Andreas Feininger BBC Master Photographers (1983)

do you think the eye is the superior instrument to the camera yeah yes and no I think each one has advantages and the job of the good photographer is to use superiority superiority of the camera to his advantage and avoid the integrity and for instance some instances where the camera is superior today is due to the fact that the focal length of the lens of the eye is fixed in other words we see everything always in the same scale no matter what we do well if you use a camera we can put on lenses with long short medium focal length and get any degree of scale or magnification that we want andreas finding us unshakeable believe in the capacity of the camera to enrich people's way of seeing is reflected in his many books on photography anatomy of nature experimental work and many others have been a source of inspiration to photographers all over the world finding I was born in 1906 the son of Lionel finding of the famous Bauhaus painter he grew up in a world of painting and design which influenced much of his thinking with the rise of Hitler he left Germany and emigrated first to Sweden and then to America where he became a photographer for Life magazine he has spent his life trying to extend the possibilities of the camera experiments with close-up photography of the very small objects in nature have preoccupied him over the last few years he was one of the first used telephoto lenses achieving stunning new perspectives and visual patterns finding his contribution to experimental photography has earned him a place among the master photographers no I start with a shin this is what is called a fig shell which is a very lovely thing but it doesn't look like much and most people would not pay any attention to it this is a way of photographed it here is another thing this is a fragment of a shell which absolutely looks like nothing but it has eroded and the internal structure becomes visible if I light this thing properly this is what I get this is the actual object and the picture of it believe it or not now for this effect you have to take many photographs or no I take only one I look at this very closely I'm very nearsighted when I take off my glasses I can look this close and see the structure of this thing and when I walk along the beach and pick up these things I hold him so the Sun light hits Matan angle which brings out the relief in the texture and I put in my pocket take it home photographing this marvelous thing comes out of it no here we have a shell of the kind that anybody has seen before and bought probably in a in a gift shop at the beach somewhere looks like nothing looks like a piece of kitsch but I photograph it because I'm intrigued with this and this is what I get this to me has dignity and has a beautiful form and it somehow suggests the sea the ocean the wind the air the sky it obviously is a composition it is artificially put together to get a specific effect that is not nature faking that is you may call it art or whatever you want to but it is deliberately done to get the best effect out of the shell the strongest visual and emotional effect here we have one what I consider one of the most beautiful of all shells it's called the Venus Venus comb shell and this is the way it looks and this is the way I photograph it why do you think that the photograph seems to have a aggressive quality you touch this thing and you feel you will feel instantly why I think it is aggressor just put your hands around yes it's very sharp it bites you it is needlepointed all over it is nothing but aggression if it disguises it in nature and yes the doubt in the photos but that's a feeling also it intrigues me is that this is what I call a form of the sea it looks a party like a fish skeleton and partly like the ribs of a board of a wooden board is parallel curved pieces and this saw unmistakeably off the sea and again by making it large you see so much more than you would see if you have the thing in front of you particularly if you see it in a museum in a showcase behind glass but if we would pause and take time and look at the actual object wouldn't we come to a much deeper understanding of this object by looking at the object than going by the photograph yes that's true but how many people have the chance of holding this thing in their hands and studying it actually well if I make a photograph and put it in a book and sell 10,000 copies you know it's amazing yes yes and the camera enriches your life most visually and emotionally in the realm of thought you think more you wonder what is it why is it you feel something you enjoy you get respect of nature mr. Faneca did you always want to be a photographer no that actually happened quite accidentally because I wasn't architect I started as an architect and worked as an architect for several years but those were bad types of us dressed before World War two and eventually I couldn't find work as an architect so I did architectural photography for architects and that's how I got involved in photography I was living in Stockholm at and started gradually photographing the city and eventually good the idea of making a book so then I filled in with the pictures that I thought were important that would make into the book typical of Stockholm and they are got into trouble first because the best views where across water I could never get very close to them so I had to use telephoto lenses and what year are we to in the year was 1934 what distance would you be you would be where I was about I