Why photography matters jerry l thompson

@ 2013 Jerry L. ThomPson

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Library oFCongrcss Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Thompson, lctry L. Vhy photography matters lJerryL. Thompson'

Pagcs cm

Includes bibliographical rcflrcnces.

ISBN 978-0-262-01928-6(hardcover : alk' paper) 1' Photography-

Psychological aspects. 2. Photography-Philosophy' I' Title' 'fF.l86;r4753 2013 770-dc23

2012044048

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Why Photography Matters

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Like a photograph takcn of a stranger, my title is a theft. In 2008 a book appeared called lYlry Photography

Maturs as Art as Neuer Before. It is quite long, running to over 400 pages, and I have not mastered all its arguments. Nor am I convinced that some of the artists it discusses merit so much attention as photographers. But I so admire the breathless urgency of the title that I have lifted its first three words for my own, much briefer, effort. My target length is best measured not in pages, but in words.

P.lad briefl inrend this effort to be. Breuity, concision, abrupmesr all qualities appropriate to a discussion of the mosr modern of artistic mediums. Breviry and abrupmess

were qualities admired by modernists as various as Andrei

Bely, the Russian author who set the pace of his dis;ointed

novel .!r. Petersburg (1913) to the ticking of a revolution- ary's time bomb, and the young Valker Evans, who in 1931 published a brief essay urging postwar vision to explore "swift chance, disarray, wonder, and experiment."l

Our modern love of speed, chance, and disarray will not only direct the progress ofthis essay: further on, the need to move fast will play a role in its argument as well.

\Yby Photograplry Matters, the title and the qucstion it implies echo the urgency of another revolutionary title: N.

G. Chernyshwsky's 'Vhat Is to Be Done? Then (1863), political revoludon was sweeping Europe, and would before too long threaten to spill over into Fortress America.

i. Valkcr Evans, "The Reappearance of Photography," Hoand and Hom 5, no. 1 (October-December l93l\ 126.

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

Now (2012), the capitalisr economies of Europe and Amcrica seem to be running out of gas: stagnation and entropy are greater threats than revolutionary uphcaval. \i/hat is the urgcncy of a halting limp or a slowing crawl? And what has photography to do with it, that wc should ask breathless qucstions about its importance now?

,\(ell might we ask what photography has to do with it.1fuuch of thc photography we sec in prestigious muse- ums and lavish publications is dccorative sclf-indulgence.

Elegant, knowing riffs on the history of painting fill our commercial galleries and bring the highest prices at auc- rion. Such work lopks like a symptom of unraveling, a lossI of vital purpose. $houldn't photography-which began as a hypcrdetailed rccord of our shared visible world-pro- vide a close, critical examination of that world, the kind of jarring irritant able to rouse viewcrs out of a complacent,

I forgetful slumber, and into a wakeful regard of what is? \.a

Four rcfcrences and two opinions set a spare stage. Against this provisional backdrop, lct me rcask thc titlc question: rWhy does photography matter, and why now?

Photography matters now for two interrclated rea- sons: One, because oFhow it works, not only as an artistic but also as an epistemological medium; and Two, because it presents an instructive example of what might be called present-dqr understandirzg. How we now-today*under- stand what photography is and how it works tells us something about how wc understand anything, And it may appear that how we understand anything is not unrelated to how photography works.

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Though we today can hardly get through a conversation without using it, the word personality, indicating a remarkable or at least notewofthy degree of personal presence, represents a relatively recent addition to Eng- lish usage. Emerson and Ruskin in the mid-nineteenth century were among the earliest writers to use the word in this sense. Some words-substance, for example, or smnsisn-rnay carry meanings we can't instantly give with precision, but they are made from components which are quite concrete and easy to visualize: sub-stance refers to somerhing rhat stands under something else; e-mltion describes a movement outward. Personalily is based on prrr on, ayery old word, but a word whose foun- dation is hard to discover. It is used very early to describe dramatic presences-/ersonle-as well as actual human ones, and its earliest formation may derive from the Latin per sonare, meaning to sound through,

\7ith words like substance and emotion, we look for the specific meaning and find a physical arrangement or an action clearly described. 'With personality, we are sute

we know exactly what its specific meaning is because we use it so much, but when we look for the physical arrangement or action at irs roor, we find it is not a thing at all but, rather, a medium for something else. The pic- ture we come up with is not of some concrete source but, rather, of a mask or a megaphone. In this model, what is it that is sounding behind the mask, through the megaphone?

65

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

-When we today think about photography as an aftis- tic medium, most of us will begin by thinking about the l:est-known artists who practice it: the personalides we single out as gredt artitts. lf asked what photography is today, someone who keeps up with things in general and takes an interest in art would likely respond by naming a few practitioners whose work is of interest, or seems important. This person might mention Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Demand, or some other artist who has been written about recently, someonc whose pic-

tures are exhibited frequently in prominent venues and sell for high prices. Fifteen years ago that same person might have mentioned Richard Avedon, Robert Map- plethorpe, or one of the generation of then-young German

photographers known as the Diisseldorf School. Forry or

fifty years ago the first name mentioned might have been that ofAnsel Adams, and ninetyyears ago the name would

have been Alfred Stieglitz or Edward Steichen. Longer ago

than that, rhe question would likely not have been answered by names because the field had not yet produced

any celebrity photographers, any outsized personalities. Photography was not yet an arena for celebriry practitio- ners. As late as 1900 the New York Camera Club enter- tained a motion to convert imelf into a bicycle club.

For reasons too complex and far-reaching to attempt

to discuss here, we today tend to define any field of inter-

est in rerms of im dominant personalides. Perhaps \Tarlter

Lippmann (Public Opinion, 1922) or Elias Canetti (Crowds and Power, 1960) might suggest some possible

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

reasons for the modern reliance on personaliry. But ccr-

tainly this tendency in present-day thinking acts as ;t handy short cut, a way of cutting through the enormotts

complexity (both logistical and intellectual) all of us flce

every day. lVhen we look at a puzzling work of art, wc

may try to untangle thc thinking that led its makcr trr imagine that arrwork as a thing possible to make. Morc lilcely, we will focus on how the work looks-its style--' and think about where that style came from. \fle will think about influence, and we will end up talking aborrt Valker and Robert.

