The one thing that has always struck me about photography is the fact that a good picture combines both the skill of the photographer and some amount of luck that the photographer has no control over.
The picture below will illustrate my point – in the first picture (taken seconds apart in the vicinity of the destroyed World Trade Center on Sept 27th), the woman is the strong one, the man grieves – in the second the man is strong – the woman grieves. The photographer did not do much other than just chance on these people watching a tragic event. (the artist was there at the right place at the right time – again luck – and got the right pictures).
Photo courtesy: Kevin Bubriski
Don’t get me wrong, I love photographs – I look at photography books for hours on end savoring these moments frozen in time by the power of film. Among others, I love Steve Durbin’s work – but behind it all I have a feeling that great photographs is a combination of the skill of the artist and some element of luck. In some ways, I consider abstract expressionist painters the same way – as long as they get some of the accidental splotches of color to line up right and give the picture a unified whole feeling, it looks good; and luck owes a part to getting that accidental splotch of color in the right place on the canvas as was the skill of the painter…
What are your thoughts?
I agree and for me there is always an element of luck…also though, I see something and then anticipate what is coming next and wait till I see it. Espeically with people…there is something of a connect even if only recognition of what is coming next/a flash of a second and witnessing something raw. Knowing the light will change, being at the Bosque when the winds are from the south and the snow geese arrive for a upward photo with the wings backlighted….on and on. But certainly always there is luck.
It is hard not to read “luck” as a perjorative when this discussion comes up. Part of the problem is the deception that it is a documentary medium, when it is really a kind of engagement with reality that results in these moments of abstraction, upon which we layer our own meaning.
Because we have a choice to be in any particular “right” place at the right time, and that’s how most photographs are made, it can discount the predilection of the photographer in choosing just what environment he or she is going to operate. Documentary streeet photography in particular may depend on the accidental, but the propensity toward happy accident is under more control than it appears.
That said, I would love to have the capacity for accident that Elliot Erwitt has.
I guess I’m a little surprised at your characterization of “being strong” vs. “grieving.” Are they mutually exclusive? Do we know for sure what each person is doing in the two shots?
Theres no denying that luck — in the sense of timing that is only partially under the control of the photographer — can play a big role in the content of an image. I’d say it plays a relatively small role in my work, since I’m not photographing people as in your example. Still, I would not have made the particular waterfall photographs I recently posted if I had not happened to be at those locations at those times. I did not go there knowing what I’d find and having planned the shots I wanted. One might argue that I could have made similar photos at different times, and that’s partially true. Last weekend I was only 10 minutes from Tower Falls, Yellowstone (#3 here), but I didn’t bother to go (in part knowing the ice was gone, though no doubt interesting images were still possible).
But the point I would disagree with is your statement that “The photographer did not do much other than just chance on these people watching a tragic event.” The more I photograph, the more I realize that a very great deal is involved in the choice of where to stand and what to include in the frame. Yes, these could have been determined in your example case partly by constraints (fixed lens, too crowded or no time to move). Or the photographer may not have thought consciously about it at all. In itself, that doesn’t diminish the quality of a photograph, though it could affect my judgement of the skill of the photographer — two very different things. One great photo does not necessarily mean a great photographer, though many would be strong evidence.
Your main point about photography being more contingent, less under the artist’s control (compared to painting, say), seems valid to me. I wouldn’t like to say whether this is a positive or a negative point in general. For myself, despite frequent frustrations at lack of control of the subject, I think it’s positive.
As luck would have it, Mark Hobson just posted an anecdote about some photos he made yesterday as a result of “lucky happenstance.”
I think Alan makes an excellent point about strength and grief. Perhaps together each of the people are stong or perhaps they are each very strong..In my mind it takes tremendous strength to grieve,to witness, not just walk away or forget.
I choose to think that Luck is not perjorative. The camera is an extension of me…who I am, what I see, how I feel and identify…luck is such a small part/
Sunil.
I think it is so much more complicated. For example, your interpretation of the woman and man is, to me, questionable. Are the photographs really that different to you, especially as you reduce them to generalizations and the inadequacy of language? And to think of Photography minimally as a factor of Luck seems too Dismissing. Why do that? Why limit the experience? Why not just let each experience define itself? Luck, Journey, Moment… art should have Everything.
And to look at these remarkable images and to consider the Good Fortune of the photographer seems entirely… wrong.
