Musings on Photography

Browsing Matt Alofs blog, I came across this post, quoting Harry Callahan as writing a grant proposal that asked for money so that he might “photograph… to regulate a pleasant form of living”. Well, that really rang my chimes. But I’m wary of my old nemesis, the ellipsis, which often hides cunning retargeting of words. (it’s not that I distrust Matt. It’s that often the ellipsis is passed on, generation to generation, so Matt might have inherited it, as it were).

A quick search with Google landed me on this page (link points to the Google cache, because the full text page requires a subscription.) which gives a somewhat fuller quotation and a reference:

When he was 34, Callahan wrote what might remain the truest and most naïve of all grant proposals. He was asking for money “to photograph as I felt and desired; to regulate a pleasant form of living; to get up in the morning — free, to feel the trees, the grass, the water, sky or buildings, people — everything that affects us; and to photograph that which I saw and have always felt.”

Perhaps the most radical part of this extraordinary plea for help is the phrase “to regulate a pleasant form of living.” Callahan was not a verbal person, but after very hard work he sometimes found the necessary word. In this instance, I think he got it precisely right: The function of his photographs was not merely or primarily to express the quality of his life, but to define it — to give it shape and structure, by allowing him to spend his days seeking those occasional victories that confirmed the existence of a minimal, necessary beauty.

To ask for other people’s money in order to improve the quality of one’s own life is unusual; the common thing is to propose that one’s work will in some fairly direct way improve the lives of others, generally some group that is materially or spiritually less fortunate than the applicant, and much less fortunate than the prospective donor. Callahan seemed never confused about this; he understood that he was an artist, and that his work would help others only if and as they might be helped by art. He hoped that “when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit of people.” As a decent man, he hoped to be useful, but he knew that he had little control, or none, over whose spirits he might touch, and the question was in a sense irrelevant, since it would not affect what he was driven to do.

For me, this touches on an important point. As a pastime, artmaking is fraught with peril. You make some art, you put it out there, and after that, it’s out of your control. You can, as Mark Hobson has done, write an artist statement that attempts to direct your audience in their interpretation of your art, but (despite Mark’s umbrage) it turns out that you can lead an audience to your intentions but you can’t make them think. Well, you can’t make them think the way you want, anyway; people are annoying that way.

So in the end it seems to me that if there are reliable rewards to artmaking, the Callahan quotation suggests a good target. I like the idea that we might use artmaking rather the way we use regular exercise - as a mechanism to regulate our lives so that they are more fulfilling and more meaningful to us. If we’re quite lucky the outcome might have some positive impact in the world beyond. Or not - you make your art, and you take your chances.

Anyway, Callahan’s grant proposal gets my vote as the most sensible articulation of a good reason to make art that I’ve ever read.