From: Jeffrey D. Mathias (jeffrey.d.mathias@worldnet.att.net)
Date: 05/15/01-06:18:08 AM Z
Judy Seigel wrote:
>
> On Mon, 14 May 2001, Darryl Baird wrote:
> > As Minor saw the spiritual aspects in all things, I doubt this
> > interpretation would withstand close scrutiny....
>
> I think Darryl makes the point very tactfully. And there's an important
> other point -- the quality of a photographer's photographs is entirely
> unrelated to the quality of his/her, um, prose.
Perhaps, but they do both come from the same person. Is it prose, or
verse, or a bit of both?
> Minor White was a wonderful photographer, ....
> However,
> if you try to parse his WRITING, mystico spirituoso religico abstrusico,
> it comes out like the famous kikki bird, or like peeling an onion, you go
> round & round & in the end, simply onion air.
Just as not everyone can look at a photograph and completely understand
it, so too not everyone is going to understand a piece of prose or
verse. I know I have learned some things of importance from Minor
White, from both his images and his words. Perhaps he is indicating
that photography offers one an advantage to become more objective.
Perhaps he indicates a certain advantage to creation through observation
rather than manipulation. His Zen thinking brings another to mind, that
of the architect I.M. Pei. Pei has stated his strong preference to
carefully observe, learn, and create in concordance with an environment
and culture and to not attempt to manipulate, insert himself, ignore, or
disrespect an environment and culture. Sort of sounds like what I call
being objective.
If one truly studies either of these artist, one should likely develop
an understanding for their objective approach and why they choose to
take that path. Of course, to study and understand work by someone
else, one should have some objectivity. (Sort of a "Catch 22")
> P-F # 5 quoted A. D. Coleman (p. 24) TYPICALLY over the top & HYSTERICALLY
> out-of-proportion, but in 1973 so riled up at some major Minor spiritual
> effluvia he said White's "Octave of Prayer" was an "insidious insult to
> all photographers... proto-totalitarian... self-serving claptrap....
> dangerous...auto-deification.. and monumental abuse of power," then closed
> with, "the time has come for White to be folded up and neatly and
> carefully put away before he gets a chance to hurt himself or anybody
> else." ...
> ... it rightly suggests that attempts to get useful literal meaning
> from Minor aphorisms are fruitless. ...
And I have yet to see some photographs by A. D. Coleman, although I have
read some of his prose. It can be so easy to pick away and hate
something and so difficult to understand and learn from it. The
Newhalls weren't the almighty either. Just remember how they treated
Fredrick Sommers. They failed to recognize the genius (perhaps didn't
like his prose or verse either), maybe because they couldn't force into
one of their cubbyholes (well, at least they made some decent
photographs).
Anyway, I have learned a lot from the efforts of Minor White. I still
hope to understand his sequencing of images to apply to some of my work
someday. It may be unfortunate that he didn't write more about
sequencing, although, maybe he did.
> ..."let the subject generate its own photograph. Become a camera."
> ...
> Either way, it's unclear if the sentence is supposed to be instruction, as
> let the subject become a camera, or telling the reader to become a camera,...
I interpret it to mean "be objective". The Zen archer lets the arrow,
lets the bow, lets the target determine when to fire. I interpret this
to "be objective". But do not for an instant think or imagine that
there is no training, no discipline, no mastering of body and mind. For
without proper and dedicated training and discipline, there is no
mastering, and there is no Zen, and there is no photograph.
-- Jeffrey D. Mathias http://home.att.net/~jeffrey.d.mathias/
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