'When we make things pcrsonal, another element is

added to the dialecticJike process I tried to describe ear- lier. Then, I proposed that a serious photographcr might establish a kind of dialecdc with a subject-old Paris ftrr Atget, upstate New York farmland for Due, city streets for Winogrand. Over time, I suggested (or in the case of' \(inogrand, perhaps more quickly, as much as a result of extreme concentration as of repeated observation), dialec-

tic advances to the extent that the photographer sees things in the chosen subject matter no one else woulcl likely see.

In my initial description I spccified rwo qualifications: if all the right things are in phce, and if this process contintns without dis*action. The notion of celebriry photographers (or "strong poets," to use Bloom's term) adds another kind

of dialog rhat cuts across thc onc in the model initially sug-

gested. Robert "talking" with (or, again in Bloom's termi- nolory, "contending" with) Valker is different from Atget

58 WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

"talking" to old Paris. The contention of strong person- alities is different from an investigator (and perhaps one with a modest personality at that) progressively interro- gating, and gedng to know, a subject.

This state of affairs raises a question: is rhis second dialectic-like conversation-1fss "ssnyersation" among Strong Artists-a distraction only, or does it add some- thing of value to rhe enterprise-perhaps a something necessary in our time (a time in which personality and celebrity matter so) for fully realized work? Or, put anothcr way, is our presenr-day shorthand focus on the personality of artists a legitimate dwelopment (recall what deuelopment implies), an "authentic" aspect of pres- ent-day realiry, or is it a short cut that sacrifices in full- ness and complexiry more than it gains in speed and abruptness?

[t may be the answer lies somewhere benueen the rwo extremes both forms of the question suggest; if it does, then maybe the question should be asked in the broadest way: must swifi chance, disarray, wond.er, and experiment necessarily dominate any aftempt to undersand and live life in the present-day world, or are these things merely choices from among many possible enthusiasms sdll available today (even if some of these possibilities are not easy to see, and not likely to appeal to many)i

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This last question is a broad one, and trying to answer it directly will tempt us to generalizations as dangerous as they are sweeping-even though generalizations can sound or read reassuringly abrupt and forceful: to the modernist taste. More about that soon enough; for now,

as a way of beginning to consider this Big Quesdon, con- sider a very small thing: the mathematical procedure for

calculadng the square root of a number. Fifry years ago,

every student learned to do the long version of this calcu-

lation. No one today performs that algorithm; inexpen- sive calculators and now universally available computers

have taken over that function. No one any more does it step by step. Few even remember how.

Fewer still remember how a square root came to have

that name, or what a root ot a squar€ was before we all began to speak glibly about 'square roots," a mathemati- cal short cut useful in solving problems with practical applications: what will be the dimensions of a quarter- acre-square building lot? lVe use the concept without thinking about where it came from.

Our understanding of words like mrth and beauty is similar. \7e use them and assume everybody who hears us knows what we mean by them. And everybody does-in a general wa1l But it is precisely the generaliry of this understanding that limits--one might say bhchs-our discourse from really understanding anything. The words

we depend on have become something like the Black Boxes technologists speak of. A Black Box is a discrete assembly, a device that does something you need done:

9t

problem goes in one side and solution comes out thc other. You don't know (or carc) how it works, so long as it does the job, solves the problcm at hand. (That it may also be doing orher things, too, is not somcthing we usually con- ccrn ourselves with at the tirne thc Black Box comcs into wide use.) An external hard drive is one kind of Black Box, an elcctronic onc; a psychotropic drug is anorher. A dumpster is a third.

Prcsent-day lifc dcpcnds on a Iot of Black Boxes. If Socrates wanted to go from Athens to Piraeus, he walked, step by step, on bare feet, we are told; not evcn the tech- nology of shoe-making was taken for granted. Today wc would enlisr a couple of tons of stccl, plastic, and elcctron- ics, a construction so complex no one alive can explain how every .singlc componcnt part works, let alonc why.

According to the testimony of Plato, whencvcr anyone

in conversation mentioncd words like knoulcdge or uirtue, Socrates was likely to turn the conversation to figuring out exactly what those words actually mean. He couldn't resist unpacking the Black Boxes, examining accepted notions to

see whar thcy actually meant. The phrase go into it a littb

further turns up frequenrly. Somctimes-often-his attempts are dcstructive: pardcipants in the conversations

{or diahgs, as they arc usually called) end by having to admit they really can't say exactly what the disputcd word mcans. But the dcstruction is ncvcr final, or nihilistic: thc questioning serves to prompt deeper thinking and further discussion. Untii the end of rhe Phaeda-thc dialog that ends with thc dcath of Socrates-thcrc is always another

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

day, another group of talkers, another word (or the samc word taken up again) ro examine.

The goal of philosophy is nor ro compile lists of famous philosophers or of positions and arguments ro lcarn like stratcgies in chcss or debate. Its goal is to keep thinking alivc, ro cnsurc thar nothing-or as littlc as pos- siblc, at least-is accepred without good rcason, without having bcen built up logically from unshakeable (or at least the deepcsr possible) foundations.r5

Present-day discourse does not often have time for rhis nitpicking. Aphoristic sound bites allow us ro ger through a subjcct of intcrest quickly, if superficially, and rcferring ro thc authoriry of a famous (or, if you prefer, successfully branded) personality can hclp position an apho- rism as oracular. So far in this essay, I have been consider- ing how photographcrs approach the world that is their subjecr-(1) via the patienr, obscrvanr, dialecdcJike pro- ccss I have tried to dcscribe, or (Z) by an abbrcviatcd tcch- nique relying on rhc "pcr.sonal" vision of a studio artist, and also perhaps relying on rhe kind of direct, challcnging response a later worker presenrs in his work to a famous precursor. The formcr ("dialecticJikc") procedure is linked to what I have just called "the goal of philosophy.,, The lartcr ("abbrcviated") procedure, I havc been suggcsring, is tcrribly arrracrivc to the pace and temper of prcscnt-day IiFe.

15. Of thc many learnetl opinions possiblc to cite in support of rhis swccping:rsserti

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

This distinction berween former and latter applies not to the practice of photography only. Consider the distinction from another angle: ler us shift rhe ground from the practice ofphotography to a discussion ofhow we uruderstanl photography. (At this point, the amentive reader will note, we have finally arrived, much later than promised, at Reason'Iwo.)

