Stuff
Some general things from around the web, with links to film of varying tenuousness…
1) From Jerry Nevin’s “Readings” Page this interview with Garry Winogrand.
2) From O.C. Garza’s site, his recollections of being taught by Winogrand.
Winogrand is fascinating to me because of his ideas about context (it doesn’t really matter) and his ambivalence to directing the viewer (see the first link particularly).
I have these ideas at the forefront of my mind recently because of a comment I saw on flickr, along the lines of someone liking a picture because compositional rules were broken “consciously” and not in “blissful ignorance”. I can’t help thinking that the first, and most appropriate reaction to an image should be “Do I like it?” Whether the author of it intended the outcome or not seems entirely irrelevant, and to only like those where the outcome is a result of conscious decision seems to me the worst sort of unthinking snobbery. Winogrand’s conception of the photograph as something that exists separately to photographer, subject &c fits my current ideas, although he goes somewhat further than me.
Anyway, with spleen venting over, I have two things for you from Alec Soth’s Blog;
1) Why Bother?
In which the author muses on vernacular and found photography, and wonders if he’ll do anything with that impact - the comment thread after the article being almost as revealing as the article itself.
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