I didn’t know how to react when my Mum said “Might as well keep them” nonchalantly passing me the family history stored inside a chocolate selections box. I’ve known about these for years, since my Grandad died. I never dared show too much interest, they seem too sacred a thing to even hint and wanting to take custody of. Perhaps it would cause a family dispute. My Sister would throw a wobbly knowing I’ve got them. I am unconvinced my Mums family was rich, but they sure kept up appearances, a proud lot. Social and family bonds, loves and holidays. Tintypes, Carte de Visite, Albumen and Silver Gelatin, these photographs where more than I could ever hope for.
I re-read Susan Sontag’s “On Photography” over Christmas. At times it goes over my intellectual ceiling, leaving it to my interpretations. While Sontag doesn’t explicitly exclaim the highest order of photography; I come away thinking that over time, photographs meant to be Art, fair less well than Photographs meant to be Photographs. It is possible that such photographs, capturing snippets of reality or genuine life playing out, might be the highest order of Art. Whist ‘On Photography’ doesn’t suggest photography was the final destination of Art, it was hinted.
In practice, when I die, If my photographs where inherited by a future soul, I could fully imagine all my big darkroom prints getting shoved in the recycling whilst the family photos in the Chocolate selections box would be treasured.
Sponging off the last of my pea soup with a rustic slice of bread, listing to some trippy shit via The Folklore Tapes on Bandcamp, the images spread on my coffee table seemed to remind me that I’m a solitary git. Young couples, probably from an age where marriage was an essential rite of passage, stare at me confused. The elder portraits seem to look on kindly, telling me there’s still time to get a social life of some description.
I could be the most enthusiastic of photographers in the family and it is me that seems somewhat responsible for breaking both the family chains and the photography chain combined. When I do visit the family, it feels too awkward taking some damn photographs. I probably need to work on that.
I am trying to console myself that most of my images, and future images of fields and hedgerows are probably somebody’s future recycling bin task. My images of models probably fair a little better. I cannot really go back to doing straight portraits of models, I am not convinced that works either as a serious project.
Ive concluded I just need to make art, im driven to make it. It just so happens I am using a camera. Cameras are also capable of taking photographs of life, which happen to surpass what I am doing. I guess it doesn’t matter.
Finally, a musing for anther day. When I browse the uploads of model portfolio sites, and I judge them from the perspective of a future generation, wondering whether to keep uncle Matts photography collection, I think most uploads would fail miserably. It would be an interesting subject to ponder. What photographs of Woman have survived the passing of time?
In one zone there is Family Portraits that seem the most valued only to the family. Then photographs that edge into a kind of Social Documentary, that give a little something more of the community rather than the insular family. Then nudging into Julia Margret Cameron where she takes the portrait and elevates it to a higher art, perhaps still related to the Family portrait.
It could be something as stuffy as Decorum. A seriousness or at least an honesty to the creation of the image. As soon as a model is concentring on the “Strike the pose” moment, the smoke bombs have been lit, you’ve just gone deep into future 'recycling task' danger zone. Reading around portraiture, like most of art and photography, the secrets to good images are more holistic and diffuse than definite guidelines could ever help to simplify. One quality of portraits many hold high is that they must somehow “Let you in” a vulnerability or relatable aspect, something model shoots rarely do.
Composition, I keep coming back to a conundrum that photography seemed to liberate composition. Books say early photography copied the traditions of Art composition, like this was a stupid self-limiting handicap. Many of my old family portraits are firmly of a traditional composition, a composition more sophisticated and solid than what we regard as photographic composition today; today being the rule of thirds and a nice balance of values. I wouldn’t mind experimenting with some future shoots going back in time and imitating some traditional pictorial formulas for portrait photographs. They did evolve over hundreds of years after all, even if Robert Frank did get famous for breaking it all.
