Minor White / Exploratory Camera

minor white / EXPLORATORY CAMERA

A RATIONALE FOR THE MINIATURE CAMERA

minor white

This rationale or working method for the miniature camera is one of discovery. One of using the accidental intelligently; one of treating the camera as an investigating tool to uncover the emotional blind spots of the prejudiced human eye.

To clear the way for discussion two main points need to be made. 1 / If photography is to be an extension of vision each type of camera needs to be fully exploited for its unique possibilities, consequently thruout this paper an exaggerated distinction between view and miniature camera technique is kept. 2 / The growth of any rationale can be outlined thus:

First, a rationale is firmly grounded in a specific camera, specific film, developers, paper, and so on.

Second, it grows out of technique. "Technique” will be considered a welding of tools and processes and the man into a working unit. During this welding process several things happen to man, tools, and processes. At first the tools temporarily block his expressiveness — just as the conscious phases of any learning process does. Any photographer working out an esthetic for himself is, to start, under the influence, if not the control of the specific instruments and procedures. Such influence is beneficial for during this time the tools, by force of their inanimate limits, powerfully channel or focus the man’s ordinarily diffuse seeing. Then, as he masters the equipment and processes, as he absorbs their influence, the channeling is reversed — he gives direction to the medium. Out of this interaction of tools, processes, and man which becomes a technique or working unit, the rationale, or working method, also develops. The rationale is the man’s own central and long term direction.

The exploratory rationale presented here is the working method one man developed for the miniature camera. It treats the camera as a research tool for the creative photogapher. There are several places in the photographic cycle (or spiral) where tools, processes, and analysis of prints can affect the total rationale, or w'here the exploratory role of the miniature camera can be put into effect. These are: The Exposure-Development phase which is terminated in the negative. The Printing phase which ends with a set of fine photographs or reproductions. The Display phase which ends when the prints are out of sight. The Seeing phase which is terminated by exposure.

In each phase various physical features of equipment, analytical methods and so on affect the total rationale which can be summed up as concepts. The main concepts for each phase are stated below.

I / THE EXPOSURE-DEVELOPMENT phase is affected by three concepts: prolific exposures which make working by the roll both feasible and valid; rapid exposures, which let seeing and exposure nearly coincide; and negative control, which can be differentiated thus:

In view camera technique all control of seeing is localized in the negative so printing can be as mechanical as possible a materialization of the remembered image.

In miniature camera technique statement control is only started in the negative and so must be completed in printing.

II / THE PRINTING phase is affected by the concept of the negative as above, and the concept of the camera as a research tool. In view camera work the negative is made to contain one unique statement. In miniature work it is thought to contain more than one; so to find these the negative is fully explored via tonal alterations, cropping, and size variations on the enlarger. This exploration is for new possibilities, for things not seen or even thought of at the time of exposure or before. The camera as a research tool brings the accident, happy or otherwise, into control.

III / THE DISPLAY phase is affected by the concept of audience participation and the concept of single prints treated as units of a group. The latter comes from the miniature camera’s capacity to move all the way around its theme, squirm thru, and penetrate its objective so readily that not only are many pictures available, but the many can give a three dimensionality no single photograph can to an objective, whether the objective is in space or in a situation. The concept of the group of photographs leans heavily towards cinematic techniques. Audience participation is an enormous field of exploration. Once a photographer has listed all the implications of his photographs for himself, other people can point out things he never would see or even imagine by himself. The effect photographs have on different people is a whole world of experience for the photographer, sometimes amazing, sometimes disappointing, sometimes rewarding out of all proportion.

IV / THE SEEING phase is affected by the kind of camera used. Miniature, view, eye-level, waist-level, or tripod, all channel the seeing of a man in some characteristic way. The miniature is like sitting in people’s laps, the view camera is more polite; the former snatches the instant of revelation, the latter the moment of vision; the one is mainly spontaneous, the other gives evidence of ordered thinking. The eye-level miniature is intimate because it is directly on the axis of sight between eye and subject; the navellevel miniature is one angle of vision removed from direct sight and consequently more impersonal.

The seeing phase is also affected by the concept of "recognition.” This will be explained fully later, but briefly it is a mechanism whereby the discoveries the camera makes for a man, and which he locates in the printing and display phases, are caused to work for him when he is in the field photographing.

