Photographic storytelling by Soth
Highlights
Portraiture is a dance. It's a relationship between you and the subject.
Photography is a relationship in space.
Photography is the art of editing.
When you are taking a photo, you are editing out the world as much as you are including a frame.
It is in putting photos together that photography reaches a higher level as an art form.
The object-ness of photography
maquette -> hand-made dummy -> final publication
To find your voice as a photographer, just go out in the world and look around
Lesson 01 — Beginnings
Soth feels like it is important to him as a photographer that he has this internal life that he seeks to represent in the external world.
Photography for him is this dive inward but doing it in the external world.
Summer Nights by Robert Adams
- Walking around sub-urban Denver at night
- This convinced him to take photography more seriously
Took a summer course in the University of Minnesota.
- Replicated Adams' photographs.
To learn how to do things, copy people at first.
Studied under Joel Sternfeld.
- "On the road" photography
- He avoided copying Joel.
- Instead focused on staged studio photography.
During spring break, he did the photography he really wanted to do.
He worked as an assistant to a commercial photographer.
- It made him realized this is not his path.
He then worked at a small dark room.
- But he wasn't happy.
He became a part-time bus driver.
- It got him out of the dark room job.
He then became a suburban newspaper photographer.
Returned to a dark room job.
He intentionally chose to separate his art (keep it pure) from his day job (dark room work).
- The downside of this is that he ended up not loving dark room work.
This is the danger of making a living out of something you love. You could damage your spark, your passion.
Keep that spark alive in different ways.
- A strategy: Have multiple projects of interest, so you aren't over invested in one area.
His old high school job as a Chinese food delivery boy may have led him to photography because he was thrilled to what he sees when the customer opens the door for him.
Photography gives him the excuse to look around and, sometimes, be in very intimate situations.
Concepts, works, and people to explore:
- New Topographics
- Why People Photograph: Selected Essays and Reviews by Robert Adams
- Joel Sternfeld
- William Eggleston
- Stephen Shore
- American Prospects (1987) by Joel Sternfeld
Lesson 05 — Key Projects: Sleeping by the Mississippi
A landscape could exist in the imagination of so many people.
A landscape could be associated with an idea, e.g., freedom, longing for adventure, travel, and solitude
It is good that an idea captured by a landscape exists outside one image. Because it doesn't have to live up to one picture of the landscape.
First published project
Photographs along the river not of the river.
The goal of the project was to sse the river as a metaphor for wandering.
What Soth loved about the river is that it provided a path.
- When he went out each day, he had something to follow.
- He could use the path however he wanted.
- He could use the river as a metaphor however he wanted.
He was pursuing his own fantasies (his idea of freedom). But then he encounters people who were also seeking freedom in their own ways.
Challenge: How are the pictures going to work together?
It was a unique time in his life because he had the skills but he didn't have an audience.
- No one really cared what he was doing, so he felt free.
- He knew what he was doing but he didn't have to worry about what other people will think about his work or that he has to produce something.
- Resolve: I'm gonna do what I want to do, take the photos I want to take. If they fit, they fit. If they don't, they don't.
He looks back at the work now and he sees photos he wouldn't include if he would do it now. He sees naive mistakes. But he also thinks a lot about how naiveté is part of a project's charm.
An artist's early work has an energy.
- Mix of having enough skill and freshness, newness, and naiveté.
Lesson 11 — Case Study: 'The Griz'
He likes the act of discovery.
But he can't wander aimlessly. He needs a destination
He begins by throwing a dart at a map. This tells him where to go.
He then researches and brainstorms new avenues to go down.
He lets the location dictate what to look for.
- Ex. a lake is a destination for fishermen. He things about the analogy of fishing with photography.
- So he searched for bait and tackle shops. This research leads hims to a specific person: 'The Griz.'
Soth isn't the photographer who photographs things as they are.
- He negotiated with the subject to setup in a soft lit area rather than a harsh lit area.
- He starts figuring out the lighting.
- He starts figuring out the depth of field that he wants.
- He makes decisions on what to make out of focus.
- He makes a decision about the posture of the person.
What is post portrait?
- "Post portrait" typically refers to the process of editing or enhancing a portrait photograph after it has been taken.
Soth enjoys the scenario when the subject is in their world and he is in his world, and he gets to see the other person's body working.
He always, then, asks if he can go in the house.
- Seeing other people's homes is exciting for him.
- Photography becomes this excuse for him to look in.
- When he is inside the house, he quickly calculates what pictures he has to take.
In generally doesn't work having tons of information in a picture.
- Having tons of things in a portrait takes away power.
- You just want to look at the simple things itself.
Goal: Making analogy between photography and fishing.
- Question: What do you choose after catching thousands and thousands of fish to hang on your wall? What do I choose as a photographer after shooting thousands of photos to put into a book, a print, or exhibition? What's valuable? Why one over another?
Quotes
- species:
- themes: