Photography is the art of painting with light. But what is the role of its practitioner? Is a photographer a story teller or a documenter? Is a photograph a slice of life detached from time or is it a moment within the continuum? These questions can suck us into the vortex of the mystery named visual language. Any language comes from our desire to transcend our isolation & communicate. The digital revolution has given every Tom Dick & our very own Hari the economic empowerment of expression in this somewhat enigmatic & esoteric language. But sadly, giving tools of the trade without the quintessential tips has its downside. Today, most armature photographers are happy firing shot after shot, relying not on vision or visualization, but merely on the power, speed & quantity of photographs captured to produce a chancy image. ‘A photograph is usually looked at, seldom looked into’ said Ansel Adams. Browsing through the online galleries of many shutterbugs, one can realize the truth of his remark. We come across bulk photo images of many dynamic subjects, that doesn’t seem to go anywhere. Images that may be labeled as photo-static.
Dorothea Lange said, ‘Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.’ Contrary to the relative ambivalence of still photography, time doesn’t stand still. So an image registers on us differently if it is stiff as opposed to something that is in preparation to leap off. It is almost the difference between seeing a prone body in the state of rigor-mortis or in a state of deep sleep. Seldom would we confuse a sleeping person for a dead one. This is easily the difference between a dead & live shot. That is the missing element a photographer try to capture. Something that Gjon Mili calls ‘a brief collusion between foresight & chance.’
Dorothea Lange said, ‘Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.’ Contrary to the relative ambivalence of still photography, time doesn’t stand still. So an image registers on us differently if it is stiff as opposed to something that is in preparation to leap off. It is almost the difference between seeing a prone body in the state of rigor-mortis or in a state of deep sleep. Seldom would we confuse a sleeping person for a dead one. This is easily the difference between a dead & live shot. That is the missing element a photographer try to capture. Something that Gjon Mili calls ‘a brief collusion between foresight & chance.’
[Photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson "Detrás de la estacion Saint-Lazare", Paris ( 1932) ]
1 comment:
you can see original print in cal , come may .. Henri cartier Bresson 's traveling exhibition has calcutta on the cards
also june / july , wife martine frank will be showing in Calcutta
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