Utah 1964, Garry Winogrand
The photos that are worth taking are incomplete by design. They should be ‘open’ rather than being ‘closed’ pictures. An open picture doesn’t tell the viewer what to think, but suggest what they might like to think about. It is crucial to a living, breathing, engaging work to not say everything that it could. Or the real problem: everything the photographer thinks it should. If you say everything that you want to say, then first, you don’t let the viewer ‘in,’ and second, there is a higher chance that you’ll be doing the wrong thing, being boring.
By letting the viewer in I mean letting them engage with the work based out of their own experiences and thinking style. This will always happen, but it is a question of degree. When the viewer can get in to the picture they make it a part of themselves, rather then seeing it as the alien output from another mind. They can feel the photo rather than having to listen to it being told.
As to being wrong, that is, of course, the privilege of art, over say journalism. One is encouraged to be wrong about life, because life is wrong about itself. So really the danger is being too right. Being too right is boring. And being boring is the only real tragedy.
So what are the methods that one can use to make an open picture?
- Be Incomplete: Say less, show less, leave things out of the frame, blur objects, blow out highlights and make shadows you can’t see into. Reduce the lines, the textures, the colours, and the details in the picture. Unlike painting, where the painter starts from nothing and then adds, the photographer starts from everything and then subtracts. This capability to ‘select’ is the key mode of creation for a photographer and the most obvious way to create an open picture. Sometimes however, it helps to be overcomplete: say too much and hide what you really want to say in that. Andy Kaufman was a master at this. He’s theatricality covered up a biting sharp sarcasm, a deep and clear cynicism.
- Be Indirect: select to put the object of the picture off to the side, away from the viewer’s gaze. Do not hide the thing in such a way that it’ll never be found, but leave it for the viewer to find. Learn how to say something without saying something at all. Or saying the other thing. Silence, blankness, space are the most obvious tools, but often you can hide things in density, in detail, in diversity. Hitchcock, Ozu are two excellent, but vastly different examples to follow on indirectness.
- Be Symbolic. Symbols refer. They say more than themselves by combining the idea of themselves with ideas of something else, usually something far bigger. A sickle can be shot as a sickle, or as a reference to Soviet Russia. The difference can be as simple as the angle that the sickle is pictured at. The danger in symbols is being trite, or being sugary, or again, being too obvious. Symbols must be subtle, hidden, peeking out.
Posted 3 years ago
