I Can See it For You Wholesale

This interesting passage came up recently in my google reader, via Merlin Mann:

Afterwards, we came to refer to certain types of accomplishments as “black triangles.” These are important accomplishments that take a lot of effort to achieve, but upon completion you don’t have much to show for it – only that more work can now proceed. It takes someone who really knows the guts of what you are doing to appreciate a black triangle.

There’s some cute backstory to that term relating to game development, but I think the concept applies very nicely to some aspects of photography. I’m thinking of types of photography or photographic techniques where technical fluency is not easily achieved but is absolutely necessary before going on to intuitive practical application with consistent results. Some examples I’ve been wrestling with over the last few months include controlled lighting, infrared, and black and white processing.

With each of these areas, I’ve experienced a moment that oscillates perfectly between, “Oh my god, I can’t believe that just worked,” and “Oh my god, I’m such a tool, why am I excited that that worked.” I’m not talking about Minor White infrared landscapes or Ansel Adams prints here, I’m talking about, “Oh, wow, I managed to focus and expose that correctly.”

It’s different for things like manual focus technique or even composition, where I tend to improve steadily with practice. Instead, I have to engage in this carefully planned, supplied, and fought battle with my own ignorance, and when I achieve victory, I don’t really have anything to show for it, except some bullshit shot or print that demonstrates that yes, I have the technical capability to use this technique — but that has no other virtue. And I don’t even have anyone handy to issue me a fucking gold star.

But at the same time, even though the result may be worthless in itself, there is this intense sense of both accomplishment and of the scary/exciting prospect of what is to be done next.

So next time you see an aesthetically pointless but technically correct image in someone’s flickr stream, just think of it as a photographer leveling up. : )

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS NO PICTURES, JUST MANY THINGS THAT ARE AWESOME. AND MANY INSTANCES OF THE WORD “AWESOME.” AWESOME.

Okay, there aren’t pictures associated with this post yet. But I had a very exciting day (for mostly non-photographic reasons), and I want to get this down while it’s still fresh.

Went to SF today to see a live taping of You Look Nice Today with my mom and sister and Andrew

Some things that happened:

We had delicious things from Miette, Mijita, and Delica RF-1.

Andrew fought an epic battle with an eldeberry “refreshment drink.” And yes, there will have been blood.

Later, I spread cheese from safeway on other cheese from safeway and ate it. It was delicious.

You Look Nice Today was AWESOME. Jordan Jesse Go was funny, too.

My sister got a free YLNT t-shirt. This is both more and less awesome than it sounds. (She always gets stuff at events. Sexism, I say.)

She got Scott, Merlin, and Adam to sign said shirt. Awesome.

During the Q&A session, I asked if there was going to be a CD at some point with “Baby on a Dog” and the theme to “Barber and the Balls.” They all slowly backed away from the mics and milled around. Then Jesse got on a table, and it broke.

Despite SF Sketchfest’s Orwellian proclamations about photography, I got some shots with my Olypmus XA and my new (ancient) Koni-Omega. Hopefully awesome — we’ll see once I get it developed. ::crosses fingers::

Took a picture of Adam through the box office window, stalker-style. He played it cool, but then I waved excitedly at him. Because I’m a fourteen-year-old girl. But not really, or else I probably would have gotten a fucking shirt, too.

Then he came out and asked me about the camera (second person today to ask me about it, because it’s awesome), and we talked about surreptitious photography, and it was awesome. Then Merlin told us to make sure to “watch our backs” while taking BART home. Because no, it’s not too soon. Awesome. Scott mentioned his work on a Wii game (“Heavy Metal Food”). Awesome. Also, Merlin said something about a YLNT “Behind the Music.” AWESOME.

There was some kind of alcoholic after-thing, which none of us went to, because some of us have jobs, some of us don’t drink, and some of us had to find a place to stay. Less awesome, but I’m okay with that.

Then, while walking back to BART, Andrew mentioned that something during the evening had reminded him of a Borges story he’d been reading on the train up, but he couldn’t remember which one. I asked to see the book, explaining that sometimes I can figure these things out. He was, to say the least, doubtful regarding my ability to divine what he had been reading that YLNT had reminded him of. Need I say that I got it on the first try?

