The test of time

1957, from the Havana series

A little while ago, I wrote an article on images for posterity and what we would want to be remembered for vs what we might actually be remembered for. I’ve been wondering about why certain images are remembered and tend to stick in the minds of the viewers, or better yet, in common culture. I’ve had a hypothesis or two on that since, and wanted to share those thoughts. Though it isn’t the objective or necessity of every person taking pictures to make a different image for every single shot, I’m sure we all want to make something memorable. And some of us have to because well, that’s our job – and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Fog, Vienna

It might sound obvious, but the first litmus test is time itself: there is no way of telling whether something ‘fresh’ – recently shot and shown – is going to make it or not. We humans simply lack the objectivity*. We are immediately limited by our biases: either it’s too different and we lack a frame of reference in which to place the work relative to other work of the same subject or location or genre we’ve seen; or, it isn’t different enough and automatically gets summarily dismissed into ‘something we’ve seen before’. Clearly then, this is a tricky balance to achieve: an image that is different enough to stand out, but not so different that it challenges the viewer to the point that they cannot figure out what is going on. Both require some degree of ongoing or repeat viewing: this way, the audience is forced to confront and consciously assess it. Shocking the audience into attention is necessary. I bet Warhol’s soup cans were the enfant terrible of their day: personally I don’t like, but there’s no denying that the first time you see them, they force you to look. And then stick around in your mind, because they are visually unique. This is of course only one example.

*Unless, I suppose, you are one of those few gallery curators whose word is taken as irrevocable.

Forest II

History does not remember second place: actually, it doesn’t remember anything, unless the winner was widely publicised. The winner in some ways earns the perceived right of the masses to dictate how he or she will be remembered. There are many images which are accepted today as being ‘great’ – even though if the work was presented anonymously to a fresh audience it would probably be dismissed for lacking something. I can think of several offhand of both ‘classic’ and modern photographs, but in the interests of attempting to keep this discussion objective will not be any more specific. Making an image that ‘works’ and ‘lasts’ is not necessarily all about the merits of the image: it is also dependent on how loudly you can shout about it.

Transparency

There is an element of historical fickleness here, too: images of famous people before they became famous are only of any interest because history happened, the people became notorious for something, and then there was curiosity and our modern day obsession with celebrities. I don’t think early images of Brad Pitt in his early 20s would be of any interest if he was say, a gardener or janitor. Capa’s Normandy Landing series would probably have been forgotten if the Allies lost the war. And Vivian Maier would be forever anonymous but for random chance of the negatives being discovered by somebody who knew something about photography and the current mass interest in street photography. Individual images of daily life from the current age will probably be far less interesting or memorable than those from the 1900s simply because there are so many of them.

Only the clouds are truly free I

Even an image that is era-independent – say a still life – is going to requires one ‘sitting time’ before we can assess if it has any of the kind of merits that signal longevity. It’s back to objectivity again: the more invested we are in an image, the harder it is for us to be unemotional about it. And though memorable images work to evoke emotion at a deeper level in the viewer, we must be able to separate that from the attachment which comes with ‘but it took two hours of waiting in the rain to get that shot!’. That is not a good reason to submits something as part of your portfolio. Anybody else could have invested the same effort, which would not make up for compositional or other shortcomings in the eyes of the audience: they almost always have no idea of how easy or difficult execution was or the ‘but I couldn’t move to the left’ kind of defence. We must remember that the audience can only see what was put in front of them.

Lone tree

So how much sitting time is enough? I don’t know if there’s a concrete answer to this, other than images that have immediate visual punch (contrast, color, size etc.) are much more difficult to be objective about than ones that are subtle and transparent. The former screams at us ‘DIFFERENT!’, and instantly compromises our defences; the latter are much closer to reality and thus tend to get overlooked**. The more subtle an image is, the more time it needs: we have to contemplate it. Punchy images usually last for only one or two serious viewings before their glaring flaws start shouting out at us. It’s one of the reasons why the more advertising there is, the punchier it gets, the less effective the overall campaign: we simply reach a saturation point and switch off. If you go to New York or Tokyo you probably won’t notice the ads at all, but if there was a billboard in the middle of the desert or open ocean, I think you’d probably remember it for some time afterwards.

**Our minds must act as an automatic filter of information, or we’d simply be overwhelmed going through daily life. It’s one of the reasons children find everything interesting and have short attention spans – all of it is new! Jaded adults have to be slapped a few times about the head with a wet fish to notice. Photographers should always be as observant, but perhaps not quite as excitable as toddlers.

Eyes

This does not mean a very ordinary image will be recognised as a masterpiece if you could somehow make your audience stare at it for a week: if anything, the opposite. At very least, subtle image or not, there has to be some visual ‘hook’ to get you to notice the photograph in the first place and encourage you to take a closer look: color, subject, angle etc. I believe the very best images reward you with something slightly different every time you view them: either additional layers of nuance or story, or  details you didn’t notice before. It’s obvious that this is not easy to achieve. In addition to the four things and the bonus fifth, we must figure out how to consciously integrate layers of nuance into the image in which the less obvious elements both support or suggest additional depth to the initial story, but do not contradict or appear too strong. The display medium of course plays a big part; it’s difficult to integrate nuance if your possible range of tones and spatial resolution are limited. (It is of course one of the reasons I like large Ultraprints.)

The welder, from Engineering Art in Metal

The images I’ve selected to illustrate this article are ones you’ve seen before. They were all shot over  a year ago, and in some cases even more than that; yet they are images which a) people keep commenting on or ordering as prints, and b) keep making it into my own portfolios which I use to represent the best of my work. To me, they have demonstrated sticking power; but the reason for doing so isn’t always the same as what I envisioned at the time of capture. In Fog, Vienna I didn’t see the small second man behind the primary character – but he’s obvious enough in a print to make the mood rather sinister. There are other images I really liked at the time, but now see flaws in – and they don’t make it. Oculus looks great at web sizes and moderate prints, but I run into technical limitations that rob the last bit of transparency – that particular lens was a bit CA-heavy in the corners, limiting my output. I suppose we must all continually raise the bar.

Oculus

My students see the impact of time on curation during every Masterclasses: due to time constraints, the final portfolio of 10 must be done immediately after the last day of shooting in time for the last classroom session. However, what lands up being submitted to the reader flickr pool later on is usually quite different, and better. I find the same thing with my own work: on the last day of the workshop, I’ll curate my week of shooting down to ten in about an hour. When I get home and do it again, usually only three or four make it. And if I’m putting together a portfolio for something else much later on, the composition changes again (though of course the objective of the portfolio will affect this, too). I’m going to leave you all with a final exercise to try: shoot for a week, then immediately curate+ the best ten at the end of your last shooting day. Don’t delete any of what you shot. Instead, put it away for say two weeks, and then repeat the exercise afresh. You will probably find that your new ten picks may have changed quite a bit. Are they going to ‘last’? You’ll have to revisit the exercise again in a year or two – I’d be curious to hear what the results are… MT

+The best way to do this is use the four things plus Bridge or LR’s ranking system; I go into much more detail with examples in PS Workflow II.

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