> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of > Paul Stenquist
> > Writers establish what's called psychological distance between the > work and the reader primarily through point of view (language itself > can contribute to this)--1st, 2nd, 3rd person pov, and all the shades > thereof. Through what photographic technique does a photographer > minimize or maximize intellectual distance? Cheers, Christine > > Simply by not becoming part of the photo. When the subject sees the > camera and photographer, the nature of the encounter changes, and the > subject reacts to the camera. When the camera and photographer are > unobserved recorders of the scene, the true nature of the scenario is > preserved. That's akin to a writer not injecting himself or herself > into a story. > Paul that's not possible, either for the writer or the photographer. It's what the literary theorists have been banging on about for the last 60 years. The best writers and photographers know this, and work with it. The ones who don't know this are by definition naives and primitives, in some sense. I don't mean this disparagingly, but people who are consciously working within the art tradition - or against it - are aware of it. Nowadays that awareness extends very much to knowledge of the place of the author and his/her relationship with the work. I'd go so far as to say that in contemporary street photography perhaps the subject _ought_ to be aware of the camera, and that the irony of this is important within a genre which has traditionally emphasised the candid snapshot, because the true nature of the situation includes a photographer, and we all know that. B -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
