Why do I like Diane Arbus and what can I learn from her work?

I have written about my admiration for the work of Diane Arbus before in this blog - Aberdeen Art Gallery;  Barcelona;  the impact she had on me to get back into photography.

Strangely enough, I have never asked myself why I like her work. What is it about her images that I find so intriguing and interesting? After all, the photographs I take are nothing like her work.

I am finding it hard to put into words why I like her images.

I too take images of communities who lived on the edge - on the margins of civilisation, remote, far from amenities and facilities. Outsiders perhaps?

Yes, my images also contain ugliness and a lack of beauty but then we all know what they say about beauty.

I can't say I challenge the viewer as perhaps Arbus's work does, however I am trying to alter the experience of the viewer to decay, debris and to stuff that was once loved and admired but left behind. Some see Arbus's images as portraying people full of despair but I find them intriguing and remarkable. Her "deviant and marginal' people seem to be doing the best they could under some difficult circumstance, within a society that rejected their lifestyle and for some, rejected their shape, size and sexual orientation. Her images are, to me, full of energy and life, as well as compelling. Her work is raw, at times disturbing, unflinching but what an insight we get to a world we would never have seen otherwise.

There is no doubt you can feel like an intruder, a voyeur when looking at her work. Her subjects and the lives they led are almost 'run of the mill' these days, with TV programmes filling late night spots with 'embarrassing bodies' and the like. Looking at my images of someone else's home, albeit abandoned and in a state of decay, may feel like intruding and you may want to look away or you may get a feeling of foreboding - "what will happen to my home, to my 'stuff', when I'm gone?"

Many of Diane Arbus's images hold my attention but also make me want to look away and perhaps it is that conflict that, for me, makes her work so captivating.

So what can I learn from her work? Eric Kim asked the same question regarding his street photography. I have changed his blog post to consider rural exploration/abandoned communities instead of street photography:-

1. Go places you have never been

Arbus shares some of her thoughts:
“My favourite thing is to go where I’ve never been. For me there’s something about just going into someone else’s house. When it comes time to go, if I have to take a bus to somewhere or if I have to grade a cab uptown, it’s like I’ve got a blind date. It’s always seemed something like that to me. And sometimes I have a sinking feeling of, Oh God it’s time and I really don’t want to go. And then, once I’m on my way, something terrific takes over about the sort of queasiness of it and how there’s absolutely no method for control."

I constantly read local history books and scour maps to find new places, never knowing what I'll find. The planning and the journey to find the abandoned place plays a huge part in my work.

2. The camera is a license to enter the lives of others

As Arbus explains:
“If I were just curious, it would be very hard to say to someone, “I want to come to your house and have you talk to me and tell me the story of your life.” I mean people are going to say, “You’re crazy.” Plus they’re going to keep mighty guarded. But the camera is a kind of license. A lot of people, they want to be paid that much attention and that’s a reasonable kind of attention to be paid."

Documenting abandoned and disappearing communities deserves attention and my camera, my project, has got me into properties to capture the fading memories of lives long since past.

3. Realise you can never truly understand the world from your subjects eyes

"You might have a certain intent when photographing, but the result can be totally different. Not only that, but what we may perceive as a “tragedy” may not be considered as a tragedy to your subject:
And that has to do with what I’ve always called the gap between intention and effect. I mean if you scrutinize reality closely enough, if in some way you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic. You know it really is totally fantastic that we look like this and you sometimes see that very clearly in a photograph. Something is ironic in the world and it has to do with the fact that what you intend never comes out like you intended it.
What I’m trying to describe is that it’s impossible to get out of your skin into somebody else’s. And that’s what all this is a little bit about. That somebody else’s tragedy is not the same as your own“.

I feel many emotions in empty cottages, but they are really what I imagine it must have been like either to live there or how it felt to have to leave. They are only my emotions.

