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| P. Greenaway, The mysteries of the garden of Compton House (1982) |
keep wondering whether the distinction drawn by Ghirri (the couple photographer passive / active photographer ) is sufficient to give an account of how things really are in the complicated world of photography. I realize, in fact, that in the rigid cataloging many aspects of photography can not find suitable accommodation. To upset these meditations came the discovery, in the rich (for method and results) Geoff Dyer's book , The infinite moment. essay on photography, another category: that of unconscious photographers, definition to be given, as reported by Dyer, the great Walker Evans: "Walker Evans said that one of his" favorite topics "being concerned" unconsciously photographers' by writers like James Joyce and Henry James. "
Dyer does not clarify what we mean by" unconsciously photographers. " Lets just guess. It provides, however, always calling Evans, the case of Walt Whitman as an example of use (Literary) conscious of photography: "In these Leaves of Grass photographed everything is literally" these verses and quotes "Look into my poems, the strong, large inland city, with roads paved, buildings of stone and iron, vehicles and incessant trade, / Look at the rotary steam, with many cylinders, look at the electric telegraph, which crosses the continent (...) / Look at the strong and quick locomotive, puffing, goes off to sounding the whistle of steam " calling them" a long caption in an enormous catalog of photographs ".
That's it, but no matter how slender this track seem to me the stone was launched and so I started to pursue the suggestion of the idea, which has expanded as circles on the surface water.
First, I wondered when and how I unconsciously photographer. From photographer, I tend to look at reality as a potential reservoir of images, a kind of subject headings and endless chaos. This means that the optical vision overlap (often with no apparent conscious control) made a mental vision of fake shots, evaluations of brightness, possible relationships between subjects, likely narratives, known images that re-emerge, but this is the toolbox of every (good) photographer. What, however, my brief self-analysis revealed the surprise is that this attitude is in place much more often than thought, and especially in unexpected situations. I noticed, for example, that I read by photographer: annotations in pencil all the time I leave the margins of the books are nothing more than photographic views, interior shots that active and help to bring out a visual subtext. I realized that I take when I read, almost unwittingly, a photographic point of view , a perspective on the words, frame it, I value the perspective planes, I try to define space and I have in the characters or objects in the scene, I imagine the light. Returning to many of the notes taken in the time I discovered that he was (unconsciously) attracted to images of other writers unconsciously photographers. are a few to sample:
"Kees did not want to sleep. He went to look out the window, or rather all'abbaino, and left wandering eyes on an extraordinary landscape: snow-covered meadows in the distance, then rails, buildings, iron beams, confused masses of material of a great station wagons which moved without engine plane, locomotive without cars, which marked furious pace, whistles, shouts, and sparse trees escaped the massacre, which drew a sad tangle of black branches against a sky cooled. " (G. Simenon, The Man Who watched trains go by)
" A red line on the white snow, / prey wound / that lame " (A . Kiarostami, A wolf lurking)
"... the scarlet berets of the dragons, the cloth of a red flag demolished, and the traces of blood on the snow that stretched in streams and drops reddish. " (B. Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago)
But here's the surprise. What they have in common, for example, these three images in addition to color temperature? All are winter scenes, in which the snow determines the dominant main Kiarostami and Pasternak, then, they also share the same color contrast white / red. But not only this, the text of Dyer provides illumination to read and see in new watermark a kind of "photographic unconscious" that emerges from the depths of subtext. Simenon, who was also amateur photographer, "the photographer unconscious" acts through the use of "natural viewfinder" represented by the window, the landscape picture is seen through the frame of a skylight. In Kiarostami, director, poet and fotogrofo, the selection of a few essential elements that make up the verses are hiding, as a preliminary sketch of the fresco, some of his photographs of winter landscapes . Regarding Pasternak, I do not know what relationship he had with the photo, but it certainly is difficult for me now not to see the assembly of the subjects strongly symbolic and allusive present in the scene (scarlet caps, cloth flag, rivulets and drops of blood on the snow) echo the theories of mounting and framing of S. Eisenstein. And I count myself, fishing in my notes, a specimen of use (literary) conscious of photography: the citation of the work of Bill Brandt by Leonardo Sciascia in To each his own to describe the exuberance physical widow of Roscoe (" ... while his naked body and certain parts of her body, flowed and dilated in perspective similar to those that the photographer knows Brandt obsessively play.") A striking example not only of the close link between word and image (photo) in Sciascia, but especially here that photography has become, in effect, narrative material.
At this point I try to draw a perimeter around the first of what Dyer had only hinted at. What can it mean "to be unconsciously photographers? It may mean, for example, that in our arsenal of communication is so underground, even how to view the photographic medium. It may mean that, even if not practiced, the photo station in the toolbox of writing like a figure of speech, a incipit, a similarity (as in the case of Sciascia). From this perspective, the examples cited may be read almost like a ecfrasi , that the verbal description of something that was perceived or imagined (more or less conscious) according to the way that photography has to take over the world: the frame. What does, in fact, seem to be a latent shot.
But there's more: the circles on the water will go ever further from the shore. How to define, for example, the images that come from a time when photography had not been announced yet? I can still speak of "unconscious photo for Goethe's Elective Affinities (1809) or for haiku Konishi RAIZAN (1653-1716) and Ito Shintoku (1653-1716)?
"Charles greeted her husband at the door [the hut of moss] and made him sit in a way that, through the door and windows, he could embrace in one glance the different perspectives that showed the landscape nearly as framed. " (Goethe, Elective Affinities)
"the back door / in the stock reflected the cold / Stain Bamboo" (Konishi RAIZAN)
" rain: / through my gate / a bouquet of irises " (ITO Shintoku)
In these cases, I could probably talk to empathize with Dyer, unaware of photographers rummaging among the" frames "of his own memory of life without the audience even know what a frame. However, what seems to emerge from all of the examples cited so far is that there is in humans, whether belonging to the civilization of the picture or screen dislpay or that of a mode of vision related to the idea of \u200b\u200bsetting, regardless of N technique. In other words, I suspect that everyone has (not know whether innate or culturally induced) need a goal, the reality, of looking through : an almost physical need to frame, even if only mentally, the vastness of the visible to make it more bearable and perhaps more understandable. The need for a visual rule, more instinctive than conscious, to help select the chaotic flow of the daily portions of reality that reassuring gaze, so as to protect themselves from excessive exposure, a bit 'as when we try to protect your eyes dazzled by brightness too intrusive. A hidden frame, which acts as the collective unconscious, to bring order, as he said Ghirri, in space and in her eyes.
