Seeing the image… beyond the cliché
As I was walking along the main shopping/pedestrian area in Frankfurt today, I noticed a Japanese tourist who intently looked at a bike that was chained to one of the trees there. He then raised a very nice old Leica M4 or M3 rangefinder camera to his eyes and began to photograph the bike chained to the tree. He took a few steps back and forward and I could sense that he was carefully framing an image and was looking for the best composition. Judging from the camera, he was not merely a snapper – an analogue rangefinder camera is ‘serious’ stuff after all (probably he was developing his own film as well).
I tried to look at the bike from his vantage point and tried to imagine what he would see through his camera – but I just did not get it. I could not see an interesting image, no matter how I attempted to see what he was seeing. Not in black and white and not in colour, not focusing in on detail and not looking at the whole ensemble.
What was I missing? Did I just not see it? Have I become blind to my own and very familiar environment? Was he merely photographing the bike (and hence finding it interesting to photograph) because it looked so different from a street scene in Tokyo? Or was he able to see something that I was missing because he had a ‘foreign’ eye? Or was he merely photographing a cliché that might merit an entry in a quirky Japanese photo album about his trip to Europe but had no meaning beyond that?
And yet in a few days’ time I would wander around the Independence Square in Kiev for the first time this summer and would be trying to catch scenes that capture the ‘spirit’ of the place. I would try to find images that had meaning beyond the merely obvious. Images that expressed something about the people frequenting the place and the political and sociological situation that currently prevails in the Ukraine.
Would I fall into the same trap and photograph scenes, signs, faces that are just quirky or look particular to a ‘foreign’ eye but had not much meaning beyond that? Images that are so familiar to the people there that they are in fact not special but something you would expect to see, i.e. be plain obvious?
And if I did manage to see any such ‘particular’ scenes, faces or artefacts, how long would it be before it became all too familiar for me? For how long would my ‘unused’ eye last to see these particular images before I became blind to any interesting scenes?
Ex-Magnum photographer Raymond Depardon has just published a book called ‘Villes/Cities/Städte’ where he visited twelve different cities (Shanghai, Cairo, Rio, New York, Addis Ababa, Berlin, among others) and took pictures in each of the cities over the course of just two to three weeks. He said that he spent only a short time in each city, in order to document his first impressions in unspoiled form… i.e. to keep his ‘hungry foreign’ eye and perspective. In my opinion, some of the images work but others don’t, especially in the cities that I know a bit (e.g. Berlin) the images look pretty superficial to me… more those of a tourist in transit than what a well researched documentary would attempt to do… but maybe that was just his point.
I tried to look at the bike from his vantage point and tried to imagine what he would see through his camera – but I just did not get it. I could not see an interesting image, no matter how I attempted to see what he was seeing. Not in black and white and not in colour, not focusing in on detail and not looking at the whole ensemble.
What was I missing? Did I just not see it? Have I become blind to my own and very familiar environment? Was he merely photographing the bike (and hence finding it interesting to photograph) because it looked so different from a street scene in Tokyo? Or was he able to see something that I was missing because he had a ‘foreign’ eye? Or was he merely photographing a cliché that might merit an entry in a quirky Japanese photo album about his trip to Europe but had no meaning beyond that?
And yet in a few days’ time I would wander around the Independence Square in Kiev for the first time this summer and would be trying to catch scenes that capture the ‘spirit’ of the place. I would try to find images that had meaning beyond the merely obvious. Images that expressed something about the people frequenting the place and the political and sociological situation that currently prevails in the Ukraine.
Would I fall into the same trap and photograph scenes, signs, faces that are just quirky or look particular to a ‘foreign’ eye but had not much meaning beyond that? Images that are so familiar to the people there that they are in fact not special but something you would expect to see, i.e. be plain obvious?
And if I did manage to see any such ‘particular’ scenes, faces or artefacts, how long would it be before it became all too familiar for me? For how long would my ‘unused’ eye last to see these particular images before I became blind to any interesting scenes?
Ex-Magnum photographer Raymond Depardon has just published a book called ‘Villes/Cities/Städte’ where he visited twelve different cities (Shanghai, Cairo, Rio, New York, Addis Ababa, Berlin, among others) and took pictures in each of the cities over the course of just two to three weeks. He said that he spent only a short time in each city, in order to document his first impressions in unspoiled form… i.e. to keep his ‘hungry foreign’ eye and perspective. In my opinion, some of the images work but others don’t, especially in the cities that I know a bit (e.g. Berlin) the images look pretty superficial to me… more those of a tourist in transit than what a well researched documentary would attempt to do… but maybe that was just his point.
posted by rupert beagle at 11:27 am
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