We can now consider these four phases at greater length:

I / THE EXPOSURE-DEVELOPMENT PHASE.

The specific equipment and processes from which the rationale has been derived are these: cameras, 35 millimeter, 2!4 square, both eye-level and reflex types; films, panchromatic of both 50 and 100 Weston speeds; processing, a two-bath development for negative material (D-23 followed by 1 % Borax), sulphate-acetic short-stop, fresh hypo; Varigam paper with the Dr. Beer’s two-solution contrast control developers. For field exposures short-cut methods, firmly based on the Zone System of Ansel Adams (Book 2, The Negative, Morgan and Lester), have been worked out to allow a man to work with the least possible thought to exposure problems. At the same time they yield "explorable” negatives (rich shadow detail and unblocked highlights) over a wide range of subject contrast.

Knowing both the Zone System and its short-cut methods is essential to the miniature cameraman. Where there is time for elaborate calculations the system lets the photographer plan special kinds of negatives for special interpretive problems. When speed is essential the short-cuts make eye and camera one instrument. The distinguishing concept of this phase is exposure by the roll as contrasted with carefully shooting one frame at a time. The concept is linked to the nature of the miniature camera to move rapidly all around its theme. One, two, five, as many rolls as is needed to keep a photographer abreast of an exploding situation is the rule. If the situation has potentials of building to a climax the cameraman is right with it to the peak; if it collapses like a couple of sparring drunks, the cameraman throws the film away. These machine gun tactics are kept from deteriorating into sloppy seeing by discipling every frame of a roll to be the best the eye can see.

Il / THE PRINTING PHASE.

There are four steps in printing — contact proofs, enlarged proofs, tonal scale proofs, and final prints. Since selection goes on at each step (say from 25 rolls exposed at a parade) the final set is not a collection of single prints that somehow' fit together, but a group that have belonged together, or have grow'n together, from the start. Exploration uncovers which ones belong together; or to state it another w'ay, exploration is the soil for a "free" grow'th of the ideas contained within a set of exposures.

A. Contact Proofs.

By printing or sunproofing a dozen 2(4 square negatives at a time on 8x10 sheets, contact prints are made ready for gross selection and preliminary indications of cropping. With a magnifying glass to give a preview' of enlarging the step is valuable, especially to the beginning student. How-ever, as the ability to crop, feel appropriate size, select important negatives — in short, as the mind becomes more and more like an enlarger — the step can be omitted.

B. Enlarged Proofs.

From a liberal selection of contact proofs enlargements are made according to the indicated croppings. They are printed in the middle of the scale, mainly to make visible every last iota of substance the negative contains on both ends of the scale — not to test the photographer’s tolerance for flat prints. Once made they are subjected to involved and taxing analysis. There is the leisure now' to discover w'hat the camera has discovered on its ow'n. "Fragments I have never seen till now'" could title this section if w'e w'ere not being deliberately matter of fact. Impartial and at the same time sensitive searching wall uncover all kinds of things, which can be classified as follow's:

1 / Mechanical Discoveries. Faces and materials out of focus, overand under-exposure, unintentional solarizations, camera movement, object movement, and others. The photographer can do one of tw'o things with these lucky accidents. He may be a little dishonest and claim them as his own. Or he may consider them as "sketches,” hints of ideas he would not have thought of by himself. By digesting these sketch ideas, experimenting w'ith them in other photographs, he can make these ideas the camera brought to him really his own. The lucky accident, thru digestion and experiment, is brought into control — for instance, learning to use blurred faces with malice and aforethought.

2 / Discoveries in the World of Events, of circumstance, of space relations, of situations. Again the photographer may claim the happy accident as a materialization of his own genius; or on the contrary let his mind digest these new meanings and use them the next time he is out photographing. The human imagination left alone travels in ever narrowing circles unless given new materials to work. The prolific miniature camera brings a constant flow of new images.

