© David Hockney
As I try to crack the nut that is the still/motion convergence (the strength of the single image vs (or alongside) the ability to show motion) I am rereading the introduction to David Hockney’s Cameraworks. Written by Lawrence Weschler, it conveys several conversations between the author and the artist. Let’s ponder some images and then some choice excerpts from the introduction:
© David Hockney
© David Hockney
… Hockney began making what he referred to as “Joiners.”… “At first I was just going through all this because the result, the depiction of the particular subject, came out looking clearer and more true to life than a single wide-angle version of the same subject… However, fairly early on I noticed that these joiners also had more presence than ordinary photographs. With five photos, for instance, you were forced to look five times. You couldn’t help but look more carefully.”
“My main argument was that a photograph couldn’t be looked at for a long time. Have you noticed that?” Hockney led me back into the studio and picked up a magazine, thumbing through randomly to an ad, a photograph of a happy family picknicking on a hillside green “See? You can’t look at most photos for more than, say, thirty seconds. It has nothing to do with the subject matter. I first noticed this with erotic photographs, trying to find them lively: you can’t. Life is precisely what they don’t have- or rather, time, lived time. All you can do with most ordinary photographs is stare at them- they stare back, blankly- and presently your concentration begins to fade. They stare you down. I mean, photography is all right if you don’t mind looking at the world form the point of view of a paralysed cyclops- for a split second. But that’s not what it’s like to live in the world, or to convey the experience of living in the world.”
Hockney began composing his polaroid collages in the early 1980′s.
“From that first day” Hockney recalls, “I was exhilarated. First of all, I immediately realized I’d conquered my problem with time in photography. It takes time to see these pictures- you can look at them for a long time, they invite that sort of looking. But, more importantly, I realized that this sort of picture came closer to how we actually see, which is to say, not all-at-once but rather in discrete, separate glimpses which we then build up into our continuous experience of the world. Looking at you now… there are a hundred separate looks across time from which I synthesize my living impression of you.”
In Hockney’s new portraits, Weschler explains, “(the subjects show a) living relationship: it’s living right there before your eyes”. It is a still image that shows time passing. This is different than “moving images” which also, and in this case literally, can’t be looked at for longer than a split second.
Oddly enough, much like digital photography now, Hockney was able to see his collage take shape as he shot it because he was using Polaroids. As he shot his subject, he would arrange the fixing SX-70s and see what needed to be adjusted as he went along. Eventually he stopped working with Polaroid and began using regular film.
“I decided to do a study of an ice skater.” Hockney recalls, “and I invited a skater friend to join me at a rink in New York City. I watched him for some time, and I noticed something very odd: you never see the blur. The convention of the blur comes from photography, it’s what happens when motion is compressed onto a chemical plate. We’ve seen so many photos of blurs that we now think we actually see them in the world But look some time: you don’t. At every instant the rapidly spinning skater is distinct. And I wanted somehow to convey this combination of speed and clarity.” The resultant collage has a lot of spin- legs flying, skates scraping, shirt billowing, head turning, arms rising, everything converging on and moving out from the focused center, the waist- but no blur…. A series of studies Hockney undertook a few days later… proved both simpler and more successful… the entire piece reads as one carefree casual gesture- a toss-off.
© David Hockney
In our frenetic world, does it matter if an image will only hold our attention for a few seconds? That photographs can’t fully convey the experience of living in the world?
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hockney has been very critical of photography. He is comparing the experience of looking at photography with that of drawing and painting. One of the challenges photography faces is that it doesn’t show process in the final image. There could be as many hours taken in creating a photograph as it takes to create a painting. The evidence of that time is invisible to the viewer. The painting shows the brush strokes and the build up of paint.
Photography’s fundamental characteristic is detail. This can be amazing in its own, but lacks the movement of life Hockney is talking about. This movement helps us understand how the subject functions. Susan Sontag, in her book On Photography, states that “Only that which narrates can make us understand” This understanding takes place and is understood through time. Hockney does this in his joiners by extending the moment through multiple photographs. The narrative capacity of the photograph can be limited. In most cases, especially the consume and discard photographs required by the advertising world, often don’t use narrative. When they do the story is compressed into 30 seconds or less. (This makes for good advertising photographs) Hockney would like photographs to have the ability to captivate a viewer for longer periods of time, like paintings do.
Photographs can’t convey the full experience of living in the world. I don’t think any media can. Photographs are but fragments of the world, both in how they isolate time and space. The key is how the photographer isolates that time and space.
My own art explores extending time and space through the use of multiple images. I have been influenced by Hockeny’s use of photography.
cheers,
Simon
What an ambitious and thoughtful way to explore our world through art.
I love that he captures a range of time in a single image. It’s a collage but feels like a single, complete image. It’s a motion capture over time presented in a single static frame, artfully done.
It feels cubist, but over a span of time – whereas traditional cubism incorporates various angels presumably from the same moment in time. It’s like looking at a higher dimension in 2D.
I also paint though it’s been about 5 years… *sigh* I was starting to delve into the Italian Futurist’s like Bocioni and Bala both were trying to convey time in 2 dimensions. And I might add they did it very well! I enjoyed what I ended up at but still in awe of something like Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending Stair Case” or anyone else capturing the sense time and movement in oil. I drag the shutter with my camera to give a sense of movement but have a new appreciation for what Hockey details in his idea of time, photography and our impression of people. Great post.
{ 1 trackback }