would say three miles at least and these are some more of these ships pictures that are shot and that's how I got and then particularly to tail photography but at that time telephoto lenses were not available commercially or else a bit too expensive for me so I built my own camera since we speak of telephoto V I want to show you a few for instance this is a picture of the Empire State Building seen across the meadows and across the Hudson River from a distance of about seven miles and I found that the farther away you go the more monumental this building looks if you stand on Fifth Avenue block away the buildings next to you I actually obscuring this immense building because you are so close so in order to get the feeling of it I went all the way into New Jersey and shot this picture let's take this one for instance you see their ships here yeah and here when you see they're quite small well the buildings are very large but if you take the same shot from a ferry passing by the normal lens your ships would be this big in the buildings the small in other words the perspective would be what I call or natural because the relationship between ship and building is not what it isn't realize I would like to show you a few more Taylor photographs this for instance a picture of the united states passing 14 set 42nd Street in New York and again you see tiny people I hope you can see that they give the scales to the to the page to the ship which is immense without this kind of scale I feel you lose part of what's essential and only the telephoto lens can bring it out because it doesn't distort here's a shot which I talk on a standard for life of Coney Island on the 4th of July and they wanted to show these enormous masses of people and again I felt only the telephoto lens would enable me to get this feeling because if you use a regular lens you have to go too close and you see it doesn't people in the foreground very large and whatever is further away is too small to make any sense and you get the distortions people close to you are much too big in the ones far away a much too small this gives you the feeling of masses like ants swarming which is what the beach of Coney Island is on the 4th of July but what you were also seduced by is the pattern isn't that something yes like pattern oh and very always very conscious of what you might call composition if it tries to have structure it has to have a center of interest and it has to all together in the dress to make it graphically interesting design so to speak it is terribly important to me you imagine all my pictures this is the shot of one of the cemeteries of New York shot for the 40 inch lens and again you get the pattern of these tombstones if you use a smaller than sir shorter lens with a standard what you might call the standard lens again there's the stones in the foreground would be much too big in the ones in back in the back too small and you get something that looks like nothing you know ordinary is so what picture when I look at those two photographs together I mean you're obviously not interested in tombstones or the people what you're interested what the effect I want to get the effect of this immensity they mentioned masses of people in the immense of tombstones the size of the cemetery another colossal amount of dead bodies there the feeling of it you know but it also you're also very interested in a formal problem you're also because it's almost like an abstract painting yes very much so but their light is also very important oh I play up shadows and light on this yes yes is I mean you must have waited a long time for guessing that relationship between darkness and light on yes you see I'm enormous the constants of light because unless the light is right I don't show it that is everything in particular in black-and-white photography where you work with a light and shadow and the shadows give you the feeling of depth but it also gives you mood mood very much indeed yes it is and I am very conscious of the position of the Sun for instance in New York I know exactly when to go where when the legislate either without whether I want light or shadow or side like breaking side light for the texture on buildings for instance so I'm very conscious because you always have to seem to have the dual problem it has to look right but it also has to feel right yes but you think this is what the eye sees actually it is because the camera can show you only what the eye sees that kid does not create different perspective but you see it at arm's length you would see the same this whole the height of this picture in real life scene at arm's length like this would be a quarter of an inch rolling you see and so you are not aware of it but if you look for instance through binoculars then you see it like the telephoto lenses and it is real the eye sees everything in what we call rectilinear perspective but with a camera we have two additional perspective cylindrical and spherical the cylindrical perspective we get when we use a panoramic camera with the swing lens the spherical perspective we get when we use a fisheye lens and the advantage is that we can encompass an enormous angle of view in one single picture and this is a short part that I'm particularly fond of this was as far as I know the first time that any photographer ever used a 40 inch lens in the city to make close-ups across previous to this they had used a telephoto lens only to get distant objects close objects are way too far away to be seen clearly with a normal lens but here this