Minimalist photography is easy to learn but hard to master - talking with W. Scott Olsen
Hello fellow photographers. In this episode I am talking with W. Scott Olsen and we are discussing minimalist photography. Specifically the article I read in the Digital Companion of the FRAMES Magazine. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode. Make sure you are subscribed if you want to be notified when I post a new episode. If you like this content and you think other people might like it as well Feel free to take a screenshot and through it out on your instagram story or share it with your friends.
W. Scott Olsen
Websites:
http://blog.cord.edu/wscottolsen
https://www.concordiacollege.edu/directories/faculty-staff/details/w-scott-olsen
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/w.scottolsen
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WScottOlsen
FRAMES Magazine: https://readframes.com
IIf you want to follow ME on social media 🙃
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest
YouTube index:
00:00 - Hello there!
02:44 - How do we get past the cliché ?
04:02 - the difference between cliché and insight
04:49 - Is cliché the biggest enemy of minimalist photography?
06:12 - The problem with minimalist pictures
07:26 - Is minimalist photography its own genre?
08:59 - The minimalist photography is about evoking an idea
11:52 - The idea is the highest form of reality
14:23 - The picture of an idea
14:55 - Should every photographer try minimalist photography?
16:57 - the essence of making a good minimalist photograph
19:37 - Not all minimal pictures are minimalist photography
22:46 - The end
Today's topic I'd like to talk about is minimalism in photography. I got the idea from one of your articles in Frames Magazine, which publishes a digital companion every month full of pieces like this one. With your permission, I'll read part of the article, and then we can discuss it.
The article we're talking about today is called Winter Solitude, by Steve Silverman, a Canadian award-winning fine art photographer. Let me read a section: "Let's begin with, and stay with, the image. Here we have a tree, nothing more, it seems. We're told it's winter, so there aren't any leaves. The image is black and white, so there's no colour. There's no ground and no sky, just the bare tree, centred in the frame. Pretty simple, right? So why is this picture so alluring? Minimalism, of course, is a powerful and popular type of photography. It's also easy to do badly, or to stop short at the click and share: do we really need to see yet another pier extending into glassy, still water? But when it's done well, it opens up something both evocative and deep."
My first question would be: how do we get past the cliché?
That's a really good question, because especially in minimalism, where everything matters, you have to do the cliché first. You have to practice, take a hundred, or a hundred thousand, images to figure out where the nuances are. I think of minimalism a lot like a Japanese form of poetry called haiku: just three lines, a fixed number of syllables. It looks so simple, and yet that simplicity becomes a tremendously challenging form. What can you fit into those syllables that's going to be more than a cliché, more than a kind of trite generality?
Like so many things, minimalism requires practice. It requires either an accident, where you just say thank you and move on, or it requires real dedication to the form. The difference between cliché and insight, in minimalism or anything else, is a genuinely difficult border to cross. We all know people who are very good piano players but not great ones. We know people who are really good cooks but would never hold down a job as a chef. So where is that line? It's not permanent, it fluctuates with every image. But how do you get past the cliché? Basically, by driving at it full speed, over and over, until you figure out, okay, here's something new.
Do you think cliché is the biggest enemy of minimalist photography?
I'm not sure "biggest enemy" is quite the right word. It's the biggest challenge, because what happens is you come up with an image that's pretty good, and you say, that's pretty good. The problem is, it's not excellent. So the question becomes whether pretty good is enough for you to stop. It's more of a motivation challenge than an image challenge.
And keep in mind, I'm a great fan of what we're calling the cliché here, as an étude, as a practice, as something to learn a technique from. I make fun of it in that introduction you read, the picture of a lake or a river with some pier or dock sitting right in the middle of the frame, going out into water that's all smooth, under a moody sky. It's a great picture, and everybody's taken it. It's become sort of the standard emblem of a lot of minimalism. You need to learn how to take that one, you've got to do the rudiments, but you can't stop there.
Do you think the problem is with that particular kind of shot itself, or is it more that it's been done so many times before that it becomes a cliché, that everyone keeps taking the same picture? When I look at famous photographers like Michael Kenna, for instance, I see him taking pictures of a pier disappearing into the water too.