Reread (or consider, if you are reading it for the first dme) this assertive paragraph from a widely read and fre- quendy cited critical essay on photography first published in 1973 by Susan Sontag. Sontag (d. 2004) was what is often called apublic intelltctual; her reputation as an author-

iry is as established as her tone is confidcnt and assertive, aphoristic if not oracular. She is writing about the photog- rapher Walker Evans (1903-1975), who was still alive and working as an arrisr when this essiay was published:

Evans wantcd his photographs to be "literate, author-

itative, transcendent." The moral universe of the 1930s being no longer otrrs, these adjectives are barely credible today. Nobody demands that photog raphy be literate. Nobody can imagine how it could be authoritative. Nobody understands how anything, least of all a photograph, could be transcendent.'r'

Somewhere in there, lurking beneath the rhetoric, are some basic principlcs-presuppositions, actually. These

16. Susan Sontag, "Amcrica, Sccn through Photographs, Darkly," in Oz Photography (New York: Picador, 1990), 31.

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

presuppositions have been supposed for so long that the energy and thought that went into their original formula- tion no longer ftgure into thc thinking of most readers, perhaps not even firlly into the thinking of the writer, who

confidently takes a number of things for granted. The pas-

sive-that is to say, unquestioned, and unwon by the hard worlc of thinking these things through again-acceptance of these suppositions amounts to a retreat from critical thinking. Perhaps the writer is merely impatient, too eager

to rush ahead with her indictment to bother unpacking every single Black Box she relies on along the way. But, as

an examination conducted at a less-than-breathless pace discloses, some of these boxes are pretty large.

Sontag's essay is not a dismissive criticism of Evans's intention. She refers to him elsewhere in the essay as a "great" [her word] artist. But she describes him as the lat great artist to use photography in \Vhitmanesque celebra- tion of the importance and dignity of humble things. Though Stiegliu and Steichen (earlier StrongArtists) were

drawn to "noble" subject matter (moody landscapes, "important" architecture, and heroic portraits), both had occasionally made art photographs of lowly subject matter.

Evans cxtended their range enormously, consistcntly turn- ing his camera on the tumbledown main streets of small rural towns, and on the faces and houses of thc poor.rT

17. For cxamplc, Alfred Sticglitz (1864-1946) made a photograph of a bough of applcs secn against thc grrblc of a framc larmhouse in 1922; Edward Stcichen (1879-1973) photographcd milk bottlcs on a lire cscape in 1917. Evans (1903-1975) cxplorcd the obscure and thc overlooked from the beginning ofhis work as a photographcr in I928 until its end in Iatc Novembcr or carly Dccember 1974. His last photograph was of a dis- cardcd fi shcrman's float.

65

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

But during the years since Evans's work in thc 1930s, Sontag goes on to say, we have lost faith-and intcrest-in the optimistic view of the ordinary she ffnds in'Whitman's verse and in Evans's pictures. By 1973, the "moral uni- verse" had changed. Thcsc changcd circumstanccs (and thc

changed art photography appropriate to them, requiredby thcm) are what the quotcd paragraph intends to csrablish.

ln 1973, a photograph is unable to ("nobody can imagine how it could") be authoritatiue, but clcarly not because nothing can be authoritative anymore: her state-

ment irself is authoritative in the extrcme, If not itsclf lit- erate (ft lacks the rcfcrcnces to litcraturc and to bodies of thinking that might explain thc assumptions upon which it depends), hcr paragraph is ccrtainly rhetorical: the triple rcpetition of nobod1,, cach time at thc bcginning

18. 'Ihc phrtsc ruorul uniuc,nc is an intcrcsting one , il tcrm I first e ncoun- tered in a linc spokcn by a !floody Allen charactcr who is justifring his dalliancc with anothcr charactcr's girl: "T'hc artist crL?tcs his own moral universc." (Bulleu ouer llroadwa.y, 1988.) Moral comcs from L,arin morcs: how nrost pcoplc act, acccptublc bchrvior. Uniucrst mcrns thc Onc which includes everything, all that is. How carr all thtt is bc linkcd to wbat nost paoplt do! \(hich pcoplc? Uniuenc is totaliry, all thcre is, rhc inevitablc; moral suggesrs a choicc among alternarivcs. (lan thcrc bc morc than onc universc to choosc from?

A Googlc scarch turns up a largc numbcr of uscs of thc rcrm raoral rniuerse, but most of thcm arc o[rclativcly rcccnt date, from thc last fcw decades, during which the tcrnr *moral univcrse" hrs bccome a popular phm^sc, a way to yoke high-mindcd, enlightcncd idcas abour right bchavior

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

As for transcendence, she will have none of it. She said elsewherc that aftcr seeing the photographs made by the Allies of liberated concentration camps, nothing ever was

with thc rclativistic (and equally enlightcncd) concept that nor all things are the same for all people. Pcrhaps thc tcrm's most promincnt rccent usage was by Dr. Manin Luthcr King, Jr., who in scveral speeches deliv- crcd ncar rhe end of his liflc dcscribcs thc "arc of thc moral univcrse" as long, but bcnding towrrd justicc.

Intercstingly, in thc contcxr ofKing's spccchcs this notion ofarc rakes on a tcmporel mcaning, as if the aic werc a trajcctory, onc that aims toward justicc as an artillery shcll travel.s toward its target, ovcr time. Just bcforc saying thc arc of thc moral univcrse is long, King cmphasiz,es thar rime is passing, rhat we are moving ahcad. He asks: How long will it take? \(hen will . . . (repcatcd four timcs)? How long (rcpeatcd fivc times)? Bach timc hc answcrs: Not long, and rhcn, after thc fifth question/answer, givcs this rcason: "bccausc thc arc o[ thc moral universe is long, but it bcnds toward justice." Afrer rhis, thc specch concludcs with chc narra- tive-cnacted over rime-of thc coming o[the Lord of which'minc eycs have sccn thc glory." 'fhe arc of King's universe is not a thing, but rathcr a dynamic evcnt, a history. (Specch on the stcps o[ rhc State Capitol in Bir- mingham, Alabama, March25, 1965, tcxt availablc at .)