could have been shot with any lens in the wide angle but I deliberately backed up about six or eight blocks and used the 40 insulins to get this feeling of traffic jam this feeling of cars stacked up tightly one on top of the order to give the feeling of New York traffic and only the telephoto lens can give me this feeling one of the most beautiful features offer New York are the big bridges and again I feel the telephoto lens does a much better job in photographing them in the standard lens because it gives you the feeling of monumentality shot with a normal lens or wide angle lens the thing the bridge stretches out endlessly and it looks like a toy or skinny well here you feel the massiveness of these power of these powerful stone towers this is another mood this shows the importance of light for mood of a picture actually this is the same bridge and you asked me before yeah what is important in it to me light in mood and which is the best moment to shoot something and I say it depends what you want now this I think is a good example because I think both pictures I value it and equally good but very very different they show different moods different aspects of the same subject this to me has the eerie quality of a Joseph Conrad tale you know that old-fashioned bridge and old-fashioned Freight I get in the fog this is a shot of the George Washington Bridge shot with the 40 inch lens and again you get the proportions right in other words the cars are a small receiver small as in the in reality in relation to the immense size of the bridge if you shoot that with a standard lens from close by you get a completely distorted picture what I call distorted here you have the feeling of the immensity of this bridge do you think that photographs like this interpret reality rather than representing it both because by interpreting they represent is more strongly than an actual photograph which in addition to only gives you what you already have seen and you may not even look at it you say oh gosh I've seen it under tents but when you see this picture you look up in detail you pay attention and you see for the first time how enormously big that bridge actually is it never became conscious to you I think photographs of this kind they they widened your sense of reality because you show your reality as it really is so to speak and not only the way you see it but let me show you one more picture which is the opposite all the ones I showed previously were taken with a telephoto lens this one's taken with the wide-angle lens for one reason I wanted to get the strongest feeling of depth and height in a picture for which I used distortion deliberately this is the Aussie a building short from the previous time and life building the roof I am about halfway the height of the Empire of the RCA Building looking more or less down and through this strong through strong converging lines I can symbolize the feeling of depth and get a strong feeling of depth this shows how different lens I have to be used to get different effects but they have to be used consciously deliberately the photographer has to know what he's doing do you think as a photographer you can make something visually interesting which is been not always Dow for their eye sometimes sometimes it's hopeless sometimes nothing can be done if it's dark period there's nothing you can do or is you certain tricks but then it isn't real anymore they're just faking able to do that could you define what is visually interesting well it's virtually impossible you have to feel it you see it has to is it one important aspect maybe is that it is unusual that is as eye-catching and that can be because the subject is unusual or the lightest unusual of the perspectives unusual something has to be so that it catches your eye if you think oh I have seen that already it's boring forget it I wouldn't shoot it but it must be there must be as many ways of seeing as there are photographers exactly of course yes this is my person we have seen and not everybody may agree with me I know that these are two pictures of tribal masks are shot in the British Museum they fascinate we have a whole series on this and I deliberately left the reflections in the picture I could probably have avoided them either by using a polarizing filter or by asking somebody to open the cases for me so the glass was removed but these streaks of reflection here and here and here I think that adds enormous ly to the fantastic of these two masks it is a matter of seeing you see I saw it this way other people would have seen it differently maybe because I mean again there is an almost obsessional quality with the formal problem of Arles yes that is very important it also makes the picture somehow more eye-catching because people will see this and immediately ask what is this oil they may come in and say didn't the photographer know any better to remove the reflections or watch out for them because most amateur photographers in particular discover these things after the fact when they flash a picture in the living room shoot the family there and see in the picture on glass the big reflection of the flesh you know things like that but I think your photographs put a very high demand on the viewer because it cancels our first emotions I think it is not an immediately emotional impact it is only hope in somewhere else it is if I suppose so yes that I think is unfortunate for the viewer it is like it in modern art you see paintings that you don't understand at all the artist doesn't give a damn that he