We do not always click for pictures

Some times I reach the rocky wilderness that lay beyond the streets,
To see sun-smelling rocks, and shrubs that make the other world
That seemed to exist beyond the banality of our daily existence
I click for strange frames in which rocks, shrubs and men co-exist.
My eye-frame brings strange bed-fellows into a plane of existence.

I click to understand colors, to understand shapes, not for pictures,
Not totalities of a beauty vision formed by well-thought motifs.
I click for strange ways in which rock merges in light with dead trees,
For the shared consciousness of rocks, trees and people, machines
Caught in a single frame encompassing these and several elements.
I click for the chemistry that binds the sun, the rocks, and the shrubs
With bits of blue sky that exist with them, glued to them on the top.

Color in people photography

Today in the morning walk, as I turned towards another street I came upon two women in bright red sarees against the morning sun. Their figures etched against a bright orange light presented a most inviting photo-opportunity. In people photography it is the colors, shapes and textures of random people that make for beauty.

More particularly it is the dominant splash of color emerging out of one or two figures that becomes the chief motif of the picture .Here it is the color that plays the main part in the drama of human actions as though the color explains everything and is the motive spring for the subsequent human actions.

The aesthetics of people photography

In people photography I look at people as mere extensions of nature ,a part of the soul of nature contributing to it and merging into its ambience. To me their faces do not matter because they do not exist in my photo-space independently as themselves but exist as part of nature.They form part of the spatial consciousness and in their movements further the dynamics of nature .They merge effortlessly into nature reacting to it like any other objects in nature through the ambient light that falls on them . Groups of people sitting in corners or huddled together in closed spaces contribute to the spirit as though they are an integral part of the surrounding environment. We look at their shadows ,their silhouettes ,the way they sit huddled in groups,their body languages complementing each other. They become part of the history of the time-space ,a cosmic event chronicled in a photograph.

Especially people on the river banks.as they become part of the river,bathing ,waddling,boating in groups,washing clothes,washing buffaloes etc. People sitting before the temples , pilgrims walking in groups in the orange hues of sunrise.

Capturing the inner silence of the subject in a portrait

Henri Cartier-Bresson’s portraits of the famous personalities of the time are remarkable for a certain quality in the depiction of their personalities which almost makes them closer to paintings. I am talking about the capture of what he calls the “inner silence” of the personalities.I have read recently somewhere that about 80 of his portraits are currently on display all of which reveal ,with a few exceptions,a duel between the photographer out to bring out the inner silence and the subject who is reluctant to reveal himself.

Cartier-Bresson’s wife who happened to be with him when he had this photography session with Ezra Pound has remarked about the heavy” external silence ” that prevailed during the session .The portrait was of Pound who had a disturbed appearance,hair in disorder and eyes reflecting wildness as though the depression which he had recently gone through had still left some marks on his mental health.

Apparently the photographer could capture the essence of the poet’s life quickly although his session with him lasted barely an hour or so,and most of it was spent on arranging things and getting the props ready.A painter spends a long long time with the subject and has interactions with him over prolonged sesions and is in better position to understand the subject .The greatness of Cartier-Bresson lies in the way he has tried to capture the “soul” of the subject despite the difficulty in getting him to reveal himself.

On a dreary wet afternoon

Some times a photograph can be used effectively to define the character of a place or ethos.Obviously such a picture will have disparate elements somehow fusing together to convey the overall character of a place or scene.We come back to the old premise-a picture manages to integrate several elements that share a common spatial consciousness which is tied to a particular chunk of time. The character of the scene is defined by the way the elements fuse together to convey a single unified impression.

In the abovephotograph ,taken from the timesonline.uk.com archives,one can experience the  defining character of the coalmines premises on a wet afternoon .The defining character is of course the mind-numbing dreariness of the place which can be experienced easily although the scene is from a place far removed from us in space and time.

Photography as a means towards artistic representation of universal truth

Photography can be effectively used to make stylized representations of the human condition in much the same way as poetry .Here the photograph ceases to be a mere document depicting the current reality and assumes a much larger profile -that of an artistic representation of a universal truth.In several of these representations you can see the human drama unfolding and the characters playing out their part on much larger canvas ,their immediate concerns losing their significance and their role and scope enlarged beyond the immediate context.