Whether you want to call it luck or chance, I find myself allowing more and more room for it in my art practice. It’s the door to discovery, and I try to keep it wide open.
Making use of chance does not, in my opinion, reduce the need of skill or vision. If anything the opposite is true. Otherwise, how would one explain than some photographers (and other artists) are consistently luckier than others?
I’m back.
Sunil, luck plays a large part in all art. Oh I suppose some intentional education could get you some ways along, but for me, serendipity is just another tool that I take advantage of. I twist the brush because I’m batting at a fly, and suddenly see that I’ve achieved an effect that I didn’t know I needed until just that moment.
I’m hoping to work up a post for tomorrow on the challenge of trying to do a Cubist painting. I’m finding it entirely not easy; I’m only hoping it will come more readily as I go along. So your comment on abstract paintings might be a nice segue into my post.
Brilliant shots, very expressive!
Alan,
Being strong and grieving are just two states of emotion shown on the picture. I do not think I made any positive or negative connotation in the description. It just occurred to me that that was their emotional state.
Doug and D,
Looks like both of you have similar points of view namely that the photographer has a choice in being at the right place at the right time (well said) and there are numerous more elements that constitute a good photo including journey, moment and layering of our implied meanings on the abstraction that is created…
Steve,
You bring out a good point when you say “The more I photograph, the more I realize that a very great deal is involved in the choice of where to stand and what to include in the frame” – which implies that practice would make it more fluid for a photographer to assume the right composure in shooting that ‘right’ picture. Yes, this is something that I had discounted in the post. An inexperienced photographer would have botched the shot of the onlookers at the World Trade Center (especially producing the second one with as great a quality as the first one takes practice and experience)… Very illuminating…
Thank you for the link to Mark Hobson. I enjoyed the pictures there – the starkness of the calf against the dark red/umber background brings out the event a lot more to life.
June,
We will wait for your post. Looking forward to an interesting discussion.
Sunil,
If you really want to make yourself popular you could add: since photography is as quick and easy as pressing a button, it offers the opportunity for a huge number of “trials” in which the appropriate accidental might occur. We could think of this as a “filter” approach to art.
I’m not saying that, mind you…
I think David got it right: Whether you want to call it luck or chance, I find myself allowing more and more room for it in my art practice. It’s the door to discovery, and I try to keep it wide open.
Sunil:
This topic sets me all a’quiver.
Here we are in a world where your existence and mine are statistically improbable, if not impossible. Our thoughts and actions should not occur. Yet we are active and able to extract out of this smudge a concept of luck.
I’m not religious, but the circumstances that allow us to attach meanings and make judgments as we do, seems to point to something more organized to which we seem to have an umbilical connection. It’s like a principle of determinacy which frames exigencies and allows us to see the difference. Henri Cartier-Bresson, to the extent that he never took more than one shot of anything, seemed to be tapped into something like this.
Personally it’s hard to describe, but sometimes a day will be a series of photo ops as motifs all around assemble for a moment into compositions. Then I will know that the determinacy has come to visit. On occasion I will have a camera and be able to capture something, either as a glimmer in time or as a more extended opportunity. I believe that intent and practice – the meditation that has been spoken of in A&P, helps form links to the “D” and we recognize the products of this as being special.
Luck, chance, whatever. But I think you are selling yourselves short when you leave out preparedness and dialogue. What photographers do mostly is observe, and then create dialogue through observation. We have prepared ourselves by the practice of our craft, and when opportunity (call it luck or chance if you must) presents itself, we respond each according to our own bias. And it is because of this bias there is no such thing as objective documentation, nor is their any reality in art other than our own preceived reality. Plummer got it right == “…moments of abstraction upon which we layer our own meaning.”
P’taker
Karl,
This post was triggered by some long held perceptions and prejudices that I had about photography. I guess I laid my questions too bare – that is OK as what I got in return was enlightened responses from a very qualified set of people who gently took me down the path where I saw some of the essence behind photography. In the fracas if I become unpopular that is OK, I guess… I learned something new.
Can’t say luck ever played a big part in my photography. I’m not a professional photographer but have spent many hours shooting and working in dark rooms and such. Timing is everything, especially when capturing light, but that’s not the same as luck. There’s too much minutiae involved in photography to ever rely on luck.
But I suppose luck may occassionally play a role in capturing the unexpected.