4. Create specific photographs

“A photograph has to be specific. I remember a long time ago when I first began to photograph I thought, There are an awful lot of people in the world and it’s going to be terribly hard to photograph all of them, so if I photograph some kind of generalized human being, everybody’ll recognize it. It’ll be like what they used to call the common man or something.
It was my teacher Lisette Model, who finally made it clear to me that the more specific you are, the more general it’ll be. You really have to face that thing. And there are certain evasions, certain nicenesses that I think you have to get out of."

More and more I am taking shots that, may not have the compositional appeal or be pleasing to the eye, but mean something to me. I may have been moved by something left behind or some part of the cottage may have brought back a personal memory - either way, the image I take on those occasions resonate with people much more than the bog standard abandoned cottage shot.

5. Adore your subjects

“Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot. It was one of the first things I photographed and it had a terrific kind of excitement for me. I just used to adore them. I still adore some of them, I don’t quite mean they’re my best friends but they made me feel a mixture of shame and awe."

I think it is clear that I love local history!

6. Gain inspiration from reading

“Another thing I’ve worked from is reading it happens very obliquely. I don’t mean I read something and rush out and make a picture of it. And I hate that business of illustrating poems.

But here’s an example of something I’ve never photographed that’s like a photograph to me. There’s a Kafka story called “Investigations of a Dog” which I read a long, long time ago and I’ve read it since a number of times. It’s a terrific story written by the dog and the real dog life of a dog."

I think it is clear that to be a better photographer, it is important to embrace life, to get inspiration for many aspects of life be it reading, music, travel, walking, etc.

7. Take bad photos

“Some pictures are tentative forays without your even knowing it. They become methods. It’s important to take bad pictures. It’s the bad ones that have to do with what you’ve never done before. They can make you recognize something you had seen in a way that will make you recognize it when you see it again."

I am realising this more and more. The more I fail, the more I learn. But I can't fail if I don't get out and shoot. Of course it is crucial to understand what went wrong and how might that be fixed. Accidents are a different thing altogether. 

8. Sometimes your best photos aren’t immediately apparent (to you)

“Recently I did a picture—I’ve had this experience before—and I made rough prints of a number of them, there was something wrong in all of them. I felt I’d sort of missed it and I figured I'd go back. But there was one that was just totally peculiar. It was a terrible dodo of a picture. It looks to me a little as if the lady’s husband took it. Its terribly head-on and sort of ugly and there’s something terrific about it. I’ve gotten to like it better and better and now I’m secretly sort of nutty about it.”

Oh, how I would love to have a picture editor! So important to go back over old work with a new mind.

9. Don’t arrange others, arrange yourself

“I work from awkwardness. By that I mean I don’t like to arrange things if I stand in front of something, instead of arranging it, I arrange myself”.

Very rarely do I move stuff around to make a better picture. I'm not sure why I have this approach. It could be that I want to show respect to the previous owners or that I feel it is important to show the property as I find it. The jury is still out on this one.

10. Get over the fear of photographing by getting to know your subjects

To overcome her fear of shooting junkies people in a park (who frightened her) – Diane would revisit over and over again, and found out over time she became less timid. Not only that but she got to know the people there, and asked for permission. This helped her feel more comfortable and photograph the people in the area.

I have overcome my feeling of intruding, my fear of been 'found out' and continue to work on my confident manner when approaching locals or when confronted by concerned individuals who want to know what I'm doing. Often the conversation ends in my favour when they tell me about other abandoned cottages.

11. Your subjects are more important than the pictures

Although Arbus was criticised much during her lifetime (and even now today) for seemingly lacking compassion – she certainly did care for her subjects more than the photos themselves:
“For me the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture. And more complicated. I do have a feeling for the print but I don’t have a holy feeling for it. I really think what it is, is what its about. I mean it has to be of something. And what its of is always more remarkable than what it is.”

I have to give this one more thought because I think I amy be going in the opposite direction. Initially, it was all about the history of these abandoned glens and documenting them before they fell into even more ruin. Other photographers suggested I focus my work more on the details of the cottages, more on producing images that evoke emotions and memories. I'm trying to do this and enjoying the challenge but, to be fair to myself, I sense it will make me want to delve even deeper into the my interest, my passion, to hopefully produce better images.

