Friday, September 14, 2012

What keeps us going

Lessons from the life of Vivian Maier

Steve Pressfield wrote in a recent blog posting:
A practice is lifelong. A practice promises no nirvana. The whole point of a practice is that we discover meaning (and define ourselves) in the act of struggle and the expression of aspiration.

I've been thinking about Vivian Maier recently. There's a new exhibit of her self-portraits and a new book on its way, which I mentioned in a previous post. I keep coming back to a question that continues to nag me: "What kept Maier going, week after week and year after year, developing her art to the level of grand master of street photography, without seeking any apparent support, feedback or recognition from critics, curators, publishers, gallery owners, collectors, or camera club members?"



Employed most of her life as a nanny, she carried her camera - and used it - on her time off and on vacations. She produced at least 100,000 images that we know about, in the pre-digital age of roll film. I've been told by someone who makes his living curating photography that she had a remarkably good hit rate for creating decent images per roll of film. She left thousands of pictures on unprocessed film, only now being developed by those who acquired them after her death in 2009.

From what I've learned about Maier, she appears to have been strong willed, independent, and self sufficient. There is no evidence she continued with formal art education after initially starting out in photography. But she persisted, day in and day out, to perfect her craft by constant practice.

She was a collector of articles and clippings, and I have to imagine she also made liberal use of the volumes of photographic and art books in the public library. No doubt, she was highly self critical of her own work, and probably would not have spared others her honest opinion of their work if they ever had an opportunity to seek it. My impression is that she was proper and decorous at all times, but spoke her mind when invited to do so.

Through her photographic images she spoke in a clearly articulated voice. Viewing the scant assortment of her pictures that have seen the light of day so far, one gets to know her as an unintimidated individualist capable of expressing what she takes from her world through her art. She was not a random snap shot shooter. Her interests were primarily people, shadows, and geometry. Among her subjects were social pretense, poverty, and innocence. Though of modest financial means, she did manage to travel internationally on several occasions, and it is interesting to compare images from her travels to the ones she amassed on the streets of Chicago and New York.

From what little I have been able to learn about her life, and from much more that her photographs have shown me, this is what Vivian Maier teaches me:

1. Practice is more important than product. Maier always seemed to have a camera with her, but accumulated hundreds of rolls of exposed but unprocessed film.
2. One develops and advances in the craft of photography by going out and doing it, not by talking about it.
3. Self-insight and self-criticism can be an effective way to stimulate self-growth, as long as it isn't self-delusional.
4. An audience, a market, a brand were irrelevant to achieving what Maier achieved.
5. Taking a lot of pictures won't in itself assure sensitivity and mastery. Maier left behind at least 100,000 analogue images. Today, with digital technology, and the negligible cost per image, a photographer over a similarly long lifetime might leave behind a million or more images. What distinguishes Maier is how many of her images are very good compositions and tell interesting stories. Quantity does not assure quality. Mastery of the craft, sensitivity to the subject, and having something to say that's worth listening to are what characterize the best images.

6. The best lesson for the artist might be: Don't quit your day job.


I can only speculate how different Maier's work would be had she been active in a photo club, submitted to a portfolio review, sought representation by a gallery, or tried to make money with her camera. But I'm confident she was not the sort of person to heed fools' advice. So many of her images thus far shared with the public reveal a solitary but confident individual comfortable moving through crowds, engaging with strangers, contemplating reflections and spending time in shadows. Most of all, they reveal a person who is most freely herself when engaged in her chosen pursuit of photography, defining herself through the images she creates, and relaxed in the attentive pursuit of her evolving photographic voice.

For those of us who photograph because it's the only way we know to artistically express our reactions to the world that surrounds us, for those of us who will never make a living with our camera, for those of us who see best with a camera in our hand, Maier gives us the encouragement to continue. It is possible to work alone and unknown, with passion, craft, and brilliant creativity, for only the personal satisfaction that comes from the practice of something that deeply touches our soul.

