PHOTOGRAPHY IS… WHAT EXACTLY?
One of my Covid-era stay-at-homeactivities has been editing the forthcoming magnum opus, A Few Of The Legends, by photographer Peter Adams.
It’s a 600+ page book that’s been 36-odd years in the making and includes many of the most famous names in 20th-century photography that Peter has managed to interview and photograph. It’s been a mammoth project that, in addition to all that time, has cost close to $500,000 to produce, involved around 250,000 kilometres of travel (much of it overseas) and generated 42,000 film negatives (plus countless digital files). Publication – delayed by the pandemic – is scheduled for August 2021.
The editing process proved to be hugely educational… I thought I knew a lot about photography and photographers, but Peter’s face-to-face interviews often reveal little details (or even big ones) that you just don’t get in any of the major surveys of photography, even the more thorough ones. Around 300 photographers are featured in A Few Of The Legends, and the ‘big names’ alone include Edward Boubat, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Cornell Capa, David Bailey, Bruce Davidson, Robert Doisneau, Terence Donovan, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Elliott Erwitt, Sam Haskins, Yousuf Karsh, William Klein, Annie Liebovitz, Patrick Litchfield, Jay Maisel, Sally Mann, Mary Ellen Mark, Don McCullin, Steve McCurry, Sarah Moon, David Moore, Arnold Newman, Helmut Newton, Gordon Parkes, Martin Parr, Willy Ronis, Sabastião Salgado and Pete Turner. That’s just for starters, but you can start to see why this project has ended up taking half a lifetime.
Particularly interesting are the key quotes from the interviews that reveal wildly differing views regarding the essence of photography and what being a photographer is all about.
French photographer Bernard Descamps – “Photography: it’s as simple as getting a camera and going for a walk. Then start looking. It’s something very instant. It’s done very quickly. There’s no need to prepare things.”
Australian photographer Ian Dodd –
“I like to explore the magic and the real, the human, erotic and eccentric. Photography is still the most powerful medium for creating an illusion of reality”.
Moroccan-born French photographer Bruno Barbey – “Photography is the only language that can be understood anywhere in the world.”
Elliott Erwitt – “Good photography is not about Zone Printing or any other Ansel Adams nonsense. It’s just about seeing. You either see or you don’t see. The rest is academic. Photography is simply a function of noticing things. Nothing more.”
American Anthony Friedken – “Great photographs, like great art, transcend time. Picasso once wrote, ‘Art is the lie that tells us the truth’, but only a photograph can tell us the truth of the moment.”
American Charles Harbutt – “Photography is a unique visual language that cannot be expressed in words. As a matter of fact, if it can be expressed in words, then it probably isn’t worth photographing.”
English photographer Paul Hill – “A photograph is a tissue of lies. The photographer chooses where to put the tripod, what to leave in, what to leave out, and what moment to press the shutter. The resulting image can present a believable window on the world but it is, in fact, very subjective.”
Mary Ellen Mark – “Photographers must have a point-of-view, must have something to say. Without a philosophy, a photographer is simply a technician who clicks the camera.”
English photographer Roger Mayne – “Photography involves two main distortions: a simplification into black and white and the seizing of an instant in time.”
American photographer Sheila Metzner – “Photography is still the most basic form of magic. Caught in my ‘box of darkness’, the image becomes immortal.”
American Barbara Bordnick – “What’s true about photography? There is no truth in photography. The only thing true about photography is that you were there. And even that’s not true anymore.”
So there you are… photography, like love, a many splendored thing.
Paul Burrows, Editor