considering pictures | sean justice > open journal

Photographs © NYSAT-Municipal Landscape Control Committee Pictures are part of our modern landscape, and help create it, too. New York City tourists know they're here because their experience matches their image of it — an image formed often and substantially by pictures. Paraphrasing Sontag: our streets are thickened by billboards, animated signs, and advertisements adhered to every surface, an irresistible mental pollution to which we are addicted, and we crowd along the avenues in an image-addled stupor, feeling that our citizenship is more stable than it is. So...wow, that feels kind of negative. But as you've heard me say in class, the best way to recognize their influence on us is to imagine a day without them, entirely off the grid, no pictures of any kind. I know this strikes a nerve somehow because I see you smile as I say it. My friend Jordan knows the power of pictures, especially the advertising pictures that assault us on the sidewalk. His epic struggle against the...

photo by Becky Olstad We're zooming through another session of intro and intermediate photography at the ICP and the avalanche of worry and frustration is beginning to feel overwhelming. Apertures, shutter speeds, focus modes, flash ratios, bias controls, clipping indicators, framing options, not to mention working with the scene, feet on the ground, paying attention to light, texture, detail -- and how about actually talking to your subjects? Forgetaboutit. Lightroom? Photoshop? Printing? C'mon.... What are we learning when we learn photography? Let's back it up a bit and take a breath. photo by Colleen Mullins I recently reconnected with a friend from a previous orbit whom I haven't seen in a long time. Colleen Mullins directs the photography program at Art Institutes International Minnesota and we caught up with each other at the Photolucida reviews last month. Her story inspires me to keep inventing the process, to keep challenging the norms. At root she wants to...

If you don't read FOAM , you should. My favorite magazine that deals with photography. From the current issue, themed " Displaced ," from an interview with Francis Hodgson, the Head of Photographs at Sotheby's London, by Anne-Celine Jaeger. Jaeger asks: What makes a great photograph? Hodgson answers: It has something to do with the photographer's ability to express him or herself. If you've got nothing to say, then say nothing. It's not really about f-stops and technical perfection. It's about the photographer testing what the viewer already knows, being confident not to say the same again, but adding a bit. Take a picture of a car, lit by 40 lights for an ad campaign, that ad might be a great picture of a car but it won't tell you what the photographer thought about the car. I think it's hugely important for photography students to have knowledge of the history of photography, to know what's gone before. It's shocking how so many stude...

This week in class we mulled over aesthetics. I don't like that word. Actually, I like the way it looks, especially the freaky kerning of the 'a' and the 'e' in some fonts. And I like the way it flutters from my mouth and ends in a crunch. But I definitely don't like the modern connotations of rules and judgment that crowd along beneath the surface every time we use it. I also don't like the way it's become a cliche for saying nothing at all when we talk about pictures. Here's how it rolls for me, but we have to rewind a bit to get there: As a concept with deep roots the word 'aesthetics' can be anchored in the Greek to mean 'perception.' But beginning a few hundred years ago and stretching to today it's evolved to stand at the apex of an entire system of thought that strives to separate what we do from who we are, how we make meaning from how we live meaningfully, and (most notoriously, to my mind), who can access the beautiful f...

Almost three weeks without writing here....April has been the cruelest month. But with reasons enough for two months. The picture below was taken last week at the public portfolio walk during Photolucida Festival , a four day extravaganza of portfolio sharing and networking that happens every other year in Portland, Oregon. For the past month I've been cloistered in my studio printing the portfolio I showed there. Then, for the past week, I was cloistered at the Benson Hotel in Portland with appointments all day and night with curators and gallerists and photographers, discussing and sharing pictures. Exhilarating. Exhausting. A marathon of photography intensity. But now it's back to regular life, which means that there's less time to look at and talk about photographs, and that the focused drive that took us there in first place has to get in line again behind doing the dishes, helping the kids with homework, and preparing for teaching class (or for whatever day-job suppor...

At the ICP we roll on 10-week sessions, and the winter session has just ended. Which means we can catch our breath for a few days before the spring session begins. In the photo one and two courses, as usual, the wave will swell fast and then spread out over the duration of the term, because there's so much to learn, so fast, at the start. And then once you've crested the top the challenge becomes just holding your balance and continuing to take pictures. In the full-time graduate programs, however, we've been working straight since September (or earlier) so the challenge is different. At this point the conversation is shifting to focus on what comes next, how to start a career in photography. ...how to start a career in photography. That wave is so huge it makes me shudder. When we look at it I almost have to laugh because I have no idea what to say. Even spelling it out like this -- how to start a career in photography -- seems absurd, makes it overly simple and too doable...