In the source lor King's lgfglgnss-1 scrmon published in Boston irr 1852 6y Theodorc Parker, an abolitionisr preacher-the imagc is spatial rather than tcmporal: Parkcr's image strcsses thc cnormous slze o[ thc moral univcrse, and not its clranges ovcr time:

I do not pretcnd to undcrstand thc moral univcrse; the arc is a long onc, my eye rcachcs but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complctc thc ligurc by thc cxperiencc o[sighr; I can divinc it by con- scicncc. And from what I sec I am surc it bcnds toward justicc. ("Of Justice and the Conscience," in lbn Sermons of Religioa [Cambridge, Mass.: Mctcalf and Company, I8i2l, 84-85)

The image here is of an obscrvcr looking at thc wholc carrh, unablc to scc the curvarure but nonetheless ablc to undcrstand that thc surface is curvcd: thc arc is long, the curve too gndual to scc, but a scnsc higher than sight discloses to thc vicwcr that thc surFacc docs in lact curvc. It is not a future event but rather thc completcd figurc-thc long arc cxtended ovcr a great

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

the same for her.re The culture that produced transcen- dental philosophy also produced the camps. Photographs

may embody all the lamentable intellectual deficiencies

distlncc-which must be divined, understood (rathcr than scen) ro bc cir- cular in shapc. King was not only accompli.shed but ralented as an orator. He adapted hi.s sourcc to scrve his immcdiatc political purposc. Description of a, thingbecomes the narrative oF an euent. Understandingbecomes action,

The other nonrccent relerencc to moral uniuerse I was able to {ind is also spatial rather than rcmporal. \(/illiam Ritchie Sorlcy (in thc Gifford Lcctures givcn at the University oFAberdeen in 1914-1915, publishcd by Cambridge University Prc'ss in 1918 as Moral Vahres and the ldea of God) compares rhe moral universe with the physical universc: both are uninreg- inably largc and divcrse. As there is an infinity o[ things in the physical universe, so is thcre a very large nurnbcr of individual peoplc faced with different functions and duties, all ofwhich involve moral considerations. The varicry of all thesc possiblc choices and con$equences adds up to an inffnitely varied moral universe, onc which is "somcthing persistcnt and pcrmanenr, pointing toward a completencss which may dcscrvc the namc of absolute" (p. 151). The moral universe, to this thinkr:r, is that sterdy and constant thing by which we know wh;rt is right in all the impossibly large number of circumstanccs. It is not a constellation of provisional values which change over time.

Even though aniuerse mcans the a//, overything rhat is, writcrs have used the not-in-a-strict-sense-logical but forceful image ol rnultiple uni- ursa since the time of Milton at least. Carlyle in i 837 supplicd onc oF the besr: "To Newton and to Newton's dog Diamond, what a dilferenr pair of Universesf" (Citetl in rhe Oxford English Dictionary.)

A mora[ universe unimaginably large, but stablc and unchanging? A moral universe changing from momcnt to momcnt, like }:leraclirus' river? lf therc are universcs, succeeding one anothcr so rapidly that rhe change is per-

ceivable to monals, then somc thing,s appcar and then disappear with final- iry. If therc is one univcrsc, immcasurably large, thcn all things continuc, though the wanderings of any single inhabitantiobserver at any particular tirne may take him eway from regions which, though distant, arc still (with great effort) recovcrable, still perceivable, perhaps cven still serviceablc.

\l/hich is ir, and by what ncccssiry?'fhese are rnatters that could be "gone into a littlc furrhcr"-a phrase common in thc Socratic dialogs- but not in a footnotc to an qssay on another subjcct, and ccrtainly not in a dependcnt clause made to scryc as an unquertioncd prcmisc,

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

and all the pernicious psychological excesses her essays describe, but one thing they don't embody or parricipate in is transcendence.

But she is not ulking only about photographs. She asserts that "nobody understands how anything [emphasis added], least ofall a photograph, could be transcendent." It's not just that photographs can't be transcendent; her assertion denies the possibiliry of the concepr. Does the idca of transcendence no longer have being in 1973? Does the moral universe also include a universe of ideas? Moral has to do with what use we make of ideas: a par- ticular age may not make use of the virtue of charity, but to make this assertion is not rhe same as asserring that the id.ea of charity no longer exists. 'fhe transience of consen- sus behavior and the being ofideas need to be considered separately, but Sontag's sweeping rhetoric ignores the dis- tinction: she takes what is other to be the same.zt'

19. "And I think I could say that my whole lift is dividcd inro before I saw those pictures [of Bclscn-Bergen] and aftcr." (Interview with Bill Moyers, NO\ifl, April 3, 2003; printable transcript availablc at .)

20. Moral unitrse is a tight, neat package oF language thar rolls off thc tongue and sticks in thc memory, A distinction berwcen the manner of being ofmoral consensus, on the onc hand, and thc being ofidcas, on the othcr, docs not lend itselfto a phrase we might encountcr in the dialog of a movie writtcn by \Zoody Allen, or in a spcech by Dr. King-and rightly so, since Allcn is concerncd with snappy entertainment, and King was concerncd with spcech urging action. But * critica.l (i,e., close and careful) reader is supposed to be concerned with rruth (deffned by Kant a.s a description which corresponds to an actuality).

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

Sontag's repeated use of nobody-especially her third-deserves a little funher amention. She cannot mean, literally, not one singb person. Surely in 1973 a few people still believed in categorial formulations, a god, nonutilitar- ian values, etc. When she says nobodl, she clearly means nobody whose opinion countsfor anything. She is giving voice

to the received wisdom of those whose opinions matter, the advanced thinkers: those whose ideas have changed with the times. Those whose thinking hx made progress.

A belief in progrcss is a common feature of modern thought. fu I have said elsewhere (in my amateur's attempt to discuss our notions of time, history, and prog- ress in a 1,000-word summary of Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, and Hegel not yet deemed publishable), I think this faith may find support in the writings of Hegel, who seems to have believed that history, as it progresses, dis- closes new possibilities while removing others.2r Certainly this opinion informs much discussion of art in our time. The history of style assumes that a thing can be done with authenticiry at a particular time, but not at some later time, when the horizon of possibilities is different. So while it may have been authentic for Thomas Eakins (as an American painter struggling to establish a specifi- cally American art) to paint the figure in 1875, it was not authenric for Andrew \fyeth to do thc same thing in

21, A luller discussion of our changing ideas of time (and thc contribu- tion o[C. V. F. I{cgel to this history) is beyond the scopc of this cssay. An abbreviatcd introduction to this subjcct is too long to includc as a foot- note even by my standards.

