I didn’t want to start my blog in a grumbling and grousing manner like “These days every fool can take a camera, go out and, taking some pretty banal shots, call oneself “a photographer”…
Nor I was going to begin in some condescending tone like: “For you to know, the word ‘photography’ is derived from the Greek words ‘photos’ (‘light’) and ‘graphein’ (‘to draw’), and was first used by the scientist Sir John F.W.Hershel in 1839...”
No, for the photography has been tamed, modernized and popularized in a flash of the 20th century, I’d be more careful with words, to pay my admiration and transports to it.
So, what does the photography mean personally for me? I decided to group three kinds of a photo application in our modern world. Why do we take pictures?
- For memory: we get born, go to school, graduate, get married, give birth, travel, die… - and every family wants to leave at least some portrayals of its members to teach their heirs what kind of mistakes they are going to do in their future as wellJ
- For job: the advertising and the promotion company in general as well as the information exchange – all those kinds of activities need to be confirmed by images, with what photography actually deals - deep message inside or not, we can observe it working everywhere.
- For art: my favourite in this list, for it being a summit of the photography application, especially as nowadays, when the photo-industry has been thrown open to everyone with the light-speed, it simultaneously has been losing its exclusiveness and uniqueness as an art.
Thus, for those, whose job is connected with art and inspired by memories, it’s a great luck to share their original view on life with the whole world, as Annie Leibovitz and James Natchway succeed to do.
Annie Leibovitz: “I’m photographing my time”
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| borrowed from www.etoday.ru |
(a fascinating interview - http://www.literalmagazine.com/pdf/L15_annie_leibovitz.pdf)
She’s a legendary figure in the photography history, for sure. The main thing in her job is that it’s her life – she lives, breathes, experiences life with her models on the same wave. And she’s a great woman, who is able to bring three little children up and have as much work as nobody seems ever be able to handle. And as a highly tactful and wise woman, she can listen keenly, please and satisfy, pay attention to everyone, who needs her, and at the same time give as much freedom and private space to her models as they need and expect. And which is of the greatest importance in any work - she is able to admit her mistakes and bring to perfection her every work.
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| borrowed from www.liveinternet.ru |
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| borrowed from www.etoday.ru |
Her love to the photography was inspired by constant moving around the U.S. (because her father used to be a lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force) and further – around the world, so that the first pictures she took were in the Philippines during the Vietnam War. The photography has always been family-based for her, but then the circles of acquaintances start broadening, as she becomes interested in various artistic endeavors, writing and playing music… And then it goes work in “The Rolling Stones” magazine, Rolling Stones group concert-tour of the Americas ’75, last and sound portraiture of John Lennon and Yoko Ono before he was killed 5 hours later, one of the first scandalous pictures of nude and pregnant Demi Moore, world-famous Afro-American star Whoopi Goldberg, lying in a bathtub full of milk, Leonardo DiCaprio with a swan, with its delicate neck twinning round DiCaprio’s, then she cooperates with “Vanity Fair”, realizes projects with Queen Elizabeth II, Walt Disney Company and takes millions of shots, which are admired as world-greatest works nowadays, and no doubts – best examples of studio- and portraiture photographs for us, green young photographers…
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| borrowed from www.wordpress.com |
General Tips, taken from Annie’s works:
· To be brave in ideas and way of looking inside people – why not trying the first craziest thing, having come to your head? It’s usually the way all masterpieces are done. From the same raw of “Eureka!”, light-bulbs and sudden dawning upon…
· To play with light, colour and texture (of bodies, wrinkles, sheets, dresses, deserts…) – to draw parallels in-between a person and the atmosphere, the surroundings, to underline one’s personality with a plot behind, but so that not to lose a model in the decorations…
· To be deeply interested and enthusiastic in people’s lives, so that to be able to understand better their views, life-styles, and correspondingly their personality as well.