Enormous gratitude goes to John Maloof and Jeffrey Goldstein, who acquired the photographs, negatives, unprocessed film and personal items from Vivian Maier's storage locker, recognized the treasure they possessed, and have undertaken the effort to bring to the public the artistic work of Maier's lifetime.

Maloof and Goldstein have placed galleries of some of Maier's images on the web, here and here.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Storytelling, Photography, and Artist Statements


 
Since the mid-1990's I've been engaged in storytelling. Literally. I performed in front of live audiences, entertained listeners ranging from preschoolers to nursing home residents, and regularly sought feedback and critique from those who are considered masters of the craft.

 
For me, storytelling has always been more than providing entertainment to an audience. I'm particular about the stories I choose to tell. I specialize in what are called sacred tales from the Jewish tradition. These are stories from the Jewish folk tradition, stories about the deeds of Jewish sages, and stories authored and used by earlier rabbis and tellers to transmit a teaching. I especially enjoy retelling Chasidic tales. I have a library comprised of several shelves of anthologies and collections of sacred stories from the Jewish and other traditions, and have a repertoire of perhaps three dozen stories to which I frequently return, ranging in length from a compact ninety seconds to a convoluted forty five minutes.

 
When I read a story for the first time, I know immediately whether it will work for me as a teller. When I choose a particular story for telling, it has to do something to me, to move me in a certain way, to invite me to spend some time with it. If it's a story I want to learn, it will resonate for me in a deep internal place. Telling stories is a spiritual practice for me, and to repeat one of these selected tales is to experience wonder and awe each time I perform it. There is something in the core of my being that the story taps into. It makes me feel like I'm in the presence of something much bigger than myself. If my telling connects with a listener, the story can also go deeply into the soul of another person.

 
Some storytellers learn stories verbatim, like a script. I tend to learn stories in a different way. I discovered I learn stories visually, and when I perform them, my mind's eye reaches back into a special place where I've learned to go and I verbalize what I "see" during the telling. I believe the most effective storytellers are able to help their audience create these mental images as well.

 
I guess this visual aspect of learning and performing accounts for my attraction to another kind of art ... photography. I've been taking pictures since I was in middle school, well over fifty years ago.

 
It's nothing new to hear people say that photography is a kind of storytelling. But, for me, at least, I've had to get beyond the verbal narrative aspect of storytelling to appreciate the full meaning of this, because there is an obvious difference from the verbal story. In a narrated spoken or written story, there's a linearity, a beginning, middle and end that unfolds over the time it takes to tell the story. Photography happens in 1/60 or 1/250 or 1/4000 of a second. It's nearly instantaneous. Unless the photographer deliberately creates the illusion of blurred movement, the photograph is a frozen moment. Even the time exposure is frozen in the image, unchanging once the exposure is complete.

 
So how does something that's frozen tell a story? It's easier to answer this by experiencing it than by trying to explain it. Just look at the work of photographers like Cartier-Bresson or Vivian Maier or Timothy O'Sullivan or Andre Kertesz or Elliot Erwitt. Within the body of work ofany master photographer there are images that make us pause, linger, and return repeatedly. The images engage us without verbal narrative. In a single image, there is a visual telling. The picture may be frozen, but what it communicates is movement, action, relationship or the glancing touch of an emotion or feeling or truth or irony. It puts a question into our mind and simultaneously gives us what we need to answer it. The image pulls us in, holds our imagination, and brings us someplace else, just like any well-told story.

 
A story that's effectively performed by a storyteller doesn't need an explanation at the end to tell people what the story is about. Listeners will get what the story is about in their own way. It's like the message is tailored to custom fit each listener. Members of the audience leave with different understandings, insights, feelings and experiences. For some it might be "aha," for others it might be "wow". They don't need to be told what this ought to be. To do so is to insult their humanity and belittle their capacity for imagination.

