Visualization, Anticipation, Creative Photography
Ansel Adams in Ansel Adams, An Autobiography, 1985, pages 76–9:
“I was asked by Modern Photography to write an article about creative photography for their 1934–5 annual. This was my definition of visualization.
The camera makes an image-record of the object before it. It records the subject in terms of the optical properties of the lens, and the chemical and physical properties of the negative and print. The control of that record lies in the selection by the photographer and in his understanding of the photographic processes at his command. The photographer visualizes his conception of the subject as presented in the final print. He achieves the expression of his visualization through his technique—aesthetic, intellectual, and mechanical.
The visualization of a photograph involves the intuitive search for meaning, shape, form, texture, and the projection of the image-format on the subject. The image forms in the mind—is visualized—and another part of the mind calculates the physical processes involved in determining the exposure and development of the image of the negative and anticipates the qualities of the final print. The creative artist is constantly roving the worlds without, and creating new worlds within.
When I met Alfred Stieglitz in 1933, I told him of my concept of visualization, and he responded with his explanation of creative photography.
Once he had be querulously asked, “Stieglitz, what is a creative photograph, and what is this creative photography you are talking about and how do you go about making a machine be creative?”
Stieglitz replied, “I have the desire to photograph. I go out with my camera. I come across something that excites me emotionally, spiritually, aesthetically. I see the photograph in my mind’s eye and I compose and expose the negative. I give you the print as the equivalent of what I saw and felt.” I think that his explanation is the most valid statement extant on the genesis of a creative photograph.
Ansel Adams’ Monolith, The Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, 1927.
Anticipation is another prime element of creative art and essential to visualization. Some years ago I was talking with Edwin Land, a brilliant scientist and close friend. We talked about the remarkable photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, with his images of people in motion arrested at precisely the optimum expressive moment of time and place.
Land pointed out that the moment captured on film was realized through anticipation. Had Cartier-Bresson released the shutter at the “decisive moment” as revealed in his pictures, the psycho-physical lag would have resulted in capturing the moment after the ideal position in the composition.
Anticipation is one of the most perplexing capabilities of the mind: projection into future time. Impressive with a single moving object, it is overwhelming when several such objects are considered together and in relation to their environment. I believe that the mind, working at incredible speeds, is able to probe into the future as well as recall the past. Our explorations of the past support the present, and our awareness of the present will clarify the future.
As with all art, the photographer’s objective is not the duplication of visual reality. Photographic images cannot avoid being accurate optically, as lenses are used. However, they depart from reality in direct relation to the placement of the camera before the subject, the lens chosen, the film and filters, the exposure indicated, the related development and printing; all, of course, relating to what the photographer visualizes.
The exhilaration, when anticipation, visualization, mind, equipment, and subject are all behaving, is fantastic. Sometimes disaster breaks the chain: a light-leak in the film holder, the omission of a filter-factor or a lens-extension factor, a sharpness-spoling gust of wind at the moment of exposure, the frustrations of the shutter that sticks, the cable-release that develops a kink, the slow collapse of the tripod leg (unnoticed until the exposure has been made), and the glorious pageantry of a great cloudscape just after the last negative has been exposed. When one of these things happened to me in Beaumont Newhall’s presence, he would blandly quote:
‘A blank he lived and a blank he died;
He never remembered to pull the slide!’I do not know any photographer who was not thrilled over his first exposures and who does not continue to be excited as pictures evolve and his craft improves. With all of my analysis of photography, there is still something quite incomprehensible to me about the photographic process. A friend once said to me, ‘The two most beautiful sounds in the world are the opening and closing of the camera shutter.’ How clearly I recall the stately sound of my old Compur shutter, carving one second out of time in which the measured throng of protons poured through the focused lens and agitated the myriad halide crystals of the negative emulsion. The physics of the situation are fearfully complex, but the miracle of the image is a triumph of imagination. The most miraculous ritual of all is the combination of machine, mind, and spirit that brings forth images of great power and beauty.
Photography is an investigation of both the outer and the inner worlds. One might consider that if one is born an explorer he will never find existence dull. The first experiences with the camera involve looking at the world beyond the lens, trusting the instrument will ‘capture’ something ‘seen.’ The terms shoot and take are not accidental; they represent an attitude of conquest and appropriation. Only when the photographer grows into perception and creative impulse does the term make define a condition of empathy between the external and the internal events. Stieglitz told me, ‘When I make a photograph, I make love!’“
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