Some people divide life into two colours – black and white, but I’d prefer to state that there are two other sides – colourful and b&w. So, if Annie Leibovitz is a consummate master of portraying people on the picks of their happiness, prosperity, health, sexuality and beauty, then we should have (and we do) a completely opposite genius, depicting a dark side of our life too - sufferings, grieves, starvation, poverty and death.
James Natchway:
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| borrowed from www.blogspot.com |
“The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated”
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| borrowed from www.jamesnachtwey.com/ |
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| borrowed from www.jamesnachtwey.com/ |
He’s a War-Photographer, a confident and methodical professional outside, but a sufferer and a lonely way-farer inside. He has a goal in his work – to alarm and awake people all over the world, showing them what a horror happens just out of their countries’ boarders, on the same Earth, done by the same, as we are, people. Inspired by powerful images from the Vietnam War and the American Civil Rights movement, while studying Art History and Political Sciences in college, he decided to dedicate his own life to all existing wars – for them to stop existing anymore. Since the 1980-s he started as a magazine’s reporter in hot spots - in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, South Africa, Russia, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Romania, Brazil and the United States.
His photographs speak for themselves, so I need to comment them in details, but there are some tips we should borrow from his art:
· Be tactful and attentive towards all people around, especially when they’re grieving
· Black and white works better to strengthen one’s message
· Use lights, shadows, darkness and contrast to make your shots deeper
· Different formats of pictures – foreground, portraiture, background – harmony and balance, follow classical composition rules
· Be courageous enough to break rules of composition and lightening
· Find your aim and style
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| borrowed from www.jamesnachtwey.com/ |
What is the photography for me personally?
I’ve found a couple of answers on one of our colleagues’ blog: “I love those pictures, in which an author puts one thing, a critique would say another, but the audience would see something different at all…”.
“A complicated in its design a photograph should be simple in terms of meaning, but a simple, without many details, one must be deep and have lots of layers” (http://www.liveinternet.ru/community/bw_world/post80099856/ - my translation from Russian).
I completely agree with those opinions, because to my mind a photograph should have some meaning in it, ideally – some layers. A photograph also is one of the possible ways to express oneself. That’s why for me the main issue here is a personal, unique style of a photographer. Nevertheless, the same way as I really appreciate Takeshi Kitano’s cinematographically different films, I’d really love to see pictures of one author made in different manners.
In stead of good-byeing…
Mephistopheles
…And daren’t stay a moment longer!
Goethe “Faust”
(http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/FaustIScenesVIItoXV.htm)
The 21st century is characterised as the fast-pace time: fast food, fast love, fast art… Which may be good for the civilization, but for me – it’s definitely an unfortunate thing. The photograph here kind of saves us – on the one hand it gives us an illusion of living on a level higher than just everyday routine, for we express ourselves and make people around us think, on the other hand – it answers our fast-rhythm life, because few of us has time, patience and skills enough to paint or draw…
But I would like to add that the photograph is also a good “slower” for us nowadays, as it give us a valuable opportunity to stop our race and look around right now and here – to weight, appreciate, judge, conclude and may be a little bit, at least with our own lives – to correct the present for it not to have wars, poverty and misery. Because life is not about yesterday or tomorrow – it’s all about now. The same as the photography art.
This is a really interesting post - it goes beyond summarizing these two photographers by offering fascinating insight and observations. I would like to ask you: where does photography within visual anthropology fit in? Memory, job and/or art?
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for your praise. I'll try to keep writing my blog putting the best of my efforts.
ReplyDeleteAs for the photography in visual anthropology - I'd say that it depends on a person and his/her own individual goals of every shot. For the first time it's probably done just for the memorization of some unusual (in comparison with our used culture)event. Then we'll get obsessed with taking pictures of everything, what could explain us the culture or new circumstances we are in, and then with time - the most hard-working and successful of us make it their job. Further, after some time, our works, created with love and sweat, might be considered as works of art. However for that last stage, people have to wait way too much, so sometimes we risk to be awarded posthumously perhaps - but anyways it's worth it, right?:)