contact

I've been watching a series of short documentaries, called Contacts. What you see are contact sheets, while the photographers talk about the pix, the day and moment of shooting, the choosing of the right image.

The first disc concentrates on street photographers of the early to mid-20th century: Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau, Klein.

I'm esp interested in William Klein. The photos in his book Close Up fascinate me. Technically they violate every classical rule: massive wide-angle distortion, action blurs, buckshot grain. As art, they wrap themselves around your vision. This is an oversize book, 10 inches wide (thus 20 inches opened up) by 14 inches tall; appropriate scale for the work. I'm sure they've been reproduced smaller, but they were not the same work in such cases.

As somebody who takes pictures with what could be called a computer with a lens rather than a camera with a chip, it amazes me that Klein worked with a wide-angle, fixed focus lens, guessing exposure as he shot. It's a skill you don't acquire anymore as a necessity, only an option, almost an eccentricity.

I was hoping for some additional insight about composition and selection; I haven't quite gotten that. Klein talks about this crowd and this moment and that, but when it comes to discerning the one he just says, "Now, this is a photograph." Elliot Erwitt, whose work I am just coming to fully appreciate and admire, says of one of his selections, "A good frame and a good moment."

For a moment, I'm frustrated; I was hoping for something more utile, more nuts and bolts. But then I cheer up. Here's something I remember out of focus and out of context: I can't remember who said this, an Abstract Expressionist, probably Ad Reinhardt or Philip Guston, or possibly the composer Morton Feldman (I was reading a lot about all of them at the same time). "Art is done in the dark." Craft is plan, art is immediate. Day, night.

I've been wondering how much of an art photography is, really, how much of the night goes into writing with light. It's a mystery to the masters. They become masters because they just make it, trust it, doubt it, see it, and convince us.