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October 4, 2010
Stacy Oborn has a post on photographic character at The Space in Between. I don't know about the concept of 'photographic character'. So I am intrigued as to what it means for both photo criticism and the practice of photography.
Oborn says:
Projects + Ideology + Temperament + Social Group + Psycho-biography=photographic character to understand photographic character is to (1) enter a similar frame of mind [as the photographer's]; (2) experience their photographic experience, and (3) understand it [them] in a total way. once you understand what a photographer would never do (e.g. walker evans would never make a nude), you can begin to understand the parameters of a given artist’s photographic character.
I find that a bit vague even though I comprehend what Oborn means by Walker Evans would never make a nude). This suggests that 'photographic character' is different from the use of art history's concept of 'style' in the special field of the history of photography.
Oborn then adds:
douglas nickel’s notion of photography and photo-history as being a discursive, social practice based on an entire set of discourses and commentaries in our lifetimes can serve as a basis for understanding how to approach the notion of photographic character. photographic projects should be viewed with these questions in the back of our pockets: what were they trying to do with photography here? what of their character is evinced in their photography–what have they put of their person in here? what was their attitude? what was their disposition?
Oborn says where one points the camera is where your psyche pointed it. If a photographer does not deal with that thing the psyche is putting forth, the psyche will in turn relentlessly keep pointing them there.
Is this important? Do we actually know what the photographer intends? What are they trying to do? Do we know what their psyche is saying? How do we know this? How do we know that the psyche calls the shots? How is the psyche different from the unconscious?
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