Love It / Don't Get It

I had another visitor yesterday—longtime reader and not-infrequent commenter Nikhil Ramkarran came all the way from Georgetown, Guyana. Via New York City, where he was visiting old friends in Queens. He's a lawyer in Guyana, the only country in South America where English is the native language. His name is culturally Indian, but his family has been in Guyana for generations.

He wouldn't admit how many cameras he owns, but I asked him to send me a picture of his camera shelves. Plural. (Now if we could just get a picture of Ken Tanaka's.) He made me laugh because he admitted he has a thing for Mamiya TLRs and keeps buying more because each one he buys isn't quite right. I did that with several kinds of old cameras back in the '90s when eBay first got going. I soon had an embarrassing number of old cameras around the house. I wonder how many camera fans enjoy the hunt, not just for used cameras, but for just the right used camera?

Mike and Nikhil at lunch. (Do you like my hat?*)
That's a Rollei 35 Nikhil is clutching in his left hand.

Nikhil is erudite and philosophical about many things, insightful about photography, and great fun to talk to. One of his many observations touched a spark: we were talking about TOP print sale prints, and he mentioned that he has my print "Hands" hanging in his office and that it gets a lot of comments. It's one of my all-time favorite pictures, so I asked him what they think, and he said, "Many people love it. And some people don't get it at all."

That seemed very familiar, and I wonder if it isn't true of a lot of work by many photographers. Photography is a lot like music, and that's one more way it is—it seems to me that with a lot of excellent, well-known music—songs, entire genres, artists—there will be people who love them unreservedly, yet also those who don't get it. Over the years, I've noticed that when I put up a specific picture for discussion, no matter how many people love it, there will usually be one or two who just aren't touched by it at all. In recent days this has been true of Gordon's "Precipitation," Boubat's "Lella," and "The Stewart Sisters" by Judith Joy Ross.

I would expound on this at greater length, but I am having a tooth pulled in about an hour and although I am fine, it seems my inner big baby is just a tiny bit freaked out. Wish me luck, and if I do not return, send a search party.

Mike

*The only proper answer is "I do not like that hat."

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Oh, crap.
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

JF: "Embarrassed to say but I need a link to 'Hands.' I searched the site but could not find it. Thanks."

Mike replies: I don't blame you, because I searched and searched using every keyword I could think of and I couldn't find it either. Here it is:

 

Aravind Nair: "Guyana! A place I had always wanted to visit, but beyond my means. May I cheekily recommend a book to you that made me want to visit the place after reading it during my school days? Three Singles to Adventure by Gerald Durrell."

Mike replies: Thank you for the recommendation! Reading it now. I can't believe I had never heard of Gerald Durrell. What a character.

Comments

[bongo]

Holly Molly what size shoes do you wear!?

[Dennis]

I think it probably is true - that for any artist widely recognized as great, there are any number of us who look at their work and wonder what all the fuss is about. You mentioned three works - I love one of the three and am left cold by the other two. I suspect artists need to have a thick skin because, depending on the accessibility of their work, anywhere from only a small handful to a bigger minority of people will actually resonate with it. There's plenty of work that I like very much that I'm sure would leave other people scratching their heads. I don't necessarily see it as a weakness on the part of the artist or the viewer - we're all wired differently. One thing I have learned over time is that just because I don't get something doesn't mean there's nothing to get. Sometimes, I just don't understand what it is that others get. Other times, I can appreciate what other people see in something, but it still doesn't do much for me. That's the case with a lot of music and comedy ... you can appreciate the quality of something without it really clicking, or you can imagine yourself enjoying it 20 or 30 years ago, or driving with the windows open, or maybe while drinking with friends, and finding something enjoyable that just isn't doing it for you now. (Sadly, I encountered this recently when playing a clip from "This is Spinal Tap" ... hysterical when I was 19).

[Del Bomberger]

The hat is somewhat "Avuncular", and reminds me of Charles Kuralt, who inspite of appropriating "On the Road" from Kerouac remains a favorite-even after his departure down a further road. Looks good on you.

[Steve Higgins]

Good luck with the extraction. Last one I had was a wisdom tooth - that was fun, he lied.

I also had a dental appointment today, but fortunately just my 9-monthly (there's probably a clever Latin word for that compromise between the recommended half-yearly and the preferred-by-many annual) check-up. Also fortunately, I got an all clear from the pretty young lady dentist.

Mind you, I have an appointment with the hygienist next month. For those of you who wondered what happened to the Inquisition's collection of instruments...

[MikeR]

Absolutely cannot say that I don't like your hat, as I have one just like it. Purchase was prompted by a tip from some photography blogger who lives near a lake somewhere.

Sympathies on the dental work. I recall reading some time ago of a nonagenerian giving advice to the interviewer on how to have an enjoyable old age: "Forget the testicles. Keep your teeth. "

[hugh crawford]

I went to a memorial service for an art professor that I had never taken a class with much to the surprise of some of his former students who knew that he really didn't like my work, and sometimes he was pretty convincing that he might not like me personally either. Lots of people would tell me that they liked my work , but that he would tell me why he didn't like it, sometimes going on for 20 minutes starting with an opening like "oh you are just using a lot of formal tools to misdirect people into buying into a cult of personality like the bastard child of Stalin and Leni Riefenstahl ripping off John the Baptist ( a photo of someone pointing at someone in the background ) So much more useful than "Oh it's really beautiful" .

Old painter joke:

Painter one: If a million people think that a painting represents the end of western civilization and one person thinks it's worth a million dollars then you have it made.
Painter two: But really you need to offend two million people, then you have an underbidder.

[JF]

Embarrassed to say but I need a link to "Hands". I searched the site but could not find it. Thanks.

[Me too. I cannot find it. --Mike]

[Ernie Van Veen]

I think an Akubra hat would suit you. A big investment, but they look great and last a lifetime (and keep the sun and rain off your entire head and neck).

[Bill Tyler]

Please let us know how you're doing, post extraction.

[Yin Fang]

I once heard at a training session at my work: "if a group of 10 Jewish people conduct a vote, and there are 9 votes for it, then it's an obligation for 10th person to vote against it".

[Steve Caddy]

Oh! I love that!

[Mim]

Found the original page by searching for the three words boat lake hands - http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2013/07/random-snap.html

I went looking because I remembered it, but I also remembered that it didn't grab me the first time. And yet it does this time around. Is it my mood is different? or the white border? I don't know but I really like it now!

[Richard Alan Fox]

I like the hat but prefer a beret.

[fws]

Yes,that is also my all-time favorite among the images I saw on TOP
Fritz

[Ken Tanaka]

"Many people love it, and some people don't get it at all."

Some years ago, while viewing one of my street-style images featuring a single person, someone asked me, "Who is that?". It was a stark reminder that viewers can, and DO, come to photographs, in particular, from diametrically different backgrounds and assumptions. Given the overall style and context of the image any other photo aficionado would just assume the subject was unknown to the photographer. But someone off the street, as this person was, might assume the photographer's familiarity with a human subject. Otherwise why would I take the person's picture and show it?

Unlike paintings or drawings, photographs are often expected to immediately make sense to viewers. Even bad ones. That is, in fact, simultaneously the greatest asset and liability of the medium.

/philosophy

[MikeK]

I remember the "Hands" picture, but thanks for posting it again – it ties in nicely with your recent posts about black and white images and tone.

[Rob L.]

You may wanna consider adding 'Hands' to a Print Sale, if we're also going a second chance at 'Precipitation'. Both, indeed, have legs...

[Roberto]

See, you really need an organised portfolio of all the TOP sales. A portfolio of all photo discussed here would be too much too ask, I suppose.