Diane Arbus was not only a ground breaking and controversial photographer, but she also had deep feelings and emotions with and for her subjects. This clearly comes across in her photography. She followed her heart in her photography and took photos of subjects that not only interested her but felt compassion and warmth towards.

( All Arbus quotes from Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph.) 

Going for a walk and failing to imitate your hero.

Today I was walking up a track which had about 6 to 8 inches (20cm) of snow on it. Some people had been on the track days previously and had compacted the snow and their footprints now formed ice. I tried walking on the virgin snow but it was hard going so I went on to the footprints of the previous walkers. It was slightly easier but the footprints were not matching up with my stride so I kept slipping and wasn't having a comfortable journey. I was following in their footsteps but doing it to my stride. This situation made think back on a book I had just read.

In Austin Kleon's Steal Like An Artist, (yes, I know, I'm rather late to this party), he suggests, 'don't wait until you know who you are to get started'. You should just get on with being creative. Study and imitate those you admire and want to emulate; look at their motivations and inspirations to help inspire you. When you try to emulate your inspirations you will undoubtedly fail to create another Bresson, Arbus or whoever it is you're trying to emulate. But, and this was the interesting bit, it will be your failure to completely imitate your hero that will eventually help you find your path, your footing, your style, your voice. 

Yesterday I went on one of my rural explorations of abandoned crofts - 'croft crawling' as I call it. Just as I was about to enter a ruin, I decided to try and imitate a photographer Rob Hudson who has been creating an interesting and fascinating set called Songs of Travel.  I wasn't sure how he creates these images so I just tried 10 multiple exposures and moved forward at each shot. My results were nothing like Rob's but it did make me think about where and how I could use such a technique. Here's one of my efforts:

So I was trying to walk in Rob's footprints but not hitting his stride and failing. However, I was learning, I was having fun and I thought more about the technique for my situation.

'Blooming, buzzing confusion', switchtasking and 'sometimes reinforcements'.

Tomorrow I go back to work after a two week break and, as usual, I dread the thought of it and kind of look forward to it at the same time.

Like most people I love being on holiday. We live in a stunning location in rural Aberdeenshire. In 2012 we improved and modernised existing rooms in the steading (barn) attached to our cottage and this festive period has been even better with the luxury of the new living areas. I could quite happily work from this home!

As some of you know, I'm the Principal Teacher of History at a secondary school (12 - 18 year olds) and I get great satisfaction from teaching. I love my subject and the pupils make the job. They are often an inspiration to me. Yes, all of us in education face the continuous interference from politicians and so called 'experts' who force on us ever more 'new thinking' and 'new approaches' which can seem totally at odds with what your particular school and pupils actually need. But at the end of the day, it is a far preferable job to the one I did for 14 years in the oil industry.

So, returning to work brings things to look forward to and things that I could do without in my life.

But here's what gets me the most about the end of holidays - all the books and magazines not read; all the movies not watched; all the blogs and websites not read; all the walks not taken; all the photographs not taken; all the friends and relatives not visited; all the stuff still on my 'to do' list! Clearly I was unrealistic about what I could do during what is a busy holiday anyway. Worst still, there are so many distractions nowadays.

I'm currently reading The Pleasures of Reading in an Ages of Distraction by Alan Jacobs.  A few years ago I was trying to speed up my reading but Jacobs explains why you shouldn't if you really want to get more from what you're reading apart from just uploading information to our brains without giving time to consolidate and consider the information. Reading will always seem slow if all you want to do is pass your eyes over page after page and tick the book off as 'read'.

However, reading slower will mean I will get through less pages before I'm distracted by Facebook, twitter, Flickr, emails, cats, the scenery, the need to get outside! Technology has brought 'intermittent reinforcements' as B.F Skinner calls it, into my life and to rid myself of most of them, I'll have to alter my habits. It's this 'sometimes reinforcements' that causes the 'addiction' to keep checking social media. 

