Shameless Self Promotion

Danish Masters. Copyright: Knut Skjærven. CLICK IMAGE.

On this, the last Friday of November 2009, I shall engage in what you might call shameless self promotion. I got webwords this morning that this photograph has been shortlisted for a webguide on Copenhagen. It is shot at Statens Museum for Kunst (The Danish National Gallery) in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Hi Knut,

I am writing to let you know that one of your photos has
been short-listed for inclusion in the ninth edition of our
Schmap Copenhagen Guide, to be published mid-December 2009.

Best regards,

Emma Williams,
Managing Editor, Schmap Guides
www.schmap.me/ewilliams

The shot was picked up on flickr at bareboneslight photostream.

Do I enjoy this image? Yes I do.There are several reasons for this.

First of all it is shot with as small, compact camera and not with my usual gear. The small pocked sized camera is a Leica D-Lux 4 and the lens as absolutely fantastic. Not even a shed of doubt about that. Look at, what shall I call it, the brightness of this picture. It is fabulous corner to corner.

Secondly, and I had no control over this, are the positions of the three girls in the frame. You can control part of that, but not all of it: one front to camera, one back to camera and one profile to camera. This is accidental. No deliberate pose here.

Thirdly, and what in my opinion really make this photo (shortlist or not), and lifts it way beyond average random shooting, is the first girl from the right hand side; the way she holds her hands makes all the difference in the world. That pose is the punctum of this shot. For me, definitely. (This is much more distinct in a larger version of the photo).

Forth and final, is the way all components overall combine in this particular shot. You need tremendous luck to pocket a shot like this. If you don’t believe me, try doing it. Maybe I’ll see you around then .

If you for one moment thought that this was a snapshot, forget it. Hopefully it will now become a schmapshot, and that is a huge difference. Particularly if that shot works as a window to the Danish Masters of Visual Arts. Those represented at The Danish National Gallery. In my ears, that idea does not sound bad at all.

Thanks Emma, I am much obliged. Have a good weekend.

Go here for Schmap Copenhagen.

Barthes’ Connotation Procedures 6: Syntax.

British Museum

Finally, the last of Barthes’ connotation procedures coming up. And maybe the most obvious one. I has to do with picture syntax. Barthes is simply  stating that when more than one image is involved, there emerges a new connotative level based on the series or cluster of images. Please read the quote below to get a better understanding of the matter.

Look at the picture above. It is perfectly possible to analyze each individual photograph on its own, but you can also analyze the combination of the series of pictures. Sometimes, but not all the time, you might end up with connotations that differ from one image to all of them taken as a cluster. There are individual pictures in there, that e.g. do not connote “liveliness” or “youth”, but if you look at the cluster as a whole you will find such connotations.

We all know that series, or clusters, of pictures are very common. Newspaper, or magazine, articles are obvious examples where more than one image often are used. An advertising campaign, most of the time, uses more than one picture. So, be aware that you can deliberately provoke connotations by using a multiple of images. But you need to know what you are doing.

Go here to get to the other connotation procedures.

Barthes: “We have already considered a discursive reading of the object-signs within a single photograph. Naturally, several photographs can come together to form a sequence (this is commonly the case in illustrated magazines); the signifier of connotations is then no longer to be found at the level of any one of the fragments of the sequence but at that – what the linguists would call the suprasegmental level – of the concatenation. Consider for example four snaps of a presidential shoot at Rambouillet: in each the illustrious sportsman (Vincent Auriol) is pointing his rifle in some unlikely direction, to the great peril of the keepers who run away or fling themselves to the ground. The sequence (and the sequence alone) offers an effect of comedy which emerges, according to a familiar procedure, from the repetition and variation of the attitudes”.

Library Thing. (Roland Barthes: Image, Music, Text, pages 15-31, Fontana Press 1977, UK. Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath).

Barebones Pitstop Puzzle

Pitstop Puzzle. Copyright 2009: Knut Skjærven.

I just did you a favour.

From time to time I have posts that simply consist of a quote. Often an image added. These posts are all tagged “pitstop”, but unless you go for that tag in the tag cloud, you will never find them in one go.

I have collected them all for you. Linked from the same blog post. This one.  If you visit the blog page pitstop puzzle you will find the same linked there. I will update that page whenever I publish a new pitstop  post.

The idea with the pistop posts is simply to give you a break. Read them, or leave them.

Each pistop is a breath of fresh air. They all stand on their own and can be read in isolation. However there is an intention with these pitstop posts. Not expressive written down, or instructed. They are pieces of the same puzzle. They are pieces of the same picture. The are pieces of barebones.