 
It's the same with photography, or any art for that matter. What's salient is the engagement between the artist and the audience through the particular medium. My experience with storytelling has taught me that a well told story carries the audience along in a journey and there's a kind of energy that binds the performer and the audience together. I experience that same thing when a particular photograph engages me. I'm drawn into it. I keep going back to it. It possesses a kind of magnetic attraction with something inside me. But my journey is going to be different from another person's.

 
I don't need to be told what a photograph is about any more than I need to be told what a story is about. If it works for me, I can figure that out myself. If well crafted as an artful expression, it can do its own telling in its own voice without any additional help from captions, artist statements, or commentators. Next to a well crafted image, expressive of the photographic artist's intent, such things are superfluous and patronizing.

 
 
This is an expansion of a post that first appeared in my general photography blog  jhdricker.blogspot.com  on August 4, 2012.  It also appeared as a guest posting on Olivier Duong's blog, The f/8 Blog, on August 23, 2012.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Slowing down to accomplish more

It's hard to cultivate a relationship when multi-tasking or fighting distractions. Just reflect upon how exaspirating it is to conduct a conversation over a meal when the dinner partner has a smart phone on the table and repeatedly glances at it.  What's more important, the trivial text or tweet, or me?  Please, at least give me a half hour of your undivided attention, if you can remember how to do that.

As photographers, we are engaged in cultivating relationships with our subjects, and risk allowing distractions to degrade these relationships as surely as a smart phone at dinner.  There is a cost for giving up full engagement and presence.  Something goes missing from the picture.  This isn't just about rushing through the photo shoot.  It's about allowing the body to slow down and settle in.  It's about bringing the breathing and heart rate down from a frenzy to a slow, relaxed, and attentive rhythm. It's about quieting the mind.  It's about gaining more control by being less controlling. It's about giving the soul of the subject and the soul of the photographer a chance to touch.  I'm not just talking about portrait and event photography, where we are expected to engage with the people we photograph.  I'm also talking about street photography, nature and landscape photography, still life and product photography.  Indeed, I'm talking about any creative engagement where we have a personal investment in the outcome. If the objective is to express something about ourselves in the way we see and record and respond, then we cheat ourselves and the whole enterprise when we give less than full frontal attention to our subject.

Author Bors Vesterby has a recent post on the Luminous Landscape website that addresses this topic, titled Dynamic Patience.  Link to it here and linger with it for a few minutes.


Thursday, April 12, 2012

Artist versus technician

What's happened to creative control?

The economy of digital photography is a blessing and a curse.  It's a blessing because it does not oppress with the costs of film and processing.  It's a curse for the same reason.  Because image capture is now free (once the equipment is in the hand) it's easy to let quantity overpower quality. But the path from good to best is not through more of the same.  I can't improve my art simply by taking more pictures.

One of my favorite cameras was a 4x5 view camera.  I never brought it with me when I traveled by air.  I never took snapshots with it.  I never did street photography with it.  I never followed my cat around the house with it.  But the best pictures of my children were taken with that camera fitted with a polaroid back. I would carefully compose, zone-focus, and then wait.  The camera wasn't in front of my face.  I was standing beside it with a cable release.  Then I'd engage my children, and take one picture.  The polaroid gave its feedback in a couple of minutes. Each exposure cost me around $1.50, and that was back in the late 70's and early 80's. I eventually got a roll film back for the view camera, but my method was the same: careful composition, zone focus, and engagement with the subject. 

I also had a succession of 35mm cameras.  My favorite was a Leica M3, which I bought used while I was in graduate school.  It was unobtrusive, quiet, and relatively uncomplicated.  There was no auto-focus and no through-the-lens metering.  I'd use a hand held meter. I'd take one reading, then do my shooting.  I'd only take another meter reading if the lighting noticably changed.  I was, therefore, attentive to the light. Often I knew from experience what exposure to use and wouldn't even bother with the meter.  Each frame on the roll was precious.  I took my time, pre-planned, shot with intentionality.

