What I Want from Photographs (and Photobooks)
In which I talk about what got me interested in photography in the first place
I just realized that over the course of the past weeks, while we have been collectively hunkered down because of the pandemic raging in our midst, most of the misgivings I have with the world of photography (or photoland as I tend to call it) have been greatly amplified: the macho cult, the tone deafness, they privilege. They don’t necessarily come together all the time, but sometimes they do.
I don’t mean to paint with too broad a brush. There are many photolandians I appreciate or even am friends with because they do not display any of those things.
The toxic combination of macho cult, tone deafness, and privilege came together in one case on 12 June 2020:
Before I even clicked on the link, I already knew the photographer in question. But I still wasn’t prepared for what I saw. For me, Bruce Gilden’s photographs have always reeked of the sheer disdain he must have for his subjects. But with these particular pictures, he really has hit a new low. To make these kinds of pictures during a pandemic… Shoving his camera with the flash into the faces of shoppers at a Walmart — and sort of asking permission (but not really)… That’s just insane.
When I thought about why these particular pictures bothered me so much, it was that combination of macho cult, tone deafness, and privilege I spoke of. With a proper trigger warning, the photographs make a perfect case study for an “ethics of photography” class.
Even before I saw those pictures, I had been thinking that I needed to focus on why I had felt attracted to photography in the first place. I don’t want to allow myself to remain in a space that has been set for me — the space of what’s wrong. Instead, I want to explore the space of what’s right because it is from there that I can hope to make next steps (whether in terms of writing or photographing).
I came to photography very late, and just after I had begun to dive into it, I moved to the US. I have no actual education in photography (or writing). Like everybody else, I had grown up being surrounded by pictures and developing an expectation of those pictures. Those expectations kept me away from photography for a long time.
But then I bought a camera (a Lomo LC-A) simply because a band I liked (Mouse on Mars) had named a remix of one of their songs after it (yes, my beginnings are that mundane and pedestrian). I couldn’t find the remix online, so here’s the original song:
Regardless, the pictures that I took with the camera looked very different than what I thought they would look like. I was intrigued simply because there was a way to make pictures that were different than what I had seen with my own eyes, and I liked them.
(I don’t like them any longer, and they don’t need to be seen.)
Obviously, if you go to art school, you learn all that on day one of Photo 101 — if you don’t know it already. But I didn’t have that background. Nobody had told me what to look at, and at the time I didn’t know anyone who could tell me. So I started looking around on my own.
That’s why I don’t have the appreciation for, let’s say, Robert Frank or Walker Evans that people who went to art school have: these photographers were (and are) a lot less interesting to me than many other artists. Nobody told me to look at The Americans or American Photographs as these masterpieces that had to be studied. So I looked at them a lot later, and they never became my personal landmark books.
The first photobook I ever bought was this one (sorry, this is an iPhone picture), a series of portraits by Steve Pyke. This is the 1993 paperback, and I found it at the wonderful St. Mark’s Boookshop a decade and a half before it closed. I used to go there a lot when I was in New York, because I love book shops, but also because it always had such a nice selection of photobooks. Plus, they had bargains. This was one: $9.98 (oddly, I never took off the original price sticker — I usually always do that).
Before I looked at this book, I had never thought about portraits all that much. What was there to think about anyway? A portrait is a picture of a person, isn’t it? But then I saw these pictures, and they made me realize that a portrait can do all kinds of things.
To begin with, many of the pictures have a very shallow depth of field. I didn’t know at the time that you could do that with a portrait. I just had never thought about that. And with your choices, you could also decide not to flatter your subject. I don’t mean the Gilden thing, of course.
It’s very obvious from Pyke’s pictures that his subjects agreed to pose for him. They’re also all professors, and some of them are very famous. In these pictures, you can tell that they’re comfortable being who they are. And if as philosophers, they think about some topic from all angles, really diving down into it, then taking that approach to photographing them felt appropriate to me.
So the pictures are as much about the photographer as they are about the philosophers, and they made me interested in all the people whom I didn’t know (the majority of them).
If this is something photography can do, I thought, then that’s interesting to me. That’s why I want to make photographs and look at photographs: I want to be made interested in something, possibly something I hadn’t considered before. (Obviously, I don’t remember my exact thoughts at the time. But you might as well take my word for it that whatever I was thinking at the time boiled down to what I just wrote.)
The other day, I checked the mail, and I found a relatively small padded envelope. I didn’t remember ordering something, so that was strange. I opened the envelope to find a book inside. I’m no stranger to getting books in the mail. But they mostly come in larger envelopes or in boxes. And they mostly tend to be larger than this particular book, Snake Legs by Max Zerrahn (see iPhone picture above, pen* used for scale).
This is not the time and place to talk about the book itself (there will be a review on CPhMag.com at some stage). But there is something that has been on my mind for a long time now. When I still used to travel, I often thought about bringing a photobook to look at. But I almost never ended up picking one, because they were all too big, too unwieldy.
I don’t know where or when this started, but why are photobooks almost always so big (and, by extension, so expensive)? I can think of one reason why they have a certain size, but that reason ties them more to being containers for pictures — instead of entities on their own.
Snake Legs, in contrast, is roughly the size of a paperback. I don’t know what the future of traveling will hold, but I could imagine putting it into my bag, to look at it during a long flight.
In fact, on almost every trip I not only bring my Kindle, I also bring a few actual books. I obviously could get these books in ebook form. But bringing the books is more than bringing their content. It brings me enjoyment and some comfort to hold them and to leaf through them — an enjoyment and comfort that is completely absent from holding the Kindle device.
There is a sense of intimacy to books of a certain size. It’s almost as if they’re so small that I need to handle them with care. Most books obviously aren’t that small, but maybe you understand what I’m trying to get at here.
When I thought about what my own book should look and feel like as an object, those kinds of considerations were at the center of my thinking. I didn’t want to make a book that screamed “this is art”. I didn’t want to make a book that would be too expensive, too precious. The work is very dear, very precious to me — but the translation into a different kind of preciousness felt wrong to me. I’ll see how this will pan out later this year…
* I should note that I have a bit of an addiction: I love having good stationary, especially pens. I’m very picky, and I find problems with pretty much any pen. Not this one. It has a nice weight, it’s extremely well made, and it feels so good writing with it. Of course, it’s Japanese (Germany also produces good pens, but the Japanese are really the best): it’s the Ohto Horizon EU Ballpoint Pen. Buy yourself one, and you will realize how much you actually missed having this pen.
And this concludes this installment of my Mailing List. As always thank you for reading!
— Jörg
I’m a freelance writer, photographer, and educator currently living and working in the US.
This Mailing List is my attempt to bring back some of the aspects that made early blogging so great -- community engagement and a more relaxed and maybe less polished approach to writing and thinking about photography. You can find the bulk of my main writing on CPhMag.com.
If you like what you read and would like to support my work, you can. Large parts of my work are fueled by black and green tea, and I very much appreciate your support!
You can also support me by liking this email, by sharing it with others, and/or by emailing me back to tell me what you think. I'd love to hear from you!