Absolutely, the answer to your question is both. I actually adore, and I wrote about this in Frames, in a different article, a minimalist image of a pier sticking out into a lake, but the water is disturbed, there's some rush to it, almost as if it's trying to pull the dock back out into the water. There's a little bit of drama there, a little bit of narrative. I absolutely loved that. And the difference between that and the cliché is so small, except the photographer said, wait a minute, there's a story here, there's a narrative, there's something going on, other than just technique.
How would you define minimalist photography? Do you think it's a genre of its own, like landscape or street photography, or is it more something that crosses genres, so you could have minimalist photography within landscape, street, or macro photography?
The answer is both, again. Is it its own genre? Absolutely. There are people who leave the door and say, I'm going out and I'm looking for minimalist landscapes, minimalist cityscapes, whatever their whole aesthetic is, that's what they're looking for before they even bring the camera up to their face. It's marvellous, just like haiku is its own form of poetry, with its own strength. When it's done well, I think it's one of the premier photographic forms.
Is it also possible to do within other genres? Sure. But now we're talking about composition, how do you isolate things within a larger frame. Minimalism is an aesthetic, a way of looking at the world. Sometimes it's in the foreground, sometimes in the background. But it's really about evocation. It's not about journalism or documentary, although those things can certainly be done in a minimalist way too. Minimalist photography, for me, is about evoking an idea, a mood, or a feeling, something that causes you to stop and ponder the depth of the still image.
So basically, it captures the essence of the subject?
Maybe the essence, or an essence. You've captured something, and you may not even know what that something is. But you're looking at it and thinking, this is good, this is something I have to take. And you go from there.
When we talk about the technique or the approach, you strip the subject down to its essentials. You remove all the distractions around the subject so it appears within the space, and the negative space becomes as important as the positive space, right?
Yeah, absolutely. It's about isolation and emphasis.
Do you think it's a trend that goes beyond photography, into humanity in general? You also mention Marie Kondo in the article, and this trend of minimalism, people getting rid of things in their real lives, that then transcends into photography and other art forms too. Do you think photography was influenced by that, or was it more a result of people getting fed up with a certain style and revolting against it?
I think the desire for simplicity has been with us since the beginning of time. Back in the second century, when monasteries were being built, they weren't built in the middle of cities. People said, we're going to go out to a mountaintop, we're going to go into the desert, because we want to simplify, we want to minimize the noise in our lives. Henry David Thoreau's biggest piece of advice in the nineteenth century was simplify, simplify, simplify. We've identified hoarding as a disorder. We want our lives to be more attentive, more in focus, and I don't mean that only photographically, we want clarity. So is it a revolt? Yes. But is it new? Not even close. I think we've been fighting against the noise all along.
Another thing that struck me in your article was the passage about Plato's cave. Let me read that part too: "And let's not forget Plato's cave. While the allegory is not an argument for minimalism, it is nonetheless an argument that an idea, more so than an object or its shadow, is the highest form of reality." Can you expand on that a little?
It's a peculiar reading of Plato's cave, but I still enjoy it. If you know the allegory, there are people in a cave looking at a wall, and all they see are shadows. They don't know any better, that's all they know. Then, through the allegory, they learn that there are actually people behind them, that there are several layers of reality, of perceived reality, at play.
The crossover for photography is that the image itself, not the tree, not the pier, not the lake, is its own thing. It's its own form of reality, not the only one, maybe not the highest, maybe not the lowest. But we're no longer asking what this is a representation of, we're saying it is its own idea. And I think that idea of reality is one of the focusing elements for minimalist photographers. So many photographers I've talked to, when I ask what it is they're doing with their photography, come back with ideas. They say, I'm trying to photograph a kind of spirituality, or I'm trying to photograph love. They don't say, I'm trying to photograph a building, and they don't talk about getting down low, shooting at f/1.8 to make it really sharp. They come up with a kind of heart-truth, something from their soul that they want to find in their images. I think that's really wonderful. Can you imagine? "Hey honey, I'm going to go out and take some pictures." "Really? What are you taking pictures of?" "Oh, I'm taking pictures of love." "Huh?" "Yeah, you'll know it when you catch it."
It's like nothing else. Now I understand it, because you also note in the article that Silverman calls it Winter Solitude, not Winter Tree. It's a picture of an idea.
Yes, exactly. The tree is there, but that's not what it's a picture of. Minimalism is about a feeling, an aesthetic, a way of looking at the world. Like I said, it's not only documentary, or anything else.
