying it, even if it's just me. Third and most important, I use photography to explain to others what we are fighting for, what they are loosing right now, and what we all stand to loose in the future, because of our bad stewardship of the planet we all live on.

Contrary to your view, I assert that my photography is largely about humans even if it contains very few humans. Just because they aren't in the picture doesn't mean you can't see them.

[Toyon]

Don, maybe you should study some art theory. When photographing inanimate objects, human emotions do not "go away." They are present in the image. Not only through the photographer, but often via the objects themselves, that through their patterns of wear, use and patterns reflect human activity and emotions. To many people, the natural, built, or hybrid landscapes or objects reflect or embody their deep feelings and emotions.

If you feel nothing from viewing their images, it is either the result of poor photography, or it possibly means that your emotional life is is very strongly on the human-relations side of the emotional spectrum. I think Georgia O'Keefe is an example of an artist whose emotions where heavily felt in the inanimate, Van Gogh was someone who felt emotions equally strongly reflected in the inanimate as animate, while Lucien Freud seems to be on the animate end of the emotional/visual spectrum.

I'll admit that I myself would to see more work done in large format portraiture - probably because of its difficulty and awkwardness compared to other formats.

[Jeffrey Sipress]

I don't like people. Especially in my images. I really don't think there's anything special about them, except they all do. There are WAY too many of them around. I am annoyed and uncomfortable around too many of them. I sadly spend too much of my life's energy avoiding them and the generally stupid things they do, especially the fairytales of imaginary friends, politics, and marketing that never seems to end. When I seek the joy of nature, photography and recreation, I nearly always locate myself near none of them and seek true solitude. I do, however, have one significant image of a person that I made while in Africa. So, I'm not all that bad!

OK, let the shredding start....

[Donald Miller]

It's easier. We need to admit that we all gravitate to the easiest path from point A to point B. Street photography bores me. That leaves actual human interaction which for most of us is hard work. The threshold is beginning the conversation. That is 88% of the work. Beyond that point things rarely go badly. Other humans are mostly gracious. I just finished reading Don Normark's Chavez Ravine, A Los Angeles Story for the second, or is it the third time. It's remarkable on so many levels. A shy white kid walks into a mexican-american neighborhood, becomes a familiar, and makes some of the most dazzling human experience photographs I've ever seen with an $18 camera!

A beloved neice is exploring photography in college courses with her low end Canon digital SLR. She is looking for a deeper experience. For Christmas I bought her Normark's book, a Ciroflex TLR, (the camera Don Normark used!), a used Paterson tank, a half-brick of outdated Kodak 120 Tri-X and some D76 and fixer. Where she goes from there is completely up to her. One hopes.


Jim, I think that perhaps you have touched on what I believe to be true...at least in my personal experience. I wonder how many of us photographers are really highly social beings on the level of our extroverted or introverted tendencies. I know in my case that I spent a good portion of my life in relatively solitary experience...albeit that has changed in recent years. For me to be a human being today involves relating to other human beings at a more intimate level than I was once willing to experience. For me this matter of relating is a process of exchange. As a consequence my photography changed...both the subject matter and the presentation of that subject matter. I no longer do much photography of rocks, trees, or streams...while at one time that was the table of fare for me. I believe that the reason for that in my experience is that I never have heard a single rock, tree or stream speak to me in my native language...I don't really think that any tree or rock that I ever met gave a damn that my wife was pissed off or happy with me on a given day.

Yes, while photographing people doing people things and experiencing people feelings can be a heck of a lot of work and a real pain in the ass sometimes, the possible results can be so much as to far outweigh the less tasteful aspects.

While those who contend that all is alive are accurate, we certainly do not observe a lump of coal (as an example) alter it's basis or it's objective reality in our awareness without the inclusion of external heat in our life times...so this lump of coal appears inanimate in the context of our habitual awareness...while at a molecular level it is animate.

[Jeffrey Arthur]

Don, I have always admired your skill in portraiture and last but not least the subjects that you have found. I do not know where you find them, but they have made along with your abilities some remarkable photographs. A great inspiration to me. I love still life and landscapes that take my breath awat, but to see a face that could speak volumes is very special.