'The philosopher William James famously wrote of the "blooming, buzzing confusion" that constitutes sensuous experience for babies, who have not yet developed the filters necessary to organise that experience into discrete and meaningful units, but our daily technologies threaten to return us all to virtual babyhood"(my italics). [Jacobs, p.79]

Lately, I've been feeling this 'blooming and buzzing' has had an impact on my reading - not only the quantity but also the quality. My mind drifts much easier than it used to. This blog post is admitting my awareness of the 'condition' and how I want to do something to address the imbalance.

Essentially, I need to make it difficult if not impossible to go online for part of my day/week so I can get back to quality reading, studying, thinking and doing. Many years ago, I managed to stop smoking and drinking so surely I can do this? Jacobs talks about e-readers like Kindle which place emphasis on the text and 'hiding' the 'connect' command. ( I don't have a Kindle so can't comment on this.) So technology can be part of the solution, but I fear I may be too distracted still. I can't multitask, not because I'm a male; no, it's because none of us can, according to new research. Dave Crenshaw points out that genuine multitasking is impossible and a more accurate term is 'switchtasking'. We are really in a state of 'continuous partial attention'. Boy, does that describe perfectly how I felt much of the time in 2012!

At the moment, I'm still working on how to use social media and the internet to keep me informed, educate me, entertain me, promote me but not distract me so much. I will be 'experimenting' with possible solutions this year which may see me on Facebook and twitter a lot less but then again, ...

To be continued (and hopefully resolved).

Well done if you managed to read all this without getting distracted!

Think more, think less or let others think for you?

I recently watched the documentary on the making of Bruce Springsteen's album Darkness on the Edge of Town. I was moved by it in many ways. Bruce was only in his 20's when he made the record but his philosophy, work ethic and vision seemed to me to be so mature. He was trying to come to a reckoning with the adult world; dealing with a future life of limitations and compromise but finding the resilience and commitment to still embrace life. He also was considering what is sin in a good life and how do you carry that, deal with that? Thus, he wanted the album to be stripped down to its barest and austere elements with no distraction to the narrative.
When it came to deciding on getting the photograph for the album cover, Frank Stefanko was chosen. Frank had just moved into a new apartment so it had little furniture and old wallpaper on the walls from the previous blue collar working class family. Bruce just took a sample of his usual clothes and Frank took a few test shots.

© Frank Stefanko,

Of course Bruce chose those test shots as they were very stripped down, revealing and 'blue collar' - just what he wanted for the album. Fortuitous for Frank but what if he had found out more about Bruce's vision for the album? Would he have done something similar or entirely different and perhaps cliched? Who knows, but a good story and perhaps a lesson to photographers - show the client all your shots?

Back to Bruce; his maturity at such an early age stunned me. He seemed to see that as you get older, you can end up in a life in stasis, shackled by memories and hurt. Old habits die hard and patterns repeat themselves and you can unintentionally let past disappointments effect your present and it can be difficult to move forward.

I'm listening to that album with new ears whilst smiling at the cover shot by Frank Stefanko.

What I decided whilst in hospital regarding me and photography. Part 3

Upstairs, Badenyon
Originally uploaded by James_at_Slack

I have decided to remain a hobbyist photographer who will shoot mainly local Historical sites and abandoned communities. Will I be bothered then if there is no interest or enjoyment from my pictures? The answer should be no because I will be shooting what I’m passionate about and I should be fulfilling my creative urges. But in reality, we humans like to get some encouragement and praise - don’t we? We tend to trust the people who are like us so if people who have an interest in local History and/or abandoned communities see that I too have that interest, then perhaps I will have an audience for my work. It is like serving a market where you are already an ‘insider’, so it should help me empathise with that market.

The question ‘Am I good enough?’ will come up. A question like that will never be answered probably, and self doubt can be the motivator to improve one’s craft. I will be (and have been) dogged by such a question but I know that all I can say is, I’m getting better, I’m improving but will fall short of being ‘good enough’ because I will always want to be better. Talent is not easily evaluated or quantified.

