And then it all changed...
In which I grapple with today's big questions (mostly unsuccessfully)
Well, this all took quite the turn, didn’t it? I had started to write this email, and then the virus really hit the US. It’s not even that I’m surprised it happened — anyone following international news would have easily predicted it. What caught me by surprise, however, is how quickly everything changed, and by “everything” I am referring to people’s mindset (mine included).
The original impetus for these emails suddenly got so quickly and vastly expanded. I had started to write them to reach out to readers in this somewhat direct fashion. But with more and more people now being confined to their homes, doing something for people, reaching out to them directly — in whatever way — has taken on a completely new meaning for me.
This might sound trite, but over the course of the roughly past two weeks, my thinking has been directed very forcefully towards doing something for people, doing something that I know how to do and share it — hoping that it might bring people joy.
For too long, I had been disillusioned about the hellscape that large parts of the internet have become. But now, there’s something else opening up, with people sharing something other than anger, outrage, snark…
Honestly, I want to be part of that, because it feels very important to me.
One of the things I started doing was talking about photobooks live on Instagram (this is my account). I can’t say I like the platform very much — it’s owned by Facebook, one of the most evil corporations on the planet. And the format itself is not very attractive. But talking about books live, with people watching and responding, connects me back to when I would talk about photobooks years ago, to upload my presentations to YouTube.
I’m still in the early stages, but I started working on creating recordings of the live presentations. To be honest, there is a way to do this through Instagram. But so far I have not paid enough attention to how this needs to be done (there’s just too much to deal with these days), plus I own a rather old iPhone that doesn’t have enough memory to store big files.
Regardless, I recorded my second talk, and most of the discussion of the first book (Michael Schmidt’s 89/90) is now on YouTube:
(The reason why there’s a minute or so missing is that the camera I’m using to record has a time limit for videos. Also note the camera shifting as I hit my one of my flimsy tripods by chance. It’s all a very low-budget operation.)
There will be more photobook presentations. The plan is to do them every three or four days — at least as long as we’re all confined to our homes. Follow me on Instagram to see them (or check YouTube).
These pictures here don’t mean anything. They’re all from walks in the neighbourhood. I’m still working on expanding what I can do with my camera, and every once in a while I think I succeed (not that I would want to imply that for any of these pictures).
I had the picture above in mind before setting out for one walk. I know the area, it’s just down the road from where I live, off the main street. Moments after I had taken the picture I realized what had drawn me to it, so I fixed it (sorry, Andrew Wyeth):
(this is a bit older but I’m keeping it here)
The other day, I briefly considered writing an article about the number 1 cliché talking point in large parts of photoland these days, namely that social media are ruining photography because people just scroll through quickly (if you’re a certain age, you’ll remember that before that, the role of the scapegoat was played by digital photography). I cannot express in words how tired I am of seeing this — frankly — bullshit “argument” being made by people who you’d imagine should know a lot better. I ultimately decided against writing the article because I didn’t want to spend more time than necessary trying to refute it. The idea itself is irrefutable — it’s more a question of faith than anything else. After all, how exactly would one go about proving its veracity?
The only thing that’s really interesting about seeing this nonsense being repeated everywhere is that it points at a few things. To begin with, it points at a rather unbecoming elitism that pervades photoland, where those outside — the vast unwashed masses — simply don’t get “it.” In my own experience, pretty much the inverse could be said more often than not, but I don’t want to go there.
The second, rather interesting aspect that lies hidden behind the talking point is the idea that somehow, there is only one proper way to look at photographs. You need to sit down with them (or maybe stand in front of them) and study them for a long time. You cannot, in other words, look at them briefly or — the horror! the horror! — have them scroll by on your phone.
I’d say that first, most photographs aren’t worth spending much time with, and that includes most of the pictures made by those using said talking point. Furthermore, I don’t understand the idea of decreeing how anyone has to engage with photographs at all. For example, when I go to a museum or gallery I typically walk through rather briskly. When I look at a photobook, I do the same. If anything, it’s repeated viewing of certain photographs that has me appreciate them. Your way of engaging with photography might be different, but should we impose our own ways onto each other?
I don’t remember the exact quote but Ludwig Wittgenstein said something along the lines of museums being pointless, and he’d rather go in and look at only one painting and then leave instead of looking at the whole space. Let’s assume I remember the gist of the quote (if someone knows it, please let me know). If what I remember is correct, then Ludwig Wittgenstein would probably be considered a rube by the very same elitists who place demands on how people engage with pieces of art.
Honestly, I personally would rather have large numbers of people engage with photography by scrolling through them on their phones than, for example, the situation I grew up in where there was a huge disconnect between photography and most people. Then, photography was this strange artifice that you had very limited access to. Now, you do have access. And it’s nobody’s task to decree how photography should get accessed. Everybody ought to be able to do it on their own terms, however much — or little — those terms are influenced by the underlying medium in question.
(ditto)
After I had published my piece about Glass Strenči, Gregers Heering sent me an email that included a series of questions that I found it hard to find an answer for (quoted with his permission):
Why is contemporary photography, including my own, so often lacking that lightness and a sense of humor it needs to actually show something so deeply human? When and why did it all get so serious, over-intellectual, often relieving the work of that very human connection it so desperately needs in order to resonate with an audience?
There’s the “including my own.” When I first read this, I re-read this in case my brain had added it, but no. “Including my own.” I know many photographers who would claim that their work has a lightness and sense of humour that, in reality, is entirely absent. And to be honest, I don’t know that many photographers who would admit, however happily, that these qualities are absent in their work.