,i

I

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

1975, when so many concerns other than the one that motivated Eakins were more pressing.22

Some changes in artistic sryle result from technicd advances. After perspective was developed, for example, European pictures began to look different from how they had looked before. This was a change that was (arguably)

necessary (at least for painters whose goal was to represent visual experience), a change to a possibiliry that had not formerly been technically available. But what caused large

numbers of talented and prominent twentieth-century painters working in America to abandon clearly dclin- eated biomorphic form in favor of active brushwork freely applied to large canvases?'W'as it simply a change in the 2kitgeist, and thus in the horizon of "authentic" pos- sibilities available during a parricular historical moment with its ov/n particular pressures and concerns? Or did the complex of causes at work include the less necessary kind of change known asfashion?

The repeated nobodys in Sontag's assertion suggest a fashion of ideas. Fashion rejects the old or familiar not bccause it no longer has meaning and use, but simply because it is old and familiar. In fact, old things (especially thinkings which originated long ago) sometimes appear

22. "ln a world that ha^s F,llsworth Kclly, Jasper Johns and \flillcm de Kooning you don't givc Andrcw Vyeth a one man show, 'Io the naivc vicwcr, his arr looks hanl to do. It's got a lot ofstrokc's and it would appcar to be rime-consunring. Ir is a bit astonishing, but it's a conjuring trick." Hcnry Geldzahlcr quotcd in l)ouglas McGill, "'Helga' Show Renc"ws Dcbate on Andrcw Vyeth," New York l'imes, February 3, 1987 ,

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worn out because we no longer consider them carefully. .We

think we know thern well because they've been around for so long. But in fact, we've fallen into the habit of refer- ring to them in shorthand, and in the process we have actudly lost, or forgotten, the vital content and potential for relevant meaning these old things may still possess.

Consider a couple of examples, timeworn chestnuts many advanced present-day thinkers might consider to have outlived their usefulness long ago:

Think of lValker Evans's well-known close head- and-shoulders portrait of Allie Mae Burroughs (taken in 1936), a harrowing, terrific thing. But seeing it as that involves the effort needed to cut through its iconic famil- iarity and all its accreted baggage about rare vintage prints, prices at auction, the ethics of exploitation, the gaze, its recontextualization by appropriation artists, and so on. Someone who has a print at home may be lucky enough to lift a box lid late some night, while trying to find something else, and suddenly see that face staring back, as if for the first time. The brieflreverie following an accidental encounter at an unexpected time may be about

the only occasion left that allows a viewer to uncover the real content of that famous picture. The picturc is power- ful still, but it's harder for us to recognize and experience its power without being distracted by its fame, and dulled by its familiariry.

Or thinkof the dialogs of Plato, a collection of writings most sudents today encounter in undergraduate survey courses, if at all, or know by reputation as something often

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referred to in brief summary. (One of Sontag's cssays is titled "In Plato's Cave"; my daughter's ninth-grade history textbook contained a one-page boxed sidebar summarizing "the allegory of the cave.") One might be tempted to say: Nobody reads them anymore. But in these dramatic poems, the conversing about and the acting out of virtues are as carefully balanced as they ever were. They resist summarizing and excerpting as much as they ever did. If anything, these texts are richer than any time since they were wriftcn out because of the several generations of per- ceptive commentary writtcn since knowledge of Ancient Greek fully emerged from its domination by Iatinate scholarship. Still, for a secular, pragmatic modern some effort is required. You have to read what the words (and

notes) actually say, and not what you expect them to say. You have to be prepared not to close the book when you read about beautifulaaions, saz&doing this or that, things

that are images of ideas rather than the other way round, or the Good itself as opposed to a good this or that. Encounrering these texts requires the reader to work at discovering how words with meanings now hopelessly blurred function in the demanding world of the text before her (accurate notes and thoughtful commentary will help with this work). To paraphrase Faulkner, these tcxts from the past are never dead. They are not even past.

Nobody calculates a square root using the long-form algorithm. Soon, we may be able to say thar nobody does long division. Does thar mean thar all the steps in computa- tion needcd to arrive at the result have disappeared? Or only

worn out because we no longer consider them carefirlly. \We thinkwe know them well because they've been around for so long. But in fact, we've fallen into the habit of refer- ring to them in shorthand, and in the process we have actually lost, or forgotten, the vital content and potential for relevant meaning these old things may still possess.

Consider a couple of examples, timeworn chestnuts many advanced present-day rhinkers might consider to have outlived their usefirlness long ago:

Think of 'Walker Evans's well-known close head- and-shoulders portrait of Allie Mae Burroughs (taken in 1936), a harrowing, terriftc thing. But seeing it as that involves the effort needed to cut through its iconic famil- iarity and all its accreted baggage about rare vintage prints, prices at auction, the ethics of exploitation, the gaze, its recontextualization by appropriation artists, and

so on. Someone who has a print at home may be lucky enough to Iift a box lid late some night, while trying to find something else, and suddenly see that face staring back, as if for the first time. The bricf reverie following an accidental encounter at an unexpected time may be about

the only occasion left that allows a viewer to uncover the real content of that famous picture. The picturc is power- ful still, but it's harder for us to recognize and experience its power without being distracted by its fame, and dulled by its familiarity.

Or think of thc dialogs of Plato, a collecdon ofwridngs most studenm today encounter in undergraduate survry courses, if at dl, or know by reputation as something often

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

referred to in brief summary. (One of Sonrag's essays is tided "In Plato's Cave"; my daughter's ninth-grade history tcxtbook contained a one-page boxed sidebar summarizing "the allegory of the cave.") One might be tempted to say: Nobody reads them anymore. But in these dramatic poems, the conversing about and rhe acdng out of vinues are as carefully balanced as they ever were. They resist summarizing and excerpting as much as they ever did. If anything, these texts are richer than any dme since they were written out because of the several generations ofper- ceptive commentary wrimen since knowledge of Ancient Greek fully emerged from its domination by Latinate scholarship. Still, for a secular, pragmatic modern some effon is required. You have to read what rhe words (and notes) actually say, and not what you expecr them to say. You have to be prepared not to close the book when you read about beautiful acdons, sazt doing this or that, rhings that are images of ideas rather than the other way round, or the Good itself as opposed to a good this or that. Encountering these texrs requires the reader to work at discovering how words with meanings now hopelessly blurred function in the demanding world of the text before her (accurate notes and rhoughtful commentary will help with this work). To paraphrase Faulkner, rhese texts from the past are never dead, They are not even past.

