A Meeting Of The Portland Interim Workshop

A Meeting of the Portland Interim Workshop

During a meeting of the Portland, Oregon Interim Workshop in the Fall of 1965, member Harlan Reed brought a word and photograph sequence for viewing and discussion. Both the sequence and the discussion have been condensed so as to indicate a method of conducting meetings held for the purpose of discussing photographs and to show simply what happened at a certain meeting. The importance of this “happening” lies in the involvement of everyone present. Neither the sequence of pictures and words nor the content of what was said is nearly as important as the mutual encounters with pictures and each other.

The Workshop formed itself in 1961 in order to keep alive during the rainy season in Portland the stimulation of the Summer workshops guided by Minor White. The format is simple: five or six assignments are given in the Fall. At irregular intervals the group meets with their assignment photographs. For the first two years only pictures were sent for critiques to the guide on the other side of the continent. His reviews were returned on tape. After that the group began to learn how to talk about assignments into a microphone. (That learning process is still going on.) Thereafter, critiques from the East included comments on both the pictures and the discussion. The attempt to learn to talk meaningfully and insightfully about pictures is a slow process which has been invariably hindered by too little time and too many pictures. As can be seen from the comments, as the excitement mounts talk bounces off the images. This seems to be the way it is.

Overtones of therapy may be caught in the interactions of the talk content. In our day and in our society therapy is inevitable; so, if it gets in somehow, it does not seem to interfere with the kind of improvement that increases our enjoyment of life. The more important matter is to observe that the presence of the photographer affects the experience of his pictures favorably. His presence in a self-conscious way is not a serious detraction, nor does the presence embody the love with which Edward Weston used to show his photographs in a group of friends. This is also being learned.

At many meetings there are a few minutes when a superior picture and some especially insightful statements involve the entire group in a beautiful experience. These moments are invariably impossible to reproduce in a magazine. Yet, with “Harlan’s evening” perhaps there is a sufficient excitement for some carry over. We hope so.

(NOTE: Following this introduction, Harlan Reed’s photographs and verbal phrases are presented. One should not look for a direct relationship between any single photograph and the accompanying phrase, but rather absorb all the images and words as a totality. As is the custom of the Workshop, the reader should view these images and then proceed to the commentary of the participants.)

DR. WILLIAM

Harlan Reed’s collection of photographs, all of which consists of images that I recall having seen over the past several years . . . these are being looked at as a group, with captions. As I start in, graphically they sequence fairly well . . . until I get to the mid-point . . . then it does not make a damn bit of difference . . . because the impact is all there in the individual photographs . . . in the captions also which arouse such strongly negative and twisted feelings within me as I read them . . . for themselves.

EUGENE

Ah . . . these photographs ... I have made responses to them before, some of them not all of them . . . And after ... he has some very strong literary captions on each photograph . . . and if you read those comments and recall what your former responses were . . . somehow they lose impact for me ... uh ... I don’t know why it does, but this ... his comments are so strong . . . that the response as I remember gone past . . . it does not mean anything anymore. I don’t know.

DR. WILLIAM

While you were talking things became clearer to me because in all the times we have looked at Harlan’s pictures we have been able to . . . laugh at some, and find friendly monsters . . . and twist them so that we could be comfortable with them. He has forced us to look at them differently . . . and things that strike me so profoundly are two pictures that have people in them.

They’re real and they’re . . . there.

LEE

The image of Harlan with his monsters comes to my mind. Then I go along and read the literary captions to it here. And I find it hard to place the two together.

I feel here, Harlan, as he always is,

is very blunt. Sometimes he is very cutting . . . with a twinge of humor about it . . .

He is revealing many things about himself in words now, probably that he hasn’t . . . has kind of ... at times been subtle about in the photographs. I think what strikes most people is the language used.

Some people might consider it gutter language, I don’t know. But I have to take a little more time studying the particular photographs that I can’t place with a caption. All the time we have been looking at Harlan’s monsters now that they have spoken? Know what they’ve said?

FATHER DON

We have all seen a lot of Harlan’s work in the past, and my response has in the past been largely as a comment upon Harlan himself. Or a comment coming out of Harlan. And reading the copy that is now placed along with them, I still get the sensation that this is strongly Harlan.

