Chris McCaw “Sunburned GSP#492 (North Slope Alaska 24 hours)," 2011

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Sometime in 2012, I was judging a competition for “Critical Mass” for Photo Center Northwest in Portland, Oregon and was asked to title the exhibition and catalogue ahead of time, before I had looked at any of the work. That struck me as perverse but I complied welcoming the exercise and wondering how do I think about photography? More to the point, how do I look at photographs?

Stephen Sondheim and his “Sunday in the Park with George” offers a solution. As the George Seurat the title character sings, here is how I put it together when I am looking.

In the song “Color and Light," George lists: Order, Design, Composition, Tone, Form, Symmetry, and Balance. *1

These can begin to give us a language with which to talk about pictures. Are these elements you can identify? Sure. These are words to use to describe what you sense. Looking is more than seeing. Take it all in.

Think of balance as equilibrium; color (I have added this) as the quality of reflected light, composition relates to form as a whole; design is plan; think also of form, shape; light, illumination; order, organization; symmetry, proportion, and tone, even sound. With the latter you might ask how does sound play into photography? Tone can be resonance.

What is the visceral impact of the photograph on you?

Consider Chris McCaw’s sublime “Sunburned GSP#492 (North Slope Alaska 24 hours)," 2011. It is not only musical but geometric. It is a perfect, gently arching sine wave. It has all of the above mentioned elements including color because the surface of the photographic paper bears nuances of a spectrum of grays and creams and whites. It has surface where the sun has etched a smoky trail. Through a prism, the artist aimed the path of a full day’s light on to a series of photographic papers. All of that gives the piece a complete sense of order and an orderly sense of completion.

Chris McCaw “Sunburned GSP#492 (North Slope Alaska 24 hours)," 2011

It is deft, assured, inspired and, for me, great.

A great photograph is one that I want to dance with, to take off of the wall or move in front of it, in some sort of mute, personal, intimate exchange. It insists “Let’s dance!”

In 1925 Alfred Stieglitz began to describe his images of clouds as “Equivalents," and that demonstrates a seeming divide in photography between representation and abstraction. Stieglitz was championing the idea that these photographs of clouds were both. “My aim is increasingly to make my photographs look so much like photographs that unless one has eyes and sees, they won't be seen — and still everyone will never forget them having once looked at them”. *2

With respect to Gertrude Stein, I would offer that a photograph is a photograph is a photograph.

Eliot Erwitt has another version of this: “What can you say about pictures? You’ve got to look at pictures and react to them. You can’t just dissect pictures. I mean, a picture has got to be a picture to begin with. It should have some kind of content and emotion, and it should appeal to you in some way, and it should be out of the ordinary if possible. And then it’s a picture, whether it’s of hands, feet, ears, noses or whatever.” *3

Over the years I have judged many photographic competitions and have run into a mindset that confounds me, categories, like “fine art: still life” or “documentary: daily life”. I recognize that these are holdovers from an earlier era when photography lacked some legitimacy as a cultural force, and so I recognize that I should just hold my tongue because in the end, I will champion the images that transcend the notion of strict genres, like “fine art” as opposed to whatever else you’ve got. “Not so fine” art?

What makes a great photograph?

For me it is the ability of an image, a print or a reproduction in a magazine or a candid on your cell phone or thumbnail on your computer screen, to evoke a sensation that resonates through my being. Tone (see above). Ring my chimes, please. It is neither the subject matter nor the elements of technical or aesthetic practice brought to bear in its creation that matter. It can be rendered expertly or accidentally, or best, magically. I will be persuaded by the unique marriage of those principles shaping light transcendently.

For competitions, as judge or as viewer, when I look, I intend to be tingling, hungrily sorting through the hundreds of images of backyards, trees, kids playing, naked girl or boy friends on beds, aging parents or monochromatic panels of pure color, distorting emulsion on glass, or repurposing or disruptive interruptions of the surface with scissors and glue or Photoshop, nonsensical or well intended, and so on, urged on by the hope and promise of those beauties that I haven’t seen before, simultaneously new yet strangely familiar. Shake me and stir me.

And that is the equivalent of fun.

The artist must put it together.

“Bumbumbum ... “. George continues,
“Putting it together...
Piece by Piece —
Only way to make a work of art.
Every moment makes a contribution,
Every little detail plays a part.
Having just a vision's no solution,
Everything depends on execution:
Putting it together-
That's what counts!

“The art of making art
Is putting it together-
Bit by bit”. *4

Or more simply:

“Dance with me
I want to be your partner
Can't you see?
The music is just starting
Night is calling, and I am falling
Dance with me”.*5

*2 Alfred Stieglitz “How I came to Photograph Clouds”. Amateur Photographer and Photography

*3 “a Show of Hands”, 2007, a film by James Danziger

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