Nobody calculates a square roor using the long-form algorithm. Soon, we may be able to say that nobody does Iong division. Does that mean thar all the steps in compua- tion nerded to arrive at the result have disappeared? Or only

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

that these steps are now done out of our sight, by some- one (or -thing) else? To forget these steps carries risk; to forget that they ever existed may be disastrous.23

Nobody undrrstands how anything, least of all a photo-

gra?li, could be transcendtnt. Either the craft of picture- making looks toward a goal higher than pleasing visual design or simple description, or it docsn't. A highcr goal might be the same as the goal of the dialecticlike process described earlier: question-and-answer leading farther and higher, away from the simple and obvious toward the not-so-simple and not-so-obvious. As long as the ques- tion-and-answer process holds together, what survives scrutiny moves closer to an understanding that goes beyond-transcends (from Latin trans scandere, to climb across)-literal description of the things the picture shows, the list of things in a screen shot of a Google Eanh view. Is this something nobody understands, or something no so?histicated citizen of the present-dal world would choose to belieue?

'Vhitmanesque optimism is not a literate or transcen- dent idea residing in the handmade chairs, roadside signs, and hardware storc displays Evans photographed. It is rather something understood by the "reader" of the pic- tures, a something that comes not so much as a result of

23. For a detailed account o[thc steps in thinking needed to pass from tlrc undcrstundi ng of number as a collection of discrete things to what we rcfer to (in shorthand) e\ sqrare raal, sec Harvcy lrlaumenhaft, "Vhy \l(e 'Won't

Lct You Speak of thc Squarc Iloot of 'l'wo," St. John\ Reuiew 48, no.1 (2004):7-41.

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

looking at a single view as From looking ar (and then gen- eralizing about) an ordered collection, the kind of presen- tation a viewer encountcrs in a gallery exhibition, or in a picture book. The strongest, most concentrated book pro-

duced by Evans is Ameican Phongraphs. Those of you who know that book well will also know it delivers to its reader/viewer no single overriding message, neither Vhit- manesque optimism, nor "what people from the left tier think America is" (Ansel Adam's reading),z4 nor anything else. Its strategy is to counterpoise contraries, from picture to picturc in the sequence (pictures are presented one to a page, each opposite a blank page so rhe reader encounters a sequence of single picrures, not a "layout" combination of several), and sometimes to counterpoisc contraries within the borders of a single picture. The strategy actu- ally subums settled meaning; this strategy was likely con-

ceived (at least in pan) in recoil from the technique used by the picture edirors of Life magazine, who liked picture- sequences to tell a simple story (and provided helpful cap- tions to aid anyone who might not immediately get the poind. It was likely conceived (in parl in recoil from the easy, glib opinionating Evans so detested.z5

24. Anscl Adams, lettcr to Edward Wesron, 1938, quorcd in James Mellow, lValker Euans (Ncw York: Basic Books, 1999), 381.

25. 'I'his assessmcnr of Evans's skeptical tempcrament is bascd on my sev- eral years' cxperience of his informal personal conversation. But at least one prcscrvcd wriccn document lcnds support. Here is Evans writing to the Ford Foundation in a lctter dated April 29, 1960. He was thcn in his

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The more you look at pictures by Evans and the more you know about his work and life, the more diffi- cult it is to speak with confidence about what his pictures "mean," or about what his "vision" is. Evans as an artist calls our attention to humble objects, out-of-the-way places, and details of gesture, atiude, and character we would not likely have seen so clearly withouc his agency. Like another great mimetic artist-\Villiam Shake- speare-Evans brings these things to our atention. He doesn't rell us what to think about them.

In considering Evans, we might do well to adopt the approach Henry Adams took to the work of another American artist, Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Here is Adams (writing in the third person) on his visits (in 1892) to the bronze memorial figure he commissioned from Saint- Gaudens for the grave of his wife Marion:

Naturally every detail intcrested him [Adams]; every line; every touch of rhe artist . as the spring approached, he was apt to stop there often to see what the figure had to tell him that was new; bur, in

fifry-scvcnth year, had for fburtcen years bcen a regular employee of For- tune magar.ine, and would soon be invited to join thc Century Association in Ncw York City.'fhe scttled attitude this excerpt suggests can hardly be dismissed as the tcmporary onc of an angry young man:

[My] work is in the field of non-scholrrly, non-pedanric sociology. Ir is a visual study of American civiliz.ation of a sort ncver undertaken at a.ll cxtensivcly by photographers, who are all either commercial, journalis- tic, or "artistic." . . . [My book] may call attention to thc seriousne.ss in cc.rtain small things; it may reveal thc emptiness of certain big tlrings.

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

all that it had to say, he neyer once thought of ques- tioning what it meant. . . . The interest of thc figurc was not in its meaning, but in the response of the observer. As Adams sat there, numbers of people came, for the figure scerned to haye become a tourist fashion, and all wanted to know its meaning. Most took it for a portrait-statue, and the remnant were vacant-minded in the absence of a personal guide. . . . Thc only exceptions were the clergy, who raughr a lesson even deeper. One after anorher brought com- panions there, and, apparendy fascinated by thcir own reflection, broke out passionatcly against the expression they fclt in thc figure of despair, of athe- ism, of denial. Like the othcrs, rhe priesr saw only what he brought. Likc all great artisrs, St. Gaudens hcld up the mirror and no rnore.26

The timc-bound message Sonrag complains of is in facr her own reading*part of her own passionate reflcction- and not any content embeddcd in the picrurcs themselves, or in the things they show, or in the arrangemenr of thesc things. Sontag has confused the pictures with her own understanding of them, taking for the same t\yo things which are in fact other. She has projected her own radical contemporanciry-her firm solidariry with those in the present-day know who stand against thc nobodys---onto the ideal constructions she takes to be slaves of fashion.

