« Greats (no street content) | Home | Tilt Compost »

Closer?

There’s a passage in one of the Szarkowski essays on Garry Winogrand that talks about how, toward the end of his life, Winogrand photographed from inside moving cars in Los Angeles. A lot can be said about this, but the part that’s stuck with me is Szarkowski’s theory that the pictures were experiments in how far a photographer can be from a subject and still have it be the subject.

The picture I recall (see below) is a suburban landscape; a wide shot of a sidewalk, some parked cars, apartments in the background. A woman is walking from right to left with her kids and a stroller. They’re very small. In looking at them, there’s this chime of recognition with Winogrand’s body of work. The “ah, I’ve seen this gang before, but up close”. And that knowledge adds to the picture; it’s an ordinary picture that makes sense when incorporated into Winogrand’s body of work. He was in retreat, literally and figuratively, and his later pictures showed that, to a fault.

So much of street photography is about getting close, and being right there, next to people. Lately, I’ve been wondering about how far away you can get from something and still have it chime - still have it be recognizable as the subject, and meaningful. Worthy. Not just as a subject for street photography, but for all kinds of photography.

Winogrand’s experiment with distance reminds me of rhyming in poetry. In formal verse, we expect rhymes at the end of the line. Modern practitioners weave it through the lines, in soft or off-rhymes, braiding sounds down the page. When you hear those examples, an off-rhyme with a lot of aural space between, you raise your eyebrow. It sounds unexpected and fresh. Braided rhymes are a running fence that encircles a poem and focuses (both eye and ear) on the meat of the message.

In photography, subjects are typically right there, front and center. I’m hoping to write about photographs that are so off-center they’re about the absence of subject, but right now, I’m curious about how far away you can be from something and still remain connected to it (photographically) in a way that’s electric.

How far away can you be and still make the spark jump? How far away can you be from a small subject while still filling the frame with information that feels essential?

I’m tagging a few pics on flickr (and on whileseated.org) with “2point8closer“, if you want to add a few of yours. I’m interested in sharing examples. Here’s one that I was thinking of, at slower.net. If I owned the Winogrand book, I’d scan in the example I’m remembering. Dang photobook prices!

Tag: Tidbits