#2521S

One thing I like doing is trying to reverse-engineer photographs. Today I’m doing this with pictures of Bouwe Brouwer, a Dutch photographer and schoolteacher.

Bouwe’s shots feel loose but also polished in a way. He shoots monochrome and the tones feel thought through. I guess it’s about his ability to spot and use light well. Good light will make or break a photograph.
His sense of composition is interesting. He layers some, and totally ignores the horizon line, yet the images never look wonky or haphazard. He shoots wide angle but I can’t really figure out how wide. Some shots feel 28-ish, others are firmly 35. Might be a mix of the two but it bothers me somehow to not know.

There is a calmness in his images, even the ones that are sort of action shots. Not a lot of faces, but lots and lots of human elements. A hand, a child running, even some trash or a crack in a wall speaks of humanity. Bouwe is a haiku writer and I think that contemplative literary sense shines through his photos.
But ultimately what matters is that he’s not trying to force it. There is a patience in his work.

A lot of these points are easy to digest for me, at least on the surface. Calmness, patience, shooting for the joy of noticing, loose but considered composition.
Then there is the question of black and white.

I’m doing this analysis usually to learn something, to purposely shape or influence my own photography. So here black and white and the crooked horizont lines bring to light some things I’m stuck on.
Last year I went through a one year photojournalism course and most of my photography friends are from that world right now. I showed my work to people whose feedback was: unless they’re shooting at you, there is no reason to have a crooked horizon line. I also sat through classes where the teacher, a well liked old photojournalist, showed slides of projects both in color and black and white to ask: wouldn’t it have been better in color?

As a result of all this I came out of school with a changed sense of what “proper” photography is like. Before school I would shoot black and white a lot, play around with editing and prefer strong contrast. Now I feel like I’ve been indoctrinated in the religion of neutral contrast, color, and a generally newspaper-y look. No heart, no play, just serious documentation. I’m also interested in a lot of this stuff, I feel called to document significant events and when I’m there, I feel like it’s irresponsible not to cover the basics, not to get the descriptive shots, the wide, the detail, the speaker on the stage, the overview of the crowd. These are the key shots a photojournalist needs, and I feel like I should do that as well. Even though I’m not that, even though I don’t really want to be that either.
I want to play, freely, I want to create, I want to see photography as art, and like “pure” art, to be free from hopes and expectations of financial success, of acceptance, of praise. I’m sitting here with my boring reportage work, waiting for teachers I didn’t agree with in the first place to tell me I’m a good little photojournalist. Just dumb.

I recently started in a new full time job in an IT admin role. I wanted this job so I can start to free myself from the deep seated belief that I am destined to be an independent entity, an entrepreneur, a bold innovator, an artist for a living. I wanted a “normie” job so I can relax, and shake off the weight of a future career hanging on every shot I take. I don’t want to think about how nicely this shot will look in the lifetime achievement slideshow. I don’t want to think about projects anymore and how interesting or valid some journalism school teacher will judge them to be. I dont’ want to be serious and think serious thoughts about my responsibility as a photographer to society and history. I’m just a dude that likes taking pictures. Can it just be that?

I think I might need to decide if I want to be an artist or a documentary photographer. (Documentary work can be art, but the question is what’s my main goal, to make art that speaks to people, or to make documentary work that can serve to inform and to add to the historic record.)

I think photojournalism might be dead. I saw the most prominent teacher and curator of photography in Hungary post about a student project of AI generated documentary photo-style images of the 1956 Hungarian revolution. This is a defining event in Hungarian history and any new images surfacing of it is national news. We care about what happened, because we want to know. AI images are based on the existing look and stories we already have in real photos of the time. It reproduces the vibes but adds no historical value. While this work, shown at an exhibition titled “Real and artificial identities”, is intended as a contemplation of these very questions, I think for the general public the reality content of images is not important anymore. Truth and reality are divorced from eachother and truth matters more. It feels true, it says what it says and whether that’s reality or a constructed vibe doesn’t matter that much.
In this context, photojournalism as an impactful artform is done for. It is relegated to good cratsmanship, to a question of must-haves.

So the decision might have been made for me already.

Dan Milnor, an online favorite of mine, showed some work in a video about sequencing recently. Looking at his shots, I felt a yearning for making work like this: oldschool, simple, yet immensly creative. He has surprising angles, fun compositions, and an unapologetic sense of visual style.
This is the kind of photographer I aspired to be a few years ago. Then something changed, maybe school, maybe something else as well. I suddenly found this kind of work unserious, or maybe too brave to do when I’m not “at that level yet”.

A serious person would shoot in a serious, reserved style until they have paid their dues and worked their way up to the level where they are allowed to be creative. Until then the realm of finding stories and sequencing standard shots is where they can be creative. In this mindset any non-standard processing, like higher contrast, black and white, color shifts, any purposely introduced imperfections are pretentious and unserious, the realm of hipsters.

I really, really want to get rid of this mindset. But I feel afraid. What if I go in this direction, have fun for a bit, then show my work and people will laugh at me? What if the serious people I look up to won’t take me seriously?

Well, the serious people are on their way out. I would love to live in a world where institutions reign, and serious photographers take on interns to teach them the ropes and bring them up in the industry. Many of the people I admire, like Dan Milnor, came up in a world like this, working at newspapers, then magazines, then freelance, then starting on long term documentary projects to make incredible, heavy photobooks of and drink champagne in olive field jackets and boots at gallery openings.
Looking at their lives and their work, the years of daily grind in photojournalism taught them very strong fundamentals, that were the basis of their more creative independent work later.

The problem is: a) this world is done for and b) I’m not a fundamentals guy. So the question is really how can I stop yearning for a dead world’s approval and instead learn to truly value the whimsy and the looseness and the artistic value system and sensibilities of the world that IS here and available to me. How to change my mind about what is valuable, authentic work and what feels shallow or fake? Well, I’ve done it once, with photojournalism school. I went in with one set of values, and came out with some different ones. I am easily influenced, apparently.
So maybe I need to find an environment where a more artsy approach is valued and bring my existing documentary sensibilities to that world. I will always be a reality-based photographer, but I can surround myself with influences that teach me to value truth and emotion as well.

Well, anyways.