paints what he wants to paint if you don't understand it it's your loss I feel a little bit like that feels very strongly about what I photograph and how I photograph it if people don't understand it I think it is because they are not a way of it but I mean or sometimes it's hard to explain you see I'm very I think photography is a means of communication and I use pictures to communicate and unless I can communicate I feel they're failed but I don't go so far to change my approach to the level of every only visually uneducated person you see they have to make a little bit of an effort and I'll be glad to explain what I saw and why I did it the way I explained to you now these reflections and then 99% of the people say ah you're right I never thought of that before of course I write it it widens their their range of vision it's very interesting because I mean there was a time when photography imitated paintings very much in the nineteenth century and then there was the time when one moved away from it yes and now when one looks at your photographs again it's not that you imitating paintings but you come much nearer to with the modern painting again to the spirit of the Buddha spirit of the modern interpretation rather than the representation there are plenty that's right which is actually very interesting because one has almost come full circle I guess yes to me a photograph that only shows me something that I've seen before if especially in reality but also in picture form is a boring picture I've seen it before why should I look at it again I demand from any photograph that it gives me something that it speaks to me that it tells me something and I try to give that in all of my pictures something that I think is a little bit new to the person who looks at it David Hockney said he paints and takes photographs he said that the painting is an accumulation of of moments and time and so on and logical the photograph is the frozen long and vegetal and do you feel the same I know it that is one of the disadvantages of photography Rigga in regard to painting in comparison to painting and you have to be much more observant than careful because the moment is so terribly important the right moment in painting you can change anything any time if you are not happy with it in the photograph once you push the button it's done finished you can't do a thing about it mr. funny you seem to be very much preoccupied almost obsessed with technique well I wouldn't call it obsessed with technique because I use technique the way a writer uses words programmer in other words I try to express myself as clearly as I can to make a certain statement and as a writer would select certain words from a number of synonyms so I select my means of expression the graphic means of expression and the more I know the more these means I have at my hand the better I can find the one that fits occasion best but I can express myself so a technique for me is strictly means to an end I am NOT interested in technical such I use it because I have to are you afraid of sentimentality in photographs and I don't quite know what sentimentality in for that means what do you mean kendricks well there are photographs which appeal very much immediately to the sentiment this is a very difficult question because I think it applies mostly to pictures of people you can hardly use it in connection with objects so that you have photographed people I photographed a few people but rarely ever in the form of portraits these are pictures of people doing some things the professional people mostly and I could show you some areas when you look here this is it but you might call a portrait of a doctor actually it is the symbolic picture because all it shows is the mirror that there used to be so typically for doctors the symbol of a doctor and a silhouette but I think is a very strong picture and anybody will instantly say that's a doctor even though he cannot see which doctor it is the portrait of a doctor long supported of doctor zones it is simply symbolized as a medicine so to speak no yeah I have a router a number of these portraits here for the courses of two photographers this one here on this side is calm Islands who was a very famous life photographer he's still alive and this one was one of the live life lab technicians who loved to work with a tiny tiny tube it's Japanese mini miniature camera still in those photographs it seemed so much that their camera is much more important than the human side seems to be pushed back in a way that's true but you see in both cases the camera is an extension of themselves because that's the way they work they live they live through the camera make their living with a camera and the camera is an extension of the eyes so it is part of them so to speak as I said these are no real portraits now this here this here it's probably the most famous photograph ever made that has been used hundreds of times it's been in all the magazines yes here for it's got two more portraits of professionals this one here is the sculptor derailer smith who is dead now there at work with his blowtorch welding and this is the physicist his name is dr. Megas this is another photographer Timmerman elizabeth Timberman personname and she's editing film and I happened to see this picture I was in the same room with her editing my films on a lightbox and we were side by side and she looked up and asked me a question and I saw this absolutely beautiful light illuminating this absolutely beautiful young woman so I said Tim you have to