Do you think every photographer should explore or try minimalist photography? Would it improve how you see the world, or how you take pictures?
There are two questions there. The answer is yes, and the answer is I don't know. I'll give you an example. A few years ago, I don't know why, but I was looking at a picture that was levitation photography, and I thought, I wonder if I can do that. So I got a friend to pose sitting on a stool, took another picture, erased the stool, stacked the images, and so on. I thought, okay, that's a really pointless technique, for me. I learned how to do it, and I had absolutely nothing to say while doing it. It was a skill, and not, for me, even a very interesting one, although other people have done wonderful things with it.
I think every photographer should try minimalism, even if all they learn is that they don't like it. They should go out and dedicate themselves to a minimalist project, to see how it fits their way of shooting and looking at the world. I know a lot of street photographers who go out and shoot landscapes. I know a lot of landscape photographers who get into photojournalism, not as career changes, but as practice, as a way of building depth and skill. You might surprise yourself. You might make your living photographing rock and roll concerts, but you go out and do some minimalist work, and you think, hey, I didn't know about this, this is pretty cool. So yes, everybody should try it. Will it make them a better photographer? Maybe not. But will it make them a wiser photographer? Yes.
I also like something you wrote, going back a little to the beginning, about how it's easy to do badly, and then you expand on that, saying there's actually quite a lot going on in the image. Is that part of how you get past the cliché, to not just capture another glassy pier, but to capture the essence of what makes a good minimalist picture, to have a lot going on at once while still being a minimalist picture, if that makes sense?
Yeah, the lot that's "going on" is often more in the viewer than in the photograph itself. Just like a poet, you're providing a space for that response. If you go back to that image we began with, the sky and the ground are really muted, almost disappearing, and what that does is create a space, for me, for the viewer, to ask, how do I feel about this? What do I think about this? What does this isolation make me think and feel?
So, if you think about photography as providing space for a response, that's really what gets at how you shoot minimalism. It's not so much about removing all the objects, it's about how much space you've given the viewer to participate in the creation of meaning.
Now I finally understand it, once you explain it that way. Because I was just thinking, maybe out of my own ignorance, that you remove the distractions and let the viewer focus solely on the subject, and that would be minimalist photography, which, according to your explanation, would actually just be the general version, without the idea behind it. When I look at that tree, I'd say it's almost like fine art, or it is a fine art photograph, and what it evokes in you isn't just, oh, you're standing in the middle of a field in winter taking a picture of a tree.
If you think about it, a lot of photographers who work for museums, for instance, use a little white box or black box, and they put the artefact in it and take a picture of it for documentary purposes. Here is the fourteenth-century belt buckle. They're not asking for an emotional response, they're asking for inventory. That's the kind of removing all distractions that isn't minimalist photography. Those pictures are very important, if there was a disaster at a major museum, you'd need those pictures. But they're not asking for an emotional response. I think minimalism begins and ends with the desire for an emotional response on the part of the viewer.
You also mention that the minimalist image isn't a symbol of anything, that it just exists at that level of consideration. Could you expand on that, or is that basically what we've been talking about?
Pretty much, yeah. That tree in that image isn't a symbol of love, or happiness, or anything specific. There's no one-to-one correlation. It might mean something entirely different to you than it does to me, or to anybody else. But that's the level it's operating at, the level of emotion and idea. It's not at the level of, oh, look at the way the bark is split, the tree obviously needs watering, that kind of thing.
That description fits perfectly with what you also compare it to, impressionism, or abstract art, or improvisation. I can easily imagine good jazz improvisation. So where does that leave us, in terms of taking pictures?
I think the world's best photographers are a lot like good jazz musicians. They've got the skills, they know the melody, they know the harmony, but they think, tonight I'm going to play it differently, I'm going to go off this way a little and see what happens, or go off that way a little. Improvisation comes after all sorts of technical expertise, but that's what we're after.
Minimalism, like every other form of photography, has an awful lot to say. It's so easy to get started, and so difficult to find that last little line between the very good and the excellent. And like I said, that's not a permanent line. You don't cross it and stay there forever. You cross it with one image, then maybe you wait six months and do it again. But if it's in your heart, the way being a poet might be in your heart, chase it with everything you've got.
