Thanks for this piece of text which is soooo recognizable for me as well. I made a few levitation photos, to experiment and to support my feelings for that photo. I had exhibitions with them, and the only question I got was ‘How did you do it??’. Instead of looking further and find a story and context to the photo, which I wanted to talk about, there was only attention for the ‘how did’ question. A big disappointment for me, though I love(d) levitation photography. Love with (d) behind it, because I see a lot of the same things appearing on the internet, Flickr, but also in magazines. A lot of them look like copies from a copy from a copy from the original…

I also have that feeling with certain styles people are copying from other photographers.
There are a few photographers with whom I think: ‘oooh I wish I would have made that picture’. And I love to get inspired by their work, but I don’t want to replicate it. And that is what I see happening a lot on the internet. It makes me a little sad on one side to see less unique/personal creativity and happy on the other side to see what a big influence they have.

Old Dutch paintings and illustrations have my big ‘inspiring’ interest, more than other photography. I am now doing a little project by remaking the paintings in a photograph, with other little details than the original painting. It feels to me like back to basic.

What did I answer the people with the ‘how did’ question? Instead of you I didn’t give people an insight to the technical part. I just said I have a levitation button in my apartment. People are not completely satisfied when I say that, and right after that I challenge them to make a levitation photo with their own creative minds, that levitation is a medium, a technique to get the feeling/emotion I wanted in my photo.

Thanks again Natalie for sharing your thoughts. It is good to know that there are other photographers struggling with the same things I do. It is good to question yourself about the things you do and the principles you have. Life is full of changes, which makes it really, really interesting!

Thanks again!

Lieke

Thank you for your feedback!

Your comments are very valid.

I agree, I find it very interesting to hear the stories behind artists’ work and that which includes some comment on the equipment or technique used. For me it gives us a sense of reality as to the making of the works, it takes us there, it gives us a clearer picture of how everything came together. But then there is a line between commenting on ‘how I made this image’ and ‘how to make this image’. I love the written word alongside images (mostly when given from the artist’s own point of view rather than a journalist with a motive, hence my attraction to your blog). I have made a concerted effort to uphold this distinction when I write about my works: in my book ‘Creative Portrait Photography’, for any certain image or set of images, I talk of the experience in making them: combining comment on artistic, technical and anecdotal. There is a big difference between that style, and the ‘step by step’ breakdown of the complete production of an image which runs risk of insinuating that the method used can, and should, be replicated by the reader.

By the same token, I love when a viewer gives the sense that they enjoy both the ‘wow’ factor to a composite image’s illusion, but also the artist’s mind behind it. I think it boils down to respect for each other in life as intellectual beings, not regarding anything single-dimensionally, something to be copied and reproduced. This essay was written out of a feeling that levitation, more than other surrealism, is so dramatic and tantalising that it gets singled out easily.

Thanks for the links to Mayr’s essays, I will definitely read them!

First of all the eternal question of the technique. I completely agree, it’s crazy how a lot of photographers are mainly interested by technique itself. No one would ever ask which brand of oil colors Monet used to paint his wonderful Water Lilies, yet is something that happen everyday with photography.

In my opinion, one of the reason why it happens, is that photography -compared to other media- is much more related to complex technology. Any professional photographer have to learn a lot of technical stuff: starting from lighting syncing, passing through raw developing and post processing, to finish with printer calibration and profiling (and I’m just oversimplifying the process). If you draw you just need a pencil and some paper. Sure, you still have to learn the drawing technique, but the tools involved are much more traditional.

Another reason is that photography is more obviously influenced by the technique used. I mean, almost all the HDR photos just look the same, as well as instamatic and polaroid effects, pinhole, historical process and so on. A bit like what you say about levitation, like the effects I mentioned, is something very bold and loud. When you are a newbie, the results obtained using these techniques looks cool and different, so you just produce a lot of images without paying any attention to the content, but just because of the visual effect. The value of the photograph itself is completely hidden by the technique used.

Personally, I’m much more interested in why a photographer took a photo, compared to how the image itself was obtained. This is why Camera Obscura is above all a site of discussion about photography, much more than a technical magazine. But at the same time I’m a real geek and technique is extremely important in my work. I think this is something really exciting in photography, this kind of tension between expression and technique, in all its declinations.

But I’m diverging, back to your essay! I really liked was your sincerity: the fact that you struggled to free your self from the levitation approach. It’s so easy to be self indulgent, it’s something I know from my personal experience. I really appreciate that a successful photographer like you, still has the honesty to recognize that create something new is a struggle, and fall back on previous successful works is always a temptation.

Finally, if you don’t know his work, you may be interested by the levitation photos by Ivo Mayr and the two articles he wrote for Camera Obscura: Leichtkraft and StadtLandFlucht and passanten. His work is really nice and ironical, I’m sure you will love it!