On Looking

In ‘On Looking’ (‘Met andere ogen’ in het Nederlands) by Alexandra Horowitz, I read, paraphrasing: if you look closely, there is always something interesting to see.

As a photographer, I was already convinced of this. You should be able to stand anywhere and take good pictures. This principle is also one of the starting points of my Noord-Holland grid project: every block can bring interesting pictures.

Some photographers suffer from the opposite: looking for the most amazing image; Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment. BS. Recognizing a good image is then based on the images in your head. And thus, touching on Horowitz, you look over the other interesting things around you.

A third way of photographing is fantasizing about an image and making it. That is more or less how Jeff Wall works. He drives around the city, recognizes an image, remembers it, and later reconstructs it to make a photograph of it. Or Viviane Sassen, Andreas Gursky, Gregory Crewdson. The freedom of the mind is your only limitation.

Jeff Wall The Thinker 1986, staged photography lightbox

More on looking, as a writer.

Alexey Brodovitch on photography

The Education of a Photographer, by Charles Traub - book cover

Once again, I flip through The Education of a Photographer, by Charles Traub et al, and read Alexey Brodovitch’s refreshing ideas about photography. Amongst them:

  • What is good today is a cliché tomorrow.
  • The photographer’s job is to fight boredom.
  • … by surprising.
  • Photos should stimulate thinking and be interesting/intriguing.
  • Avoid clichés.
  • Like established photographers, don’t fall into the trap of “found approval” (sticking with the style you became known for, and not developing).
  • Develop constantly. Constantly develop a new vocabulary.
  • Make progress, don’t get stuck.
  • Any photographic technique is allowed as long as it helps you. Not cropping may have been fine for Cartier-Bresson, but don’t let that stop you from nicely cropping your photos yourself.
  • Instead, crop your photos in different ways as an exercise in improving your images.
  • It is the end result that matters, not how you got there.
  • There are two levels of viewing: at the time of taking the picture, and later while editing the images.
  • Always experiment.