Yet for me, it suddenly becomes related to me as they have never been related before. And perhaps it is the brutality that suddenly forced the issue to become clear.

I think that at least I suffer, and presume that others here are laboring under a . . . deep puritanical covering . . . sexual involvement ... as well as a fear of facing the images of fear, and the images of hidden memories that we keep within ourselves. And we don’t want to face either of these two . . . and often enough the two are associated. Here the comment is direct, simple in one way . . . we are talking about sex and fear, and in a way that has plagued mankind for . . .

I am sure the history of mankind itself . . . yet how many of us have the strength and the ability to reflect these fears, to let them rise to the surface, where we can put them in front of the public. And say, “Here it is. It’s within me; it’s within you ; it’s part of us.”

I think our comments will remain on an impersonal nature because each one of us realizes that if we comment in any way, directly and meaningfully about these prints, we are simultaneously commenting about and upon ourselves. And this would be the same type of confession that Harlan is almost making here. I don’t know that all of us have the strength or the ... I don’t think all of us are prepared to make this ... if I can honestly call it ‘confession.’ I am deeply moved because it relates closely to my life, and especially the close of the sequence.

“That’s the Spirit, Mac, that’s the Spirit.”

This is a beautiful double entendre. It summarizes a great deal of the work I’m presently involved in, in the particular area of the city I am involved in . . . and the spirituality of the people I now work with . . . down there things are pretty simple . . . down there in skid-row . . . and this is it, this is the spirit down there. This is the spirituality down there. Perhaps because the people, many of those living in skid-row are so simple and direct, the Spirituality gains a new healthiness ... a new health because of its simple and direct correlation to the fears and needs and drives of mankind.

EDWARD

I can’t put into words everything that I react to in these pictures. I do find quite a bit of savageness, bitter commentary on life here, and it distresses me very much, because I don’t think that life has to be this way. I looked at these when they were upstairs in the hall, the light wasn’t too good, and I read the commentary underneath. When they were put up down here and I had an opportunity to start looking at them again . . . without paying too much attention to the commentary . . . the photographs struck me so strongly that by the time I got to the little boy,

I almost started crying. Because, partly because I guess I empathize, or feel strongly for Harlan in his dilemma. This thing has been really thrown at us very strongly. Because here all the pictures are in one sequence.

RICHARD

The effect I get from these pictures is one of sheer hilarity. When I tried to see them upstairs I had to stop several times, and just sort of break up. They are about the funniest things I think I have seen in a long time. And the most entertaining.

I don’t know if I can express why they are funny, but I can give an analogy.

I must have been about 12, I have a brother who at the time was io. And we went for a ride in the car, with the folks out to a park somewhere. It was beautiful with green trees, and there was a lot of talk about how nice it was, what a nice day, and so forth. I can’t think about it without laughing.

We got there and we had a picnic. There was a wooden outhouse which we used.

My brother and I went to use it. Someone had gone to the toilet in the corner, rather than where they should have gone. We thought it was terribly funny. And laughed about it. We still, we’re both in our late thirties, just break up laughing when either of us mention this incident.

It is very much like these pictures.

I think it was the contrast between the beautiful afternoon, and what we all were pretending was going on. A lovely picnic in the sunshine, with the trees, and all of a sudden the two of us were let in on, in a kind of very direct way, the sort of the ghastly truth of life. Or the other side, or the full picture, somehow or other we shared the secret of something that was going on. We didn’t tell the folks about this, but I think that’s where the element of hilarity comes from. I have the sense that this is really life full scale. I don’t feel these are monsters,

I don’t feel they’re horrible. I think that somehow this represents a level of honesty. There’s a kind of massive conspiracy to hide from ourselves what, what we can’t tolerate or what threatens us. It’s a massive biological conspiracy if nothing else. And somehow or other, I don’t know Harlan at all, but somehow or other he has managed to penetrate that, and get down to a much, much more basic level, and say,

“Hey, boys, here’s what’s really going on.”

