Where's Simplicio?

Here's a little exchange of emails with my friend and Canadian artist Neil Fiertel. I'll refrain from prettifying my prose.

From: Leslie Hancock
Subject: Fotos
To: Neil Fiertel

A few worth showing, I guess.

http://www.quinbus.net/gallery/06_october/061022104426_G – American Bison http://www.quinbus.net/gallery/06_october/061022111848_G – Bear photo #1 http://www.quinbus.net/gallery/06_october/061022115707_G – Dog's geometry http://www.quinbus.net/gallery/06_october/061022124731_G – Bear photo #2

My favorite of that lot is the last one. I was repelled by the zoo's fake bear decor and tried for a photo that would make it look even fakier. Note the Hollywood clouds, for instance...

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From: Neil Fiertel
Date: October 24, 2006 9:07:01 AM EDT
To: Leslie Hancock

The problem I have with photo in controlled environments is that the photo is in essence a documentary of the designed space done by someone else. I know that lighting and whatnot makes it continually changing but I have trouble putting aside the very nature of the space as being an original statement from you. The Bison image is of course a kind of odd statement of nature reality...it does not exist in most of the world but as a picture, I guess it is more of a kind of jounalism due to the overriding statement. For me, I do not want photography or any other art form to be too much out front about what it is about. Your forays into shooting folks I think requires a certain amount of thought in terms of what you want the people to be in the image...are they formally a significant part in terms of their very shapes and forms, do they act as actors in a tableau or a prop in some story line? Sounds tacky but I sense that there has not been an internal decision on your part what the figure is actually in your images for. They seem often to be a kind of prop or a very strongly felt...they are strangers...they do not share intimacy with the viewer which I find to be a problem for me at least. I want to feel involved with them in thier thoughts or experience in a voyeuristic way. Even a hand can have that kind of connexion. One needs a telephoto I suppose for you to be comfortable doing that and I suggest that though you like the look of the wide angle...you do not have the aggressive personality that would allow you to barge right into someone's life and thoughts with a camera blazing away...nor the body armour to pull it off... Better then to stand way away with a 500 mm lens equivalent and IS and go for it without anyone being aware of it. Frankly, if I were to do that kind of photo that is what I would do as I would never move in with a WA on someone whom I did not know. I might be off the mark and no doubt you will have a rationale for the images of people...formal this and that, ironic this and that but anyway...this is what I see missing...further knowledge about them or more importantly...about you... Look at the great shots of Nachtwey, Cartier-Bresson, even Brandt who surely is the coolest of the lot...they still get into the skin of their subjects... Neil

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From: Leslie Hancock
Subject: Clement Greenberg's Bald Spot
To: Neil Fiertel

Most interesting thoughts, thanks. I too have thought a lot about such things – too much, probably, since that inhibits the gestural quality of graphic arts.

Mixed media, or mixed-up media, have great appeal to me because of their complication. Movies, comic strips, still photography mingle strictly formal considerations (geometry, color, figure and ground and so forth) with documentation and narrative in an impure way that appeals to the slob in me. Sometimes the biggest component is the one the viewer brings to the page, which I can't foresee. In that sense, and also in the sense that a photo of something does begin with the something, and owes something to that something, which if it's a construction like a stage set or a work of art or just a funny face, means the photographer's at best a collaborator, and collaborators are often shot. But I can live (or die) with that. As you note (elliptically) in mentioning my refusal to engage the people in my people pictures, I try to be invisible and egoless, and to prize the final product rather than my own claim to fame.

"They seem often to be a kind of prop...they are strangers...they do not share intimacy with the viewer." Yes! It's what I want. Sometimes I even black them out entirely: http://www.quinbus.net/gallery/06_october/061022134050a. To that very end.

