Book review: Beyond Casual Vision by Merg Ross

 A wonderful surprise greeted me when I opened up my mail box this past week and found a book sent to me by my friend and fine art photographer Merg Ross called "Beyond Casual Vision." Ross who hails from the San Francisco Bay area has put together his first monograph featuring 63 duotone images from 1953-2016 spread over 144 pages.

 For those of you that may have not heard of this fine photographer, Ross has been photographing for over 60 years and has rubbed shoulders with many of the most famous photographers of the 20th century — Edward and Brett Weston, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan and the list goes on. In the book Ross will tell you about his close friendship with Brett Weston and what it meant to him and how Brett influenced his work.

 The beautifully printed book is packed with insights into the lives of other famous photographers he has met along the way, including when Edward Weston reviewed his portfolio as a teenager in 1956. Ross's story about his cross country trip across the USA and Canada soon after he graduated from high school is an unbelievable adventure of meeting some of the biggest names in photography in the

1950's.

 Most importantly Ross showcases his beautiful and thoughtful black and white photographs, using everything from 8 x 10 view cameras to medium format film cameras incorporating traditional photographic darkroom methods. Ross's unique eye for seeing abstract forms is evidently displayed throughout the book, seeing everyday objects in his own unique way, a book that any lover of the arts and especially photography will cherish to have in his or her book collection.

 The softcover book is printed in Canada by LensWork Publishing of Anacortes, Washington and is available for $30 per copy, includes shipping by USPS Media Mail to US destinations. For Canadians the book is US$40 and includes postage.

Click here for Beyond Casual Vision

 Contact Merg Ross via email

Book review: Group f.64 by Mary Street Alinder

For anyone interested in the history of fine art photography, and is serious about fine art photography, this book, "Group f.64", by Mary Street Alinder, which has been sixteen years in the making, is not to be missed. I think its well worth the read once I started reading it was hard to put down. That says a lot for a book that is about a bunch of photographers, including Ansel Adams and Edward Weston running around with their large format cameras taking pictures from everything from mountains, to peppers to nudes. 

 The author, has written a fine book that has been throughly researched with extensive notes and references. It tells the story about the emerging group of photographers that called themselves Group f.64 who changed photography in a dramatic way by making straight photographs vs Pictorialism. Ansel Adams says in the book ( p. 264 )… "Both Pictorialists and Purists, he explained, manipulated their photographs through choices of exposure, filters, lenses, framing, printing papers, and development -all basic photographic procedures -but somewhere along the line the manipulative freedom of the photographer must be arrested by the inescapable limitations of the medium. This point of honest simplicity and maximum emotional statement suggests the basis of a critical definition of photography as an art form -that is, as a means of more than factual statement."

 I like the part where Ansel talks about holding back on the "manipulative freedom" of the photographer and emphasizes the "honest simplicity and maximum emotional statement" of the photograph.I learned a lot from reading this book, I had not known of all the women members of the group, Imogen Cunningham, Sonya Noskowiak, Dorothea Lange ( a later member of the group ), I was not familiar with the work of Consuelo Kanaga , who deserves respect for her photography and was the only one of four invited guest photographers to achieve membership status of Group f.64, also I had not realized that there was such a heated battle of words in the photo magazine Camera Craft between Ansel Adams and his photographic enemy, William Mortensen, a champion of the Pictorialists.

 After reading the book, Its good to know the history of where we have come from as photographers as it can help guide us into the future. I think there are is still lessons to be learned in this modern era of digital photography where "anything goes" with photoshop, many of the principals outlined by the straight photographers still have relevance today. In many ways overly Photoshopped images that are routinely shown on the internet today versus something more quiet, subtle and straight forward, is no different than what was happening over 80 years ago when Pictorialists were manipulating their photographs, and straight photographers were trying to show something much different, only the tools today are more advanced, the principals remain the same. Long live straight photography!

 I will be studying this book for a while yet and I have underlined in pencil many passages and turned over the corners of many pages, I'm sure I will have to re-read it again to fully take in the full context of the book. 

 I bought my book through Amazon: Group f/64

A Conversation About Photography:Pictorialism

 Lake Agnes, September, 1989

Pictorialism…."in general it refers to a style in which the photographer has somehow manipulated what would otherwise be a straightforward photograph as a means of "creating" an image rather than simply recording it." ( wikipedia ) 

Technicism in photography…."refers to a modern day approach to photography that has a predominant reliance on technology and technical knowledge as primary benefactors to making pictures as a whole. This is associated directly with photographic equipment and accessories including, cameras, lenses, computers and related software etc." ( my own definition ) 

Straight Photography or Pure Photography.…"is defined as possessing no qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form." ( wikipedia ) 

 I fully acknowledge that this blog post is about my own ideas and theories that may or may not be relevant, but never the less I humbly present them here as part of my "conversation" series about photography.

  Back in the 1930's there was a new style of photography emerging called "straight photography" overriding pictorialism, Of course things are much different today, although I think straight photography is more demanding of the photographer, there is no technical tricks to fall back on when a straight photograph fails. I think some of photography that I see on around the web including photo sharing is what I call "technicism", where a photographer relies heavily on technique to make photographs. These techniques are often learned and copied by others,  this never encourages individual creativity. Finding one's "vision"is the hard part and I humbly submit that I am earnestly working on that, reading the above definition of straight photography, keeps me challenged!  I think the art of vision or "seeing" can take a life time to find. I'm not saying that straight photography is better, I'm sure there are plenty of straight photographs that are plenty boring. In my mind it seems that with pictorialism, it was more or less formulated, follow the technical formula and you have a pictorialist style of photograph, except today it all done with photoshop.