This strikes me as very honest, very humorous. After looking at these pictures and responding to them ... I saw Harlan sitting on the steps over here a little while ago, and there was an ash tray beside full of cigarettes. I don’t know whether he was smoking or not but I had a curious feeling that I was sorry if he was smoking, and then I had the association of smoking can cause lung cancer and so forth. Then I had the further thought that I will be sorry when I learn of Harlan’s death.

{Rather forced laughter from the group)

HERMAN

There isn’t any one of the photos that I wouldn’t love to have, in a collection of my own photographs. As to the poems . . .

I know Harlan, I like Harlan, I don’t like his language, I don’t like his expression,

I don’t like to see what he’s written.

It hurts me. In a stag, maybe ‘yes’.

Drunken mood maybe ‘yes.’ But I just can’t

see that kind of writing out in public in

front of a group of people of various ages

and various sexes, and various types. I personally

think it’s poor breeding. It’s bad. I don’t

see any reason in the world to

tolerate it in the open public place.

JOSEPH

The question of word images versus images in their own right comes very strongly here.

It’s a serious question and I think that my evaluating what Harlan has placed in front of us can be explained in terms of a moving picture I saw about two years ago. “Last Year at Marienbad.” The director disassociated the sound track from the image track, if I might use that expression.

Yet they were both telling the same story.

While you were looking at the images you heard sounds of the two people involved with the particular episode. But they never

quite matched. If I take Harlan’s poems and disassociate them from the photographs they stand beside in a one to one ratio.

I can come up with a running story of something that is going on in Harlan and the rest of us. As I go through the sequence of photographs I get the same experience, and I feel that there is a connection between the two. One does it in its own way, very powerfully; the other in its own way, of course very powerfully . . . there is no way getting around the strong word images which he creates.

Which if I try to relate to any one photograph totally destroys both.

JOYCE

In that movie, however, you are forced to try to make some kind of relationship from the dialogue to the pictures . . . and I think that is what he has done here.

He is forcing us to make ... to put aside our earlier comments about a photograph that we have seen before. He wants us to look at it through his words.

DR. WILLIAM

I think the comment can filter backwards or forwards. The comment can go to the picture that follows it or the one that preceeds it. And the feeling here is very strong.

RICHARD

There is something else going on here too.

In the very first picture I looked at, and when I read the comment, there was this terrific shock. A bit later I analysed what was going on there. The picture drew forth a lot of what I recognized now as routinized or stock responses. I began to look at the worms and all this other thing and all of a sudden I read this language and it says, ‘‘Hey, buddy, here’s what you really are.” And I had the feeling that . . . the strong feeling for a moment that I was kind of a phony or something. And this kept going on between the photograph and the language all the way through. You look at this photograph of the woods and it looks like a nice photograph of the woods and you respond on your ordinary level. Sort of the way we talked about the tree in the sunlight . . . you walk into it . . . all these NICE things . . . suddenly we are brought up short and here is something not so nice going on. It’s just as real as that damp dew on the feet that we felt walking into the picture. It’s a neat device.

RUBY

I am not sure that I can express what I really feel. You certainly can’t look at the pictures and read the comments without feeling something. That’s for darn sure. However I think that I have enjoyed Harlan’s pictures as much as anybody ... his images . . . and they have a message for each one of us which up until now we have been able to . . . you know, decide for yourself what that message is . . . And I have always felt that when Harlan puts up some pictures our subconscious always has a heyday ... a carnival . . . a ball. Certainly I don’t claim that my subconscious has ... is any more un . . .

I mean just as earthy I presume as Harlan’s.

But I don’t feel that I have ever had to ... up until now haven’t been forced to accept it in four letter words. And I still don’t think that I have to do that.

In other words I think I can feel just as physical or ... I love Dick’s attitude towards this whole thing, of course as we all know Dick thinks everything is . . . great. Which is delightful in itself . . . the freshness with which he approaches the whole thing.

But speaking personally for what it does for myself ... I think there is a place for four letter words . . . and maybe as Father Don says . . . down in his . . . down in the street . . . perhaps these would go over with a ball. I wouldn’t want such a collection as this on my coffee table. The pictures, definitely yes. All my friends would enjoy them . . . but . . . with the comments I don’t know that I would have any friends left!