The great thing about photography is that it doesn't have to strive for mimesis as painters and sculptors do, or used to do. The mimetic quality is a given, the raw material to work with as we list. It's so convincing that people consistently mistake the photograph for the thing itself, looking at a picture of the Grand Canyon and saying "Oh, that's so beautiful," when what they mean is that the Grand Canyon is beautiful – a strange and terrible metonymy, yet one that provides us photographers with a huge lever to move people's feelings. One we have to learn to use wisely.

Always important to remember that a photographic or sculptural rendering of, say, a pretty girl is not a substitute for a pretty girl, being only skin deep and therefore ultimately frustrating or even physically dangerous. But a picture (or other representation) can be prettier than a pretty girl, the artist having contributed something extra. In which case we see (for once) that it's the picture, not the girl, that's pretty.

Naturally, I don't wanna be dogmatic or stuck in a rut, so when I see the chance I make a picture even if it's just for pretty, and if I see the chance to make one of those under-the-skin portraits I'll do that too. I don't know many people intimately, though, so the few such photos I've done are of you or Chris or just a couple other folks. I like this one of Chris a lot: http://www.quinbus.net/gallery/06_september/060918222146_G. (Plus it shows off the B&W style I'm pursuing.) And this oldie is one of my favorites also: http://www.quinbus.net/gallery/04_July/060711121643_G.

Further to the issue of people as props and up-front statements in photos. Certainly I agree with you about photos or other images that make a facile statement, like simple propaganda pictures of the slanty-eyed, bespectacled Jap with a skewered baby on his sword. That kind of thing repels me, unless I get some kind of campy kick out of it. But there are degrees of subtlety and satire, and I do appreciate, and practice, some of them, though usually with the aftertaste of having sucked on something dirty. Probably my feelings about certain issues are too strong and should not be indulged – like that photo of the Statue of Liberty with a huge barbed fence around it and a sign saying (you can't make these things up) NO ADMITTANCE.

More commendably, I think, I try to evoke feelings or even thoughts through the fabric of the image. Consider one of the photos I sent you last night: http://www.quinbus.net/gallery/06_october/061022115707_G – "Dog's geometry," I called it. Surely the people there are props. I did think about making their faces entirely black, but decided that would be going too far. Anyway, the point is that the flattened perspective, the painful sharpness and accumulation of detail, the lack of a central subject, the darkness, in other words the look and feel of the picture, not its specific contents, should tend toward a point of view, very literally a way of seeing the world, that I want the viewer to experience, or share, or "get," for the moment they spend inside the image.

Can you dig it?

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From: Leslie Hancock
Subject: PS
To: Neil Fiertel

Remember, though it's always wrong to generalize, you and I feel an attraction of opposites probably, 'cause we stand at different ends of the earth regarding art and people – you're certainly more emotional and attuned to human beings and humanism and humanity and feelings and issues of fairness and justice and love and hate and content, while I'm certainly unfeeling and dislike people and distrust feelings and prize logic and reason and formalism. Hot vs cold. Warm and fuzzy monkey vs dead fish on a bed of ice. Romantic vs classical. Bread-and-circuses vs let-them-eat-cake. Haha, but something in it.

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From: Neil Fiertel
Subject: Re: Clement Greenberg's Bald Spot
To: Leslie Hancock

You see...the two pictures of Chris are real...they are fine art works because they are not merely documents but allow the viewer to see what you see in the subject. They are relational and thus tie all areas together. They would have been invisible to the world had you not seen and tied this to a visual object. They evoke and elucidate as it were and are not just documentation. Do this more often as these two examples attest and you are doing what I call art...some of the images you took of me as horrible as I look..work for the same reason. In spite of your wish to remain anon you cannot and thus, release your own self in these images... Good for that... Neil

Slick or Sick? (Part 2)

A PS to Neil.

Don't want you to think I've kicked over the Canon EOS for Pentax. Two different looks. As I said, today I used the Canon to photograph the cat, and you can see that this is where it really shines – that slick studio look.