Thinking out loud in his email (so to speak), Gregers then described something very much related. To abbreviate and slightly paraphrase his argument, he wrote that while we tend to mellow with age, for most photographers, the inverse appears to be the case. Where their earlier work “oozes a certain sense of play and freedom […] too many of them seem to grow only more serious (read self-aware), especially after getting recognition.”
This is all very strange, isn’t it? I find myself agreeing with Gregers — in my review and in other pieces I have mentioned how off-putting the lack of a sense of humour in photoland is for me. There’s a German phrase (link in German) to describe humourless people (this might surprise non-Germans who mostly are under the impressions that Germans have no sense of humour): these people “gehen zum Lachen in den Keller.” The literal translation would be that humourless people go down to the basement to laugh — so nobody can see them doing so, or maybe because they’re embarrassed about being seen laughing.
Of course, there’s a lot more to the “sense of play and freedom” Gregers spoke of than merely humour. I don’t think it’s a very problematic statement to say that most contemporary photography completely lacks a lightness of touch. Why is that?
Honestly, I don’t know.
I went to Japan two times (in 2018 and 2019). I didn’t know what to expect — to be honest, the first time I was petrified. But I quickly ended up really liking the place while, at the same time, detesting it. Just briefly, Japan is mostly not a very attractive country (at least as far as the cities are concerned: the built environment is either way too quaint — the old houses — or way too ugly — the new ones). And Japanese people make it really hard to get access. I mean: really hard.
Actually, that’s not true, because the moment you look like you’re lost anywhere in Tokyo, someone will walk up to you and ask you in English whether you need help (if you attempt to talk to people, nobody ever speaks any English). Things probably are different in the countryside. But even in Tokyo, you will find people who don’t speak all that much (if any) English, and who will still go out of their way to create a deeply meaningful relationship with you, however briefly.
Regardless, I had always been fascinated by people wearing masks in public. Maybe a quarter to a third of people would wear them in Tokyo — that was before the virus. I always wondered why. With a little sleuthing online I found that there actually were many reasons, illnesses being just one of the reasons. One of the other major reasons I read about was that the mask would simply grant you a modicum of privacy, given other people would not be able to read your facial expression (or most of it anyway).
I ended up buying a pack of masks the first time I went and the second time (last year), I bought more. Mostly, they’d be impulse buys while shopping for sandwiches, drinks, and other little things at those innumerable convenience stores at night. Hey, these masks look cool, let’s buy them.
Before flying back, I thought that the masks might actually serve me well on the flight. To begin with, there’s be people coughing and sneezing etc., plus there’d be that extra privacy. Also, I wondered what it would actually feel like to wear a mask for hours. Well, there was only one way to find out.
So I bought my masks — picked the black ones, because it was all fun and games, and I did wear one on the flight back. I couldn’t have easily done this on any flight, but flying ANA with a lot of Japanese people made it easy (btw, if you ever want to know how truly awful US airlines are fly ANA just once). Even if they all think that you’re being weird (which they do most of the time anyway), Japanese culture makes it much too rude to tell you (also, I did see Westerners in Tokyo wearing masks). So nobody batted an eye.
I did, though. To begin with, I really am not a big fan of things touching my face. The moment my facial hair gets too long, it drives me crazy, and I have to trim it. So there I was, putting on my mask and realizing 10 seconds later that I wasn’t too fond of it. I could have just taken it off, but silly me was thinking that for sure all those people around me were perfectly aware of my weakness and would then be judging me even more for 12 hours (or however long the flight was). So I kept it on, trying to act cool.
What’s more, I had not realized that once you wear a mask, your glasses fog up. I immediately had to solve that problem, making me feel so incredibly uncool. All those Japanese people on the subway with their glasses never seemed to have this problem. How come I was the only person in the world with glasses fogging up? In fact, you might have been able to measure my breathing just by looking at the fog on my glasses. So this was all very awkward, and it told me a lot about people’s ability to ignore something truly annoying.
Fast forward a few months, and here we are in the time of the virus. Masks are sold out in stores. But — and for once — my ability to buy stupid shit that I don’t need is catching up with me in a good way. I have a fairly decent number of facial masks right in my house (I don’t have that many masks — but more than that one package that a normal tourist might have bought for the giggles). I’m not going to enjoy wearing them — that I know already, but at least I won’t have to worry about anything this time.
Honestly, though, I’d rather worry about what I worried about on that ANA flight than think about how somehow, these masks bought for the giggles really aren’t fun and games any longer.
A final thought: I don’t know what’s going to happen with this pandemic. At the time of this writing it’s very much possible that many thousands of people are going to die simply because countries’ leaders are more concerned about their brittle egos than about the greater good.
But this is a good reminder that whatever might happen on a larger scale is mostly out of our control. What we can control is how we behave towards one another: those close to us (family and friends) and those in our community. Photoland would love to think about itself as a community, but who are we trying to kid? When things were going well, it mostly was a dog-eat-dog group of people, many of whom were only interested in their own career while — at best — playing lip service to the larger good of their own community.
Maybe I’m naive, but I’m sensing a sea change. Or maybe it’s that I’m finding all the people now who feel my way and who are as sick and tired of the selfish, heartless hustlers as I am. I can’t express in words how wonderful it is to make these connections.
Lastly, whatever you might be thinking about the photo community and your own work, I want to implore you to do two things: Take good care of those close to you, and be very generous with others! We all desperately need it.
Thank you for reading!
— Jörg