iPhone: my battery in the 5D had drained . . .
In his book about b&w mastery, George DeWolfe talks about the ‘content problem.’ What I interpret him to mean is that we need to look past what is happening in the image per se and see other elements (the light, the composition, the negative space, the use of color) and worry about the content only as a secondary element. He talks about an example of a student whose work only became better when they stopped looking for the content. That, indeed, when we reverse that priority, and emphasize content too much, we end of with mundane images that act simply as a record of something and fall short of ‘art.’ When this happens, as I understand it, the simple fact that we have seen and capturing the thing in the photograph is what makes the photograph what it is and this overshadows everything else. When I read this part of George’s book, I hear the voice of my original photography teacher at Montclair State in my head. His name is Klaus Schnitzer, and he would deride mundane images brought to his class by students such as myself (in his German accent, of course) as simply ‘schnapshots.’
Jay Maisel has talked at length in the past (and does so eloquently in that podcast I mentioned yesterday) about the use of ‘gesture’ in his work. He implies that, indeed, the capturing of gesture is perhaps the primary element that separates the great photograph from the ordinary photograph. To my knowledge, Jay is the only mentor/teacher I have encountered who speaks about gesture in this way. I am admittedly not totally clear what he means by gesture. I have listened to a couple interviews with Jay, and even he has some trouble defining it, and I will not do better here. But I think that by gesture he means ‘attitude.’ On his website he has this image, which I think speaks much more eloquently about this topic than I might:
copyright Jay Maisel, all right reserved
Again, this is Jay’s work, not mine, and I use this image here simply as a way to try and explain what he means by ‘gesture.’ Jay goes on in the interview I mentioned to emphasize how important this concept is to him. He said he walks around with his Nikon set at ISO 1600, even in daylight on the street (he shoots a lot in NYC and is primarily a street shooter in color) so as to maximize his DOF and to hell with the noise. He is all about being ready for that moment and maximizing his chances of capturing that fleeting moment. He gently derides those who prioritize quality of image over capturing the ‘moment’ because while you might have, at ISO 100, a high-quality image, you probably missed the shot (the moment, the gesture).
When I read DeWolfe’s paragraph about the ‘content problem,’ I thought, “wow, that’s me!” When I look at my work, the images I like are the ones where I’ve simply been standing in the right place in front of the right thing at the right moment. I’m simply a stenographer of places (I know I’m being too hard on myself here). I thought that one of the things I needed to work on in 2010 was honing the vision to see beyond the ‘content.’
Then I listened to Maisel and thought about my street work, where searching for the gesture is everything. I had just scanned in images from a street session I did in NYC with Kevin Allen and they were, to my eye tangibly better images than the ones I had captured in Tempe last April. Partly this was due to the simple fact that I had gotten closer, partly because it was NYC and there was more of an attitude on the part of the subjects, but also because the images had more of what I think Jay means by gesture. But I don’t think I truly know what Jay means but I think I know it when I see it.
What I love about Gary Winogrand’s work, for instance, is his ability to capture exactly that (mind you, I have no idea whether Maisel would agree with me about Winogrand’s work). So, after listening to the podcast, I began is ask myself a ton of questions which I have yet to answer, and pose now to my readers:
- Is content the same thing as gesture?
- Are these two points of view divergent or simply semantics?
- Is this difference simply the diverging points of view of a landscape photographer (DeWolfe) and a street shooter (Maisel) or something else?
- Is the merging of the two elements what makes Cartier-Bresson’s work genius?
- Can you approach your work from both directions simultaneously?
I have some thoughts, but I’d like to hear yours. Yesterday’s image of mine with the big 737 in the foreground and the small jetliner in the air was a conscious attempt on my part to deliver on both fronts at once, btw.
Chris: What a great post. You certainly got a lot of both the podcast as well as George DeWolfe’s book. My interpretation of the content problem is slightly different from yours. George spends a lot of time talking about contemplative photography. Photography were we move past the labels and preconceived notions, or limitations of what we see on to the ‘isness’ of the object, to use a Zen phrase.
As you know, I have spoken to him on the phone a couple of times. George is Buddhist and therefore views things, I believe, just as they are, not as he believes them to be, if that makes any sense. That is certainly one thing that I’ve learned, you cannot explain some things. You can only point them out, which is where you are having the trouble defining gesture.
On the other hand, after listening to Jay Maisel’s podcast, I’m thinking that he may have been talking about implied motion, activity, or something significant, or transformational that is about to happen, but possibly not. I’ve read a couple of other interviews with him and picked out a couple of good nuggets, though these nuggets don’t get me any closer to a definition:
“One piece of information gleaned from many years of shooting is that the more equipment you carry, the less shooting you’ll actually do”
“I’m always hoping to see something that I’ve never seen before. For me, that’s the transforming moment when the mundane morphs into the magical. Too often, photographers try too hard, reaching out for things that work visually. After a time though, you learn and understand. Wait until things call out to you. Don’t shoot unless you’re moved by what you see, then dig deeper.”
