J.P. Zorn

J.P. Zorn posted a very fine photo featuring the human form. Heretofore he’s been known for strictly geometric compositions. He said it was “for Leslie.” The first comment, by Rachel B., allowed as how “It is ’leslie-like’ in that morbid sort of way.” I responded:

Morbid, huh? Nonsense, I have the heart of a boy. I keep it in the refrigerator.

But seriously, folks, JPZ must know this will please me because it’s evidence that he’s doing what I hoped he would, using his formal skill to make photos that go beyond formal, leveraging their imagery with “objective correlatives.” The result is iconic, emblematic and evocative.

Pretend we have two photos hung side by side, both showing something that has associations known to catch the eye and make us think and feel – an old lady wrapped in a flag, a soldier holding a dying baby, whatever. Now suppose that one of the photos was done by the guy next door and the other by Cartier-Bresson or Gene Smith. Most people would have no trouble saying the famous photo’s somehow better than the one by their worthy neighbor, even if they can’t articulate the reason. And in fact the reason, in technical terms, isn’t important; my point is that the better picture not only has evocative content, it’s also formally satisfying and therefore especially convincing. That’s why Mapplethorpe’s naughty pictures made such a scandal, I guess. Their formal qualities gave them evocative force. They have far more power than pornography.

So there are two levers at work in the case of a Gene Smith or Cartier-Bresson or Mapplethorpe: evocative content and compelling form. Making them work together, with one potentiating but not dominating the other, is a trick few of us can do. JPZ hasn’t fully mastered it, but he’s moving in the direction of mastery. True, few arrive at that goal. But it costs no more to try than we’re already spending on photography.

Another comment on a JPZ that’s not overtly geometric.

Evocative, more so maybe than any of your earlier posts.

Your eye for composition is at its best when the composition’s hidden, as this is, under bushels of chiaroscuro and fantasy. It’s important to have an underlying structure, even if you take it away after you’ve built on it.

JPZ posted a photo that simply doesn’t look good. That is, it looks like a snapshot. The photographer’s shadow features prominently in the composition.

Anybody here remember the last picture in that portfolio Richard Avedon did in Berlin when the Wall came down? It’s a grossly overexposed flash shot of somebody’s head, an absolutely worthless photograph even by the standards of the rankest amateur. Yet in context it’s a terrible dare that Avedon was able to carry off, and the perfect full stop to his series. Unforgettable, like the event it commemorates. Yet if you take it out of context and put it online with the legend, “Hancock calls this an ’unforgettable’ masterpiece,” well...

“Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon” is another example, a painting that nobody really likes and that Picasso worked over for quite a long time, way back when. It’s important as a document that marks a turning point in the history of art, and certainly in its maker’s personal evolution. (Almost the same thing.)

Without comparing JPZ to Picasso or Richard Avedon (but hey, you never know), I wonder whether this photo has a similar place in his own canon, either as punctuation or as an exercise in seeing.

Time will tell. And as I know from my own fiddling in photography, it’s wrong to take these things too seriously, or let others take them too seriously on your behalf. Maybe this is a case of Homer, Jr. nodding. But JPZ’s talent is real, his shit detector’s never failed him before, and I hope he keeps working to move beyond what he’s already mastered into something he hasn’t.

Christel D. responded: “Erm yes but – no offense intended and all that – as so often seen on this site, the name carries the photo – maybe to a level where it doesnt belong... If some newbie Joe or Jack had posted this shot, people would be complaining loudly (that is, if it got any comments at all) that it was cliché, that the horizon is too centered, that it has a yellow cast etc. etc. And forgive me, but thats all I see in it...”

My answer:

Christel: Just so. It’s the old question of whether we should or shouldn’t (not in a moral sense but from strictly practical considerations) evaluate every performance in isolation, without knowing who dunnit or when or why. Whole schools of criticism have been built around that notion. Then again, when I get up every morning I give thanks that I no longer have to go to school.

Context certainly adds depth to our appreciation, even if some say it’s deep folly, sentimentality, self-indulgence. More to the point, maybe, if I know for a fact that a particular photo or poem or piece of music was done by Jane or John, and also know that John or Jane has an impeccable track record, and the case-hardened, antimagnetic, unbreakable shit detector named by Hemingway as the artist’s basic navigational instrument, and I can’t make heads or tails of the photo or poem or piece, or distinguish it from a banal snapshot made by my idiot son, well... Maybe I’m looking at it from the wrong viewpoint, or with the wrong expectations, or out of the wrong gestalt or weltanschauung or zeitgeist or some other wrong German word. The 20th century didn’t teach us much about diplomacy or politics, but it did make us aware that “my kid could do better than that” is on the same critical plane as “that ain’t art” or “I know filth when I see it.”

JPZ posted a photo that got no comments except my own, viz:

Home again, with a good monitor, and yes, it’s a fine shot. Reminds me of the rule Avedon claims he set down for himself: “No obvious composition.” (My itals.) Not that this is a new principle – you find it in many of the oldest pictures still extant. Sadly, the lack of obvious composition is hard for most viewers to distinguish from the absence of composition. Maybe it’s one of those gestalt things.

And, commenting on an earlier JPZ post: Your eye for composition is at its best when the composition’s hidden, as this is, under bushels of chiaroscuro and fantasy. It’s important to have an underlying structure, even if you take it away after you’ve built on it.