I’m working on a piece on the topic of the various psychological motives that draw people into serious photography. After a lot of reflection, I’m aware of a few of my own, but I’d be most interested in hearing some insights from others. I got the idea to pursue this the other day when I was revisiting “O’Keeffe & Stieglitz: An American Romance,” by Benita Eisler. I was particularly struck by these sentences by Eisler: Photography, if not truth, in Alfred Stieglitz's life seems an inevitability. In its complex fusion of the technical and aesthetic, of process and practice, "seeing" and intuition, art and craft, the making of pictures with his new machine embraced both psychological need and expressive impulse. Conferring the illusion of control (a piece of the world reduced, arranged, and contained in a little black box), photography leaves the power drive and fragile ego structure of the narcissist intact: the photographer is the metaphysical magician who, disappearing under his black hood (and, for Stieglitz, under his black loden cape as well), emerges to mystify and demystify at will. Of equal importance, the process of the work legitimizes the demands of the obsessive-compulsive personality. In the trial and error method necessitated by primitive equipment, the photographer could reasonably shoot the same wall over and over; he could wash, rewash, and wash again the heavy glass plates, cleansing them of imperfecctions no one else could ever see. He could then "spot" the print, chemically removing, speck by speck, any trace of impurity that had remained hidden on the plate. What emerged, after the plate was dry, the print perfect--as Alfred occasionally announced one of his efforts to be--would seem nothing less than Truth, revealed and recorded for all time. So I’d be happy—and grateful—to hear some reactions to this, as well as anything else that occurs to the PhotoForum membership. Thanks! JP
