Take the Ben Shahn picture of a sheriff's back above. In 1935 when this picture was taken, backs were a new subject for photography. Dyer says Dorothea Lange discovered them earlier that year, and the innovation spread like wildfire. Amazing as it sounds, backs had to be "discovered" by somebody!
I love this photo. Dyer's a British radical and he interprets the subject as a big American bottom and a big American gun. He extrapolates that this sheriff likes to sit a lot and probably spends a lot of time reading on the can. Haw! Maybe there's some truth in that.
What I see is a symbol for the fact that somebody's always regarding us and judging us, just as we're always regarding and judging others. We're like social insects who are always on the lookout for mutants and deviants.
Lummoxes learn this behavior when they're kids by observing other lummoxes on the street. Most lummoxes are nice enough people but they're big and can't resist a little harmless intimidation of the skinny. It's just the way things are. It's lucky that we have cartoonists to point things like this out.
Even raggedy farm laborers (the Lange shot, above) possess great dignity in a backshot. When viewing somebody from the front we too often see what what we disagree with or take exception to. Look at the same person from the back, especially if that person is observing something and doesn't seem to be aware of us, and we see that person as a thinking human being...a noble creature who can take in information and make decisions of great importance.
Aaaargh! There's more to say, but I'll have to save it for another post!
9 comments:
Gee, a whole post about man ass. How 'bout you go back to the nerd girls, eh?
Sheesh...
Ben Shahn has always been something of an inspiration to me. His photos will do almost as well as his paintings.
Unfortunately, recent art critics have dismissed his work for having had a political message. Even art criticism goes through its phases.
Don't backshots also give additional info on the person were looking at?
Mike: Haw!
Michael: I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't know Shahn was also a photographer til I read it in Dyer's book.
I don't agree with Shahn's politics, but I don't question his talent. Usually I can be pretty objective about visual art that contains a political message. It's harder to do that with writing, I guess because the reader's forced to spend more time with it.
Steven: A LOT of information is in the back! It's the part you can't suck in to look thinner, the part that's neglected, disheveled and covered with grass and "kick me" signs. It's you as you really are.
I love reactions done on a backshot, and surely the most effective cut in all of filmaking is the one that takes us from a backshot to a frontshot of the same character.
Uncle Eddie sed...
"Look at the same person from the back, especially if that person is observing something and doesn't seem to be aware of us, and we see that person as a thinking human being...a noble creature who can take in information and make decisions of great importance."
I think the backshot makes it much easier to see the world from the subject's p.o.v. - literally and figuratively. We use this devices when storyboarding all the time. It does take a little bit of empathy but that's easier to manifest when we're not under a scrutinizing glare and therefore a bit self conscious.
p.s. - I sure loves me some nerd girls:)
Often these "back shots" are voyeuristic; not so much that we're looking at a butt, but we are looking at someone and they're not looking at us; they can't "see" us. It's also counter voyeuristic, as in the Lange. we are looking at someone, but we can't see what the subject is looking at. We can only look at the back of their head. It lends mystery and opacity. and contrasts with the window like transparency, that is conventionally ascribed to photography.
Hey, Eddie, I'm reading a cool book I think you'd like called "Before Stanivlasky: American Professional Acting Schools and Acting Theory 1875-1925"
I don't know why his last name is spelled wrong in the title, but it's a terrific book! I only wish I could find a good book on the acting theories of Max Reinhardt and Ernst Lubitsch!
sorry- sort of repeating the end of your post. slightly different though.
I think what makes the Lange photo interesting is that we DON"T know what's going on in the man's head, anymore that we know where the road, to the left of him, leads to.
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