Take a closer look at the photograph above. It is one single shot. Not a compilation of many. By viewing them all together you get a picture that is different from viewing each “piece” in isolation. You get THE picture.

Your turn now. Here are the collected pistop posts. Collected for you. You must make the picture by piecing them together.

Here you go: The Barebones Pistop Puzzle.

Minkowski’s Measure.

What Persists Unseen.

Lost in Translation.

Gain and Loss.

The Pose.

And Nobody Can Do Anything About It.

The Language of Facts.

A Mode of Familiarity.

This Feeling of Gratitude.

Out of the Bits and Pieces.

The Unsurpassed Elegance of a Stork.

From Solid Ground.

The Principle of Relevance.

Open Possibilities.

For Me Simply There.

No Substitute For Original Thinking.

Pitstop 05.

Pitstop 04.

Pitstop 03.

Pitstop 02.

Pitstop 01.

Good luck with it. I never told you it would be easy.

The good news, however, is that these pitstop posts do not only fit into one particular picture. They fit many. Could even be yours. There are stuff in there that will last you a lifetime. You need to fill out the blanks.

For once, I have listed things in a chronological order. Bottom up.

Your Basic Travel Kit

Timid Tulips. Copyright 2009: Knut Skjærven.

I have been away for a couple of days, and have not been able to post. However, the beauty of barebones are that you can take them with you. By this, I do not only mean that you can access the internet from any foreign hotel lobby, and even have it as room service. This is rather obvious nowadays.

I have something else in mind as well

Do you remember the post on creatics? It was posted not than long ago as an introduction to a new barebones themes on creativity in communication. The process of getting ideas seems to go like this:

1) gather relevant material, both general and more specific

2) masticating the material

3) forget all about it (this is your basic travel kit)

4) wait for the ideas to turn up “out of nowhere”

5) be critical in reviewing the ideas

If you have done, or are in the process of 1) gather relevant material, it is pretty easy to take the rest of the process with you when you are on travel, and mostly see the inside of hotel rooms, and what is going on in the near vicinity of that room. And so I did. I took barebones with me.

And I was rewarded, by amongst many other things, this shot of timid tulips. I made a critical review of it, and guess what? It passed.

There is another important principle at stake here as well: you need to learn to use the experiences of your everyday live (Lebenswelt is the phenomenological term for it) as an important (re)source of information related to what you are doing in your more “professional life”. You need to use your mind’s capacity for combining elements actively by setting that little, but important, button in your mind to default. So that it is always there, always turned on.

What can timid tulips do for barebones? How can they be used to exemplify barebones themes? Here are a few examples: remember the first dot in the CET-Test for efficient advertising? The one demanding One Unified  Impression? The photograph above is an example of such a unified impression.

Are there more barebones stuff to be had out of this photograph? Much more. What about gestalt factors similarity, and proximity? What about Roland Barthes’ connotation procedures?

I’ll leave it to you to answers the questions. You could use the gestalt factor closure when you look for answers. Now that I have pointed the way you simply close it.

You know what? These timid tulips are not timid at all. They are just big pretenders. Doing their work for barebones.

Roland Barthes on Text and Image

I am going to continue a bit with Roland Barthes.

Not because his name is Roland Barthes, and since he already has made a name for himself within the broader field of communication. But for two other reasons. The first one being that the posts tagged “Barthes” seems to work pretty good on this blog, and secondly because he is central for the barebones themes in that he works with both verbal and visual communication.

A section in his famous article The Photographic Message is about Text and Image. Barebones want to make the points Barthes addresses, in that section, operational, and  show how they can be used both proactively when constructing a message e.g trying to communicate a thought, and reactively when deconstucting a message for e.g. analysis.

Barthes addresses three points in the combination of text and image. There are probably many more, but we will start with blog posts on these three:

1) Text as parasite to an image (post coming up)

2) Text as innocent to an image (post coming up)

3) Text as contradiction to an image (post coming up)

Even if the wording here is esoteric the content of what Barthes is saying is not that hard to grasp.

I will treat these three points/procedures in separate posts. Now you are warned. The separate posts on text and image will be linked to this introductory post.

And remember: reading blogs are not a substitute for reading books. And reading books are not a substitute for reading life. If you want to know more about Barthes, go get the book. If you want to know more about life, buy a camera.

You could start with the link below.

Library Thing. (Roland Barthes: Image, Music, Text, Fontana Press 1977, UK. Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath).

For more posts on Roland Barthes go here.

What Barthes Never Knew About Carl Zeiss

 

A Portrait, Copenhagen 2009 (c)

This portrait was never intended for this site, but I’ll bring it anyway.