Tick-Tock, Tech Talk

Time passes, unless Gödel was right, and shit happens. Shit subsumes private correspondence like this email to Neil. It's topical – he went to a photo expo.

Very interesting news from the show, thanks. You should read the dpreview test of the new Canon Digital Rebel or EOS 400D or whatever – annoying that cameras have a bunch of different names, presumably chosen to appeal to different markets. I guess Americans want to think of themselves as dangerous rebels – baaaaah, me da meanest sheep in da flock! Anyway, Phil Askey compares the Canon, the Nikon D80 and the Sony/Minolta/Konica/whatever/it/is. The Nikon had the least noise, the Sony the most. The Sony's main feature is its image stabilization. The Canon does a shimmy to get rid of dust at startup. The Nikon just sits there looking a little ashamed of itself. As you know, my own way of approaching these things is lens-first. If Contax ever had a booth at such shows, which I doubt, there would've been only two or three people there – the mothers of the reps. Their cameras were good but certainly not mainstream. Their lenses, too, were out of the mainstream, being non-autofocus and non-weather-sealed and non-internal-focusing. All they had going for them was exquisite image quality, plus being built like Jayne Mansfield. Likewise for Pentax. I was tentative at first, but it seems to be true that their "Limited" lenses are, like Contax/Zeiss, out of the mainstream, eccentric, retrograde, unsuited for professional use, but exquisite imagers.

In short, I moved from Contax SLR's to Canon DSLR's because of Canon's super lenses and super CMOS sensor, and from the Contax G2 to Pentax DSLR's with Pentax "Limited" primes.

Unfortunately last night it became clear I've caught Chris's cold, so I won't be going out with either camera today. But yesterday I did get to spend an hour or two in the woods with the Pentax, then made some photos of the cat's gaping wound with the Canon "L" zoom. Using the two in rapid sequence reminded me why the Pentax isn't used by pros, or by the "advanced amateurs" who hope to be mistaken for pros. The Canon simply focuses, instantly and silently, and when you press the shutter it goes Bang, and you've got a clean shot in the can. The Pentax works, but it's just adequate -- autofocus is noisy, in low light it hunts for focus or may not focus at all, and the shutter makes a floppity-flop noise that tells you what you're getting is a picture of a moment a third of a second later than the moment you chose. (The G2 had those faults too.) Plus if you're holding the lens with a finger or two you may be slightly shocked to feel the focusing ring turn. Antique city. But then the images, well... They're in the Zeiss/Leica class.

So why you don't got a Leica, Mr H? Yeah, well, when the M8 does come out you'll stand in line six months waiting for one, then have the joy of paying $8K for a body with one lens which is not autofocus.

Incidentally, you'll recall I said that Pentax is finally going to bring out ultrasonic lenses. But what about their vaunted compatibility? Well, the (still unmarketed) 10D will have a lens mount that supports their new USM connections. But to stay backward-compatible with earlier bodies, the lenses will be focusable via the ancient turning-screw connection used in current Pentax AF. And, obviously, the 10D will have a motor in the body to turn the screw of those earlier lenses – couldn't work otherwise. El-kludge-o.

Canon came to this cusp back in the 80's and (intelligently) went the other way. They designed the EOS mount for new lenses only. This orphaned all the older lenses and bodies, but it opened up a whole new market, and for a long time they were the only ones with silent, instantly-focusing lenses. Your perception of the difference in audience appeal between Nikon and Canon testifies to the wisdom of their choice.

Slick or Sick? (Part 1)

From a letter to a friend who's not especially interested in photography.

I got out long enough to make some photos this afternoon, and will try to get to the zoo tomorrow. Forget whether I ventilated to you my adventures in photo hardware. As you know I have a Canon EOS kit that serves me well. It produces very slick, unctuous, elegant photos. And often that's exactly the look I want – for a long time it was almost the only look I wanted, because my idea was to make ironic photos, showing wounds and dead animals and too-pretty flowers in the format of a fashion photo or coffee-table book.

