Can you learn how to take a great photo … how to pose someone!
AJ - looking for the book she came to write; could not find it so choose some photographers she liked to feature
Anna - from fine art background likes Thomas Demand
can art be taught? good question! can't really teach someone to take a good photograph but can help student to become aware of what a good photograph is and the various ways it can be done
need for gut reaction
AJ - litle stories, odd photos; subject sometimes comes up with best idea of way to photograph !!
need for technical efficiency?! varies from photographer to photographer .. need for for some technical knowledge as per one's approach … pinhole!! …
does a photographer need a philosophy? what is that extra quality how one sees the world .. who you are that creates the pictures!
advice to amateur .. experiment do not worry too much about the technicalities!
catching people off guard
I am intrigued by your choice of book partly because I attended the Tate Modern seminar on the representation of violence that followed in the wake of the EXPOSED exhibition. Is Sontag really saying that we have become inured to photographs of suffering? In her book, In Regarding the Pain of Others, she actually writes … “our capacity to respond to our experiences with emotional freshness and ethical pertinence is being sapped by the relentless diffusion of vulgar and appalling images – might be called the conservative critique of the diffusion of such images. I call this argument conservative because it is the sense of reality that is eroded. There is still a reality that exists independent of the attempts to weaken its’ authority.” (p.97 Penguin Edition 2004) which I consider is a vital statement of her outlook. Elsewhere, she admits that “There are hundreds of millions of television watchers who are far from inured to what they see on television. They do not have the luxury of patronising reality.” (page 99).
Sontag is however tends to be regarded as gospel and I do not think she is; her statements are rather sweeping!
Jose
What a wonderful book you have come across! such books are a bit of a luxury and although Amazon offer it at a reasonable price, it is a matter of whether I’ll have room for it. Maybe … these days I am my own Santa so its’ possible! The Antarctic may not be there much longer so these are poignant landscapes.
As for my own choice, it is rather personal. The Indians by Raghu Rai does not seem to be available through Amazon and the cost in Delhi of £80 seemed too exorbitant. Nevertheless, I was shown a copy. It starts with a collection of Rai’s old portrait photographs, images from a bygone era when Britain ran the country; these show something of an India that is no more. This is followed by Raghu’s own photographs and features portraits of famous Indians such as Mother Teresa (actually a European) and Indira Gandhi as well as some of the great musicians (Hariprasad Chaurasia for instance). My favourite portrait is that of Jiddu Krsnamurti, a teacher who is still recognised worldwide; he is portrayed in a triptych that suggests both agony and ecstasy. The one that made me laugh is of Moraji Desai, a former prime minister who seems to be glaring defiantly down Rai’s lens; Desai was also famous for drinking his own urine, a nature cure!
I would also like to mention Michael Freeman’s Photographer’s Mind. What I like about his books is the way they bridge the gap between critic and photographer.