Everyone can take a Photograph but not Everyone can tell a Story —OR— These Days there are a lot of Storytellers who are just taking Photographs
Leonard Da Vinci, the master of the Mona Lisa enigmatic smile, reportedly made this fifteenth century observation about Florence, Italy’s new rising star’s work—Michelangelo—with a less than judicious shade-scribbling on one of his precious vellum sheets. “Anyone can carve a stone to reveal a horse,” he wrote (I’m creatively exaggerating) “But a horse only comes alive with strokes of sfumato eloquence with paint on canvas.” What Leo was saying about Mickey’s marble masterpieces; they were just bas-relief photos out of context while genius strokes of color that combined foreground, subject and background were life captured. In effect, he was making a point that David’s massive genitalia may be rock hard, but Mona’s little soft pucker actually ruled the world.
This voyeuristic innuendo not appropriate for a talk about photography? Well, lets get serious. We like camera bodies because they fit our hands like a hug. And don’t get me started about cavernous sensor size pits waiting for the firm tight connection of long lens attachments: Look, we are a visual race. We like the sensation of titillation. Everything we buy and sell, everything we feel and see and want to be revolves around sensory satisfaction.
When I began my exodus from the United States some 12 years ago that led to an extended life-recalibration in Italy, I eagerly read Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy. First because the title alone explained me to a “T.” And second, that now I walked streets Michelangelo and Leonardo probably peed in corners of. I didn’t know they were gay, that they were both buff by modern standards, both lived in Florence for a time, both knew each other, and passed each other on said streets probably leering and at the same time loathing; I had this mind image that one day they approached each other on the Ponte Vecchio and exchanged barbs. “Leo,” Michelangelo catcalled, “With your curls so tight, what’s with your problem never completing anything?” Leo, who had been contemplating purchasing a golden necklace in the window of a jewelry store on the bridge for his much younger (and oft doodle-ringleted-head on pages and pages of scientific screeds and military drawings) lover, Salai (who consistently robbed his older paramour) (Hmmm, sounds familiar, but that’s another book), grabbed Michelangelo’s pumped shoulder and shot back, “Every page I cover has exactly what’s in my head, while all you do all day is cover yourself in white dust thinking it makes you better looking, but in reality it just makes you look the same as all the other blockheads.”
I of course imagined this exchange understanding perfectly the ancient Florentine-dialect Italian spoken, and since I could relate a bit more with Leo, this golden spiral of writing—I hope—illustrates a point: Who knows the actual real relationship between these creatives? You and I could arrive on the bridge at the moment they pass and see completely different things. It’s even possible you didn’t even notice them, your full attention on how was it possible to have glass windows showcasing jewelry back at the cusp of the 1500’s. And damn! Should have purchased everything in sight because nowadays that loot could have bought the penthouse in New York City’s Central Park Tower on Billionaires Row. (I’m quite happy the years I lived—in many Italians’ assessment—my tenement apartment on the wrong side of the tracks in Padua, Italy.
On my way to the cafe this morning to write this blog, I walked 4,000 steps and took 150 photographs. As I typed out the frame of my ideas, drinking my coffee and pretending to not eat the Colombian favored Arequipa filled flaky turnover, I snapped an additional 30 pictures (mainly finding subject matter in a poodle and also a girl who sort of looked like a poodle to my artistic inner eye). My pictures add to the 5 billion or so photographs that will be taken today around the world. (If I had a penny for every photograph, I would be your—but with an additional 1,000 square feet living space—downstairs neighbor at Central Park Towers.)
According to a probably AI generated fun-fact on Google, 57,000 photographs are taken every second in the world. When I do that math I realize that my entire oeuvre of earnest artistic work taken over the span of 15 years amounts to less than 13 seconds of time. Which in my case, just leaves me with more time to get my heart broken repeatedly. Which also makes me think, what the f-and-k am I doing with my life since what I have been doing has added up to a fraction of the fifteen minutes of fame I thought would come my way by being a photographer of the world.
Math has always been a depressing subject for me. In grade school the only reason I passed in math classes was that I copied the answers to homework questions when we went over them in class the next day. Every test I ever took received an D or an F. My head was too much on the esoteric, where every question had a multitude of answers, the answers always being correct because they matched my version of what the question was. Photography, and for that matter any visual art, is much the same. We all take pictures because for us they contain a story. Some of the pictures are rich enough either in their sparseness or overflowing elements that others see a story also. But most of the 57,000 photographs taken at the beginning of this sentence are just that, photographs which don’t beg for attention beyond the person who took the image. I would like to say that all 180 pictures I took today in less than half an hour have relevance to you; they don’t. They are mine alone. Something caught my eye and then begged for capture; many times the same picture repeated, sometimes slightly from each split second capture as I positioned myself and the iPhone infinitesimally to different degrees to get what was in my head transferred to digital longevity.