Exploring the beauty of the human form

We may talk of exploring the beauty of the human form in photography through a study of archetypal postures observed in anonymous humans.This we can do by looking at their fascinating possibilities by positioning their bodies in different postures in silhouettes.But there is another aspect to it. Instead of in a silhouette we may look at the individual as a speck of light in the darkness of the universe.The light is of course controlled  and is guided by what we would like to do with the manner in which light falls on their bodies. By controlling the light that bounces off their bodies we can create subtle textures in their exteriors and luminous halos around their presences. This we can do  at the composition stage but,more particularly,at the editing stage which puts in your hands an array of tools for manipulating light and shadow ,hues and tones.

Photography may be used to capture approximations to reality

There is a bit of thinking in photography ,especially in bringing about just that much light which will show things in a different perspective than what they appear usually in.Apparently the effort is towards running away from reality. How do we run away from reality ? Probably by thinking that the reality is much deeper than appears on the face of it. What if the perspective falsifies the reality and the art presents things in a perspective which only exists in the mind .Of course the obvious answer is that it does not make any difference and what you eventually see is the reality. We are not duty-bound to concern ourselves with reality as it exists and secondly having found the reality what do we do with it ? Thirdly we do not know that the reality as we see is in fact the reality that we are concerned with.

Having thought this way, I begin to think if I can find some approximations to truth while copying reality in its normal existence .For instance my figures become blurred and my background a different texture .Why do we relate to paintings more than we relate to photographs ? Probably we all believe that the figures in art should represent only the Idea and not copies of the reality .Of course at the back of our mind is the Platonic theory that art is twice removed from Reality in that it imitates reality which itself is an imitation of the Idea.

Is photography an art?

“Q: What about photography, isn’t that art?

No. My position is that photography, which can indeed be a wonderful and excellent thing, is not actually an art form per se. A photographer can be more accurately said to “document” something by showing the audience exactly what was there (when well done, he does this using some of the same techniques that an artist might such as composition, selecting contrast levels, etc.) rather than recreating what was there in light of an expressive goal which allows a great deal of freedom to adjust what is there and how it looks which is unavailable to the photographer

Brian K.Yoder
http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2003/Best_of_ARC/best1.asp?msg=108&forumID=18

We cannot agree with the view here. The assumptions here about what photography is themselves need to be validated.For example ,the photographer does not merely document what is already there.He searches out for that which furthers his vision and arriving there he expounds his vision which is uniquely artistic. Composition in photography is not a mere beautification device but arises out of the photographer’s unique vision.The photographer recreates ,just like an artist,”what was there in light of an expressive goal which allows a great deal of freedom to adjust what is there and how it looks.It is not correct to say that such a freedom is not available to a photographer. We are not talking about photo-journalism which perhaps merely documents what is .We are talking about the great photography artists like Cartier-Bresson whose photographs are as much an expression of a unique artistic vision as any painter or a music composer.

One must not look at the local colour by itself ,but in conjunction with the colour of the sky

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh : 12 October 1883

“one must not look at the local colour by itself, but in conjunction with the colour of the sky! That sky is grey -but so iridescent that even our pure white would be unable to render this light and shimmer. Now, if one begins by painting this sky grey, thus remaining far below the intensity of nature, how much more necessary it is to tone down the browns and yellowish-greys of the soil to a lower key, in order to be consistent. I think if once one analyses it thus, it is so logical, one can hardly understand not having always seen it so.”

In most photographs we do the same thing -that is we look at the local colour of the thing photographed ,the paddy field,the brown earth ,the rocky terrain, the water surface etc.and ignore the colour of the sky hoping to salvage the colour in editing. This is just unworkable and very often I find that the local colour comes out beautifully but a terrific mess is found in the sky .In digital photography some part of the sky gets dissipated by way of loss of pixels and the overall impact is none too satisfactory.
What is true of painting as observed by van Gogh in 1883 is true of photography today.