I suppose to make clear what I was trying to say (realize nobody reads much these days... ). It's simply that photographs tend to be memorials themselves. Certainly, in using the camera - you mark the death of a moment - it ceases to exist at precisely the point at which the shutter closes. The photograph's prime 'mode' is melancholia. Especially considering the cumulative perception until this point with respect to the 'black and white' photograph. That is - there are many associations with the state of mourning or 'wistfulness'. And thus, being somewhat sensitive to, or at least somewhat conscious of, this - we choose our subjects accordingly. This is an aspect, I think, inherent to all photographs (of the 'black and white' variety for sure), and hence we tend to exploit it whenever possible. Why not?
Why are some musical instruments better at expressing sadder music than others?
It's not just LF people, you know, even us 35mm people aren't always hunting for the decisive moment on a busy street.
To me, the appeal for me is not in the derelictitiousness(??): everybody is doing the same old tired "beauty is decay, decay beauty" romantic crap that we suffer since the Romans became ruins. It's rather the fact that a pile of old things have shapes about as unique as you can get.
The Walker Evans picture of the stamped tin plate to me is a great example: I don't read it as a lament for loss time, I read it more like his later series of Polaroid, as a fascination with things, their shapes, especially the oddest ones, and the fact that these artifacts have at some point intersected with human life, and gain their meaning thereby.
I haven't made great photographs with trash (partly because I find them cliché), but I'm always sniffing around when I see a good spot.
__________________ Using film since before it was hip.
Like the old withered man down the street, these old, peeling, weathered structures have interesting (visual) stories to tell, of lives that lived and worked hard and as witnesses to our collective history.
To many of us LF'ers these structures are more interesting to point our cameras. They tell us more about ourselves than that shiny new, barely used building. Maybe I am trying to hear the stories that I never got to hear because my grandparents passed away before I was born.
gene
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Long live Ed "Big Daddy" Roth!!
I'm a structural engineer with minor in historic preservation. I was born to photograph industry and bridges. Unfortunately, for the U.S., most of it's heavy industry and huge bridges is over. I wish I was around to photograph it when it was new.
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I'm drawn to some of these old decaying subjects -- and I only go as high as 6x6. I think reellis67's comments are right on. A modern shiny structure is just there, doing its thing. Viewing an old ruin may prompt us to activate our imaginations a little about what used to be -- I think that's a good thing.
Have you come to deny the subject, passing it off like a fleeting thought; or, do you mean to say that "decay" as a persistent subject of photographers is mere happen-stance of their equipment and location?
Certainly, through the "saftey" of the ground glass we keep at bay that which disturbs. We make friends of our enemy by reverse electron shooting it to capture and controll it. Time-bound, it, is chemically dipped and washed, dried and spotted, mounted to a wall with other trophies of the hunt for endless "self"-validation; or, perhaps sold as fresh meat for the mass-hunger for the bain of "self"-existence.
Maybe it's just an antidote to all the images of fresh shiny stuff we're bombarded with each day in advertising and in media.
On another line of thinking, people are attracted by the novel, but the scenes of new stuff become stale in our heads from all the exposure. Whereas scenes of places people don't see routinly, or that are shown in a new way become what's different.
Great Thread David!! As one of those LF folks you photograph with, can only say that when you set up a camera that was 'new' when the building was 'new' and open up the lens, that was also 'new' it is kind of like letting old friends get together and have a nice long chat (you've had to wait on some of those long exposures ) Seriously, much like the face that has so much character - the years that show, the old buildings tell much the same story. In my own case, while the exposure is going I find myself wondering the who has been here before, what was it like..what did it look like, what were the people like that built it, could they have been family.
And much like the elder members of our society today, they often are forgotten...and yet they have stood the test of many years, and have so much to offer...
A bit more navel gazing than you may have intended.
). It's simply that photographs tend to be memorials themselves. Certainly, in using the camera - you mark the death of a moment - it ceases to exist at precisely the point at which the shutter closes. The photograph's prime 'mode' is melancholia. Especially considering the cumulative perception until this point with respect to the 'black and white' photograph. That is - there are many associations with the state of mourning or 'wistfulness'. And thus, being somewhat sensitive to, or at least somewhat conscious of, this - we choose our subjects accordingly. This is an aspect, I think, inherent to all photographs (of the 'black and white' variety for sure), and hence we tend to exploit it whenever possible. Why not?
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