[Robbie Shymanski]

Well, I just spent last Sunday afternoon shooting a model who couldn't hold position between the time I spent posing her, focusing and inserting a film holder.

Buildings and landscapes are good in this respect, but then they don't have cleavage that needs to be constantly adjusted.

[argos33]

Its safer. If you photograph animate objects you will be sued, jailed, branded, shot or maybe just have your film taken.

Are you serious? What kind of attitude is that? Maybe your right, we should all just photograph our personal belongings on table tops. That way we know no one has rights to the photo. That or wander to the most remote spot you can find and hope that no one else photographed that tree just like that - waiting to brand you as a fraud and try to sue the pants off you. It's not like people need to worry about anything else, like the internet where everything is perfectly accounted for and copyrighted...


I agree with Jim. I think if a lot of photographers moved out of their comfort zones a little they would be surprised with the results. That's not to say that there is anything wrong with doing what you love and doing it well. Just that sometimes if you put yourself out there and "begin the conversation" as Jim put it, you might be surprised at how decent people can be working with you.

[Bill_1856]

Why all of the photography of inanimate objects?
Because it's easier to do.

[jeroldharter]

As a psychiatrist, I get enough of people in my day job. I have other avenues for dealing with the "people side" of creativity. In photography, I want to express my view through different means.

In photography as in life, people generally do what they want. No need to second guess that.

[redrockcoulee]

Also there is more non human than human on this planet. Perhaps it may not seem that way in very large cities or trapped in rush hour traffic but in reality there is more space that does not have humans in it than does. Humans is one subject, birds a second, landscape a third , geology a fourth, etc hence there are more subjects in the non human world. As said there is less intimination in shooting (should I use this word with people with guns on the list) non humans than people. And of course we all have our own interests in life. I enjoy nature and geography as well as history so perhaps my photos may show some of that. A horse lover may have more horses in their images than motorcycles or tulips for example. The first year that I used a digital SLR most of my images had Brittany Spaniels in them. The same two mind you but they were the most common subject I shot. Glad I did as one passed away this past spring and the other is on borrowed time.

My best friend likes street photography and I do not even like most of that genre even those that I do like are really really good. I am not sure that it is harder for him to do street photography than me to do landscapes but most likely harder for me to do street photography than him landscapes.

Took a workshop on Photographing People and came away with some of the best photos I have taken and perhaps the best one in the entire class but it is not something I would want to do regularly, unless you could do it without the people:). But I do enjoy looking at photos of old buildings, landscapes, wildlife and rocks more than photographs of people so it is more than just the comfort zone. To me it what I like doing. I can photograph people if I so want but will admit it is harder. But part of the difficulty is I really do not know what I want to 'say' with my people shots. I found that out when working with models. I take photos to say what I see or how I see not to please others and as such will continue to take more without humans than with.

Having said that my wife and I are planning on doing a series of portraits with the 5X7 this coming year as there are some people we do want to capture. On the reverse side of what you mention, my wife has a series of portraits she did as woodcuts and that media is seldom used for portraits, more so for landscapes and cityscapes.

[Patrik Roseen]

The only evidence of life was a dead fish.

[Kuzano]

It's a real PITA to photograph a soccer game, or even a wedding, with an 8 X 10 camera. Or did I miss something here? My gut tells me I would very likely find an overwhelming preponderance of inanimate photography on a site dedicated to formats larger than 35mm.

In looking over the thread, I'd more sympathetic and inclined to agree with this comment from Jeffrey:

"I don't like people. Especially in my images. I really don't think there's anything special about them, except they all do. There are WAY too many of them around. I am annoyed and uncomfortable around too many of them."

With a bit of modification. It isn't so much that I don't like people, but I am separate from them for the most part. Not better, and surely not worse, but I just find them bothersome.

I suppose if I wanted to get philosophical, I might say that all living things in this world are just physically passing through to an inanimate state. So just shoot the inanimate stuff to begin with. I only "use" people in photography... for scale. I tend not to keep pictures that have people in them.

OTOH, I love the beauty in nature and much of the static world.