The process of manually focusing and setting the shutter speed and f/stop forced me to be mindful of depth of field, movement and changing light.  I think it also forced me to be more aware of where I was in the space I shared with my subject. 

I no longer have the Leica.  And I sold my view camera outfit when I changed over to digital photography in 2005.  Instead of a camera loaded with film, I now shoot with  a camera that's really a micro-computer with a lens.  It's so easy to let the camera/computer make all the adjustments and decisions.  Shooting that way, most of the pictures do look pretty good.  Most are exposed all right, and most are in focus the way I want.  All I really need to do is compose and hit the shutter release to get a pretty decent picture most of the time.  Because it's so easy this way, it's an effort to take back creative control.

But exercising creative control is what being an artist is about.

I usually shoot aperture priority on my Canon DSLR's.  If the shutter speed is too slow, I'll increase the ISO.  If I'm hand-holding the camera, I'll make sure Image Stabilization is turned on (if the lens has it).  I usually use auto-focus. I pay attention to the histogram to make sure the exposure is giving me what I want. But often I feel more like a technician than an artist.  I'm the artist when I work on the pictures in the computer; I'm the machine operator when I'm behind the lens.

Recently, things have gotten a little better in this regard.  I've  started using a Sony NEX-7.  This is a mirrorless camera with an APS-C size sensor.  It has an LCD screen as well as an electronnic viewfinder that rivals any optical one I've ever used. It's small, light weight, and doesn't have the footprint of a DSLR.  It takes interchangable lenses, and with adapters it will also take just about any other lens I own.  I've been shooting with Leica M-mount lenses made by Voigtlander.  The auto-focus on the NEX-7 doesn't work on these lenses.  I have to manually focus.  Aperture control is also strictly manual.  The only control that's automatic is shutter speed when I set the camera to aperture priority. I love it.  It's like shooting with an analogue range finder camera, but with a much better focusing system.  Would I choose this camera for shooting a basketball game? Probably not.  Would I use it for landscapes, portraits, and street photography?  Definitely.  Macro?  Wild life? The DSLR is better for those.  I love the NEX-7 because it make's me slow down ... not by much, but enough so I'm aware of it.  I feel more like an artist and less like a technician when I use it.  Will I give up my Canon cameras and lenses? Never.  But the NEX-7 will be the camera around my neck when I'm walking the streets.  It will be the camera I pack for air travel.  And it will be the camera I turn to when I fear my creative control is slipping away.

 It's easy to forget what it was like before the digital revolution. Anything that forces me to make decisions about camera operation helps me remember.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Witnessing with Compassion

Dominic Bracco II photographs the aftermath of violence in Juarez, Mexico.  He documents with sensitive compassion.  I can feel the tears on his cheeks.

Read his story in Lens, the photo blog of the NY Times.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Practice versus Product in the Vivian Maier Story

After returning from a showing of some of Vivian Maier's work in Atlanta, I've been reflecting on what was her engine, her source of momentum.  Maier never showed her work and had no known associates or colleagues in any social or artistic community.

But she did have a connection to her subjects.  That is strikingly clear from a viewing of her images.  Many of her pictures involve people, and most of those were unposed.  They reveal a respect for their dignity, regardless of social standing.  If any possess pretence or arrogance, those qualities inhering in the subjects are not superimposed by the photographer.  And Maier takes the same approach to her own self-portraits.  She discloses a personal dignity, self control, and presence in those photographs, even though many of them obscure some or all of herself in shadow or reflections.  They portray a kind of stature and presence that is quite independent from her actual physical dimensionality.

Many of her images remained on unprocessed rolls of film.  Only posthumously are they seeing the light of day.  This means that Maier took countless images without ever personally viewing the results. 

Those who now possess her work have been meticulously preparing it for publication and showing, one negative at a time.  I am told that what is striking about her work is how few of her pictures are bad images.  She possessed a refined and perfected craft with a heightened sense of timing and composition, and took a camera with her everywhere. The equipment seldom left her hands.