26. Henry Adams, 'I&, Eduation of l-lenry Adams (l\oston: Houghton Miffiin, 1964),329.

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

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Sontag's way of understanding photography in gen- cral (and Evans in particular) is dashing, aphoristic, bril- liant. Her sryle of discourse may open a window to the clear air of genius, but--caught up as it is in her own passionate reflection-it closes the door leading to the pathetic understanding of an other, the very task photog-

raphy is uniquely fined to mediate. This way, this style, closes the door to understanding a topic in discourse as surely as the too-narrow projective vision of what I have called a studio artist can, in her work, close off the possi-

biliry of understanding what is. Nitpicking and footnotes are not to everyone's taste,

at the present dme. But sometimes, when there is a lot to

say, ir is better to say it, or at least direct the rcader to where it is discussed in greater detail, than it is to elide and rush on to the conclusion. Conclusions drawn from

elided evidencc may have more in common with a large castle of carefully balanced playing cards than with a modest (but well-constructed) cube or prism.

Essays written to the modcsni5l 1x5gg-unfootnoted, brief, crisp, aphoristic, tendentious-make up a large part of present-day discourse on photography. Taken together, thcsc dozens, by now hundreds of efforts make

up our present-day attemPt to understdrtd photography: what it is, what it can do, its imporrance. A studcnt new ro the ffeld may feel a little like a hiker who encounters

the kind of thicket of underbrush that springs up when once-clcared farmland goes out of cultivation. What such

a walker encounters is a profusion of thin, long branches

from different plants, internvined and reaching in every dircction. Somc have thorns and some not; trying to pull

the individual branches apaft is a messy, riresome, cven painful business. Long effort results in limle progress.

If rhe walker has a long brush hook, she may be able to clcar away some of the tangle nearest the ground. If so,

she will discover that all the tanglcd branches stem from a finitc-large perhaps, but finite-number of trunks emerging from the ground. If you can somehow encoun- ter thc bushes nearest the ground, you can deal with the plants onc at a time and perhaps make a little progress.

Prescnt-day discussion (of photography, of almost any

subject) tcnds to take place up in the canopy, so to speak: the readcr jumps from branch end to branch end, from leaf

to single leaf, from bud to cone. \7e are too far from the roots to get a sense of structure. \Vhere do all these buds and leaves come from? \(hat is the overall shape?

I"he point of this comparison is not to imply that pres-

ent-day discussion of photography is worthless and trouble-

some, as some might think overgrown farmland to be. Far

from it. A protean medium, photography connects to and insinuatcs itself inro orher disciplines, orher modes of think-

ing, and invitc analyses from muldple poinm of view. But discussions that begin with, say, the ethics of

exploitation or the relationship of the viewer to the art objecr lead us in various directions-directions that dis- tract us from considering what photography, in and of itself, actually is, apart from the various applications it lcnds itself to. If there was evcr a unitary way of thinking

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

about photography-as a reporter of the condition of the world-that uniry has long since vanished.

The forest of discourse has gotten very large since the

time of John l)onne. Eliot liked to say that Donnc's was a time when all branchcs of knowledge could come into inrimate conract in a single scnsibiliry.2T Today we know mostly pieccs of things. Many of us havc conversations about ideas (as opposed to our conversations about proj'- ects at work, or about the logistics of real estate, schools, rravel, planning, etc., which go on incessantly). But seri-. ous discourse for most of us is largely passive: wc spend a lot of timc listening to or reading micro-expcrts, special- ists who sometimes talk beyond the range of their exper- tise. \7c construct a worldview by connecting the dots, by drawing intellectual lincs among the personalities wc "f611s1,ry"-in convcrsation, at conferences, in bools and periodicals, on television, on linc, on'l'witter, or in muse- ums and galleries, if visual art matters to us. Some among us take in more in a day than all but the most activc and privileged dcvotees of culture in thc eighteenth century might sec in a year, or a lifetimc. $7e are driven to sum- mary, to brevity, to concision and other short cuts to make sense of--to "proccss"-nll we see. W'e rely con- standy on Black Boxcs, and wc rarcly havc the time or lcisure to unpack them.

27. Scc'l'. S. F,liot, "'l'he Metaphysical Poets," in The Norton Antbolog ol' Erglish l.itcraturr (New York: W. W. Norron, 1962), vol. 2, 1508-1516. 'Ilris rcview of I Icrbert Cricnon's anthology wa-s 6rst publishcd in 1921 but has lrcen fie

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A commuter will leave his home in the northern sub- urbs of New York Ciry at 6:30 or 7 a.m. to drive on a six-lane highway at 70 or 75 milcs an hour in a car sepa- rated from the ones in front, behind, and on either side by only a few feet, often talking on thc phone while he drives. He works a full day in an office or cubicle where he givcs his attention to three or four electronic devices, an attention interrupted only by the meetings hc will attend during the workday (when he will monitor only one or rwo devices, in addition to parriciparing in the meeting). At home he will attcnd to family matters and perhaps read some, or watch rnore media to keep up on news not available at the office or in the car. For many Americans who have managed to succeed in getting something of what thry want, this is present-day life. Eliot considered present-day life at the time of his essay (1921) fractured bccause during the course ofa single day a man might listen to a typewriter, make love, cook an egg, read Spinoza. Except for listening to the typewriter, our prcsent-day commuter might do all this (and still have time for his run or workout) before breakfast.

Photography is a present-day art, one that arose as the fragmented urban/office life familiar to Eliot was coming into bcing. Photography was embraced as an ultimate short cut: it yielded automatic picturcs, more accurate than hand-drawn ones, able to be made without spending time on either lengthy training or laborious execution. And soon, the camera became the ultimatc (and litcral) Black Box: as George Eastman's advertising said (in

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

1BB8): You press the button and we'll do the rest! The photographer exposed all the film the camera came with, sent the camera box in to Kodak, and gor back his pictures along with the same black box, reloaded with fresh film.

But this particular short cut contained the germ of somcthing richer, as Talbot's observation acknowledged, an aspect of its operation that opened a door back to ancient epistemology. The subjective self-the l who is necessary to understand the world-rose to prominence relatively recently, during the stretches of the European past we call Renaissance and Enlightenment, when wide-

spread individualism became not only possible but also attractive. ("People became persons in fifteenth-century Italy," in critic Peter Schjeldahl's succinct formulation.)28 Earlier understanding had been dominated by rhe sysrem-

atic rhinking of Aristotle, in which rhe ordered cosmos holds pride of place; man's job is to understand that struc-

ture (as far as possible) and to live in harmony with ir. Every thinker in thc'$Testern rradition recognizes some kind of balance betwecn what happens inside, in the indi- vidual man or woman, and, on the outside, uthat is. Bur in antiquity, thinkers paid more attcntion to what is. Recent thinkers are more likely to start within, to lean toward the proposition thar man is the meaure of all things.2e

28. PctcrSchjcldahl,"Pcrsonsoflntcrcst,"ly'rra,Yorker,Januaryg,20l2,14.

29. Not a ncw notion. Sec Plato, 'fheaetens,lor Socrates'enacrment (and refutation) o[ an argumcnt by Protagoras (ca. 490420 BCE) thr. man is the measue of all tbings.