Math is not the only depressing thing in my life. You could add the tin-like taste of sugar-free gummy bears, and photography. Because the truth is that sugar free anything only lures you to consume more sugar. And the act of photography in our modern world only entices you to take more and more photos. And more and more of anything just makes you fat and lazy and ultimately stuck in your own version of a man-cave or woman-salon surrounded by your misfortunate and plentiful ejaculations of no-one-gives-a-damn. (Unless you are Taylor Swift where more and more and even more with some more just leads to gazillions of followers and success that spelled backwards is sseccus. She could trademark that and make it something, I’m sure.
But wait a minute Tay-Tay. This is a sliver of a second in my fame game, so hands off. (And I assume, like acting, you don’t know much about photography.) (Snarky shade, but I bow down before her actual creative brilliance.) Because she is brilliant, taking her art form and staying true to her vision yet making it appealing for mass consumption.
In fact, this blog is about just that. What she does we are not far from that. We who pursue the art of photography are all doing the same thing, taking basically the same pictures, and hoping that some odd ball moment we saw and then captured rises above the millions of captures taken that day and is seen by more than ten friends on Instagram. In my case I try for five ‘I Likes” and sometimes surprised to actually get two.
I am near finishing this weeks screed listening to Patti Smith’s newest head-swarm music, The Perfect Vision Reworkings. At some point she was talk-chant-singing about vaginas (I think as dark little places) (Not sure, I was intent in that moment writing about long lens attachments). She is an inspiration for me, how she views the world. Her music and poetry is a bit over my head, but her other memoir prose is captivating and her photography equally so. I think what draws me to her photos is the story behind them; and here we arrive at the entire reason I wrote this. It’s captivating not because the photographs are one-of-a-kind (some are) but she imbues them with prose that makes us appreciate them for her vision and not for what we actually see.
Our world has become this mega complex beast that now shifts in days and months. The act of creating art has not been left behind: It too has sped up to mass consumption and over abundance.We don’t take one photo of the total eclipse with a special camera that sees its unique characteristics, but tens of millions of photos on devices numbering in the tens of thousands, each one more than capable of the one special and unique shot. Ms. Swift in her own way recognizes this. Her song writing capabilities are unique but for every ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, Ever’, a ‘Vampire’ or ‘I Can Buy Myself Flowers’ lurks. To retain her sseccus she has learned how to turn her songs into events tied around clear and compelling album story telling. We want to hear her music because she tells us quite explicitly how we should interpret it.
As photographers we have to break free from this self imposed box where we assume our expert captures tell the story without any other context to support them; no sirree! It ain’t enough anymore. That’s one math equation I understand. To polygonal-exponential-Einstein- quadruple our pursuit to be seen in this swamp of billions, we have to get out of our man-cave/woman-salon and tell the world (even if its two people on Instagram) that we took this photograph because it said something to us and I want to tell you what it meant. (With less words in this blog, but you get the drift.)
We have to imbue our visual art with AI. Aye-I. As in, Hey-This-Is-Me-And-Let-Me-Tell-You-Why-I-Deserve-Your-Attention! This is what Da Vinci spent his life doing; observing the world with such loquacious and scientific exactitude that many of his masterpieces of draftsmanship are crowded on the same sheets of paper as his minute explanations of what they could actually do.
Whew! I know it’s a lot. Just like the first time I saw the little ‘E’ (explicit sign) on some of Taylor Swift’s song tracks. When did she become such a ‘Wrecking Ball’?
Many times a scene reveals the opportunities to tell a story you didn’t see while framing the capture. I saw this woman looking out to the street through a window and as I crossed nearer to her I concentrated on capturing some reflection that would as a layer of interest. I was actually concentrating on not being run over by a yellow taxi, though wanting that color in the photo. What I ended up with instead is much more interesting. And adds a layer even onto the layer of the photograph. The interpretation is up for anyone to apply, but I see two relatives of her, possible passed away, and she glimpses something outside her shop window that spurs memory. Perhaps she saw a crazy American running across the street, the same gangly guy her mother took a photo of years ago that resembled me her father.
I love shop windows as most street photographers do. They add layers. My poem side saw opportunity. A woman frozen in place by ropes. I also like how this mannequin resembles the AI proliferation of computer generated humanoids. Are we real or just figments of silicon injected DNA. For me this pic can take me to interesting poetic storytelling. Stay tuned!
This is very much for me a Tolkien Ent moment. The tree waiting to moan out its horror as humans encroach on its turf. So many times inanimate objects either living or man-made, when carefully arranged within a frame of a photograph, take on human characteristics.