Fuck yeah.

Good times had by all.

This is the second in a series of short reviews of photography books. See the first, along with disclaimer, here.

• Title: Europeans
• Photographer: Henri Cartier-Bresson
• Wikipedia
• Text: Jean Clair, tr. Anthony Rudolf
• Publisher: Bulfinch
• Date: 1998
• Librarything
• Size: About the same as a MacBook
• Paid: $40.00 (Used)

This books collects images taken in various countries in Europe over a period of fifty years, grouped mainly by country. It’s the first volume of Bresson’s work that I’ve encountered — although obviously it’s not my first exposure to photographs by Bresson. The images are, of course, fantastic, and the reproduction quality is very good. (As is the construction of the book.)

There’s a great deal to the photography — far more than I can speak to with my more or less nonexistent grasp of art history. As someone who has handled a camera, however, it’s not hard to divine from his work how skilled, committed, and attentive Bresson must have been. I was, of course, aware of the concept of the “decisive moment,” but I think I had understood this merely as a matter of good timing. But it is not (or at least not just) a matter of capturing the right instant in a series of instants for a moving subject. It’s more a matter of a truly impeccable sense of composition (coordinating the relationships of landscape, architectural, human, and symbolic elements) being extended to include time as well as spatial positioning and relationships.

I’m not sure how much farther I want to go in describing the photography. If you’ve looked at Bresson’s photography, I’m sure you already know, and if you haven’t, there really isn’t a substitute for doing so. At some point, I would like to try to articulate more of what I’m seeing, particularly in comparison to Doisneau, and particularly regarding their senses of humor. It seems to me that there is a great deal of human comedy in Doisneau, whereas in Bresson, there is often a sort of sublime, absurd, and inhuman humor arising from the juxtaposition of elements which is only observable from the very specific place and time which are chosen; with Doisneau, there are moments which are familiar and which you feel you might share with Doisneau, or anyone else, if you happened to be in the vicinity. With Bresson, there is often the feeling that only by being Bresson and standing in his precise position could you have fully participated in the joke, and thus his images give more of a sense of looking through his particular eyes. This makes it sound like I think there is more to Bresson than to Doisneau; I don’t know that that’s really the case, however.

The only complaint I have with the book is the text by Jean Clair. As mentioned, I do not have any background in art history, and I don’t suppose I’m qualified to judge the text. On the other hand, I can’t help thinking that if I can keep up with Foucault and Nāgārjuna and at least fake it with a smile when confronted with Zizek, then the horror I feel at reading Clair’s prose can’t just be a question of it being over my head.

I mean, is there any degree of specialized knowledge which could possibly justify this passage:

What is it that speaks to us in a European landscape if not this invitation to walk across it, the thrill of crossing it, of penetrating it on foot, so unlike those landscapes of India or America which you can barely traverse with your eye and seem eternally elusive?

Or this,

Did [Proust] not also say genius…that its owner has the power to turn his personality into a mirror, ‘genius consisting in reflecting power and not in the intrinsic quality of the scene reflected’? An axiom which a follower of the Tao would not deny, for so strongly does the writer insist here, not on the brilliance of an intelligence, the grandeur of a culture or the worldly quality of a mind…but, to the contrary, on this somewhat passive power, on this ability of the body to reflect — unhindered by refraction — the image of life passing by.

If there is some context in which this effusive, almost masturbatory prose registers as good writing, I don’t want to be a part of it. And what relevance does this have to the photography of Bresson? I cannot see Bresson (at least not in the photography in this volume) as a symbolic “penetrator” of landscapes. (Although some photographers certainly are.)

And while I may know next to nothing about art, I feel comfortable guessing that Clair knows even less about Taoism. Surely someday we will reach the point past which westerners no longer feel comfortable pointing to any particular quality/idea/sense/brainfart that strikes their fancy and dub it “Tao” or “Zen”?

Also: “Unhindered by refraction”? Please.

This is why people hate the French.

Note: This is a translation, so some of the douchiness might be the fault of the translator. However, I doubt it; the majority of the douche factor here is coming from the content rather than the particular arrangement of phrases.