A man (or woman) with a camera may be rhe mea- sure of all the things she understands to be wonhy of her aftention at the moment she frames her picture, but she is

not the measure of all things. There is Talbor's dial-plate to consider, for one thing, and (for another) the kind of reading any later viewer may come up with of the intrac- tably real things the pictures show (think of Sontag's reading of Evans, or my reading of any of the photo- graphs I have discussed). The photographer cannor be the ulrimate measure of that.

So the short cut of photography also leaves a door aiar, one leading in the direction of things as thqt are, a notion that might have made more sense, and have been more appealing, to Aristotle than to Descartes. And the Bhch Box of optics and chemistry turned out to be an advantage in this regard: the less the involvement of the operator's trained eye and trained hand, the less domi- nance that operator's learned pictorial expectarions will exeft over the final picture. Picrures by even the greatest photographers (Coomaraswamy's claim for Stieglie not- withstanding) insist on containing elements of the out- side world that just happened to be thcre.

Most art photographers we have heard of are, in some measurc, personalities. A reputation today depends upon having something like a signature sq/le. An artist must have some kind of identity before the viewing (and buying) public can link her name to a body of work: before she can become a brand. This state of affairs is how things work, today. It is our rime. You might say

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY M,ATTERS WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

these things compose our present-day moral uniuerse, if you will (though perhaps you won't, if you are a reader of footnotes).

The markct has the potendal to enable geniuses-to identify overarching ralents and reward them with the means to do huge things, rhings which, without the money supplied by collectors, museums, and founda- tions, would not be possible. But photography, as I have been understanding it in this essay-and I have been understanding it as a medium whose business is to under- stand some aspect of the world humans live in, a medium whose epistemological potential makes it unique among the picture-making arts, a medium more properly con- cerned wirh describing in thc toughest, deepest, most penetrating way than with constructing fantasies pleasing to thc eye or imagination-photography as I have been understanding it is a small-scale business, a cottage indus- try. Its main requirements are dedication and huge amounts of time. The tools and materials needed are not cxtravagant. Talent helps, but (as I have argued) conspic- uous talent may be an obstacle. I have also suggested that fame and its rewards are distracrions.

It may be that the largesse provided by the market and its allies has made possible work of genius in photography. Numerous curators and critics view the changes in art pho- tography since its embrace by the high-priced art market as a great lcap forward, the long-hoped-for emergence of a group of talented artists from what more observers than one have called the "ghetto" of photography. The large,

made-for-the-wall pictures these talented artists are pro- ducing will likely have a prominent place in art history, but I think that place will be in the company of the large paintings to which so many o[ them refer rather than in the ghetto of photography. If a prominent museum ever again hangs its picture collection in the form of a chrono- logical narrative, these large (in the lO-by-8-foot range) pictures produced by photographic means will probably claim a place somewhere after Pop.

It may be that this money-fueled expansion has brought forth works of genius, but these large, color, meant-for-the-wall (and not just any wall) works inhabit a world of ambitions and achievements I can't think of as photographic, in the sense I have been using that word in this essay. I would call such works products of stadio art. All the achievements in photography I admire most are smaller, and quieter. Most have come from workers on small budgets who (at the dme they made rhe work I admire most) had as yet little supporr from the market, and some litde recognition from any quarter. All the pho- tographs I admire engage the viewer/reader rhe way a page of text does, rather than overwhelm her with huge, spectacular presence. All are the result of a lot of walking and looking.

The market's recent (since about 1975) embrace of pho- tography may yet yield great things. kslie Kau (d. 1997), a writer and publisher with a deep knowledge of the making and appreciation of an in the mid-twentieth century, took the view that the greatest talents are incorruptible; one of

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS

his favorite examples was a photographer, Valker Evans. (Another favorite example was Louis Armstrong.) M"yb. he was right.

Photographs are made by personalities. But any per- son (recall: Latin, per sonare) is only a medium, a mes- senger. 'Vhat sounds through-what shows through-is the message. The message is what ls. The number on the distant dial-plate is the irrelevant detail that changes the story, the parry-crasher who makes the party memorable. Photography understands this, even if photographers don't. That is why photography marters.

Amenia, New York, February 14,2012

Bibliography

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adans. Boston: Houghton Mif- flin, 1964.

Agee, James, and lValker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famoas Men.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960.

Aristode. Aristotb's Metapfusk* Trans. Joe Srchs. Santa Fe, N.M.: Green Lion Press, 1999.

Aristotle. Aristotle't On the Soul. Trans. Joc Sachs. Santa Fc, N.M.: Green Lion Prcss,2001.

Aristorle. Nicomachean Ethics. -frans. Joe Sachs. Ncwburyport, Mass.: Focus l'ublishin g, 2A02.

Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Wesurn Liter- aturc.Trans. Willard Trask. Garden Ciry, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1957.

Bely, Andrei. St. Petersburg. Trans. John Cournos. Ncw York; Grove Press,1989.

Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influente. Oxflord: Oxflord Univer.siry Press,1973.

Brann, Eva. The Music of the Republic. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2004.

Bry, Doris. Alfed Stieglitz: Photograplter. Boston: Muscum of Finc Arm, 1965.

Cartier-Bresson, Henri. The Decisiue Moment. New York: Simon and Schuster,1952.

Cartier-Bresson, Henri. Pltotoporrralrr" New York: Thamcs and Hudson, 1985.

Chernyshevsky, Nikolai. lVhat Is to Be Done? Trans. Michael Katz.. Ithaca: Cornell Universiry Press, 1989.

Crawford, lVilliam. The Keeptrs of the Light.Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Morgen and Morgan, 1979.

Duc, Marcia. 'Marcia Lra Due, Photographs, 1978-1989." Introduc- tion by Leslie George Katz. Neu Rcnaissance 8, no. 3 (Spring 1993): 104-l 12.