We've had some insightful threads on ways of seeing recently, and I'd like to throw the viewer into the mix. After all, if I do sell some prints, I'll first need to understand what people might want to have...
So, a basic question: what is the value of enhanced perception, or childike curiosity... if the person beholding your work judges (in a split second) whether it's worth a second glance? Could you even reasonably expect a viewer to "get it" if it took you a good long while to get it yourself? And is that viewer's quick glance any fundamentally different from the fleeting moment when you decided whether to take the photograph?
My thesis in compact form: personal zen notwithstanding the photographer must learn to see through the eyes of others to communicate effectively.
Do you consider such things when deciding which prints to display? How do you establish a sincere line of communication with the viewer? Have you identified strategies or "hooks" that open the doors for viewers to your most thoughtful photography? Let us stipulate that a "hook" isn't necessarily a trite gimmick, but rather a personal style or coherent visual element that provides the sort of instantaneous interest that makes a viewer look twice.
Within my bank account, you mean! Just for the record, I am still true to myself in the sense that you define it
But... do we not think about how the photograph will be seen when we compose it?
Even those of you who say that you shoot for yourselves, do you deny that shooting with no film loaded is less fun than setting a print before an admiring viewer?
If you are selling something, maybe. Otherwise, not at all.
I'm doing what I want, for me, and I'm showing them what I see. What they may see is really inconsequential to my creative act. It would be nice if the image let them see the same things I did, but that seems rarely the case regardless of who the audience may be.
OTOH, if your goal is really to communicate with the masses, the gallery crowd, the newspaper reader, or the teen with money to blow on the latest fashion, then I suppose you could compromise your vision to make the sale (whatever that may be).
Pssst...I edited in a winky smiley face into my first post to let you know I wasn't too serious
Quote:
Originally Posted by keithwms
...do you deny that shooting with no film loaded is less fun than setting a print before an admiring viewer?
Actually, I'd rather be out in the forest, along the oceans shore, or on a mountain ridge seeing some amazing or delicate display of Nature while photographing with no film in the holders, than trotting out my prints for someone to see. Really. The act of photographing and the depth of awareness it affords me will always be better than what results later, be it the final print or showing it to someone!
I can happily go for years without anyone seeing my stuff. There does come a point, or a developmental fork in the road if you will, where a show has to be mounted to move onto the next stage. I've only had 3 one man shows in 25 years so there aint much progress being made I guess...oh well, me happy
I once had a simple, subtle print of Devil's Club leaves above a trickle of a creek which everyone glanced at and walked passed without much consideration. Later, an elderly lady with a walker stopped before the print and started to shed tears, because in her teens she used to romp all over the mountainsides gathering plants to dye fabrics and Devil's Club for fibre. So, you just never know...
Murray
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Note to self: Turn your negatives into positives.
Last edited by MurrayMinchin; 07-21-2008 at 01:49 AM.
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Everybody, well almost everybody needs to make a living somehow. I got sick of doing what other people wanted when I found myself photographing models getting cash out of a machine for bank brochures. So I quit doing it. However, I did sell a fair number of prints doing familiar landmarks. It was a compromise of sorts, but one that I'm not ashamed of at all; some of them are incredibly wonderful, but it is true that not all of the best ones from my perspective were big sellers. Imogen Cunningham did portraits all her life. I heard someone ask her once if she showed her proof sheets to the client. "Heavens no! Nobody likes themselves! They look to find the one that makes them look the worst, and when they find it, that's all they need. They don't buy anything." She certainly thought about it.
For a very long time, I couldn't afford to be an amateur. I might have wished that I had taken on a trade or something that would have paid the bills, but I didn't do that.
Your question is a real one, and I haven't got an easy answer. All I can suggest is that you don't JUST do work for others, but when you do, you damn well better consider what it is they want.
Here are some suggestions:
People don't buy photographs, generally. They buy pictures of things.
People want to look good.
Nobody lives in a real world. Give them something that they can imagine themselves doing, or places they can imagine themselves being.
The viewer is going to see with their own experiences, not yours. That's why everybody that has never operated more than a point and shoot and sees a picture of a lighthouse shot and printed by a master will say, 'Oh, I gotta dozen of these back home'. Their memory fills in blanks between the image they are seeing and the images they remember taking that are presently absent from the senses. When they review their images they find them lackluster and, hopefully, begin to wonder how to make their images differently. Thus the birth of seeing photographically.
If you want the viewer to react you need to lead them into the photograph, have a clear cut and familiar subject and yatta yatta yatta. I personally do not worry about such things on the whole. Mostly for the reason I seldom make images for someone else. I love to hide things in a photograph. A packpack hidden in background shadow but eventually visible in their reflection against a higher brighter background in the pool in the foreground. That kind of thing. Let the masses decide my photography is too simple or too cerebral. But for the few who 'get it' it will be unforgetable.
I am afraid that there are more people than I can imagine who can go no further than appreciating a picture that is a rectangle with an object in the middle of it, which they can identify. They don't care what is around the object as long as nothing interferes with the object itself, right in the centre.
Even after the lessons of Winogrand and Friedlander, they don't get it. They respect their work because they are told by respectable institutions that they are important artists, but what they really want to see is a picture with a figure or an object in the middle of it. They want something obvious.
The blindness is apparent when someone lets slip the word 'snapshot'. Ignorance can always be covered by 'snapshot'. The word has never had any meaning.
I am at war with the obvious.
As I like to say in my signature, the viewer is the final stage of the work. By viewing a work of art, we more or less consciously deduce a background, an origina story for it. We "click the shutter," that is we make decisions on the source of the artwork to understand it, to figure out what it means.
So there will always be a communicative gap between artist and audience. On the one hand because, like Eggleston says, some people just don't "get it", but also on the other hand because the meaning of our works begins to escape us as soon as we show them.
__________________ Using film since before it was hip.
But... do we not think about how the photograph will be seen when we compose it?
I don't think about this when taking the photograph but sometimes at the printing stage I may think that one of my friends would like that image so I make another print to give away.
... the photographer must learn to see through the eyes of others to communicate effectively.
Sometimes this is the most important thing to test out. I found that having an objective third party look at your work is one of the most effective ways to see how you are communicating. I once had an instructor (who had a lot of experience in being a panel judge) go over all my images. What I thought were cohesive images that showed my work effectively was about 50% off the target. He showed me what worked well together and I have to admit he was right. I've done this twice and got great results.
S
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The Role of the Viewer 
And is that viewer's quick glance any fundamentally different from the fleeting moment when you decided whether to take the photograph?
the photographer must learn to see through the eyes of others to communicate effectively. 
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