May 07, 2008

Honest Documents





Just to have a look, I tried yesterday's pictures in black and white. I was overcome by the irresistable urge to make squares. There are some issues at stake here, and I would stutter in conversation with respected documentarist colleagues and friends as I try to justify what I've done. (Let's be clear, we are talking documentary, purely and strictly.)

First, ditching the colour proves that my original intention has been lost. I have created something else in black and white which is other than my original intention. This is not wrong, but different, and the purity of my original vision has been challenged. This exercise goes to show how strong an influence the choice of colour and format is on the way I shoot.

There is always a reason why we press the shutter, and for me it's usually about intuitively feeling a series of elements collaborating in a split second, working a chosen medium to connect these things like wiring a circuit board - electrifying them.

Second, I may have come across something interesting and made some strong compositional shapes by cropping this way, but I have adulterated the intuitive moment I chose to capture that relationship between me, the people in frame, the surroundings, all of it.

It's great to experiment this way, and I like these little squares very much, but they don't describe how I felt at the time, and they present another view now which isn't actually honest - raking over the coals a little. The Seville trip was loaded with all sorts of subtle feelings which I chose to skirt around in panoramic colour. To be armed with medium format black and white would definitely have produced different results, probably much closer up, but at the time I didn't want that expression - it wasn't my intuitive response.

Something pure has been lost. These square frames are entertaining, but they are not alive with the original heart.

Last week an amateur photographer friend, in a moment of absolute bloody-mindedness, claimed the skill of framing in camera and applying a strictly 'no crop' policy was a redundant skill and 'b*******'. Oof... I felt that, but didn't defend myself very well at all, mumbling on about Henri and his decisive moment. I crop, sometimes. But I know it's when I haven't succeeded in the first place. It's always a second best measure when I've failed to summon that initial collaboration in the moment.

This is a feather in the bow of those documentary photographers who argue against cropping, and work hard at shooting precisely the way they experience a place and people right in that moment. Cropping and changing an original always, always, earths the electric charge of your document. I'm sorry bloody-minded friend, but this time it really is all about the moment.


{Today's soundtrack: Freelance Hellraiser}

May 06, 2008

Colour in Sevilla




Seville is an interesting city. It's a place rich in colour, so I shot colour, although found myself aching for black and white which is how I normally choose to explore portraits. Curious, that it felt this way.

There's a very obvious aesthetic in places like this, by which you allow yourself to be seduced with large blocks of colour and just let your mouth water while the sun shines. Is this really so wrong? I know plenty of photographers who would say so, the sort who are quite good at explaining the difference between beauty and glamour. What instead do I look for?

Amidst a confusion about what I am looking at, or being seduced by, and however bright-looking a city is, it is still only a city because of its people. Surprisingly, Seville stopped shouting at me when I paid attention to the people I was with. And as I started to notice them more, I saw their relationship to the space around them and–quietly–to each other. It's an interesting relationship, and makes me wonder about how much a person reflects a city. Or is it the other way around?

•••

[extract from diary, april 21]

What am I remembering?

Many walls painted yellow, or orange, or rust-red, all standing out next to white plaster and wrought iron. Purple scarf, blue shoes; red napkin boxes, blue writing on white sachets of sugar, and light gleaming off hot, metal surfaces; oranges in the trees and on the ground; lavender and lichen that make the storm clouds appear almost silver - pewter at the very least;...


I wonder how I might represent any of its colour using black and white - so this becomes about the people and their relationships and the details of how things are arranged together.

•••

How would all this look in black and white?




{Today's soundtrack: Band of Horses - Cease To Begin}