I called my self a photographer recently in a meeting for my research work for MIT@Lawrence the other day, and honestly, I felt a little like a liar. I’ve managed to combine my research in Lawrence with photographing for an MIT class in a such a hurried way that I haven’t been able to set up specific times to shoot and be completely intentional in where and when I’m shooting. I’m still waiting on a tour from a resident or from someone who works at a community center. So my body of Lawrence photography seemed incomplete in my mind and completely incidental.
When I began to spread out all the photos I’ve taken so far on a table and contemplate a storyline, I was surprised but still a little skeptical. Unfortunately, someone I trust told me recently that I focus on the glass half empty a bit too much in relation to my own work. Nevertheless, I started to draw storylines based on some themes I observed in both my research and through my camera lense. These themes held true when I started to think about linear narrative timelines, but I felt a bit like I was filling in the holes and not thinking about the strongest images.
So I’m changing gears a bit, and starting to focus on the images that I was drawn to, regardless of how they fit. And I started to look at them with a critical eye in terms of how they reflect my own values and the questions around authority that seem to be haunting me in all my classes. Much of our first semester of core city planning classes seem designed to throw us all into ultra-polemic discussions about generalized urban planning projects (and at breakneck speed, I must say). But it seems to me that questions around “Why are we here?” and “Why do we do what we do?” orginate from knowing and verbalizing your own personal values. Many of my fellow students seem unwilling or lacking the skills to do so, and remind me of the staff of any nonprofit on so many levels. It’s almost as if values are as taboo of a discussion topic as religion or politics is on a first date.
The last chapter of Anne Spirn’s book, however, rightly points out that our idealogies shape the designs we create, especially in terms of what authority we base our judgments of “good” and “bad.” Whether we rest authority on nature, tradition, art, efficiency, economics, or power, it’s there in the words we use, the designs we present, or the photos we post. Me? I think I’ll admit I’m a bit on the liberal, pluralist, champion the “little guy,” art by and for the masses bandwagon. I distrust “big” anything and perhaps that’s why so many of my photos pit small figures against the massive landscape elements of Lawrence. Maybe it’s why I tend to crouch down and take photos from the upward angle, to position the frame always looking up. And perhaps it’s why I like to focus on tiny, micro details of broken glass, individual leaves, and mini-microcosms so much in my chosen photos.
However, I’m hoping to build my final piece to cultivate the paradoxes in Lawrence and not just show one view. And after doing a little more research on photographers like Harry Callahan and Camilo Jose Vergara, I’m not feeling too bad at all about my unplanned technique. Vergara needed to take photos of cities like Camden, New Jersey and Richmond, CA over the course of thirty years to really capture their story. As he states in the intro to the Invincible Cities website:
“I use photography as a means of discovery, as a tool with which to clarify visions and construct knowledge about a particular city or place. Pictures are the starting point in posing a question, adding a link with other images or claiming new territory. A set of photographs coupled with interviews of residents of a block, neighborhood or a building became the beginning of narratives which I hope will help establish a place’s changing identity.”
And Callahan went out every day of his photographic career and took photos of the city he lived in, usually without a plan. And every year only released six or so shots as finished pieces. As John Szarkowski states in Museum of Modern Art (NYC) book on Callahan:
“Most of the time, most of the pictures are bad. Not bad because they are technically casual, or awkwardly composed, or unclear in their intent, but because they deficient in grace. They are nevertheless part of the raw material out of which later pictures are made, some of which will succeed, and will touch the spirit of people.”
I’ve got high ambitions for myself on this project based on all this, but am looking forward to the process of pulling it all together gracefully. In the end, I’m hoping I’m torn between these two photos as the single photo to represent my final project so far.
Related posts:
- Photo Journal #4 – Vocabulary of Lange and Lawrence This week we’re transitioning a bit away from the daily light observations, into some deeper observations based on our readings, primarily from Anne Spirn’s Language...
- Photo Journal # 6 – From Lawrence to Austin [10/20/07] This week’s ruminations extend the discussion of significant detail from vocabulary to the grammar of the language of landscape in Lawrence (and Austin actually)....
- Photo Journal #7 – Unexpected Poetry in Lawrence’s Landscapes This week, I’m sensing that we’re going a bit deeper in our examination of landscape – moving from focus on individual vocabulary and grammar of...
- Photo #10: Lawrence Youth & My Rough Draft I have to admit, I procrastinated a bit around building the rough draft of my final photo essays. I had all the pieces (in fact,...
- Photo Journal #5 – Significant Detail and Context This week I got into the meat of the work in Lawrence, in that I finally met some residents in a context of social change,...
