Tom – Page 4 – tom stappers

Jul 10

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worth a look (and a thought)

By Tom | photography

This morning I heard on BBC radio that there was an exhibition by what was announced as one of the most famous photographers in the world, Steve McCurry. The name sounded vaguely familiar , but did not immediately ring a bell. The interviewer asked the photographer what was it in a certain individual that got him interested enough to approach that person to start photographing him for some time, was it his or her behavior, the clothes, maybe the eyes ? The eyes ? Then I suddenly had the picture in mind: the Afghan girl with the light eyes ! The photographer started telling about a Sri Lankan fisherman that he made contact with, and how his own enthusiasm inspired his subject to cooperate in making beautiful pictures for National Geographic magazine.

Many photography enthusiasts around the world see the photographs of this magazine as sort of an ideal, because of their colorful aesthetics and idealized exotism in the “what a beautiful world” vein. Even when the subjects sometimes touch on the darker sides of life like poverty, natural disasters and human misfortune, it maintains a heroic and balanced colorful view of the world. When misery is shown, it’s hell without the smell, in other words coffee-table worthy. To many this imagery has come to represent how the world looks, a theme park for modern man to be explored, with interesting peoples to be met (and photographed) including their colorful traditions. An invitation for travel indeed.

Inevitably, the conversation comes to the girl with the eyes, the only photo I know by the man. The photographer tells the story again that we already know, stressing the fact that all was done with permission, and that the family had been compensated with a hadj to Mecca, their greatest wish, paid for by National Geographic. In a way I’m relieved to hear they really let them decide, and have not offered to take them to, let’s say Disneyland… The girl – now married to a local baker – also asked for education for her two children. Steve McCurry says that the response to the famous photograph varied widely, from people wanting to adopt the then young poor girl, and even people wanting to marry her after seeing her picture, to an amazing number of sales and publications.

This clearly raises the question, is this really all about “great photography”. Apart from recognizing beauty and skillfully portraying it – or presenting it to the world in a well-organized and packaged way (the cover of National Geographic no less …) the photograph is not a milestone in the photographic sense, it is the girl herself who is so enchanting with her wild beauty, unspoilt innocense, worlds apart from the pleasing sexiness that has become the standard pose we have become all too familiar with in our commercial culture. They even made a followup documentary, searching for the girl now grownup. Even with all the respect and compensation afterwards I have the feeling that this is marketing and hyping of the highest order. Great photography ? Not particularly, I think. The girl in the picture is stunning, her eyes are unforgettable, and we never would have looked at such beauty, were it not for Steve McCurry. But I don’t think I need to see the fisherman whose image was put in the “definitely art” category by the interviewer’s admiring remark that “the image made her think of a Dali”. The exhibition was “worth a look”, she concluded. The least Steve McCurry might hope for, anyway the Afghan girl is a classic.

Apr 25

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Bryn Campbell on the work of Garry Winogrand

By Tom | photography, street photography

“…. most significant photographer of his generation, as his much-respected admirers claim. [….] He revels in the camera’s unique ability to collect facts. His range is considerable and occasionally his talent is seamed with genius. There is no other way to describe instinctive reactions of such acute visual intelligence and wit.”

Apr 13

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thoughts while editing the contact prints

By Tom | photography, street photography

Map

I have been editing old contact prints, and quite a few at that. You can only do so much in one run, it’s tiring. After a few hundred you have to pause or you don’t really LOOK anymore – and you have to be aware of minute details sometimes! It’s your second chance of making the right choice – educated and instinctive – from the material that you have brought together in the past. You lookthink and themes emerge; even though I never work in projects, there is a clear preference for certain subjects. The individual in the crowd, possibilities and difficulties of communication, the human condition. Those moments that some higher meaning shines through like a ray of sun on a cloudy day…

How to get content in an otherwise interesting picture. I have already decided that while taking the photograph (this is analog photography, what you see is what you get). It is the art of instantaneously choosing the elements that can do the magic within the frame, the personal symbolism. The old metaphors won’t do anymore, moreover it’s rare you encounter the white horse of freedom with its waving manes on mainstreet, so you find your own images to carry your thoughts. You may look for one thing, find another, and still be happy. Improvising, being open to the world around you is what street photography is about. Analog photography with a small camera is perfect, I’m sure it has a future. There’s so much freedom in showing your reality, no matter what others call it: humanistic, political, individualistic, poetic, religious, they are all only aspects of our appreciation of “the world”, but meaning and a growing understanding of it should be the criterium, not the fashion of the moment.

