Photographer's Eye (Part 3)

Time -  “The decisive moment, but the phrase has been misunderstood; the thing that happens at the

decisive moment is not a dramatic climax but a visual one. The result is not a story but a picture”. (https://moodle.umwestern.edu/pluginfile.php/622848/mod_resource/content/2/photographers-eye.pdf) 

Harold Edgerton, Moving Skip Rope, 1952. Born in Nebraska in 1903. Became a professor in 1034 for electrical engineering at MIT.

He used his development of the electric stroboscope to capture the invisible and make it visible. (https://mitmuseum.mit.edu/exhibition/flashes-inspiration-work-harold-edgerton) 

I use this photo as an example of time, for you can see that the photo as layered with other photos

of this woman jump roping.

This photo by Jeff Wall, is called A Sudden Gust of Wind [After Hokusai] 1993. This image is a

recreation of Hokusai’s A High Wind in Yeijiri. The photo took five months to produce.

Here is another example. While the photo itself may have been staged over the course of five

months, it dos an amazing job o f capturing a freeze frame moment of a gust of wind.

Frame - “The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces a concentration

on the picture edge - the line that separates in form out - and on the shapes that are created by it.”

This photo comes from the book STATES: Photography by Christopher Griffith. His bio from his

website is literally, “BORN TORONTO. ENGLISH FATHER, CANADIAN MOTHER. BOSTON YOUTH. SOX FAN. QUIET KID. LATE BLOOMER. PUNK ROCK. GOT LOUDER. >MONTREAL.

MCGILL UNIVERSITY. B.SC BIOLOGY. LIVE WITH ARTISTS. FIRST CAMERA. >LONDON.

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE. PH.D GENETICS. LEAVE EARLY. >PARIS. PHOTOGRAPHY IN

EARNEST. FASHION. SHORT LIVED. >MANHATTAN. TRANS AMERICA. RV. TWICE. FIRST

BOOK. STATES. AWARDS. SHOOT SOME CAMPAIGNS. DISCOVER STILL LIFE. SECOND

BOOK. FALL. ON TV. MOM PROUD. >WILLIAMSBURG. MEET LADY. AUSTRALIAN. FUNNY

ACCENT. OPEN STUDIO. PURCHASE FARM. RENOVATE. THIRD BOOK. BLOWN.  MANY

AWARDS. HAVE CHILD.  TREADMILL. MOVE A LOT. 7 TIMES, 8 YEARS. HIT BRAKES.

>UPSTATE. CLOSE STUDIO. BREATHE. GET CHICKENS, THEN SHEEP. CREATE IN

MEMORIAM. VENICE BIENNALE. IT’S CONTENTIOUS. BOTTLE CAPS DEEP DIVE. POP

LIFE. IT’S QUIRKY. LADY OPENS STORE. THE QUIET BOTANIST. IT’S STUNNING. I HELP.

COVID. PROJECTS. PADDOCKS, VEGGIE GARDEN, GLAMPING CAMPSITE.

START PAINTING. CANVASES, NOT HOUSES. 

EMBRACING JOMO. GROWING FLOWERS.” (https://www.christophergriffith.com/about).

I use this photo for frame, because the buses lead your eye to the corner of the page. You can't

help but end up in that corner. The pure white of the sky also helps to bring contrast, and make

you look at the buses.

Celtic Sea, St. Agnes by Hiroshi Sugimoto. 1994. From the ongoing series of seascapes, this is

just one of many images. According to the book's excerpt, “The images border on abstraction,

epresenting a minimalist limit of composition in the photography of nature” (FORGOT TO TAKE

PICTURE OF BOOK COVER). Some of the images are made during the night with the light

source coming from the moon, and the rest are on cloudy days.

I love the contrast of this photo. You keep bouncing between the water ad the sky, but then you

try tot take all the detail of the water. I used this for frame because the water is the main focus.

Vantage Point - “and yet it is photography that has taught us to see from the unexpected vantage point, and has shown us pictures that give the sense of the scene, while withholding its narrative meaning.”

This is titled below by Cindy Bernard. It is from the Ask the Dust: Dirty Harry [1971/1990] series. This specific photo

is from 1990. This series was to capture sites of popular movies. Tis photo comes from the book

Art and Photography by David Company.

This photo comes form (). The art director was Barry Shepard, designers: Barry Shepard/ Steve

Ditko/ Karin Burklein Arnold/ Douglas Reeder. Photographers were Rick Rusing/Rick Gayle.

The Thing Itself - “The subject and the picture were not the same thing, although they would

afterwards seem so. It was the photographer’;s problem to see not simply the reality before

him but the still invisible picture, and to make his choices in terms of the letter.”

Bernie Boston, Flower Power, 1967. Born  in Washington in 1933. He was the photographer for his highschool paper and

yearbook. He won many awards from  “White House News Photographers Association, the

National Press Photographers Association, Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild and

Ohio Press Photographers Association” (https://www.whnpa.org/main/remembering-bernie-boston/

). He also won a Pulitzer Prize for his photo of Coretta Scott King.

This is a photo by Clem Albers.1942. A young evacuee of Japanese ancestry waits with the

family baggage before leaving by bus for an assembly center, (National Archives).  According to

NPS, “Clem Albers photographed Manzanar for the War Relocation Authority. He also made

photographs of the WRA camps at Poston in Arizona, Tule Lake in northern California, and

of the evacuation and assembly process. Before and after the war he worked for the San

Francisco Chronicle and became their Chief Photographer” (https://www.nps.gov/manz/learn/photosmultimedia/clem-albers-gallery.htm). 

Detail - “ The photographer could not assemble these clues into a coherent narrative, he could only isolate the fragments, document it, and by so doing claim for it some specific significance, a meaning which went beyond simple description.” 

Designer: Mike Pererson, Photographer: Al Pitzner, Client: Peterson Imports Inc.

Art Director: Walter Bohatsch, Designer: Walter Bohatsch/ Clemens Schedler, Client: Sartori &

Ruchswurm.