EYV - Part 3 - Research Points

Hiroshi Sugimoto and my personal experience

I was impressed by Sugimoto's exploration of what he calls "nothingness". Keeping open the shutter between beginning and end of a film, he obtained the paradox of  getting all frames of a film, resulting  in a white frame. So getting the "fullness" gives back the "nothingness", where the "nothingness" is a white light over the screen and the theatre set.

Hiroshi Sugimoto - Movie Theatre,Canton Palace, Ohio, 1980

Sugimoto said “.....My dream was to capture 170,000 photographs on a single frame of film. The image I had inside my brain was of a gleaming white screen inside a dark movie theater. The light created by an excess of 170,000 exposures would be the embodiment or manifestation of something awe-inspiring and divine.....”

Keeping in mind Sugimoto's experience, I tried the same during one of my exercises: I used a long shutter speed, so that resulted in the picture was the set of building and a car-light trail.

f10 25sec iso100 16mm *1,6 = 25,6 mm

What did work: this technique allowed me to make an unwanted subject (the car) disappear. like people and film frames in the theatre.

What did not work: technically, in Sugimoto's work the theatre itself was illuminated by the screen frame, while in my shot, providing the ambient light combined with 25 sec exposure, I could not reach the same outcome.

This experiment was aimed only to the technical aspect of the image-taking, not to emulate the philosopical meaning of Sugimoto's work.

Francesca Woodman

I made a brief research on Francesca Woodman and read about her short life, from school, summer holidays in Italy, graduation and failed applications of her work and her books, until the suicide.

I found a book about her, "The roman years: between flesh and film" by Isabella Pedicini, Italian Edition, Contrasto, january 26th, 2012

In the book introduction, Gerry Badger writes that Francesca Woodman was often working with mirrors and several works are based on reflex and vanishing effect: this has something to do with her use of long time lapse as well,  in order to blur the subject (herself) and give an idea of vanishing, escape (from the film trap?), or no-presence. The no-presence effect could sound in contrast with her shots: most of them are auto portraits, that could mean a strong identity statement. At the same time, in several photos she vanishes as she would like to escape from the limits of the film, of the room, of space and time. That is why some critics explained these images as a suicide anticipation, the last escape from life. Gerry Badger is fascinated by her use of long time exposure. However Badger believes that Francesca Woodman was a young woman dependent on the potential of photographic device to make art and was experimenting with a 6x6 camera.

In 1981, in Philadelphia she wrote the only book published before her death, containing fifteen photographs: "Some Disordered Interior Geometries". This title made me think to what Henri Cartier Bresson said in the documentary "L'amour de court, speaking about his particular ability to frame his pictures: "......it's geometry".  

Francesca Woodman - Blurred Image 2

Francesca-Woodman-House-3-Providence-Rhode-Island-1976

Henri Cartier Bresson - "L'amour de court" and other videos

Watching the documentary was a real source of information and a starting point for me in order to better understand why I love street-photography. I believe that street-photography will be the project of my new photographic life.

In part 1 Cartier Bresson gives the main pathway of his photographic expression like a menu list. You have to be:

- receptive;

- reactive;

- spontaneous (".....should not think about it...");

- intuitive;

- lucky (see "Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare")

You have to:

- use geometry as the basis for framing;

- use the divine proportion;

- use the golden number;

- think to the form (frame) before light;

- be ready to react;

- be observant;

- have sensibility.

An you need talent, have the sense of geometry, not being obsessed to be professional.

In my first reaction I was surprised, because I was expecting HCB to plan everything in advance and profit of the moment occasionally. On the contrary he states that if you go out planning to do or obtain something, you get nothing.

The question "Can one learn to look?" was interesting, because the answer "Can one learn to have sex?" suggests that the main characteristics of a photographer are innate. Could it be true that exists a "photographer's eye"?

The documentary was so interesting (not the part 5, because, due to a copyright issue, the audio is blocked) that i continued watching other HCB video like "The decisive Moment" and 

a part of "Pen Brush and Camera". I learned that HCB based his photographic evolution starting from drawing by a pencil on a white paper. In the video HCB states that taking a photography its more difficult than designing because, while with the pen you can add whatever you like to the picture, even in different moments, with the camera you have to play only with light, space and time, intuition and you must be receptive and reactive in order to catch the so called "decisive moment". "You cannot correct it...." he says "...if you can correct it, then it is the next picture...",  "Life is once, forever." , "The greatest joy for me is geometry." (Henry Cartier Bresson , "The Decisive Moment", published in youtube on 19 nov 2012).

Referring to the photo of the girl running on the stairs (Siphnos, Greece, 1961), answering to the question "How many pictures do you take (of a subject)", he answers "There is no rule, sometimes like this picture in  Greece...... I waited for somebody to pass......". The decisive moment, the moment where everything is in equilibrium within the picture limits.

By my opinion one of the most fascinating sides of photography and especially of street photography is that each moment is unique and not returnable: depending on our sensibility, sense of geometry, reactivity and .... luck.