For some reason I need to write a blog on my currently favourite photographer.
He's wacky and wonderful and right up my street.
Much more on the net!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Kert%C3%A9sz
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I also feel moved to include some of a piece I wrote for the Barnsley U3A magazine:
My left foot appeared, unexpectedly, in my first “serious”
photo. A low level shot of my Dad leaning against his pre-war Vauxhall 14/6
taken on a Kodak folder with an iffy viewfinder. I was twelve.
Things have not changed much and I am still wowed by the
accidental nature of photography. Mine anyway.
I don’t try to capture the “perfect image” as that’s for those with more patience and deeper pockets. My guiding principles are “visual ambiguity” and “The Equivalent”.
There is a story of the legendary Alfred Stieglitz (partner of Georgia O'Keefe) talking to a man about one of his photographs:
Man (looking at a Stieglitz Equivalent): "Is this a photograph of water"?
Stieglitz:: "What difference does it make of what it is a photograph".
Man: "But is it a photograph of water"?
Stieglitz: "I tell you it doesn't matter".
Man: "Well then, is it a photograph of the sky"?
Stieglitz: "It happens to be a picture of the sky, but I cannot understand why that is of any importance".
Basically, I believe (with Stieglitz) that the subject is largely irrelevant and it's how the viewer sees or feels about the image that is important. It's a licence to blur, distort, invert, flip, saturate or sharpen.
There's no "truth" in photography, there never has been. The world was not black and white before Autochromes, Madame Yvonnde and Kodachrome brought colour to photography.