But you can't drink the same wine forever, and over the last few years I've become more interested in colorless, elliptical, empty, "hard" photos. I was able to get the look I wanted only in black and white, and then only with film. It required extremely sharp and luminous lenses. For that I had a Contax rangefinder camera, the G2 you saw many a time. But film's fading away, so I sold the G2 and its wonderful glass, which left me without a very good way to make des photos ardues.

This year I heard about the Pentax "Limited" lenses – expensive primes, supposedly among the very best lenses optically (though they're "limited" in ways that make them unattractive for pro work). Pentax has long had a reputation as the "poor man's Leica," their lenses supposedly having that "Leica look": brilliant and sharp. I tried one such (on a cheap second-hand Pentax digital body) and find it to be as good as I'd hoped. I don't think it needs to make any apologies to Leica or Zeiss. Since then I've bought two more. Today was my first serious outing with the second one, and it's even better than I expected. So I think I may have found a way to get the effects I want. Naturally I still have the Canon for the other effects. I guess you could say the Canon gear is for color and general gorgeousness, the Pentax for B&W and true grit.

Here for example are three photos:

• Contax/Zeiss B&W in the style I described – raw, gritty, bald, grainy, hard
  
• Canon digital B&W: hopelessly slick, elegant, witty
  
• Pentax digital B&W – not the same as the Contax/Zeiss style (for example, not grainy), but hard, painfully sharp – no-frills photography
  

Lest you think the difference has to do with the studio lighting, here's a Pentax studio shot using much the same lighting as the Canon B&W shown above – cuttingly sharp, but not slick; hard to describe the difference, yet I'm sure you'll see what I mean.

PS: Since sending that note, I did another photo. This one was taken with the Canon, and you can see that this is where the Canon shines: http://www.quinbus.net/gallery/06_october/061014131325_G

Against Professionalism

A close friend is traveling through China. He's sent back photos, but says today's batch may be the last: "This is not art. It is not a labor of love. I probably won't send any more photos." (Part of) my reply to him follows.

Chris and I have both enjoyed the China snapshots. I know very well I can see the buildings and monuments and streets and like that in lots of guidebooks and photo spreads at Borders, but there's something convincing about snapshots, as Cartier-Bresson well understood.

The day after 9/11 one of the people who posted to the photo critique site I frequented put up his own photos of Ground Zero. He lived nearby and simply went into the disaster area immediately after the buildings fell, and had pictures, not especially artful, of dead folks being toted off, and similar horrors. He simply avoided the cops and the officials in the confusion – which, I should say, is what Great Photographers like Mr Nachtwey, who was on the scene also, had to do, since bystanders and sightseers were definitely not welcome.

Anyway, one of the other regulars came down hard on this guy. The regular is a NY pro photog who visited the critique site with a very uppity attitude, making it clear he was slumming and deigning to drop a few pearls of wisdom in front of the swine now and then. He said in no uncertain way that the amateur had no place at Ground Zero, that he was "just a shutterbug" who was taking advantage of the Great Tragedy That Changed Everything, that he wasn't "trained" for it and constituted a clear and present danger to himself and others. Such work should be left to the Pros.

I said nothing online because I was too mad to be convincing. But the whole point is that there's something inherently unbelievable about "professional" photos – even if they're not staged, they look that way. Some part of the viewer's mind has doubts. Too good to be true. So we tend to see the things in Pulitzer-winning news photos and National Geographic travel photos as events in a sister universe, probably the same universe we see on TV, but not our universe. C-B's greatness inheres in his ability to make "art" photos as convincing as snapshots – hell, they are snapshots in any meaningful sense, but with the qualities of composition and drama you'd expect from something staged.

Anyway, lest I get carried too far from the point, what I mean to say is that your snapshots of Dalian and such places have the immediacy of snapshots. Seeing them convinces me that the place looks that way even to the people who see it every day. Art it ain't, maybe, but then we don't live in a museum either.