This last one, I think is where he meshes perfectly with DeWolfe. If you wait long enough, which is sometimes not very long at all, you’ll see the magic.
This is one of those conversations that really should be done over coffee and the course of several hours. The short and indirect answer I believe is in remembering that JM comes from a painting background. I would love to be able to write out my ‘long’ thoughts on this but don’t think I can type fast enough to get them down correctly.
Chris this is one of the areas I would love to explore at sometime so I’m thinking if you get a slow evening give me a call
Thanks for the mention!
As a really really amateur photographer who has not really used my cameras for art in a long time, I would love some links to some of the people you mention. In the meantime, I am off to the ‘googles.’
As to the subject or question at hand, I have to relate those questions to painting.
I studied with an artist who moved from having simple nude model poses to ‘genre’ poses where the model may have nude or partially nude, but was engaged in a mundane task like ironing. I found this to be less interesting and less compelling. With a figure there was always some way to focus on something interesting. An abstraction of the form.
Of course, Vermeer painted basically in the genre format, but he focused on the light. I find that Vermeer’s light distracts the viewer from the mundane. As such, I think he captured both the content and the gesture.
Of course Vermeer was not working in the instant, he planed every detail. Even so, I would think that could be captured on film.
Many artists have painted genre, most of those compositions are simply painted schnapshots.
I think you’re right about shooting on the streets of NYC, downtown Pittsburgh or any older city. The buildings and the streets create shadows for much of the day. I think you might only see those interesting compositional elements early in the morning or early evening/night in Phoenix.
For what its worth Chris you have given me an entire day of thinking on this whole thing of gesture in art. Now I have a headache
Paul: No I didn’t know you had talked with George on the phone. Those are great quotes. Part of what I’m reacting to in both these fine artists is the way they treat photography as art, instead of just equipment and analysis. I don’t think I agree with you about DeWolfe and negative space, though. Given his interest in photography and drawing, I think he’s going for something specific there, but I don’t have his book in front of me. I’ll have to look.
Ray: I agree with you 100%. George is working from his thoughts about photography and drawing, and Jay is coming directly from his training as a painter. That’s what makes this discussion fascinating to me. Coffee, you’re on!
Kevin, so tell me what you think Maisel means by ‘gesture?’
With you especially, I knew this would set you off spinning. It does that to me as well!
Well, I knew of Jay, but not really his work. So I went and looked. My initial response was that ‘gesture’ would be motion. I think that you’re correct in that ‘gesture’ is attitude and that attitude comes from composition. So I would say that this is a semantic issue.
Gesture is NOT content. Gesture is composition.
In my highly uninformed opinion, take with a large lump of salt:
Is this difference simply the diverging points of view of a landscape photographer (DeWolfe) and a street shooter (Maisel) or something else?
-the concepts are not the same, but not mutually exclusive. I think the streetshooter vs landscape explains a lot. Often the reason a street photograph moves you isn’t the composition or the color or the lack of noise, it is that it reveals something about humanity, even if there isn’t a living thing in a photograph. The photo above from Maisel has a gesture of work. Something is happening. I could completely misunderstand “gesture” but I think I get it. A great portrait shooter doesn’t capture what a person looks like, they capture who that person is: confident, daring, timid. A photo of a skyscraper can be cold and show the loneliness of technological progression, or it can glorify the hard work of man.
A landscaper is more doing art for art, not as much for message. The landscaper is a guitar virtuoso who works for the instrument, and the effort and love of the art pours out. The street shooter is a scrappy punk rocker for whom the medium is just there for a message.
This is where the HCB element comes in. I don’t think I see much work that isn’t a combination of both. Maisel’s picture has a great composition to it, and the low-fi look is part of the art. DeWolfe’s effort to get proper color and light reveals something about humanity. How perfect nature is compared to us.
Not only CAN you approach from both directions, you HAVE to approach from both directions. I guess maybe some of us some part of it naturally, and we have to chase the other part.
And after typing all of this I start to think I just don’t understand, and that is why my photography struggles.
Jason, welcome. I follow your thoughts and agree with them, but (heh) I agree most with the last sentence: “I start to think I don’t understand, and that is why my photography struggles.” Brother, I’m right there with ya.
I do agree with your analysis. What gesture always meant to me when I heard it was composition, but also the CHOICES made with that composition. Essentially, the fact that Jay chose to crop the worker where he did is intrinsic to the composition and is, in effect, the gesture.
I think.
[...] thoughts were dredged up again by Chris’s post about Jay Maisel. I’d never heard of the guy and in visiting his site and looking at his [...]
Very interesting post, Chris. This definitely started my thinking, but I have no answers. Who does? Regarding gesture, it is to me the same as a physical expression. Framed in a picture, it becomes a composition, to me, that is.
Good exposition! But I have some trouble in intrepreting the term “gesture” in landscape photography. I guess it comes from the attitude of the photographer, but how does it appear in the image?
I have come to believe that when it applies to photography, ‘gesture’ means ‘the way in which the photographer approached the image in the first place; what he thought about the subject and how he tried to capture it.’