  When straight photography or pure photography started to gain traction, all the finest photographers that we know and love today, including Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and others started to create their work in straight photographic style, they even formed a group called the F64 Group. Interestingly quite a number of those photographers including Adams and Weston had photographed in the pictorialist style earlier on in their careers. In 1927 Adams produced a new portfolio featuring his new straight photography style which included his famous image "Monolith, the Face of Half Dome", taken with his view camera using glass plates and a dark red filter. On that hiking trip, he "visualized" the effect of the blackened sky. He later said "I had been able to realize a desired image: not the way the subject appeared in reality but how it felt to me and how it must appear in the finished print".

  Maybe I'm wrong ( could very well be ) straight approach to  photography has taken a back seat to a kind of modern day version of pictorialism  which seems to dominate so many photo sharing sites. One of the most recent discoveries in photography is the photographs of the late Vivian Maier, who made compelling street photographs in a straight kind of style in the 1950's and 1960's. Her work wasn't about technique, ( although she had very fine technique ), but more importantly, she saw "the thing itself " as Edward Weston liked to say in the subjects that she photographed. People really like her work as do I.

  For myself when I take a pictures I try to balance my vision and my technique ( lighting, camera and lens ) and together in the right balance I hope to produce a fine photograph.

  One thought to end on, Edward Weston often mentioned "the thing itself". He writes in his Daybooks (p.55), "that the camera should be used for the recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether polished steel or palpitating flesh." So I ask this: are any photographers looking for "the thing itself" these days? or is it all about technique and the latest camera gear? One thing I can say about Edward Weston, for him it was always about "the thing itself" that he loved the most. 

In many ways I think that straight photography is a stripped down version of pictorialism, just the bare essentials, a "less is more" kind of photography. 

For further reading and insight, take a look at Edward Weston's essay called "Photography - Not 

Pictorial". 

More reading and insight, here is a link to some of Ansel Adam's work on Artsy

Here is a link to my earlier blog post: A Conversation About Landscape Photography

A Conversation About Landscape Photography

  A couple of weeks ago a photographer posted an article to his blog about the redundancy with landscape photography. I thought I would share some of my own ideas ( my opinion only ), I'm sure everyone has their own take on what is a makes a for a good landscape photograph, like all art its often very subjective. There are lots of really fine landscape photographers out there doing beautiful work, of course with the internet it takes some digging to find them. 

  Some people might find that my own landscape photography to be rather derivative, cliche and not terribly creative. I tend to photograph in what some would call a "classic" stye, I'm okay with that. I go out and try my best to come back with a photograph that captures my interest and feelings at the time that I made the photo, I realize that it doesn't always work. I will say that my determination for great photography is unwavering and authentic. A number of year ago I had a photographer who gave me an unsolicited "review" of my work, he concluded that my work failed on several fronts, the main one being that my skies in my landscape pictures were not dark enough, he concluded that they should be black, and I should follow the styles of several photographers that he suggested, I wrote back and said thanks but I want to try and find my own path. 

  In my mind something that is missing in much of photography these days is subtly, including the landscape, a lot of pictures that I see are have a lot of one time visual impact, looks great on the small screens like smart phones, but once you've seen it you don't often go back for second or third looks. I can look at books by Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Ansel Adams and others and never get tired of looking at those pictures, I could look at them over and over and still find joy and inspiration.  

  I used to be a member of 500px, submitted a lot of my work there, I quit after a year. I don't think I ever got much a rating for any of my pictures, the kind of work that got lots of 'likes' is often super colourful and cheesy, maybe using a super wide angle lens, often taken at sunset or sunrise with the sun just coming up over the horizon with star burst effect, after a while they become so common that they become just ordinary.

  Looking around the internet I saw one photographer's work who does very nice black and white landscapes, but every single one of his photos that I saw had a black sky, all burned down in post processing, its very effective looking no doubt about that, but I don't think it needs to be used for every single photo. Perhaps people try to emulate Ansel Adams with his beautiful and iconic Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico made in the mid 1940's, for his later darkroom renderings the sky got darker and darker, till it became black. 

  A little while ago I came across a Facebook page featuring some nice black and white photography, mostly landscapes, when I first looked at it I thought that its was the work of one photographer, nice I thought to myself, turns out that each picture featured on the FB page was by different photographer, what struck me was how each picture looked so similar, yet all produced by different photographers, to my eye many of the pictures seemed all technique driven, with long time exposures which is fine for effect every once and while, if technique becomes "The Thing" then everyone else will follow the same technique, uniqueness is thrown out the window. Of course there is balance with having the right amount of technique and vision together, not always easy to achieve. 

  When I first started in photography I was lucky to have a very gifted mentor, who taught me a great deal. One day I came into the office extolling the virtues of some special effect filters that I could attach to my camera lens, this was back in the 1970's when these things were quite popular, ditch the filters I was told, anyone can go out and stick a filter on their camera lens and create the same affect. I often wonder with these photographic styles of today will these photographs stand the test of time in 20 or 30 years or more down the road ? Will we look back at photos done in this digital age and find that they look a bit dated, maybe some even garish looking, I guess time will tell.

For more reading, here is another blog post that I made: A conversation About Landscape Photography: Part Two