I was directed to this book by my tutor as an introduction to the course.
It is a series of essays by the American photographer and writer Robert Adams published between 1981 and 1994. The cover notes say
“His subjects vary, but again he questions accepted prejudice, this time not only the view that art is trivial but that artists are separate. He demonstrates that many understand themselves to be bound to the world by complex and important obligations.”
I read the book from cover to cover as I would a novel. I believe I have learned a number of things from it.
What I did not learn was very much about the style and methods of the photographers discussed. However, the writing introduced a number of photographers with whose work I am not familiar. The book is sparsely illustrated with examples of their work, so I think I must look elsewhere to get a better understanding of their styles.
The writings did however examine the context in which the photographers were working. Adams attempted to describe their motivations and drives, although this is largely by inference as the photographers themselves do not in general give any account of this. I found the chapter “Writing” expressed this well.
“Photographers are like other artists too n being reticent because they are afraid that self-analysis will get in the way of making more art….
The main reason that artists don’t willingly describe or explain what they produce is, however, that the minute they do so they’ve admitted failure. Words are proof that the vision they had is not, in the opinion of some at least, fully there in the picture.”
For this reason, I think that what the writing is telling me about is Robert Adams’s own motivations and reasons for his photography. As he himself acknowledges:
“Probably the best way to know what photographers think about their work, beyond consulting the internal evidence in that work, is to read or listen to what they say about pictures made by colleagues…”
There are many other points that I gained from reading this book. One of the challenges facing me is to understand the framing techniques used by Paul Strand in his work “Time in New England”. Adams describes “Church, Vermont 1944” as “among the greatest architectural pictures ever made”. The edge of a symmetrical building is cut off the image, and in other images he off-centres or includes large areas of apparently irrelevant framing.
I think I must re-read this section and find more of the images from this series. It is helping me to begin to understand the issues addresses in Exercise 1.4 Frame.
Andrew Procter 