W.M. Hunt

 #somereallygoodones, #matthewpillsbury, #amandameans, #thisisagreatphotgraph, #janescarousel, #balance&secrets, #goldilocks

This is a great photograph.

The photographer — the artist — is Matthew Pillsbury. I saw this image, “Jane’s Carousel” in The New York Times Sunday Magazine when it appeared sometime in 2011. I went online and found a digital version of it and saved it to a folder I labelled GREAT thinking that it would be a sweet spot in which I could save remarkable pictures. In time I came to use them as reference for a workshop/talk I would give called “How I Look at Photographs” and as the basis of this series of texts.

I called Matthew and said how dazzled I was. I congratulated him and told him how pleased I was that he seemed to have upped his game as it were as he seemed to be making images that were better and better.  

I stepped back after the call and looked again. What makes it great? Hmm. I am, I have discovered in time, a formalist. I like work that sits in the middle of the frame without a lot of competing information. I also like work that has a strong sense of verticality, meaning an uprightness as if there is an unseen force of energy elevating that center.  

This image distills time. The long exposure time blurs some of the detail and lets the viewer bring some imagination to looking. We can get lost in it. Time stops.

That’s good.

I do like square format photographs because that finiteness makes things orderly. Pictures should fully earn and then use all of the real estate within the frame. An artist is someone who says, “ I jump six inches into the air. That’s my artistry.” And you think, that’s no big deal. Then they jump exactly six inches into the air. Not five, not seven. Six. They deliver on the promise, and I like that.

That’s what I hope to do with these essays, folks, jump.   

Great photographs have two things. balance and secrets. It is all well and good to read John Szarkowski “Looking at Photographs” (The Museum of Modern Art, New York 1966) and Stephen Shore “The Nature of Photographs” (Phaidon Press 2007) and take in their language about looking at photographs. The more you look, the more you know. You must look to see. These acknowledged masters might give the vocabulary to be able to speak articulately about what you see.  

And you must look, look, look. THere is the Walker Evans’ statement: “Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.”*1

There is a chance of getting lost in the weeds there. I’m happy to offer two principles: balance and secrets.

By balance, I mean the extraordinary feat of keeping all the balls in the air simultaneously, capturing and carefully — artfully — selecting and arranging a matrix of lines and shapes into a pleasing arrangement that one looks at and feels a sense of release. It is all there.

Secrets are similar. You don’t need to know everything. You want the artist to hold back something and tease you forward. The artist plants the germ of an idea, and you fulfill it. You give it life. 

At some point, I stumbled on to “The Goldilocks Principle”. Not everyone knows the story — Italians and Chinese I’ve discovered — so briefly, here goes. A young blonde girl gets lost in the woods, stumbles upon a house occupied by three bears — Mama, Papa, and Baby Bear. Goldilocks is tired and anxious, and she tries to get comfortable, but the beds and chairs are too soft or too hard until at last, the third one, is “Just right!”. The Goldilocks Principle is not too hot, not too cold, but … .  

Look at the Amanda Means “Water Glass”. It is the definitive half full half, empty situation. It is divided perfectly into bands of light and dark; there are life affirming bubbles. It is just right in so many ways, balance being the most important for this moment in this discussion.

The chip on the edge of the glass suggests some off stage incident, some history. We don’t need the specifics, just the awareness of some secret.  

This is how I look: rapaciously, hungrily, thirstily, excitedly, greedily, Impatiently, expectantly, lustfully.  

I went to see a disappointing rather bloated production of King Lear in London, and I was exhausted from the “red eye” flight, slumped against a wall in standing room in the stalls wishing it would be over when I heard this exchange between mad Lear and blinded Gloucester.  

Lear says, “…yet you see how this world goes”. To which Gloucester responds, “I see it feelingly.” *2  

Yes! Electricity nearly flowed out of my butt.

That’s what great photographs do.   

*1 Walker Evans, “Many Are Called”, 1966.

*2 William Shakespeare, “King Lear”, Act IV: Scene 6

©2021 

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