3 / Subjective Discoveries. The name and nature of the inner beast is clearly written in one’s own prints. But because photography is so deceptively impersonal most youngsters hardly realize how much of themselves they (and others) can read in their prints. Any camera, view camera as well as miniature, stands between man and world, thus revealing much of both. The miniature camera, however, allows so many photographs so fast that more than a small degree of "automatic writing” can take place. Shooting can be so rapid that critical thinking at exposure is suspended. What is felt, what is liked, what is exciting, is trigger enough to plunge a shutter. Consequently something like automatism is present in a day’s run of photographing. "Automatic writing” is popularly considered a method of tapping the subconscious, and while it may really do little more than ruffle some outer fringe of consciousness, the camera counterpart of automatic writing or "free exposing” reveals much of the inner workings of the photographer — to the psychologist if not to himself. These are hardly in the category of lucky accidents; they are mirrors to mental states or personality facets as they twist around. Analysis will open a little window on what the soul is doing. It takes considerable self-exploration thru one’s own photographs before one can make a camera explore the object world in an objective manner.

There is another highly important aspect of discovery in the Enlarged Proof stage. Seeing and exposing could have been so nearly simultaneous that the photographer felt no more than a sense of importance at the time of exposure. The exposure was made before the full significance of the event was grasped, and the event passed so rapidly there was time to only half experience it. Thus the photographer was left to wait till he sees the print to find what he had intuitively felt. In this situation looking at the proof prints may become the first contact with the experience photographed! The experience is not at exposure but at the print.

The concept of the print as the first original experience is almost the antithesis of view camera esthetic where the print is a record of something fully understood — even if not quite fully digested — before exposure. This is perhaps the most important concept in this rationale of exploration.

INTIMATIONS OF DISASTER / 1950

C. Tonal Scale Proofs.

Further selections from the enlarged proofs are next printed for standard variations. If the negative is used as a starting point it can be printed in several standard ways (high and low key, short, full and overscaled) to uncover any further unsuspected statements. This is to be thought of as the opposite of printing in slightly different ways to get the "best” print. The negative is treated to severe changes to find "what else” it says. The differences may be surprisingly great, not just variations on a theme. Again some negatives can be printed in only one way; they seem to contain only one statement. Apparently the contrast range and detail structure is not the only factor that makes exploratory printing possible. Actual tone distribution, chiaroscuro, and subject matter have much to do with it. Maybe the clearest illustration of what can be uncovered by printing is to watch a face come up in the developer — facet after facet of character is added as the tone darkens. A child’s face printed light may be like a tragic mask, the same face printed dark shows that tears are being held back.

When the photographer has made a rigid analysis of the statements in each printing variation he knows all that each negative contains. Referring back to the 25 rolls and 300 exposures of a parade mentioned earlier, by this time the photographer, thru elimination at each step, may have 50 negatives and twice that many prints from which to work up the final group. The prints can be laid out, shuffled, assembled, grouped and sequenced, and reshuffled to discover which ones belong together and to encourage whatever "free” growth will appear. Many different statements will be discovered in the group that were never anticipated or suspected at the time of exposure. This opens a whole new region of discovery and exploration.

The basic conditions of this area of discovery are based on three points: 1 / the prints are like words in a vocabulary; 2 / the order of the prints affects the meanings of the statements — like word order in a poem; 3 / the order of "reading” is not only left to right but in all directions at once. Exploration takes the direction of finding the sentences that the prints will form. One sequence of ten or twenty, out of five times that many prints, will give a kindly and respectful twist to a situation, another may make it kiddingly funny or ribald. A set of pictures of people looking at an exhibition can run the whole range of ridicule to sympathy. Within the boundaries of what the group contains, the photographer can isolate by sequencing what he wants to say.

While looking, shuffling, trying to find the hidden statements in a large group of prints, the photographer is still in the grip of the photographs, he is still experiencing beyond what he felt at the time of seeing. The hold is not released till some statement out of the many possible ones "jells” for him. That which might have been half felt at exposure frequently grows during this period, comes to a climax in some form not previously known, and during this period the first great overwhelming experience of the prints as a whole comes to an end. If a statement jells of its own accord, or seems to, the photographer has an easy time. If not, he has to coerce it into shape.

D. Final Prints.

With the selection made from the above a new printing period is entered in which the refinements of local tone control and total contrast selection balances the entire set of prints. When group printing it is better to print in sequence so the emotional line is followed. Re-experiencing of the set is thus induced, which gives body to the period and vitality to the prints. This is hardly an exploratory period so much as one of pure sweating to get out of the reluctant materials what they have promised.

