Here is a translation into English for everyone except Charles and Emmanuel (who, I have no doubt, will tear my attempts to shreds
)Qu'en pensez-vous ? What do you think?After returning from the large format workshop, which I I attended for these past three days in Pleudihen, I have become aware of some important information about the appreciation of an image: the nationality or the culture of the person viewing it.
The workshop was led by Joanna Carter, an English landscape photographer.
For several years, landscape photography didn't really interest me, too pictorial and missing that element of risk for my taste.
Surprisingly, this point of view was shared by other attendees, who were French like me.
And it is there that lies the interest of this workshop because, with the help of certain participants, of Joanna and her English friend, I have been able to appreciate the simplicity of these images.
The "English School" of landscape photography is very classical. You will not find images that shock in this heritage, only images that do not belong to a series but, in which, beauty becomes the underlying subject.
The photographs are not very contrasty and the subtlety, from processing to printing - whether silver or digital - becomes an integral part of the codes of this school from the other side of the Channel.
The landscapes of Jem Southam for example, with a gentle contrast, benefit from well detailed shadows that are not completely dark.
Helen, Joanna's friend, showed me photos that supported these cultural differences. We were in the process of preparing a photo in Photoshop: the horizon, a viaduct, some surrounding trees and a river cutting a path between the plants and the stones on the ground.
To my mind, the digital print was almost complete. Overall, the image looked good but something was disturbing me about the plants on the ground. I felt that this area was too bland, lacking slightly in contrast and not dark enough.
For the two English women, the photo was finished and there was nothing more to change. I explained my dissatisfaction to them, they explained their satisfaction to me and it was at this moment that Helen helped me to understand the differences of vision in a common universe: the photograph.
The French like to print their photos with a lot of contrast, with strong blacks and extremely dense greys : "It has to be art" said Joanna with a hint of irony, talking of the French school. Helen leafed through the previous month's edition of the Réponses Photo magazine and, effectively, in a flash it hit me between the eyes.
Printing is a question of proportion, that is to say, of good taste. It has to be stated that the French have a heavy hand!
An image with too marked a variation between the highlights and the shadows falls rapidly into the vulgar. But, more seriously, it becomes rigid. The lines are strengthened, the edges are widened and the eye has trouble in finding its way around.
In looking again at the image that we were in the process of printing, the viaduct was well balanced, delicate, much more subtle than my initial ideas.
You could look at it several times and discover, at each look, something new. In places, a moderate weight to the print augmented the ways in which the print could be viewed.
That which made me a little afraid in this experience was that, between the beginning of the workshop and the Sunday, Friday's insipid and bland photo had become Sunday's subtle and elegant photo. On the other hand, the contrasty image that I would have appreciated at the start of the workshop had fallen, in my mind, into vulgarity and bad taste at the end of the three days.
One single photo, two different opinions separated by three days.
Even if my discourse seems a little qualified, the two different versions of this photo, by adjusting the printing, are both "good". The difference is slight but is representative of a visual culture specific to each country.
In a manner of conclusion, I will cite Jean-Lou Sieff who has found the solution to these existential questionings: "I suggest, without great hope of being respected, to classify photographs in two large families: the good and the bad!"