Pentax SMC P-DA 21mm F3.2 AL Limited

For the moment there's a shortage of info online about the Pentax DA 21mm Limited lens that came out last summer. It's a digital-only design, made to work with Pentax DSLR's like the 100D and 10D, and "Limited" not in the sense of a limited production run but like the three "Limited" lenses Pentax introduced in the late 90's and early noughts to match their new flagship film SLR, which never made it to market.

Those older models were 31/1.8, 43/1.9 and 77/1.8. The DA-based "Limited" series are 21/3.2, 40/2.8 and 70/2.4, all pancakes, equivalent to 31, 60 and 105mm for 35mm format. The oldest man in the world probably couldn't say why Pentax picked those focal lengths, which give their users a pawky wide-angle, a too-long normal or a too-short telephoto, and what Leica used to call a "mountain lens." (I know, they do offer a 14mm DA, which is seriously wide-angle, but it's not "Limited" and it sure ain't a pancake.)

For years now I've been trying to find some digital replacement for my late Contax G2 and its brilliant Zeiss-G lenses. Fed Fuji's Neopan, that kit gave me just what I wanted in B&W look and feel, viz. Diva, this landscape, or the never-popular Dog Run. But film is for young folks; I no longer have the time to fart around with it. My EOS digital kit's fine, but I chose it for Canon's slick, unctuous look, which isn't what I want, or all I want, from black and white. Well...I've always liked Pentax, and believe their best lenses have a special snap, so decided to give them a try.

I began with the 31/1.8 on my wife's Pentax DL and got a happy surprise, as you can see here and elsewhere in my September album. Thus encouraged, I figured I'd build a B&W package using the 31mm as a normal lens. For a portrait-length tele I got the 50/1.4, and found it good. (Examples here and in other photos from 9/27.)

But what about wide angle? After some thought I chose the DA 21mm, taking its quality on faith in the absence of published tests. I wish it were a bit wider, but hey – this is supposed to be a Cartier-Bresson outfit, nothing very long or short.

Well, the 21/3.2 arrived from B&H two days ago. I don't have any bench equipment, but did some field testing to get to know its good and bad points. I'll spare you the intimate details; you can see the results of yesterday's outing to the American Museum of Natural History for yourself. (Caveat: I tweaked the photos in Photoshop just as I normally would, so you can't take the images as unvarnished samples of what the lens captured.) In sum, it's a good lens, with tonal qualities and contrast that please me very much.

It's sharp, yes. Sharpness has become something of a red herring, like megapixel count. It's a necessary but insufficient attribute. Two lenses capable of resolving the same pattern on a chart can be quite different in other ways. I expect a prime lens this well made to be sharp, and wasn't surprised to find it resolving as much detail at f/8 as the 31 or 50, or my Canon 24-105 "L" zoom, and let's leave it at that till somebody puts one of these things on the bench. What I want has to do with luminosity and textures and edges, qualities less easily measured.

So far so good. Two days aren't enough. I'll follow up on this later; for the moment I like what I see and hope I've found a winning combination. What's not to like? Well, f/3.2 isn't great, but it's only a wink away from the usual 21mm aperture of f/2.8, and after all Pentax was trying to keep the lens small – very small. But it's not easy for an SLR to focus a 21mm lens, which is why Leica and Cosina still make rangefinders, so the wider the lens the better. In low light I found that the DL wasn't always getting the focus bang on. Even in good light autofocus seems a bit iffy. Of course the very thing that makes focusing a WA lens hard, its great depth of field, goes a long way toward saving this situation. However, at the museum, where dimness rules, the DL often couldn't find focus at all, and I missed the shot. A decisive-moment combo this isn't.

That may have more to do with the entry-level Pentax body than with the lens. I'll get the 10D when it's available; maybe that camera will have better eyesight. I'll keep you folks advised.

My wife's DL? I kept it and bought her a new 100D, which suits her even better.