The "meaning" of photos

I have loved (xiang) and (yao) taking photos since I was a child. Unfortunately, in the eyes of my family, those who take photos are either engaged in art or those who run photo studios, and these two types of people have a negative impact on them. They say they are "not doing their job properly", so I have never owned a camera of my own. I can only feel some pleasure by touching the cameras brought by others during family gatherings. I don’t dare to press the shutter button, for fear of not taking good pictures and wasting film and being scolded by my family.

I remember when I went to summer camp in the first grade of junior high school, many students brought cameras. I especially wanted to bring a camera. It didn’t matter whether I took pictures or not. I could take a few pictures of the female classmates I liked. The photos are also superb. So I borrowed a "point-and-shoot" camera from a relative, and spent a "big price" to buy three rolls of film myself. However, except for the first roll, which my relatives helped me load, and I took pictures without any problems, the last two rolls were all because they were not loaded correctly. If you roll it without passing the film, you won’t get anything. When I think of the way my female classmate smiled sweeter than V in front of my camera, I feel that I have suffered a heavy loss. It seems that my youth ended prematurely that summer.

This is probably my first tragic memory about taking pictures.

Today’s children may no longer have this experience, nor will they have to think for a long time every time they press the shutter. Thanks to the popularization of photography equipment, almost everyone now has a device (mobile phone) that can take pictures. No one will think that taking pictures is only the exclusive job of artists or studio masters, and taking pictures will no longer be the same as it used to be. An existence full of ritual has become a universal and random activity.

The popularity of social networks has also made image dissemination more fluid. People no longer appreciate their works like looking at a bronze mirror or can only appreciate them through certain objects. The filtering rules allow you to see the works of other professional photographers. As long as the photos do not violate the rules, we can see photos taken by various people around the world at any time.

So taking photos became a habit. We used photos to record our lives, until taking photos also became our daily life.

Everything has pros and cons. With more content, the boundaries will become confused. Many people like to say that they sweep the streets and say that they like to shoot streets, but in fact, more people use the so-called "street photography" At best, the shooting location is on the street. If you don’t dare to take pictures of people, you can only take random pictures of the flowers and plants on the street without center of gravity.

Street photography can be a very embarrassing existence:

First, anyone can take it and everyone thinks they are taking it on the street, as long as his photo is taken on the street

Secondly, the sense of existence of street photography is very weak. There are too many photos without themes and content. People will inevitably have a misunderstanding of street photography, thinking that it has "no technical content" and "unsatisfactory". What’s the point of taking “good-looking” photos?

Thirdly, because street photography is “non-interventional”, it is easy to attract criticism.

First, let’s define what exactly street photography is.

Daido Moriyama once said: "I am a photographer who shoots and walks on the street. I always like to press the shutter on spaces that include level crossings or bridges. They are my must-photograph scenery." ("Towards Another Country")

The first condition for street photography is the street, which is actually a place where people are active. Therefore, for street photographers, the city as a container is a necessary factor. .

But the city is just a container (in fact, the same is true for villages, small towns, etc.). Its function is to bring people together. As long as there are people, there will be stories. Therefore, the city is just a container that carries countless stories. possibility.

Sometimes some people think that certain photos do not belong to street photography because they take place in a room, not on the street. But we cannot understand the street in a narrow sense as the scene on the external surface of streets, buildings, etc., it should even include the scene inside a building, etc. The main core of "street" is sociality, people provide emotions, and emotions amplify the theme of the photo.

Another attribute of street photography is the social nature mentioned above, that is, stories. As photographer Valérie Jardin said: "Street photography is just recording life."

Generally speaking, street photography does not allow staged shots and any pre-designed storylines, and must capture random occurrences. moment of the event.

What exactly is street photography? We can use a simple equation to summarize street photography:

Social (scene) aesthetics + non-controlled scene = street photography

< p> As for the "technical content" of street photography, it is precisely because of the "non-control" nature of street photography mentioned above that it is destined that street photography cannot be as beautiful as those carefully designed photos. It is precisely because of this " "No control" makes street photography far more difficult than those carefully designed photos. Anyone can take beautiful photos, as long as they have a certain understanding of photography technology and know what kind of equipment to use at what time and what settings to press the shutter.