Stop and back-up. Please. Right now, ask yourself: when was the last time I made a back-up of my photographs? Every term, unfortunately, somebody loses a hard drive. This term it's happened twice. No matter how many times I make a scene, wave my arms, jump up and down, beg and plead, yell like a crazy person, nobody takes me seriously until it happens. And then it's too late, at least for somebody. What do I have to do to make you take this seriously? Your hard drive is going to fail. Guaranteed. Hard drives fail. That's what they do. Hard drives do not keep working. They stop working. My friend Tony thinks we should make movies of when it happens: the disbelief, the shock, the tears...and post them on Youtube. All those pictures of birthday parties, kids growing up, parents, friends, neighbors....all gone. Maybe it would help. I don't know. I work with between 30 and 60 students each term, and the average lately has been one hard drive failure per term. The reasons var...

Today my thoughts are trending toward success and what it means to make photographs that matter. I'm happy to say that another draft of the China book has been completed (the one I wrote about earlier ). In this version, responding to ample criticism, I've opened up the pages and included more white space, more room for breathing. I'm hopeful that this project is getting closer to finished—because there's so much other work I want to do—but the process is long, and I can't put it down until it feels like it has the right weight. Zoe Strauss wrote recently about the anxiety she feels when nearing the end stage of a project, in this case her annual and massive I-95 exhibition in Philadelphia. Her words resonate with me: I am confident in myself, in my work, but I am occasionally beset with anxiety surrounding my work. She makes photos that matter, and if she feels this way then I'm having trouble breathing! My friend Allison is giving awards randomly for stuff sh...

This weekend several students wrote to ask why their pictures are so dark. Right on time! This is the point in the term when that question always surfaces. As soon as we start printing in earnest, the abstraction of camera exposure takes on a newly practical necessity. It seems that no matter how shutter speeds and f-stops are explained, the need for a correctly balanced exposure suddenly becomes urgent once the picture becomes physical as a paper object. These days I'm primarily teaching with digital cameras, but the dynamic is similar when teaching film photography. Whether in a darkroom or in a computer lab, it's not until you give up trying to print an underexposed frame that you return to the basics of proper exposure. The tools different, of course, but in this basic fundamental they are remarkably similar: exposure is key, and underexposure is deadly. Drilling yourself in the basics of exposure is a good way to start understanding the tools of photography. Whether you...

Some interesting conversations evolved and continued this week. First, a student wrote to ask for clarification of a comment I made in class: ...but I was thinking about what you said last week in terms of not caring less if people like your pictures and that all that was important to you was to communicate something. Did I get that right? Can you explain that a bit more for me? I responded that, yes, more important than whether or not someone personally “likes” any particular picture, is creating a photograph that communicates something that matters, or leaves a record, or visualizes a moment, or responds poetically to a frame of mind. I don’t know if it’s entirely possible to do this, however. But a good conversation about pictures can sometimes illuminate a path toward accomplishing that goal, as long as we don't get stuck on simplistic responses such as "I like it," or "I think it works." Second, I was asked what I would do if given the chance to develop a ...

Hiroshi Sunari is giving trees to friends and artists who can engage a dream. About LEUR L'EXISTENCE * Tree Project , he says, The trees that still live from the time of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima are called, Hibaku trees (A-bombed trees). In 2009, tree doctor Riki Horiguchi gave me about 250-500 seeds of Round Leaf Holly, Persimmon, Chinaberry, Firmiana simplex, Japanese Hackberry, Jujube—trees that are the second or third generation of Hibaku Trees. I am going to give these seeds to people who are interested in planting them. These seedlings will be exhibited at The Horticultural Society of New York in Dec 2009. I'm amazed and comforted by Hiroshi's project. The idea is inspiring, literally, breath-giving. The spirit and the invitation are gently engaging, compelling, activating. The photographs are quiet, transparent, and honest. When I say that photography is a conversation, a way of knowing, a way of paying attention, I'm talking about Hiroshi's project. ...

I am walking with my son on a warm day in winter. The road is quiet, the park is closed to vehicles, and bicyclists, bladers, and runners pass occasionally on either side of us. The sun glistening from the asphalt makes the world seem wet. Something is in my eye. My son walks beyond. Looking up I realize he doesn't know I've stopped. I call to him and he turns to me.

Yesterday at ICP Bradly Treadaway and I talked about how we could improve our teaching. One of the topics we touched on was the idea of substance, specifically technology training, and we asked ourselves what should be included in our curriculum, and what might be unnecessarily clouding the issues. This morning I answered emails from more students wondering about classes for next term - what they should take in order to keep advancing towards becoming a photographer - and caught up on some photo blogs. One thread in particular, from APL , has caught my attention lately: it started when Haggart posted an email he'd received from a photo-school graduate who was having difficulty "making it" in the photo world. Nearly 200 replies later (I added my own thoughts today, in fact), the conversation is going strong. It's totally engaging, if you're interested in the business of photography and the education of photographers, and has touched on many of the concerns I hea...