. . . I love you Harlan.

DR. ARNOLD

I have watched Harlan put his photographs up and heard our comments on them now, for six years. Never have I heard this much discussion about any of his photographs.

The only thing different here are, first, they are presented as a series, and secondly, there is prose attached to them. Well it’s not the series, because we have carried images in sequences before.

And we are familiar with most of the photographs. Therefore the prose which is new to us has thrown this shocking element and motivated much of this discussion. Well, what about the prose. When we as protected individuals look at the photographs, we can shut off meanings that are painful to us, or that we wish to avoid. We can see only that which we want to see.

However, the words have more specific meaning to us than the images. Or at least we can’t shut off the meanings, the full meanings of the prose, as we can the photographic images. Image and prose together I think is very powerful and I think it speaks of the man far better than any other thing that I have seen. The man is really telling you where he lives, and what goes on inside of him. And if you read it over again you see a lot of the conflict and bitterness and the hurt and the turmoil that is going on inside this man. And much of this you can pick up from the prose, and when you examine the pictures again you can see it in the photographs. Sure it’s not pretty language. We’re all mature, we’re all grown up, and people themselves on the inside . . . they’re not always pretty.

And it’s provocative, and this has a place.

It has a very definite place. I for one want to compliment Harlan very much for having the guts, I think that is the best word, for having the guts to put it down in writing where nobody can escape from it.

So that no one can hide behind a prosaic or Victorian, or even semi-liberated form.

It’s right out there and you got to meet it face to face. And it’s hard to meet, but Harlan’s talking about what goes on inside of him, and it’s not pretty.

DR. WILLIAM

Arnold, Arnold, are you suggesting that we mature individuals should protect the immature ones from this experience that they might not get to ... be ready to accept?

DR. ARNOLD

No. I don’t say you should protect anyone.

I think this can be put in an APERTURE . . . sure. But I am going to cut off the commentary because I want to reserve the remainder of the tape for Harlan. And the group here are like haltered animals, they all want to talk at the same time, Minor.

HARLAN REED

I am mopping up the blood. (Laughter)

And I hope I can carry on. I am very pleased at the . . . how strongly the group felt about this. As it is I feel that it’s justifiable. I made this presentation,

I didn’t know exactly how I was going to do it. I made it as strong as possible because I thought that maybe that was the way to do it. For some people it was probably too strong, obviously. In putting words and pictures together I did not do them in a one to one ratio ... at all.

I was trying to tell a narrative, to tell a story verbally, and the same story visually. But not in a one to one ratio.

And if I had, if I could have seen how to lay it out, I would have preferred to have the narrative go on and the pictures flip up indiscriminately. As far as the literary style that I used . . . there is much in great literature that makes this thing seem very tame.

I put in more pictures than, someone told

me there are too many, I put in extra ones

so that it could be edited ... if it

was felt that it need to be. So that

some pictures and some commentary could be

taken out. I did not feel that this was

too strong for a mixed group however.

I apologize if I embarrassed anybody.

I don’t know of anything else to say. A rousing discussion if we ever had one. (Laughter)

EDWARD

I have to agree with what Arnold had to say about this being Harlan’s inner self.

This is one reason that it distressed me so much to realize that he did have so much bitterness within him. I knew that he did but I was not aware that it was this strong and this deep. I think it has a great deal of therapeutic value as far as Harlan is concerned because when he lays himself out like this and hears us go into it there is a possibility that he might from our remarks gain a deeper insight into his problem. If he does, maybe he can come to grips with it and lick it. I had a similar problem years ago when I first took up photography, and I was photographing one particular type of thing all the time. It wasn’t until finally that I understood what the symbolism was, and once I understood it, it no longer bothered me. I have not take that kind of picture since. So I think that our group is a good place for people to expose themselves, to the public.

HARLAN REED

This is not simply a confession, all that I have put up here. It might be ... as all writing and pictures have a certain amount of intimacy with their creator, but it is a piece of fiction and it is not just simply exposing myself as such. Or maybe it would be to an extent, naturally. But, heck, I have no problems. (Laughter)