Mar 31

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street photography: hunters and collectors

By Tom | photography, street photography

Some days ago I was seeking cover from the spring rain that came pouring down in the busy Amsterdam streets where I was photographing. Shoppers and tourists alike were huddling together in a covered passage between two streets, suddenly standing shoulder to shoulder looking at each other. I was holding my camera in my coat pocket, finger on the trigger as it were, ready for whatever was coming. As the small crowd was accumulating I spotted another photographer with his camera around his neck; I knew him because he has also been photographing people in the streets of Amsterdam for a long time. From time to time I almost bump into him because I like to move around in the crowd while he often stands at a strategic spot like a rock in the sea, watching the passers-by. We don’t speak though, as I get the impression that he doesn’t like to as he avoids eye contact. I’ve seen some of his work on the internet, and have read that he wanted to photograph people’s activities in the streets and group these pictures into categories, which would eventually lead to some kind of encyclopaedia. He actually has a small book out with such pictures and categories. I looked it through and concluded that his approach is that of a collector. He adds pictures of eating people to more pictures of eaters in the streets, etc. He uses a digital camera, shoots a lot from the hip (therefore does not compose in the finder/on the screen), crops his photographs. A very different approach from mine, so it’s interesting for me to see if the results are very different and what these differences are. After all my approach is more like hunting, I don’t stand and wait, but I move continually, trying to find the hotspots looking for action or turmoil in the crowd, a technique I developed in the years I did my photography amongst the night-long dance parties of the house era. What I look for is that special moment that the banal suddenly shows something of a higher order which lifts the scene above the everyday moment. That’s what I am hunting for.

Feb 25

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Bill Brandt: description and story-telling

By Tom | photography

“Throughout his career, Brandt used photographs to tell stories, and London in the Thirties is a collection of three stories.” The well-known photobook by Bill Brandt from which I cite, contains 96 photographs, showing in 3 chapters his pictures of a vanishing class society in what was later to become the “A day in the life of…” -style. His observations of both high and low class Londoners are individually strong images of iconic value, which in their combination tell the story of a society holding on to old values and traditions which are bound to change. The photographs describe, their juxtapositions tell a story…

quote: © Mark Haworth-Booth, Victoria and Albert Museum, London: introduction to Bill Brandt: London in the Thirties” (Pantheon Books, New York 1984)

Feb 24

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a Bill Brandt interview

By Tom | photography

I looked up this old tape I had with a Bill Brandt interview. The sound had deteriorated some, but then he did not talk much. Bill Brandt, then already an old man, was not just a gentleman, but a gentle man. Soft-spoken, almost shy, he looked at his own photographs as if he had not seen them for a long time, reliving the moments of their taking, but without sentimentality. Looking at each picture for a long time he remembers the circumstances, the light mainly. Composition: that’s how it was, what it looked like – almost an excuse. “Decisive moment?” – there is a naughty boyish smile on his face – “sounds like Cartier-Bresson”, he says, “no, I don’t believe in that.” Several times he remarked that his nudes were his favorite photographs, but at the time nobody liked them. He was fascinated by playing with perspective, such as including the ceilings of rooms and the optical deformation of parts of the female body done with a special camera with a wide-angle lens. He tried color, but did not like it. When the portraits come by, he is surprised by the remark that almost every person is placed very excentrical: “O, really, I hadn’t noticed that” and starts checking. A very modest man indeed.

Jan 31

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“snapshot aesthetic” and the social landscape

By Tom | photography, street photography

“Interestingly enough, the snapshot’s significance in modifying our attitude toward picture content and structure has been quite remarkable. [….] [It] has contributed greatly to the visual vocabulary of all graphic media since before the turn of the century [e.i. before 1900, TS].

Friedlander on one rare occasion simply stated: “I’m interested in people and people things”. Winogrand in an interview with Mary Orovan in U.S.Camera suggested “For me the true business of photography is to capture a bit of reality (whatever that is) on film…. if, later, the reality means something to someone else, so much the better.”

I do not find it hard to believe that photographers who have been concerned with the question of the authentic relevance of events and objects should consciously or unconsciously adopt one of the most authentic picture forms photography has produced. The directness of their commentary of “people and people things” is not an attempt to define but to clarify the meaning of the human condition.”

Jan 10

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personal interpretation, anything goes

By Tom | photography

When the great Bill Brandt learned about the poem that Ralph Mills had written about one of his photographs (the famous “Ear on the Beach”,1957)

he wrote back: “This is my favourite photograph, and I thought I knew the picture, but your poem has taught me to look at it quite differently. I am delighted.” Everyone is entitled to his own interpretation. Happy 2010.

Dec 23

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of all the old pictures

By Tom | photography

I got a call for my permission to use a certain photograph in an upcoming exhibition by a group of new documentary photographers. They had to choose an “old” photograph from the municipal archives for inspiration, and one of them chose my 1968 picture of some gypsy caravans on an open space near where I lived in The Hague. I looked up the negatives, and the four-digit number clearly showed the distance in time between then and now. Since I am now rapidly approaching the number of 80,000 negatives I’m suddenly aware of all the pictures I have taken in all those years, all the many different subjects. Maybe because it’s that time of the year again – everybody’s looking back, automatically you look back too, it’s like in a crowd – but it is a new experience that somebody now chooses one of my early photographs for inspiration. I was more used to thinking in terms of being inspired myself…