(embiggemable)
(embiggemable)
(embiggemable)
(embiggemable)
FIRST THING FIRST - CONGRATS TO MIKE JOHNSTON for being published as the featured article in the The New Yorker. No mean feat, indeed.
That written, I did not like the article at all. iMo, it fell far sort of the best piece ever written, albeit now quite dated, about the family photo…
Of all the world’s photographers, the lowliest and least honored is the simple householder who desires only to “have a camera around the house” and to “get a picture of Dolores in her graduation gown.” He lugs his primitive equipment with him on vacation trips, picnics, and family outings of all sorts. His knowledge of photography is about that of your average chipmunk. He often has trouble loading his camera, even after owning it for twenty years. Emulsion speeds, f- stops, meter readings, shutter speeds have absolutely no meaning to him, except as a language he hears spoken when, by mistake, he wanders into a real camera store to buy film instead of his usual drugstore. His product is almost always people- or possession-oriented. It rarely occurs to such a photographer to take a picture of something, say a Venetian fountain, without a loved one standing directly in front of it and smiling into the lens. What artistic results he obtains are almost inevitably accidental and totally without self-consciousness. Perhaps because of his very artlessness, and his very numbers, the nameless picture maker may in the end be the truest and most valuable recorder of our times. He never edits; he never editorializes; he just snaps away and sends the film off to be developed, all the while innocently freezing forever the plain people of his time in all their lumpishness, their humanity, and their universality. ~ Jean Shepherd
Re: what (and why) I didn’t like. I’ll begin with the title…
I did not know that the was/is a “secret” about family photos that was crying out to be revealed. And, after reading the article I most certainly did not feel that I was enlightened in any manner about any “secret”. Sorry, but I mean, is it a secret that family photos have been, and are currently being made by the billions? Or, is it a secret that many of those pictures are important to and have personal meaning for the picture maker and those with whom he might share them? I could go on but, simply put, what was the secret?
Item # 2: What photos made by professional photographers on assignment-in this case a specific FSA photographer-have to do with “family photos” is beyond my understanding of the concept of family photos. Ditto, photos made an accomplished FIne Art picture maker in pursuit of creating a body of Fine Art photographs for exhibition and publication.
Item # 3: The idea that “Creating a comprehensive record of a family’s life is inherently challenging…” is, within the boundaries of my understanding of ”family photos”, a rather ridiculous / inflated construct. In my experience, I have never encountered a picture making individual, even those who are “serious” picture makers, who has set out to create a comprehensive record of their family’s life. I can write, without doubt or fear of contradiction, that the overwhelming number of those making pictures of their family are, as Jean Shepherd wrote, just merrily “snapping away” with very little thought, if any, given to creating a comprehensive record for posterity. Why do I think so?…
Item # 4: creating a comprehensive record of a family’s life, if it is to have lasting value, would require a commitment to amass an actual record of that life, aka: making, and keeping safe, prints. A commitment that, while it has not completely disappeared, is sorrily under-utilized. A topic which, BTW, is left unaddressed in the article.
Item # 5: Johnston’s section about collecting is curious inasmuch as he writes about “the high-water mark of portraiture for hire” which I thought was a bit of a switch-a-roo inasmuch as, to my way of thinking, a “family photo” is one-most often a “snapshot”-made by a family member of another family member, to include relatives, friends, and acquaintances. (Perhaps my nit-picking definition of the idea of “family photo” is…well…nit-picking.)
Item # 6: In the same collecting section, Johnston mentions that “some people collect pictures of other peoples’ families” and that “some of the finds are beautiful and unique. (And sometimes weird, hilarious, or surreal.)” I am one of those people who collect pictures of other people who are other than friends and family. And, indeed, I seek out pictures that are occasionally beautiful pictures but the ones I enjoy the most are the weird, hilarious, or surreal pictures. Ones that Shepherd writes “freez[es] forever the plain people of [their] time in all their lumpishness, their humanity, and their universality.
Those pictures that I collect are ones that prick my eye and sensibilities. Pictures that might be weak on the interesting configuration side of things but, on the referent side of things, they are truly full of life. And I think that encapsulates my dislike, or perhaps better stated “disappointment”, in the article. There is too much emphasis on the personal experiences of the writer, slightly academic and historic takes on the subject, all of which is way too “serious” for me considering the topic at hand.
What, for me, is sorrily lacking in the article is the sense of spontaneity, the pure joy of making friends and family pictures, and the ultimate, over time, re-creation of that joy, spontaneity and, to be sure, occasional melancholy when viewing the pictures. I do not want to rain on Johnston’s parade-that’s why I am publishing this here-I’m sorry, but I just do not feel in the article a sense of that spontaneity and joy that the making and viewing of “family photos” (mine and those made by others) brings to me.