She possessed mastery of the craft, sensitivity and empathy for her subjects, and no desire for approval or critique of her images.  External acknowledgement appeared to be irrelevant to her.  And even the tangible results of her art - the image in print form - seemed to be a low priority to her. For her, the practice was primary, not the product.

I can imagine her walking with perfect posture, making brief eye contact with strangers, relaxed smile, Rolliflex always ready at her waist, open to and anticipating a fleeting moment of the right light, perfect composition, and convergence of textures and lines.  She moved through space with the kind of gentle attentiveness masterful photographers and spiritual masters have in common.

 I don't know if she actually did this, but I wouldn't be surprised if she continued to compose and "shoot" with her camera even after she ran out of film or money. 

I suspect, for Maier, the camera was the portal through which she primarily engaged the world.  I can't help but think that without the camera at her waist, her vision would have been diminished.  Here practice as photographer was the way she saw, encountered and engaged.  She seemed to have little curiosity, in her later years, about what the pictures looked like. The print was a byproduct, something left over after the process concluded, increasingly irrelevant as time passed. It was through the camera's viewfinder that she accessed her world, not through the printed image.   I can only speculate.  I might be entirely wrong about this.  Maybe the reason so many rolls of film went undeveloped was purely financial.

But we can't dispute that Vivian Maier and her cameras were inseparable.  Most of us also agree that she articulated the way she saw the world with a voice that was exquisitely gifted. How fortunate it is for all of us that she used real film in her cameras.

Read another related post about Vivian Maier on my general photography blog.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Artist and Viewer

The separation of artist from audience has been something I've been thinking about recently.  To what extent do the preferences of viewers affect the kind of work I produce or offer for exhibition or purchase?  How have viewers communicated these preferences to me? Do mediators (curators, gallery owners, publishers) affect the choices and decisions I make as an artist?  Do I have a role in defining who my audience will be?

In a recent email newsletter from the Shambhala Meditation Center of Atlanta there was .included a copy of a letter written in 1974 by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.  I found it to be so appropriate, I include it in its entirety below.  I highlighted some sentences in bold type for emphasis.


The Dharma Art Letter

A letter written by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche on the occasion of the Naropa Institute’s first summer program in Boulder Colorado, July 1974. Pgs. 1-2, True Perception.

The term dharma art does not mean art depicting Buddhist symbols or ideas, such as the wheel of life or the story of Gautama Buddha. Rather, dharma art refers to art that springs from a certain state of mind on the part of the artist that could be called the meditative state. It is an attitude of directness and unself-consciousness in one’s creative work.

The basic problem in artistic endeavor is the tendency to split the artist from the audience and then try to send a message from one to the other. When this happens, art becomes exhibitionism. One person may get a tremendous flash of inspiration and rush to “put it down on paper” to impress or excite others, and a more deliberate artist may strategize each step of his work in order to produce certain effects on his viewers. But no matter how well-intentioned or technically accomplished such approaches may be, they inevitably become clumsy and aggressive toward others and toward oneself.

In meditative art, the artist embodies the viewer as well as the creator of the works. Vision is not separate from operation, and there is no fear of being clumsy or failing to achieve his aspiration. He or she simply makes a painting, poem, piece of music, or whatever. In that sense, a complete novice could pick up a brush and, with the right state of mind, produce a masterpiece. It is possible, but that is a very hit-and-miss approach. In art, as in life generally, we need to study our craft, develop our skills, and absorb the knowledge and insight passed down by tradition.

But whether we have the attitude of a student who could still become more proficient in handling his materials, or the attitude of an accomplished master, when we are actually creating a work of art there is a sense of total confidence. Our message is simply one of appreciating the nature of things as they are and expressing it without any struggle of thoughts and fears. We give up aggression, both toward ourselves, that we have to make a special effort to impress people, and toward others, that we can put something over on them.

Genuine art—dharma art—is simply the activity of nonaggression.