I just started a book by Geoff Dyer called "The Ongoing Moment." It's a long, rambling essay about the nature of photography, and it's easily the best writing on the subject that I've ever come across. Dyer talks about how a few photographers starting in the 1920s redefined the artform by attempting to understand what photography does best, and how the personality and philosophy of the photographer could influence the result.
What does black and white photography do best? Well, it's pretty good at making things look shabby and pathetic. It's good for shooting old people with a lot of cracks and crevices in their faces. It was the perfect medium to document the Depression and the squalid life of the early immigrants in New York City. Look how shabby Walker Evans' barber shop is above. The real shop was probably a fairly happy and social place, but the colorless photo makes it look like a compartment in Hell.
Black and white amateur photography was also pretty good at making people look old-fashioned. People in B&W photos, even ones taken in the 1950s, look like figures in a Mathew Brady picture. You feel sorry for them. The medium makes them look like automatons, pathetically playing out the roles history had given them to play. Even smiles in those old photos look like expressions of bravado in the face of a hopelessly primitive and gruesome existence.
Eventually cheap, color photography came around and we finally had a medium that could take pictures of happy, youthful subjects. The same smiles that photographed like forced bravado only a few years ago now looked completely sincere and joyfull.
In my opinion one of the several important reasons for the youth rebellion in the 60s was the proliferation of Kodachrome. The young generation looked so hip and cheerful in their pictures, and their parents looked so stolid and shabby in theirs. To teenagers thumbing through scrapbooks and magazines in that era, it must have appeared that a new and improved real world had come into existence in their time. You can see where that would lead to a generation gap.
Aaaargh! I meant to write about Dyer's ideas and I got sidetracked into talking about my own. I'll post more about this interesting book as I read farther into it.
14 comments:
Fascinating! Were you ever part of that certain youth rebellion yourself, Eddie? There are always many people who wished they had grown up in the 1960s just to see the whole counterculture movement come into fruition, so I think it would be interesting to hear your POV on it.
I'd be glad to hear more about Dyer's ideas soon!
Do you think black and white in early cartoons was an integral part in their "nightmarishness"?
Roberto: My take on the 60s? I feel I lived through a time of mass hysteria. It had a lot in common with the French Revolution which started with high ideals and devolved into craziness. I know a great book about this and I'll blog about it when I can.
Blake: Wow! An interesting thought! It seems to me that black and white supports stylized, Halloween-type horror, and color supports realistic horror like the kind in "Blair Witch" and "Paranormal Activity."
I wonder what kind of fictional horror the internet would support?
The website, Shorpy, has b/w photograph form the early 20th and late 19th centuries. the viewing resolution in them is amazing. I don't know if its because they were shot on glass plate or because of digital enhancement.
I saw Dyer speak about 5 yrs ago. He's a good "riffer" of ideas.
Nice thoughts on that, Eddie! I think I know what kind of horror the internet supports: it's called "creepypasta"! "Creepypasta" is what is told on image boards, video websites, and forums.
Thomas: Wow! I just took a look at Shorpy and it was great! Thanks much for the tip!
Blake: Well, the net seems to work best with social networking (including "creepypasta"), youTube videos, porn, news that fits whatever bias you already have, and the kind of thing Amazon and Netflix do. Maybe recipe and medical info, too. Other kinds of sites serve niche audiences, which is the audience that I'm fond of.
B&W does that? I guess when it comes to color, the rules are different.
There are some kodachromes too, you have to search a little. Family photos from the blogger, but worthwhile for the color quality and sort of socio-antropology stuff; toys, cars, etc.
The detail you get to see is amazing in all the photos.
Most are from east of the Mississippi, though.
Of course in previous decades, having your picture taken was sometimes regarded as a "solemn" occasion, so you see plenty of stiff postures in black and white pictures. Buut of course there are b&W snaps that just brim with life and may even seem jarringly modern. Like a picture I saw once of a youngster aggressively sticking his tongue out and flashing his two middle fingers.... from the 1940's.
Of course, Kodachrome had been around since the mid 30's, but in its early years color was regarded as something very special indeed so no goofing off in front of the camera!
The incredible detail seen in the Shorpy images taken from the Library of Congress library is due to their having been taken, in most cases, on 8X10 glass plates, a few even as large as 11X14. Yes, that means that the original camera negatives were 8 inches by 10 inches, etc. There are also some beautiful full-color Kodachromes taken on 4X5 sheet film by various government agencies during WWII, generally for the purposes of wartime promotions, such as employment for women in wartime industrial manufacturing, but also chronicling various aspects of wartime life. The original scans were generally done in low-contrast to preserve as much detail as possible, and the webmaster adjusts them in Photoshop to restore them to proper density, but the detail is actually what was originally captured, not something that's digitally produced.
Shorpy also publishes user contributions, many of which are Kodachromes, Ektachromes and Kodacolors from the 40s through the 70s, providing color images of everyday life in the period we most often see only in black and white. I personally have submitted over 200 photos from my family's collection.
Paul: Wow! Thanks for the info! Good for you for contributing the family photos.
I used to think the future would have an overabundance of reference material to document these times, but now I'm not so sure. I'm glad to hear that people like you are sharing your collections.
Of those 200+ I guess the most topical for this blog would be this one; me and Walt Kelly's Pogo in Kodachrome in 1963. Also a cool period clock radio.
Oops, sorry, it's Ektachrome. Still...
Dunno Eddie...I used to make my (what we laughingly called)living doing photography, and overall, I found that color often got in the way of the "story", in much the same way that mothers insist that Johnny must be smiling, when a more pensive look may suit better.
Bring on the Plus-X!!
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