Remember Roland Barthes and his connotation procedures in photopraphy? One of his procedures is trick effects, and that procedure is probably that which comes closest to my point here. The mere quality of the equipment is yet another parameter for handling connotations.

This shot has been made with a Carl Zeiss lens (Zeiss Planar 1,4/85 mm ZE), and, in my opinion, is has connotation qualities that goes far beyond what I have seen with other lenses. What these lenses are famous for, are the ability to render 3D like effects. I am amazed, particularly since this is the first portrait, ever, I have shot with this lens. This person comes to life way beyond my expectations. Because of the Zeiss glass in the lens.

What has this to do with connotations? Well, this equipment based qualities certainly contain connotations. Thinks like “strong personality”, “stern”, “in control of things”, “highly skilled”, “professional”, et cetera. You can add to the list yourself.

Barthes himself was not a photographer. He did not think he had the talent for it. He had to contribute to the art of photography by writing about it. That is probably why he never knew about Carl Zeiss and his glass.

And talking about quality: this picture is best viewed on a Mac. The bigger the better. And I am not joking.

And no, this is not a picture of Carl Zeiss.  Have a good day .

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If you want to read more barebones’ posts related to Roland Barthes, you should hit “Roland Barthes” in the tag cloud.

Brief Tribute To A Red Car

 

Brief Tribute To A Red Car. Copyright 2008: Knut Skjærven.

 

Brief tribute to a red car.

Just  to remind you of  Roland Barthes’ connotation procedures.   His article from 1961 The Photographic Message tells the story. All but one, of his 6 procedures, have so far been treated on barebones. It you want to read the posts, you can start right at this page. Just follow the links.

1. Trick effects 

2. Pose 

3. Objects 

4. Photogenia 

5. Aestheticism 

6. Syntax 

Which reminds me that I have to write a post on his  ”syntax”, as well. Not forgotten. 

And while you are here: Don’t forget to listen to U2’s No Line On The Horizon. The reviews haven’t been all that good, but listen to it a couple of times and I am sure you’ll get over it. Let you cruise over the horizon, indeed. In a red car. In a masterpiece.

Best cruiser from the album is Moment of Surrender.

Good luck with it. 

Library Thing. (Roland Barthes: Image, Music, Text, pages 15-31, Fontana Press 1977, UK. Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath)

Obvious Obtuse

Obvious Obtuse. Copyright 2009: Knut Skjærven.

Roland Barthes had another flamboyant  idea. Analysing stills from another great master, the Russian Serge Eisenstein, he lacked a word for the meaning that was bluntly there.  So he invented a label for that kind of meaning. He called it obtuse: the blunt meaning. You can read all about it in his essay “The Third Meaning”, or you can read a bit about how others interpret it, by following this link. The article on obtuse meaning was originally written in the French magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 1970.

As you clearly can see, the photograph above are embedded with obtuse meanings. Well, bluntly …. . You need to take a good look at the photograph, because as Barthes says, the obtuse meaning cannot be described. Good luck with it.

Picture shot at Lousiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark 2008.

Barthes’ Discontinuous Elements

You may remember the rather lengthy post on Barthes, where Barthes speaks about “the co-presence of two discontinuous elements”, that he found in the photography of Koen Wessing? Here is just one more of those shots where you find the co-presence of two discontinuous elements.

I had to take a trip to Delft in The Netherlands last week, and wanted to do some storefront shooting when an elderly shopper came in my camera way. So, in stead of a pretty simple and one dimensional photograph/message, I ended up with this much more complex and interesting image/message.

By the way, you should visit Delft. It is an old and very Dutch and very beautiful city just south of Amsterdam. And the home town of painter Johannes (or Jan) Vermeer. Yes, the one with the pearl earring. The very same.

Enjoy. 

The Delft Shopper, Delft, The Netherlands 2009.

Barebones or Barthes

It seems that barebones communication has turned out a good substitute for Roland Barthes. On the the net anyway, and according to Patrick Cooper at his www.patrickcooper.com.

Patrick Cooper writes, talking about Roland Barthes and his famous punctum: “And the source itself is a good read as well”. Try hitting that link and see what happens.

Well, I really don’t mind, but I am sure Barthes would have . By the way, it is a quite impressive blog Patrick Cooper runs. Go see it.

And while we are at it, I could ask you if you find any punctums in the photograph of the street musician below? I “was hit” by a punctum in this shot: it is the staring face of the girl left hand side behind the musician. You can hardly see the person, but the distant  face has obviously observed the situation between the shooter and the shot. Or is the face only looking in the same direction?

Street Musician, Prague 2008.