But street photography is completely different. What it requires is not the kind of technique that can be learned instantly, but observation, keen observation of the surrounding world, and the ability to capture this moment as quickly as possible. .

More often than not, street photography requires an understanding of the world rather than skills in operating a camera.

Sometimes when I post some street photography photos, some people will always ask, “What’s the “meaning” of taking such photos? "

The photos of "Master" are okay. People in this world will always be tolerant to those who are successful and famous. Only those unknown people suffer, and they always have to silently endure some unnecessary things. judge.

The image itself has no "meaning".

The meaning is given by the viewer, and all photos can only belong to the past. As photographers, all they have to do is to fix the truest emotions of the moment and present them to the viewer in an organized form.

What a photo can present depends on the story the viewer "reads" from the photo. The thinking about the photo triggered by the photo leads to an understanding of the meaning of the photo.

The thoughts, moods, knowledge systems, world views, values, etc. of people who look at the photos resonate with the story of the photos being "read" and form meaning. This "meaning" , belongs to the viewer, and is a way for the viewer to connect with the image. What you think it means is just what you want it to mean.

And meaning cannot be known immediately. Meaning must be discovered in interconnected life experiences. Without its own understanding, meaning cannot exist.

Without story, without revelation, there is no meaning.

When we want to give a photo "meaning", this meaning is essentially a reaction, which is both a reaction to the known and a reaction to the unknown. Behind the meaning is mystery. Neither can abandon the passage of time and exist alone.

What kind of story is being told in that moment that was photographed, and what preceded it? What comes after it? Meaning can be derived only when the viewer can read in it a persistence beyond itself. This meaning is the past and future given to the photo by the viewer.

The photographer chooses the moment, and the viewer gives this moment its past and future.

Street photography is not just about shooting strangers’ stories. What Vivian Maier left us is not just her exquisite selfies. Street photography exists to preserve the development of human society and prevent it from being destroyed. Those subtle moments that people value only happen in those few tenths of a second. If we don't record them, they will disappear forever.

Let’s take Vivian Maier as an example. When we look at her photos, the street images she recorded can instantly take us back to Chicago of that era, allowing us to experience the atmosphere of that era immersively. The lifestyle, in the large number of photos she left us, completely records the fashion, clothing, humanity, architecture and culture of that era.

It is photography that preserves these small, trivial fragments of time, forming a huge scroll, and precisely preserves memories that may disappear forever.

All photos have the potential to contribute to history. The difference between photos is that some photos are meant to cherish moments as manifestations of subjective feelings, while others serve as evidence of positivism. Used to break history’s monopoly on time.

It is no wonder that some photography critics believe that the birth of photography has made the history recorded by historians (or history enthusiasts) with the writing style of novelists no longer authoritative, and simply written by historians. The history recorded in writing ends here.

But there is one thing. In my opinion (of course not all street photographers think so), another important factor is not to "intervene". First of all, "intervention" will definitely change the mood of the current scene. , which changes the scene from a passive social reality to a targeted picture caused by the entry of the photographer himself. Secondly, "intervention" will bring aggression, which is not good for both the photographer and the subject.

The most important thing is, don’t use the camera in your hand to do immoral things. All the pictures you take must be able to be put on the table.

Street photography creates a connection that connects the momentary emotion, the photographer, and the viewer through one picture. The photographer discovers the story and the emotion, and they use the lens to capture it. Connection, and then through the form of photos, the viewer can connect with the story that happened in another time and space. This is also the temporality of photography. A photo should include three times, the time when the shutter is pressed, the time when the photo is created (developed/printed/published), and the time when the viewer sees the photo.

The overlap of the three times creates the "meaning" of the photo.

Even in different time and space, we are still closely connected to each other.