Sensitive Response Tuesday December 12, 2006
When I become sensitive to what is happening to me – as soon as I begin to be aware of my thoughts, of my feelings, of my body, my sensations – this energy is beginning to work in me. Without this….sensitive energy we are nothing but machines. Up to that point there is nothing but mechanicalness, but as soon as sensitive energy enters, the possibility of separating from our own automatism begins.
JG Bennett Energies: 16
1964 Coombe Springs Press, England
This energy enables us to ‘notice’. When something unusual happens, or when we have to do something that we do not have a complete programme for, we have to be sensitive. Sensitivity is at work in our reactions, which can be of high intensity. Pain and pleasure come from sensitivity.
Anthony Blake
http://www.duversity.org/ideas/mental_energies.html
John Szarkowski, former photography curator of New York’s Museum Of Modern Art, wrote some influential critical books. Looking At Photographs (1973) was not especially one of them, and much of it is now outdated. But it’s an interesting survey of some of the older and classical photography, albeit that people only get one picture to represent them.
On lady photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952), he says this:
The importance of women as photographers has been much greater than one would guess on the basis of a straight statistical projection….There are several possible explanations for the fact that women have been more important in photography than their numbers alone would seem to warrant. One explanation might be the fact that photography has never had licensing laws or trade unions, by means of which women might have been effectively discriminated against. A second reason might be the fact that the specialised technical preparation need not be enormously demanding, so that the medium has been open to those unable to spend long years in formal study (52).
It’s an interesting subject, although Szarkowski’s ideas have the tang of a former era when women were confined by economic-social circumstances, more true in 1973 and even more applicable in the lifetime of Johnston than it is now in 2006. Much of that has now changed, and I think women have advantages in some forms of photography. Szarkowski says:
A third possible reason could be that women have a greater natural talent or photography than men do. Discretion (or cowardice) suggests that this hypothesis is best not pursued, since a freely speculative exploration of it might take unrepresentative and indefensible lines. One might for example consider the idea that thee art of photography is in its nature receptive, or passive, thus suggesting that women are also (ibid).
I agree, it’s a difficult and problematic subject to consider, but the general trends indicating a greater preponderance of girls and young women interested in Art and English, rather than Physics and football, would suggest some basis for this – albeit, that the latter has become more disseminated over the last fifteen years and it’s not uncommon to find female fans. I know this from experience – in the English teaching I used to do, I’d say about 75% of the students were female. Not only that, but I often found them more receptive to the subject. Although that is partly attributed to the greater maturity of young women commensurate with differing psychological development, it also coincides with a more evident propensity for sensitive response, which is a passive (and under-valued) characteristic. I would add though, that it’s dangerous to over generalise this point, that men can and do have fine qualities of sensitive feeling – although it can still be useful to characterise it in terms of a binary gender polarity, as a philosophical dimension referred to by Lao Tsu as yin and yang. Yin is passive and receptive, against yang which is active and aggressive.
Certainly, photography requires a particular kind of sensitivity or ‘yin’. It’s difficult to say exactly what this is in its entirety, although its component parts can probably be ascertained. First and pre-eminently, you need a sensitive response to visual information. This itself breaks down into further categories including artistic composition, which is frequently an integral part of even the grittiest news photography, and the ability to recognise narrative suggestion conveyed in gesture, context, facial expression and the myriad features of a skilful picture which film theorists describe, in relation to their own art, with the French term mise-en-scene.
Secondly you need a sensitive response to the information that is being conveyed in artistic, political, humanitarian, or philosophical terms. The image of suffering, or longing, or joy, is meaningless unless you can resonate with that sentiment within yourself. One of the most heart-breaking images I’ve recently seen is this one, captured by Magnum photographer Chris Steele-Perkins showing a casualty of African war:
What can you possibly say about such an image? What words add to its eloquent import? What further meaning needs conveying, beyond the tragic and anger-making suffering of small people in a wretched and betraying world not of their making? And yet this picture also expresses an implicit hope, contained within the vulnerable but resilient spirit of this small child. We see in her eyes a beginning comprehension of the significance of her handicap and how it will afflict the rest of her life. At this moment we understand it better than her; we see school friends who will jeer, potential boyfriends who will sneer, and real practical difficulties making a life and finding a place in the world. We see her in a pretty dress lovingly provided by an anonymous adult that should make her happy, and smile, with a face where we see it would be radiant. It’s slightly too big for her, suggesting make-do poverty. The juxtaposition of her disfigurement and her pretty dress is unbearable; it stabs us to see she is half-aware of this herself when she shouldn’t be, and makes us dig deeper into our understanding of beauty. It stabs us with guilt that we, makers of this world, have done this; that we, guardians of her life, are impotent to repair this life-long casual damage. The image accuses us, the viewers, by showing that we cannot make her smile with a hug, gift, or kind words, because the damage is too profound. We were her caretakers and we failed; this is a black world where, to paraphrase Dostoyevsky, we might not accept a narrative God who allows small children to suffer.
A proverbial thousand words, indeed, that are actually extraneous. The power of photography is that it can do this, although it’s a language of sensitivity that is itself a less confined and more elusive faculty. In fact, in my experience, it’s a more recognised and realised characteristic of literary studies than the photographic art.
Well done Sir, Mr Steele-Perkins, for doing this. And taken on the same continent, well done Magnum photographer Mr Ian Berry for this beautiful photo below:
I love this image. The world is also like this, Berry says: full of precious innocence and hope, an instinctive natural care regardless of the fucked up qualities of humanity and its destructive and stupid and mechanical behaviour.