Subjektive Fotografie 2

SUBJEKTIVE FOTOGRAFIE 2

Dr. Steinert does the creative photographers of the world a great service by energetically waving the flag of subjective photography in the face of the impersonal and the imitative. He gives considerable dignity and status to the serious photographer who, not only serious, has some talent for creativeness, no taste for the sentimental, and furthermore can see beyond the glass horizon of a lens. So let us greet his second SUBJEKTIVE FOTOGRAFIE with enthusiasm, for it seems to repeat the success of the first. The first appeared in 1952. [Reviewed Vol. 1, No. 4.]

The book is available in this country from Rayelle Publications in Philadelphia, for S7.95. Wittenborn and Company, 38 East 57th St., New 'Vork 22, lists it in their catalogue. It has 40 pages of text, French and English translations, 111 illustrations. The book is lavishly laid out, one picture on each page. The choice of opposing pictures is generally distressing. No matter whether one goes through the book backwards or forwards pictures seen side by side because they have similar elements is disturbing. The two on pages 86 and 87, for instance, both have thin, white, irregular lines. At first glance the doubling of this characteristic strengthens the idea of the thin and nervous line. On longer contemplation the common characteristic merges the two pictures into one. This saps the strength of each. One such combination is at least humorous: a study of microscopic diatoms opposite a cloverleaf ramp. The juxtaposition sets up an idea between the two pictures never intended by either photographer. The humor of it is the editor talking. He is not always so entertaining. On pages 54 and 55 the picture facing Chargesheimer’s brick and globs of plaster is one of a butcher shop window full of dead chickens, which slants Chargesheimer's slyly humorous picture towards the morbid.

The fame of the first book evidently spread, for more photographers from further away from Saarbrücken contributed to the second exhibition held at the State School of Arts and Crafts of which Dr. Steinert is director. Twelve American as compared to three the first time, and nine Japanese as compared to none, account for twenty-three of the one hundred eleven illustrations of the present book. All of them fall comfortably into one or the other of the two categories by which the doctor defines the scope of "subjektive fotografie.”

These two categories are explained, with others, in the prefatory essay "On the Creative Possibilities of Photography.” In spite of the fact that both the English and French translations come limping out of the bout with aesthetics in German, Dr. Steinert is more lucid than in his preface to the first book. The two categories are called, awkwardly enough, Representative Photographic Creation and Absolute Photographic Creation. These two positively belong to "subjektive fotografie"; a third, Representative Image, hovers on the border. It hovers because, by definition, photographs in this category are still subordinated to the subject or "motif.” This means that the photograph is made because the subject appeals to the photographer, and not because he wishes to shape the subject into a picture exploiting photographic characteristics. On this score it is too close to the fourth (and lowest) category. Neutral Reporting, which stands for reportage at its most unbiased. Contrariwise photographs made because a person responds to a subject is obviously evidence of choice; choice is always personal and subjective and should, therefore, belong in the scope of "subjektive fotografie”: in the earlier book it did. As was said this category hovers. That it does so, if the English translations are not misleading me, indicates a change in Dr. Steinert's opinion and that he now takes a firmer stand on a somewhat narrower platform than previously. Brief definitions of the other two categories will make this stand clear.

Representative Photographic Creation includes those photographs in which subject is photographed, no longer for its own sake, but "rather deprived of its own significance” to serve the personal aims of the photographer. (It seems to be assumed that such personal aims can only be creative; such is open to question.) This category has been called by other names by other people; Alfred Stieglitz, and the classes at the California School of Fine Arts after him, called such pictures "equivalents.”

Absolute Photographic Creation stands for the subject that is done away with in the process of being photographed! In such photographs any reproduction of the object is dematerialized or abstracted till it is but a component of the total photograph. This definition includes the montage, the photogram, and the luminogram (flashlights swung over sensitized paper).

Practitioners in this last Absolute Photographic Creation category often report near ecstasy during the making of a multiple exposure, or a montage, or a solarization, or combining negatives in the enlarger. And because they have had a creative, esthetic, quasimystical, or just plain dandy time, wonder why the viewers of their creations do not react with equal or greater ecstasy. The reason is not far to seek and the parallel to the student writer fits. The student writer has feelings and when he writes he sets down the words that accidently accompany his feeling, and by virtue of the juxtaposition, thinks that he has communicated his feeling to his reader. Only the experienced writer realizes that he must translate his feelings into words that his reader can understand ; and that when he is unsuccessful in translating or evoking he is talking to himself. Of the seventeen examples of Absolute Photographic Creation in the book, three of them get out of the man-talking-to-himself class: the one by Milton Halberstadt on page 28, the one by William Kline on page 9, and the one by Dr. Steinert on page 19. The first is a multiple solarization transformation of an old house, the other two are luminograms. (How luminograms are justified in a book on photography I can not imagine.)

In this country Andreas Feininger has advocated a similar stand; he believes and the Doctor might believe, to put it bluntly, that it is more creative to alter the original appearance of a subject than to leave it alone. In THE CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHER Feininger brings to a close a fifteen year period of writing about this attitude towards creativeness in photography. Dr. Steinert, however, even in translation is terse when Feininger is repetitive, lucid when Feininger is confused, and furthermore selects imaginative and poetic illustrations; hence he is convincing. His various categories span many varieties of photographers whose intentions are creative, and most of them will welcome inclusion in his concept of a personal photography. Being human, of course, they will wonder why the others are included. The Representative Image photographers consider that the Representative Photographic Creators rape nature, while the RPC’s are sure they only seduce her. Both the RI’s and the RPC’s think that the Absolute Photographic Creators seduce themselves, or worse. The APC’s are sure they woo divinity if not Art. But this is the thanks that any man in Dr. Steinert’s position can count on.

