Tod Papageorge:
I have no real argument against so-called set-up photography, at least as a process. The fact that I’ve had many successful students doing it in different ways I think makes my case. I also think that the reason they’ve felt free enough to work in this way at Yale is because I profoundly believe in—and teach—the proposition that photography is inherently a fiction-making process. Don’t speak to me of the document; I don’t really believe in it, particularly now. A picture’s not the world, but a new thing.
That said—too briefly—my argument against the set-up picture is that it leaves the matter of content to the IMAGINATION of the photographer, a faculty that, in my experience, is generally deficient compared to the mad swirling possibilities that our dear common world kicks up at us on a regular basis. That’s all. Remember, T. S. Eliot made the clear, brutal distinction between the art that floods us with the “aura” of experience, and the art that ‘presents’ the experience itself. ANY artist, I feel, must contend seriously with the question of which side of that distinction he or she is going to bet on in their work. Obviously, I’m with Eliot—and Homer—in this, believing that the mind-constructed photograph almost necessarily leads to a form of illustration, the very epitome of aura-art.
Read the entire interview over at Alec’s archived blog HERE.
This speaks to me.
I even call this on clients. When shooting I ask them what they’d prefer, beautifully dressed, beautifully lit, beautiful models or their own real people?
When customers and clients look at their annual report or web site (or whatever), what are they expecting to see: some fabricated notion of what they want to communicate, or do you want to show them they are proud of their people and they are not afraid to delivery this degree of transparency?
It’s a question of integrity. the more I work, the less I am inclined to ‘pull the wool over people’s eyes’, I want to represent the truth, and I’ll only alter the reality of any given situation with a chosen amount of depth of field, or selective use of available light. I am even veering away from long or wide lenses because they distort reality. It’s a dangerous path to take, especially when there is food to put on the family table, but one that feeds my sense of what’s right in photography. After all, if I am expecting my clients to act with integrity, have I not to do so also?