Rockabilly, Coors and Jargon (Fashion Only Forum 2/12/00)

On the drive to the dayjob this morning there was a radio interview with the director of the San Diego Civic Ballet. He was talking about choreography, specifically dance to Jim Croce's music. He described that instead of having a solo dancer for some of Croce's solos, he'd be using multiple dancers to show the layers of the music, and interpret them each, rather than just have one interpreting only one aspect.

That made me think first about layers of meaning, in dance, and in other art. Now I'm not a big fan of "meaning" in art, though I'll grudgingly accept that it may exist. What really interested me was the trouble the director was having in turning macro concepts of art into words.

Later tonight I was flipping through a bunch of old bookmarks and hit the one for FotoFest. There's a button there called "Literacy." "Oh Boy," thought I. A vocabulary of photographic terms. Maybe some beyond technical words or Fisher's definitions. Maybe a way to describe photography with flavor. Nope.

Recently I posted "Leslie #80" here and on Atlantic looking for comments. There I specifically asked that people comment on what they saw on their monitors, as I had some pretty fundamental questions about the way my scans were being seen on others' screens. The three posted and one emailed response confirmed that what shows on most screens is exactly what I want to show. But it also pointed out that there's no shorthand to describe photographs very well.

The wonderful book (and movie) Smilla's Sense of Snow has a heroine that notices something about a crime scene that doesn't fit the police account. She does this because she's Aleut and has a hundred or more words for "snow" each with different nuances. Nuances that are important to life in her home on Greenland. The snow evidence didn't match her knowledge of how snow works. Here, we have maybe three words: snow, powder and slush. Probably a few more. I'm not familiar with one that describes the squeaky snow at -30 degrees, or the snow mixed with blown topsoil of Spring (actually we called it "snirt"), or the snow with a crust on top covering mostly empty space, etc.

Something I read recently about perception of art said that some cultures don't recognize some colors. For example "ochre" is identical to gray in Ancient Greek. In a world that has three primary and three complimentary colors, description of color will be simple, but will have little descriptive value. Adding black, white and gray doesn't help a lot. Fortunately in English we have thousands of works for colors, but few that are used outside fashion or interior design. Photographers tend to see things in terms of primary and complimentary colors anyway, if colors play a major role in their work.

Down a bit Bruce used "chiaroscuro." He even spelled it right. It's a useful word in describing use of shadow. (It's also an interesting website.) There's another word I can't quite remember that describes side light that retains its intensity throughout distance from a window. It was a trick used in painting to make the subjects look right, even though such light doesn't exist in nature. (The word may come to me as I hit "Post Message.")

Other words exist that can be used to describe composition, texture and luminosity of photographs, but are limited in use now to other disciplines.

Photographic styles are defined in most artbooks, but as we deal mostly with editorial fashion they may not apply. Wouldn't hurt to try though. One photographer somewhere on the web keeps using "Bauhaus" even though nothing I've seen of his fits that description - at least as far as my understanding.

Maybe we need some more useable jargon and shorthand. Maybe we should be adopting descriptive words that can be useful in our craft.

Just sitting here listening to Rockabilly, drinking a Coors, thinking again. Sorry.

-Don