III / THE DISPLAY PHASE.

Viewing conditions of prints are various. They may be a single print held in the hand, or several in a portfolio, singles or groups on wails, on panels, in huge museum displays, all more or less under the control of the photographer. Or the prints may appear as reproductions in books, magazines, and newspapers where he has little to say as to cropping and can rarely prevent copy added that distorts or even reverses his meaning. We will keep to the controllable forms here. We also can repeat that this phase and the organization of proofs into groups are mutually interactive — the prospective audience has a major effect on the selection of the prints.

At its best miniature camera work is only slightly removed from the life of the situation. Such prints are like patches snipped out of the whole cloth. The action centered in the print is frequently linked visibly to action beyond the borders of the print; and perhaps it is because of this rich linkage to implied action outside of the print that makes many miniature camera prints look misplaced if not actually inadequate on bordered mounts.

At any rate, because so many miniature camera photographs look crippled on border mounts — as if the camera points out the phonyness of removing images from life — an interesting concept wiggles a beckoning finger here. Namely, that the controlled exposures of view camera technique live comfortably isolated on mattes and borders; whereas the active or "caught” experience of the miniature is only appropriate on unbordered mounts. On the bled mount the action that is implied outside the frame is more readily understood as happening when the edges of the print coincide with space instead of with isolating borders. The removal from the whole cloth is not so violent, indeed there is a tendency to put it back into life. The view camera print with its proud borders isolates experience, tends to create a world of the photographer’s own making; the miniature camera print lying in space tends to let the spectator participate as directly as possible in the event the camera photographed.

Another reason why many miniature camera prints look misplaced when isolated is that they simply are not complete enough to benefit by isolation. Sometimes it is difficult to tell at first glance whether a print is incomplete or merely the result of tired seeing; if it is the former it may be typical of miniature camera work; if the latter it is simply a failure. While incompleteness is the usual label for this quality, I feel there is a characteristic of the medium (it demands and causes the spectator to take part in the life the camera reports) which bears only a superficial resemblance to incompleteness. We could call such a characteristic indeterminacy; and mean by that term a close contact to original subject matter which operates powerfully to give the spectator a sense of aesthetic experience and satisfaction. In other words, ’’incompleteness” may indicate a failure whereas "indeterminacy” indicates success.

If indeterminacy is a characteristic of miniature camera work there are exceptions to consider, those prints in which both the antecedent action and sequel are so thoroughly snarled in the "exact moment” that they are as self-contained as a Paul Strand eternal; consequently, the separate world of borders and frames fit them exactly.

It is obvious that the miniature camera can produce the single print. Perhaps in the long run those are the ones that will survive; however, everything about the rationale we have discussed so far indicates otherwise. The prolific miniature camera points to the benefits to be derived from an abundance of images. This is contrary to view camera technique which can deify the single print, complete, self-sustaining within itself.

One of the benefits of the miniature is what can be called interdependence of prints, instead of each print mutually excluding each other, they can mutually enhance one another, like the flow of images in a movie depend on the organization of various intensities of individual pictures to reach a climax. This idea of interdependence in miniature camera prints must be thought of as radically different than a means to rescue slipshod seeing. It is hardly a means of turning relaxed seeing into tension and importance; but one of turning into a whole the most intense images time and situation provides to the eye. Sometimes the entire meaning of a situation is two or more images, not one. The miniature camera can capture both or all.

Because miniature camera themes are so barely removed from life they frequently look naked, incomplete, lonesome even on bled mounts. Scatter a group of twenty-odd on a small table so they have to be hand lifted to be viewed — there is a reality of experience to the spectator not otherwise gained. It is one way of putting them back into some kind of context. The juicy moments of the situations amplify one another. Haphazard and uncontrolled as such scattering may be, it is amazingly appropriate to street crowds, circus scenes, parades, and the like.

From a capricious shifting "montage” on a table to a controlled one on a panel or wall is a logical step. The organization of the prints can be worked out, tho there is a tendency for the prints to take over and grow their own pattern. Here is the area of exploration in this phase — to discover the total statement a group of photographs will make when treated as a montage. The interplay of prints is not only left to right and right to left but top to bottom and vice versa and diagonally.