photograph that had no camera okay we will do it again next time and we staged it then but it is exactly where I saw it the first time this and spontaneous a post spontaneous photographs of the speed but it seems to be one of the few photographs where one can feel the direct relationship between the subject and the photographer true because that's really the wait what she asked me a question I looked at her she looked at me no this is a photograph of a diamond cutter with his fantastic spectacles and when I put the lights on him I saw these reflections but instantly suggested the sparking of diamonds and so I photographed him this way it all these photographs I have the feeling have very little to do with the actual subject it's your interpretation of the world is they are not portraits these are representatives of their profession so to speak formally if you look at this portrait there on your diamond cutter and you think about the mask in the British Museum yes there's a straight link yes I do think there is a straight link between your almost abstract later photographs and the very early photographs on Coney Island yes a straight formal link yeah yes I know it's one of my weaknesses maybe I say people as almost an object you are very fascinated by nature yes I have been all my life and I photographed it both for Life magazine and later especially for myself I would like to show you a few pictures which I have here this is a skeleton of a gaboon viper the weight is constructed as just a model to me all these different ribs and vertebrae everything growing natural by itself according to a pattern that is transmitted from one generation to another in microscopic form it's all there it's in the excel and the sperm and invisible all the instructions to construct the snake to make it grow properly stop the growth when it has to be stopped and make it so it works at functions and this is only part of it there is the heart and there the blood vessels and the nerves in the brain which can think all of this comes out of virtually nothing invisible out of an atomic structure that to me is beyond any model you believe that a photograph is able to make nature more beautiful not more beautiful but it interprets nature so you get more out of it because it shows you things that you hadn't seen before not consciously they were think she hadn't thought of before for instance that they can be beautiful pattern and sand most people don't realize her to them sand means Beach and sonic feels nice on the feet on their sheet but that it has structure and pattern that is hardly ever occurred to them we perceive nature in gala and yet you all choose to photograph in black and white I can make stronger statements in black and white that can control my picture much more is that a technical problem in part yes because you see contrast to me is a very important element and if your photograph on color film contrast is an enemy because if the contrast is too high you literally get overexposure under exposure in your same transparency the shadows and dark parts are under expose the highlights light colors are overexposed and the effect is most unnatural so in color photography you always look for a very soft light you don't you avoid hard shadows and high contrast otherwise you it'll look unnatural it also cheap them so very much is this because of advertising yes and not only that but it is I think because you are so used to it it's only what you see every day you have seen it before doesn't interest you anymore as a matte here this is very beautiful but when you see it in the picture it is this small it has reduced in size and the corner probably is almost right but not quite it looks gaudy and you have seen it before and you say so what I have achiever should I look at this miserable reproduction you take the most natural object and it almost looks artificial once it's been photographed yes but that's the way it is that is the revelation of the camera it shows you more than you saw that's why it looks artificial because in a way it looks unnatural which means it does not look the way you used to see it actually it is like that I never faked anything you see for instance I have this is a good example this works certainly most unnatural and this is the skull of a monkey it's part of a story a short for life on bones and as usual I wanted to emphasize the structure of this goal the way it is constructed if you just look at it you see around skull cap in the big eye horse with a sock the eye sockets which are normally dark in a skull of course there's no light so it doesn't show much besides it looks dull so I put a small light bulb into the skull and trans luminate it that way it is almost like an x-ray photograph I see the structure of the skull I see these braces here that reinforce the joints of the sutures with the skull is weakest I see these circles here which reinforce the eye sockets because the circle is the strongest structural form the ears you see the way Nature has constructed the skull is the way a modern engineer would construct if you had to construct the skull these things are fascinating to me to see how nature has done things that we only do now or realize now in the ideas has been there for millions of years you

Channel: Rob Hooley

Views: 59,473

Keywords: photography

Id: 23UjjfnlDDc

Length: 34min 43sec (2083 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 14 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/whatstefansees]

Thank you for posting this here. He's a true master