Wandering through the stacks at the Brooklyn Library the other week I happened on Arthur Danto's 1994 book, Embodied Meanings, a collection of his art criticism from The Nation . As you know, I'm drawn to thinking about how and why pictures matter. I remember feeling intrigued by the title, but I don't exactly remember why I decided to check the book out--maybe there was an essay about some work from the 1980s that caught my attention. In any case, what sticks with me now, weeks after returning it to the library, is Danto's Introduction. In fact, Danto's description of himself as a writer, his background, his intentions and process, his accidental beginning as an art critic, and his candid appraisal of how we come to understand the place and importance of pictures in the first place -- an art-critic's self-criticism -- was so illuminating, so engaging and revealing, that I think it's a must-read in itself. He writes: Let me say in conclusion that I get a lo...

My friend Maggie wrote to continue a conversation we'd started in 2008. She's the production muscle behind an organization that enables photographers and writers to engage with world events— SalaamGarage . She writes: SalaamGarage is an organization started by my friend photographer Amanda Koster. SalaamGarage leads trips around the world that connect participants with international Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Travelers commit to creating and sharing unique, independent media projects that raise awareness and cause positive change. The rest of the adventure is spent touring around the region, experiencing and exploring the culture and environment within an entirely new context. Humanistic photography, the idea that a photograph can change the world, and that an impassioned observer can make a difference for the better, is one of the motivations that led me to become a photographer. The power of this idea runs deep in many of us, and yet few of us pursue it past a...

Possibility of Knowing , originally uploaded by seanjustice . My eye is drawn toward light. Knowledge pools briefly, spinning counter-clockwise. I am submerged. In the museum today I am wondering about the possibility of holding tightly, or of releasing. I should be answering emails but am drifting weightless through my time on earth. These pictures are from the Brooklyn Museum. Unearthing the Truth: Eqypt's Pagan and Coptic Sculpture examines funerary motifs carved in stone as Egypt transitioned from Pagaism to Christianity to Islam between the 3rd and 6th Centuries. Revealing the uncertainty of the museological enterprise itself, the exhibition asks whether the artifacts in its own collection are real, or if they're 20th Century fakes. Wandering home later, I'm wondering about the human enterprise of building knowledge, and about the desire to unearth certainty from facts in the ground. Crossing Prospect Park, watching kids on bicycles, I'm considering the possibili...

Waiting for the start of the day on a recent shoot in Los Angeles, I watched the sun stream in. Behind me were art directors, assistants, stylists, equipment guys unloading trucks, producers carrying coffee and coolers filled with water, and location managers making sure no one scratched anything. In front of me was the empty reception counter and this orchid, and the reflecting sun. During the shoot I never returned to this particular area, never made another photograph here, but this is the picture that sticks with me from the day. One of the things that draws to me hardest to photography is this desire to pay attention to the light, to wake up to it, to notice it, and then to catch it as it catches me. This race across the universe, this love dance with light rays, makes me feel alive.

I want to talk about play. Yesterday afternoon on our regular walk Diana and I passed the school yard at 321 where we used to spend warmer evenings with our sons. Today they're teenagers and play on their own, and we no longer while away hours watching them go up and down the slides. Yesterday evening my younger son phoned from the subway platform to double-check his direction: "should I go toward Manhattan or Coney Island?" And feeling his dislocation in space brought me close to my dislocation in time. From the outer edge I'm watching him expand into wider circles of friends and confusion where I can't follow, but where I've been before. The snow is gone today; it's bright and sunny and February-warm at 35 degrees. But I remember when we'd forge through white-out conditions, all booted and bundled, stiff with layers of thermal underwear, focused and intent on cutting the first sled-way on the big hill in the park. My friend Ed and I, grumpy about the...

I want to remember the first photograph. Not the first photograph ever, but the first photograph I ever made that made me feel like a photographer. One of the most challenging parts of my job as a teacher is to convince people to give up some of the self-emphasis and let the process evolve organically, intuitively, from a place beyond themselves. Sometimes the tools require so much practice and instruction that intuition—even the memory of intuition—becomes buried. It takes a long time to get comfortable with all these buttons. But that's the target for me: to return to finger-painting. That's when I suggest setting the camera on full-auto and going to a party or taking a walk. Maybe you remember riding a bicycle. The first time? Very scary. So off balance. If you don't have access to this memory personally, go to the park this spring and watch moms and dads getting their four-year-olds on two-wheelers. My point is, the equilibrium is learned. Keep practicing. Remember the ...

The new term has begun and we're deep into the third week of classes at both NYU and the International Center for Photography. As usual I'm dwelling on questions of learning and teaching. How do I help you become more of the photographer you already are? This is the question that keeps me up at night, that's for sure. One of the unspoken assumptions of photography is that the world is photographable. We start from here and move forward, as if making pictures in this way was not only desirable—our goal—but also doable. I'm not so sure anymore. It might be that we have to investigate this underlying assumption. What do we do when we make pictures with photography? What do we say about ourselves? About our world? About what we know, or want to know? What does the act of pointing a camera say about what we love, and what we want to forget? A student wrote to me in crisis: the computer, the arbitrary materiality of the apparatus, was confounding her, making her doubt her abi...