The next step is a "free” montage. This can be described as a configuration caused by prints that touch, but not necessarily the full lengths of their sides. Lines in one print lead into lines of the next and cause the prints to proliferate freely like the unpredictable configurations of a game of dominoes. This seems one of the most appropriate ways of displaying miniature camera prints.

Another part of the display phase is the exploration of audience participation and response. If a man thinks he has listed all the possible readings, implications, overtones and symbols of a group of prints, a short time with an articulate audience of a half dozen people will convince him otherwise. It might be thought that as an artist grows experienced with his medium the gap would narrow, if not actually close between what he discovered in his work and what others find. Facts prove to the contrary, and contemporary thought on the point advises that the print on display is not so much a bridge between spectator and photographer as a starting point for the spectator’s independent imagination. With this in mind the things the photographer's prejudiced eye never saw' before, others will see. New' connotations, new' overtones, new statements, new readings are his for the asking.

IV / THE SEEING PHASE.

All this analytical activity of darkroom, display wall and audience reading is carried over to Field practice by a mechanism we will call "recognition.” The mental-emotional integration of this mechanism is simple enough. First, there is a store of images, experience, ego problems, ideals, fears, w'hich the man brings to his seeing at the start. Second, during the activity of seeing they are matched against the images in the visual w'orld, like matching colors. This is done w'ith some conscious effort and a great deal of unconscious participation. At the moment of matching or "recognition” there is a feeling of importance at least, and sometimes a merciless impact. This in turn is secured by exposure — like a sudden gust of wind drops a ripe apple. So w'e can say that "recognition” is the trigger of exposure.

In view' camera work the lapse between recognition and exposure may be relatively long. There is time for analysis and criticism of image and idea, and exposure sums up the entire experience. But in miniature camera w'ork time is telescoped till recognition and exposure are the same motion. There is no time for criticism and none made. Analysis, criticism, and experience of the event are left to the printing phases. As was said, the print reveals, or can, what was recognized and so can act as an original experience for the photographer. Third, new images can be added to the store in a man by the discoveries in his prints — as well as anywhere else. Fourth, these can also be matched against the visual world. Since the whole exploratory role of the miniature camera is one of giving new images, it follows that the exploratory camera goes to work for the man thru the mechanism of recognition. Thru it also the accidental is deliberately controlled; and thru it also the blind spots of the individual are uncovered and bypassed.

By the time the images from analysis are deeply sunk in the photographer’s mind they have been experienced thoroughly, all the critical work is done, they are already digested, no further criticism is necessary, the colors are blended, only waiting for a match. The camera helps, but it is not only that which makes for intuitive seeing; the digestion and experiencing of prints by the man’s own analysis is far more important. The camera has only been speeded up to meet the man’s potential to be trained to see at concert speed.

In case this cyclic (or spiral) rationale looks like a dragon getting fat on its own tail, that is exactly the case. The camera first brings new images for the imagination to digest. Second, the camera can catch an unforeseen and unforeseeable slip of circumstance while the mind is still grasping for it. If exposure is made it has all been too fast for even the mechanism of "recognition” to operate fully. Just what happens is hard to say, but let’s say that importance can be anticipated, or significance sensed, or the intuition goes to work, and let it go at that. The experienced miniature cameraman seems to do it at times, tho he can not give us much clue as to where "recognition” gets beyond itself into intuitive exposures. His doing so allows us to say truthfully that the blindness that is sometimes felt at exposure is the utmost extension of vision — exploration with the camera at the eye.

From the rationale outlined it seems that the instrument is welded to the artist at three points; when recognition without criticism triggers exposure; when the print or group of prints is his experience; and when the exploratory role of camera slips a man by his own emotional blind spots.

/ EXPLORATORY CAMERA was first compounded the fall of 1949 from many conversations with Lisette Alodel when, for a few weeks, she ivas teaching a miniature camera class at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Even at that time she claimed she did not recognize any of her ideas in it. Now that it reflects a whole second year course, I still wish to express my gratitude for all Lisette Model contributed to its production.