[jnantz]

photographing "stuff" / "things" is good practice for photographing people

[poco]

You can also make a compelling case that, as a "still" medium, photography is most honestly applied to still objects. Photography's unique ability to document becomes a unique ability to lie when used to freeze a moment out of a human world that's always in a state of motion and flux. You see this all the time in portraiture where the photographer is said to have, "really captured his/her essence." Bullshit. He captured the "essence" by snatching away Churchill's cigar, or after shooting 100 sheets of tri-x, by editing down to that one shot that had Marilyn looking really drunk and out of control.

All of the above said, I've come to like people photography best. Sure it's mostly a lie, mostly artificial and often unfair, but it's a hell of a lot more interesting.

[kmack]

Archeology comes to mind.

You can get more information about a civilization from it's garbage heaps than from it's literature.

[Kirk Keyes]

The human condition is over-rated. There's a lot more to this Universe than just us.

[paulr]

It's an interesting question, but I'm not sure if I buy the idea that there's more photography of inanimate things than of people. I think a disproportionate number of pictures are of people.

It makes sense to me ... we are people, after all, and so it's especially easy for us to find interest in our own kind. But the "easy" part bugs me a bit. I think it's a little TOO easy, in a way, to look at pictures of people. There's always a superficial level on which they can be appreciated, and many viewers never dig deeper.

This isn't to say that there's anything "better" about pictures of non-people. Just that such pictures add a specific challenge for both the artist and the viewer. How to make this subject, which is not a person, interesting to a person.

I suspect another motivation for photographing inanimate things is that they tend to be cooperative subjects. Your fruit bowl is probably more patient sitting still and getting rearranged under hot lights for hours than your wife will ever be.

[Ken Lee]

Many of our subjects show the effects of time and aging on so-called stationary objects, and evoke the beauty inherent in the cycles of nature.

To suggest a feeling of motion, one needs a stationary point of reference. Each depends on the other.


http://www.kenleegallery.com/images/forum/l4.jpg

You might say that our still photos not only suggest, they often magnify a sense of motion, or life, inherent in apparently stationary objects. We find it delightful to express the animation which we as photographers discover, within apparently inanimate objects, and share with our audience.

As Mae West put it, "It's not the men in my life that count. It's the life in my men !"

[neil poulsen]

Maybe it's because inanimate objects better lend themselves to carefully composed and executed photographs. Besides, what's the point of capturing something during a one second interval, if it's going to be completely different during the next? What's worth remembering or more notable about one versus another?

Of course, many photographers have effectively captured motion in their stills. Eisenstadt and Cartier-Bresson are two examples.

[nathanm]

Shooting people requires the photographer to have an engaging, highly social personality which I just don't have. Shooting inanimate stuff gives me complete freedom, I am not concerned with someone else. It's only about technical and aesthetic matters. I've only shot close friends and family and even then I feel like I am imposing on them, making them uncomfortable and taking up their time. People are high pressure, on-the-clock kinda thing, landscapes and still lives you can mess with all day.

[paulr]

I wrote earlier that I think photographing people is easy, in the sense that we have an easy time being interested in our own kind.

A lot of you are saying that photographing people is hard, in the sense that doing it well requires especially strong abilities to build trust and human connections.

I think this is true, also. As a landscape photographer (I call myself this as a matter of history, not policy), I recognize that my unwillingness to do portraits has something to do with this. It's true that I'm more interested in barren deserts and overgrown empty lots than I am in portraiture, but it's also true that I mistrust my ability to do portraits well. And this I see as a human challenge more than a phtotographic one. In other words, a more important challenge than a photographic one. I would like to try portraits someday, if only because I think rising to the challenge will be good for me.

[Donald Miller]

I wrote earlier that I think photographing people is easy, in the sense that we have an easy time being interested in our own kind.

A lot of you are saying that photographing people is hard, in the sense that doing it well requires especially strong abilities to build trust and human connections.

I think this is true, also. As a landscape photographer (I call myself this as a matter of history, not policy), I recognize that my unwillingness to do portraits has something to do with this. It's true that I'm more interested in barren deserts and overgrown empty lots than I am in portraiture, but it's also true that I mistrust my ability to do portraits well. And this I see as a human challenge more than a phtotographic one. In other words, a more important challenge than a photographic one. I would like to try portraits someday, if only because I think rising to the challenge will be good for me.