I need to tackle and focus more on questions like ‘Am I willing to work hard at learning my craft?’ ‘ Am I willing to research and learn and make mistakes?’ ‘Am I willing to put my work under scrutiny of my peers so I can improve?’ ‘How passionately do I want this?’
I have to accept the fact that highly talented photographers may not need to work so hard as less talented photographers. That said, how do we know how much work someone has put into their craft? Why do we tend to think ‘they got lucky’ or ‘it was handed to them on a plate’? I need to always assume they have worked hard to get where they are. For me, bold steps are needed. Some interests and activities may need to jettisoned or at least cut down.

High quality, technically perfect but mediocre photography is everywhere now and organisations have a vast quantity to choose from, and at the best price - free! I don’t know if I can rise above this but I’m going to try and recent deals with publishers and record companies and a solo exhibition success has given me some encouragement. However, marketing knowledge will now take a back seat to honing my craft. I want to be a good photographer. I want to produce images that people like and get pleasure from and that is why, for the meantime, I will remain a hobbyist photographer.




Taken from Visionmongers by David duChemin.

What I decided whilst in hospital regarding me and photography. Part 2

Remicras
Originally uploaded by James_at_Slack

So I’ve decided to shoot what I love and learn my craft. Also, I can see that I will probably not be a professional photographer. Why not?

I like my day job and it can fund my hobby.
I can shoot what I want.
I can create when I want to - when I’m inspired and when I feel it is the right time. Only financially secure and successful professional photographers can do that as well as complete commercial work I would imagine.
I can love my photographs, get opinions on my work without feeling my work sucks just because nobody buys it/wants it. I can feel like a ‘real’ photographer without having to have people buy my work.
In truth, maybe I’m just not willing to do all the hard work that is needed to become a successful professional photographer (and to some extent to sacrifice my passion for commercial reasons). I’ve put my creative urges to one side for too long and it is now or never for me to pursue my creative vision.

Hobbyist or professional, a photographer should know who they are and what they have to offer. I need to ask myself which shots gave me the most satisfaction and is there a pattern? I have studied and taught History for many years now and local History, namely abandoned settlements, is still an big interest to me. I’ve been told that I have captured the spirit and essence of these abandoned places. Whether that is true or not, I’ve certainly felt the toil, hardships, relationships and tragedies of these places. I enjoy researching these places beforehand, planning the route, finding the remains and, if possible, enter these premises. The real challenge is trying to get an interesting shot which conveys the drama and remoteness of these abandoned communities.

More of my time will have to be spent honing the skills of my craft. I’m still not there when it comes to getting the exposures right. I can still screw it up and wonder why it screwed up. Also, my processing and printing needs more of my attention. I will probably never be one of these Photoshop experts who spends hours and days on one shot, but I could make small (and continue to make small) improvements to my processing and workflow.



To be continued. Taken from Visionmongers by David duChemin.

I guess the higher you want to go, the greater the obstacles.

I guess the higher you want to go, the greater the obstacles.
Originally uploaded by James_at_Slack

I'm on holiday just now and an opportunity (in between chores) to try to take my photography to the next level, if you get my meaning. Well tonight I hit the all too familiar feeling of 'Oh My God, I know nothing! I have SO much to learn! I so suck at this photography lark!' For example, I want to learn more about light and using flash, so, the best place to go would be strobist.com which I duly went to and very quickly realised how much I need to get, to learn, to do, to read, to watch, etc. etc. One website seems to lead you hundreds of others - where do you start? where do you stop? Argh! The wealth of info on the web is, on one hand just so fantastic and helpful, but on the other it can be almost paralysing.

Time - there just isn't enough of it.
Advice - there is just too much going around. Some scare you - "Your pictures should stop me dead in my tracks, everytime." An Art dealer/buyer. "You should take pictures of things no one else has taken"!!

And what have I NOT done today? Yip, taken a picture. I think that is what I should focus on more. (excuse the pun)

Any views on my grumble?