I have often watched photographic images appear in a tray of developer. They seem to emerge from a world of pale incompleteness into a full one of continuous tone. Curiously enough the early stages are reminiscent of sketches and drawings, of pastels and pastiches; then as the development goes on, the images seem to emerge from this world of painting into their own world of unique reality. For some unexplained reason I can not help but draw a comparison between this emergence of the unique image and Dr. Steinert’s concept of Absolute Photographic Creation. This concept does not seem to have as yet emerged from a context of painting; his definition, perfectly understandable, describes a situation that is still swimming to the surface of a cloudy pool. It may never break the surface. Could the word "creative” be to blame here?

Looking at Dr. Steinert’s categories from a semantic viewpoint what other outcome is possible when the word "creative” is used to generate an aesthetic of photography? What else can be expected to be the height of achievement than a "dematerialization of the subject till it becomes a component part of the picture” when the aesthetic is based on a concept of creativeness gained from the other visual media? It is only logical, from this stand, that photography must invade the realm of painting to claim the creativeness pertinent to painting. "To give new form to” as the dictionary says one must do in order to create, however, does not accurately describe the work of a few of the great men in photography.

The photographs of a few of the giants fit Dr. Steinert's Representative Image class very well: Gene-Eugene Atget, to go back to the beginning of the century, Hill and Adamson to go back to the 1840’s, Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Henri Cartier-Bresson or Bill Brandt of our present period. These men are obviously of that temperment that manifests itself as the poets, artists, composers of the race. When one examines closely, the word ''creative'' gives a false description of both their work and a false impression of their attitude towards photography. Perhaps we can take a clue from their work for a word or an idea upon which to base an esthetic of photography. And dare I suggest it ? A functional esthetic leading towards the unique use of the medium?

Edward Weston for instance says that he often photographs in order to share with others a moment of beauty he has seen in the world. Ansel Adams feels that to impose himself on nature is to present the viewer of the photograph with the imperfect instead of the perfect, of the evil instead of the good. Paul Strand seeks to reveal the essence of the people and place so as to share a moment of truth that he has seen. On the whole these men seem to fit the Representative Image class. In the Representative Photographic Creation class, Alfred Stieglitz stands out. He constantly worked so that all sense of medium disappeared. He worked as though what was seen was the very essence of what had been photographed. His Equivalents, in which he always revised the subject matter to fit his own ends, function as sidelong glances at a reality outside of himself, and a world beyond or within appearances.

In as many ways as there are photographers who hold to this attitude they all say that the camera itself is a means of recording an experience and that the photograph is a way of sharing that experience with others. And they all shrug a shoulder when some shocked soul reminds them that their medium is a recording one rather than a creative one. "Should we worry?" they might say, "the end result is the same, if we can share an experience, evoke an experience that has moved us deeply, convey one that seems to be a fusion of outward going and inward turning, we don't care how it is accomplished." Since they have discovered that every time they try to work in a manner included in Absolute Photographic Creation they are led away from what they have proved to themselves is the aim of their life, namely to see, they consider that "creativeness” as usually understood, or as is meant in APC, is an enemy. They look at the world with insight; the outer eye looks at the world of appearances in such a way that the inner eye sees the world of disappearances. When some object stands revealed, they believe that at that moment it is also visible to the glass eye of the camera. And they so believe because they have learned to see as a camera does ; hence, when some object stands revealed, it is revealed to them in terms of the photographic picture. Then a camera record is all that is needed to pass that experience along. And occasionally they are successful in making their moments of revelation, via the photograph, an instant of vision for the spectator.

I suspect that Dr. Steinert would agree with all this: in the German text he may have said it. And if photographs of this intensity had been sent to the exhibition he would have published them. As it is one such may be included.

Of the half dozen groups in Europe that aim at a personal kind of photography, Dr. Steinert's group (if it may be called any one man's) affects the most people; and this because of the two books. For a long time in this country photographers seeking guidance had a choice, so far as named approaches were concerned, between salon type and Photo League documentary. Of the two the latter was the more creative. A third unorganized minority existed but because nameless was hard to locate or grasp. They had their roots in Stieglitz; Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, and Paul Strand were offshoots; the most concrete manifestations was the /64 school. F64 lost out as the name of a permanent lodestar because its founders were so careful to outline its methods that they forgot to define its ultimate objectives in terms as transcendental as required for permanent guidance. "Subjective photography" may come to serve as an umbrella for this third group. Certainly anyone wishing to pursue a personal vision, trap the common symbol for his personal use (in contrast to the imitative) will find affirmation and, if he has a need for it, a name for his approach in "subjective photography.” As Dr. Steinert describes his categories "subjective photography” (though this term is a little awkward) can include those photographers who pursue photography as a means of communicating experience. It can also include those, who while they gladly embrace the strictest limitations of pure photography drive it for everything it has to evoke a sidelong glance at ecstasy. A sidelong glance, what art medium can achieve more?

M.W.