Paul, Judging from my own experience, I think that you have touched on a valid point and that point is that our unwillingness to approach photographing people is most of all about our own feelings of inadequacy. Roughly translated, as I see it, this is all about fear at one level or another.

[stehei]

I hardly ever take the camera out for a landscape, or a thing that does not include living people. For me making a portrait is secondary to having a conversation, trying to let somebody show himself to a camera. I've never been more satisfied with a picture when somebody gives me something in a photo. I think that van be true for landscapes etc too, but I think I'm not as good as many of you;)

BTW, as long as people feel happy being out there with a camera, I couldn't care less on whatever is being photographed! The attachment is my teacher in photography, making a joke, and testing my focus skills with a graflex super D

regards

stefan

[Brian_A]

People bore me - photographically. I deal with enough people, why do I want to do it when I am doing what I love? I make photographs to get away from people and what they seem to think. Every time I get a person in front of my camera they start asking questions and wanting certain things. I'm sorry, who's making the photograph here? Trees and other nature - which I hardly find inanimate - don't talk back to me. They massage my eyes with their beauty and beg me to shoot them they way they are. They don't complain about a leaf being out of place. They don't care if they don't have any clothes on. Plus, as stated before, they move a whole lot slower. They also don't blink. Plus, if you want to go the route of over-shot images, I would have to say that there are far more images of people than there are images from Tunnel View.... Not a whole lot more - but more.

Just my thoughts.

[r.e.]

People bore me - photographically. I deal with enough people, why do I want to do it when I am doing what I love? I make photographs to get away from people and what they seem to think.

You mean like these photos that you posted a month ago today? - http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?p=414754#post414754

:)

[nathanm]

All the misanthropy in this thread is making me like people again. :D

[Steve M Hostetter]

Well, I just spent last Sunday afternoon shooting a model who couldn't hold position between the time I spent posing her, focusing and inserting a film holder.

Buildings and landscapes are good in this respect, but then they don't have cleavage that needs to be constantly adjusted.

I goin shootin with Robbie :D

[Steve M Hostetter]

You know, you can even find out who lives in a town by going to the graveyard...

[Ash]

I can't give an honest answer because I shot 20 sheets of black and white of a model, and it's been over a week and I've not felt inclined to develop the film.

I almost never shoot still life, and recently my rut is so bad that if i shoot living things I don't bother to process, print or upload the images!

[otzi]

An issue I have found regarding people as subjects in photography is that they are divided basically into two groups. The one group who have a vested interest in the outcome and therefore try to cooperate and commit to a satisfactory result. And the rest, who as we are all very aware really don't give a toss about you , your image or anything else image related.

Any one having done intense portraits and or nude word will be very aware of this. To that end when a model is late or indifferent to the appointment is given the fare home on the spot and I move on. Folk who have endeavored to practice such imagery with close mates or spouses will have noticed the help (?) tendered is often more to patronize (help you play) than any purposeful determination for a successful image outcome. This often shows on the then wasted shot. There are exceptions of course.

Just my 2/-'s worth

[Brian_A]

You mean like these photos that you posted a month ago today? - http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?p=414754#post414754

:)

Wow, someone noticed a photo of mine!

That image isn't really of people though. A couple of hands at best. My goal was shooting the game itself - the hands just worked out. To add to that, they really didn't really even care that I was doing what I was doing. I told them to just go on with what they were doing. I didn't have to pose them or anything. Just let them live their life. A little different than deliberately making a photograph of a person. If they were to move around like that I'm sure I would have been a bit pissed :)

-Brian

[Andrew O'Neill]

I like old buildings. I feel more comfortable with them. Be it abandoned or still fully functional today. It's just me, my camera, and subject. I have this fondness for history. Photographing them connects me with history. Sometimes if there are people milling about in front of a building, I'll either wait for a moment when there are a few, or I just blur the lot of them with a long shutter speed. My shyness gets in the way of working with people, I guess.

[Bill_1856]

Donald Miller -- I thought this was going to be just another repitious boring question, but instead it has turned out to be an extremely interesting thread.
I was wrong. Thank you for posting it.

[r.e.]

I didn't have to pose them or anything. Just let them live their life.

Ahh, you're a closet street photographer :)