Equivalence: The Perennial Trend

[Joe O'Hara]

I've photographed a lot of fields. Only recently though, did it strike me that oftentimes, what I really want to do is not to photograph the fields exactly, but photograph what it feels like to stand in the fields. This might sound like an irrelevant distinction, but it completely changed the way I approach making these pictures. Specifically, I am more likely to level the camera and use some front rise than I am to point the camera up or down, and is this way I hope to keep the attention off the field or the sky and more on a general feeling. Does it work? I don't know. It works for me.

Frozen Field, Canby, Oregon by austin granger, on Flickr

I've always thought of you as out standing in your field ;-)

It works here. Composition is the strongest way of seeing, EW said. Finding the best
composition is often a matter of letting the subject speak for itself, rather than the
photographer speaking for it. Interesting how eloquent frozen fields can be, when we
allow it.

[Joe O'Hara]

I like this very much, D-tach.

[h2oman]

I think I would have preferred this one without a caption, in the spirit of this thread. For me, taking any image at more than face value is accomplished best when there is a sense of mystery to the image. In this case, telling the purpose of the window leads me to think less deeply about it.


Ticket Booth, Canby, Oregon by austin granger, on Flickr[/QUOTE]

[austin granger]

It just occurred to me that the majority of the photos in this thread are black and white, and it makes me wonder if that is because black and white pictures, already a clear abstraction, are more amenable to being made into further abstractions. That's not to say that a color picture can't be an equivalent, just that by making an image in black and white, you are very clearly telling the viewer that there's more going on than simply representation. To go on a bit of a tangent, in a strange way, this is why I've long thought that black and white pictures come closer to reality than color pictures do. Unlike a color photograph, which often pretends to show unmediated reality (but doesn't), a black and white photo says; "Look, this picture is NOT the thing represented. Obviously, it has some relationship with the thing, but it also has a relationship with me, the photographer, and also with you, the viewer. It is something in-between. Which, when you think about it, is how we live our lives, continually mediating (or creating?) things with our thoughts and feelings about those things.

If someone ever asks me; "Don't you see in color?" I'll think I'll say, "Sure, but I FEEL in black and white." And anyway, is what we're doing trying to make a copy of what our eyeballs see? Personally, that's not how I think of photography at all.

Oh, H2oman, I grabbed that picture from flickr without considering that, but I think you're right.

And thanks Joe!

[jcoldslabs]

When I see a black and white photo of my wife I recognize my wife; when I see one of my house I recognize my house; when I see one of Half Dome I recognize Half Dome. So I am unclear how a black and white image is an abstraction. Non-literal perhaps, but not abstract.

In practical terms photographs do depict "reality," at least functionally. I mean, my driver's license photo--as grainy and unflattering as it is--looks enough like the "real" me for someone to sell me some beer or let me on an airplane.

Jonathan

[austin granger]

By abstraction I don't mean abstract like a Jackson Pollock painting, but instead something removed from the source, an idea of a thing rather than the actual thing. All pictures are abstractions, but my point was that a black and white picture is more honest about it.

As long as I'm here, a couple more pictures :

Molalla by austin granger, on Flickr

Untitled by austin granger, on Flickr

[austin granger]

Maybe "more honest" is a little loaded. How about more upfront? I wasn't making a value judgement. I love color photography! Really, some of my favorite photographers are color photographers. Anyway, what I was trying to get at is the question of what a photographer is doing by making a picture in black and white. It seems to me that one thing we're doing is telegraphing to the viewer that when we made the picture, we were interested in more than just making a simple facsimile of the thing that was in front of us. Maybe we were interested in form, or pattern, or light, or mood, or some idea. You see? We're making equivalents like crazy! *If we agree that equivalents are pictures that are of the thing and also of more than the thing. And this isn't even to mention the fact that simply by choosing to make a picture of this thing instead of that thing, by putting our rectangle (or square) around that particular object, we're telling the viewer that we believe that that thing is of some significance, that it deserves their attention.

I imagine I'm wearing out my welcome on this thread. I really need to get back to making pictures.

[Tin Can]

Oh Struen, you made me look that word up. Good one!

I don't mind other people seeing things in my abstracts. I rather enjoy it. But it's not my motivation for making or showing them.

Too much apophenia leads to the collecting of flower fairies.

[h2oman]

I suspect that it is easier for many of us to create abstractly when working in black and white, and it probably helps a viewer to "read" an image in a less literal way if it is B&W. That said, there are people who are making/have made wonderful equivalents in color:

http://www.stephenstrom.com/

http://www.murrayfredericks.com.au/projects/salt/#14

and Jonathan's photograph (post #770) here:

http://www.largeformatphotography.in...stracts/page77

These definitely qualify as being fairly "empty" (Grainger), and "the subject matter is rendered in such a way that it is obscure" (White) as well. I went to a workshop with John Wimberley last year (Joe O'Hara was there as well), and he had some wonderful color photos he made after his wife's death that I felt were equivalents. (FWIW, he is also a bit of a "mystic" too.) Unfortunately none of them seem to be viewable online.

[blueribbontea]

After 130 contributions to this thread, I don't believe that we can all settle on a definition that an equivalent is a photograph "of a thing and more than the thing." Almost any photograph could fit into that definition and that makes the idea of "equivalent" a vacuous one. Even the idea of abstractions seems a bit strained. Too much a draw from the 20th century painters, in my mind. I have to say, though, that this thread has been stretching my mind in a lot of different directions but it remains troublesome to think that "we are shooting equivalents all the time..." If so, then what is the point of talking about equivalents?
Austin, whatever your photographs are, equivalent or not, they are beautiful.