William Laven (wmlaven@platinotype.com)
Sun, 11 Apr 1999 12:59:15 -0700 (PDT)
>Bill,
>My mentor (these many years ago) forbade the use of such words as "Shoot",
>"Take", "Soup" and of course "Blow-up". He was adamant that these words
>used in a "common photographic mode" indicated that the photographer did
>not "care" about the art, craft and science of photography.
>
>Ken
For several years I taught a workshop with Martha Casanave entitled
Photographing the Human Figure: Moving Beyond Stereotypes. One of the
topics we discussed was the language of photography and what it implied
about the relationship of the photographer to his or her subject (we could
even discuss the term subject in terms of a power relationship, but...)
During that weekend, we, too, forbade the use of the term "shoot," asking
people to come up with other terms and to always ask themselves questions
about how they saw and treated the model they were working with. We also
insisted that they speak to the models and get them to explain if they were
comfortable in a particular pose or not (whether for physical reasons or
psychological ones)> The theme was to empower the models to participate in
the process and make photogtraphers practice a different kind of
photographing where they were not purely directorial, but responsive, as
well, to the wishes of those whom they photographed.
One of the more revealing exercises was as follows. We discussed
stereotypical beefcake and chessecake photos of men and women we so
commonly find in the media and then said they had to make a "beefcake"
photo of a woman and a "cheescake" photo of a man, reversing, therby, the
gender roles typically used in photography. Quite a few eyes were opened.
In some workshops, we asked that the photographers be the models and do the
same exercise.
I must say I tire quickly of photographers, nearly always men, who discuss
how they feel the human form is so beautfiul and only photograph 22-24 year
old shapely, skinny women. Are they the only humans? Have they never seen
John Coplans work? He's a human whose work says more about the human body
than a hundred Ken Marcus wannabes.
OK, so this is alternative only in as much as it proposes an alternative
approach to photographing the human figure, but I just had to get it out.
*************************************************************************
WILLIAM LAVEN PHOTOGRAPHY
Workshops and tutorials in Platinum/Palladium printing and Zone System.
1931 23rd Street, San Francisco, CA, 94107
415-647-9432 (voice) 415-647-9438 (fax)
wmlaven@platinotype.com
http://www.platinotype.com
*************************************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu Oct 28 1999 - 21:39:30