Sroyon Mukherjee

I was pleased to learn that one of my favorite (and oldest) articles got mentioned and discussed in a new article elsewhere on the Web today. The new article is called "An Experiment in Looking at Photographs," and it was written by Sroyan Mukherjee, at 35mmc.

I actually carried out his 5X two-minute exercise (well I oughta!), and I also very much appreciated what he had to say about the exercise and, especially, why it works. He rightly mentions that it's difficult for many people to do...and, in fact, I haven't "read" a photo book by egg-timer for a long time now. (They say "three moves is as good as a fire," and in 2014–15 I moved twice, which was enough to lose a lot of things, including my old mini-hourglass egg timer.)

I read a study a while back that concluded that almost no one finishes news articles they encounter online. They read the first few lines or paragraphs then let their attention flit away like a butterfly. As soon as I read that, I determined that when I come across an article that seems to be worthy, I should read it carefully all the way to the end and maybe even read it twice. I can't read everything, naturally, but the idea is that I'll get more from reading one article carefully than I'll get from glancing superficially at more of them. I get The New Yorker magazine—one of very few magazines for readers left in the world—and I do that with The New Yorker too. I don't read every article, but the ones that engage me I'm careful to read all the way to the end and sometimes a second time. I just don't want the cacaphony of the attention economy to dictate the quality of my attention. Not to everything.

The quality of our attention is a big, big topic. I'm very tempted to amplify my thoughts on the matter further, but, here, I'd rather refer you to what Sroyon has to say about it in the context of photography, relative to the five photographs he chose—his comments are perceptive and engaging.

Suffice it to say: anyone who gets a stranger to look at one of his or her photographs for two minutes straight is lucky indeed.

Mike
(Thanks to Richard Parkin)

Book o' This Week:

Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. The definitive 4th edition of this perennial bestseller, in print since 1979!

The above link is a portal from TOP to Amazon. The book is also available at Amazon Canada.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Here's a handy portal to B&H Photo:

Original contents copyright 2021 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.

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

Sroyon: "Thank you Mike, for linking to my article and for your words of appreciation! And thanks also for your egg-timer post. I don't do the exercise as often as I would like, but when I do, I invariably get a lot out of it (come to think of it, this sentence applies to a depressingly long list of things). I was going to send you a link to the article myself, but funny story: after spending a good deal of time thinking about what photographs to include, speaking to different photographers, explaining about the project and so on, I remembered at the last minute that in keeping with the 35mmc post template, I also needed to pick a header image, so I hastily picked one of my own (the man looking at a painting in a gallery). 'Hastily' being the key word. When the post went live I was appalled to see the amount of dust on the negative, which I would have noticed if I spent two minutes (or even 10 seconds) looking at the picture—my own picture! (I'm generally not too fussed by dust and stuff, but this is pretty egregious.) So I thought I would re-scan the negative and fix the header image before I send you the link. I should have known someone would do it before me.... Now I think I will keep it as it is—a salutary lesson."

Joe Kashi: "This exercise is very similar to one of Minor White's very useful training exercises, 'reading photographs.' On the flip side, some years ago I was helping run a regional fine arts centered and we had a juried show that encompassed 45 good quality original pieces in various media. I remember timing one couple that toured the entire 45 piece show in 177 seconds from the time that they entered the door until they exited. That's under four seconds per piece, including walking from piece to piece in the fairly large gallery. Then consider that the average person's reaction time is two to two and a half seconds to recognize a new situation and begin reacting to it."

Richard Tugwell: "I print articles that I think will be worth reading. Generally I will finish them. Plus, you can scribble on them while you're on the bus/train. I always find the act of making a few notes helps cement things in your memory."

Geoff Wittig: "One of the current motivating ideas behind advertising is the notion of the 'attention economy,' wherein the resource being mined is eyes on the screen. Hence marketers and advertisers are becoming ever more creative (if that's the right term) in finding ways to grab onto our limited capacity to pay attention to things and to make sure we're paying attention to their goals, rather than ours. So I quite like the book How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. It discusses the issue in straightforward language and reasserts the truth that our time is ours, to spend as we see fit for our benefit, rather than the benefit of a corporate goliath."

Collin J Örthner "Back when my desk looked a lot neater and wasn't quite so loaded with things to do, I would take a book with me to work and open it to the first image. It would stay on that page for the duration of the day to be glanced at numerous times and gazed at for longer periods whenever I had a chance. Then, the following morning, I would turn the page. It would take quite some time to make my way through some books, but it certainly allowed me to absorb each image and come to a nice understanding of a book as a whole."

Mike replies: That's great. I could get into that.

Comments

[Bernard]

Michael, the whole "right brain/left brain" story has long been largely discredited, it only survives a a popular meme in pop science.
See for instance:
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/more-left-brain-right-brain-nonsense/

[c.d.embrey]

Sorry Mike, but I completely disagree. With no cost to publishing, people now write 1,000 words when 100 would do.

This is why the country is so polarized about everything. We are constantly beaten over the head, with Same Stuff Different Day (SSDD) info—enough is enough.

I've seldom looked at a photo-book. But every time I'm in DC I'll go by the National Gallery and view Salvador Dali's The Sacrament of the Last Supper

I've learned more about composition and chiaroscuro from paintings than I ever could from photos. YMMV.

[MarkB]

Ya know... if you'd read that study to the end, you'd find that by "almost no one" they meant "the people we know under the age of 30." ;-)

BTW, I read both of your entire articles to the end, as well as Sroyon's. They add to each other. Now for some reason I can't find the time to look at photos online for 2 minutes each...

[Jeff]

I appreciated reading this article after recently coming across a similarly thought provoking video..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQYIMbwL-pk

The Betty Edwards book was used as part of the curriculum for a drawing class I took long ago. I'm terrible at drawing. But one exercise, turning the subject (a photo) upside down, helped me immensely in drawing a portrait. and I could hardly believe the result. It suggested that my using a large format view camera, with inverted and reversed image, has enhanced my photographic compositions in general. To this day, I often turn my images upside down, either in Lightroom or in print, to gain a better compositional sense.

[Andrew L]

Oh man, you really hit on something with the "attention economy!" I've found myself struggling more and more to stick with articles, even sentences, all the way through, on the internet. I am better about books, and have been an avid reader since age 5 or so... but if it's on a screen, it's tough. Funny that it's the very entities who worked so hard to break up our concentration and insert their messages (advertising, etc.) that are now trying to hold our attention long enough to follow their instructions to click, read, buy, share, follow, subscribe... We're trained now not to pay attention to one thing for long, especially if we don't immediately respond positively, so how often does traditional advertising work anymore when we can glance down at our phones, or open a new tab? Again, at least my book doesn't do that to me (I mostly read in the room I've dedicated as a library: it doesn't have a computer, and I limit my smartphone use in there to looking up things or playing music). Analogue brain recovery!

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Yeah, I run slideshows at something like 2 seconds to 7 seconds per slide :-)

[Bear.]

Drawing on the right side of the brain - excellent book - one of the reasons I was drawn (sorry, couldn't resist) to photography in my pre-teens was because I could not draw. That is, I could not convert what I saw and visualised in my head onto paper with a pencil or paint but could by using a lens and film. In the early '80s, I did an adult education course following Betty Edward's techniques and book - and it actually works - at least to the limits of the practice I was prepared to put in (not enough) and the limitations arising by my lack of actual talent (rather a lot); I was able to present reasonably realistic sketches from life - as long as I followed the techniques in the book - but still was never able draw to match my internal visualisations, except by fortuitous error. But what I find REALLY interesting about your listing that particular book as BOTW is that - for me at least - it relates directly to your post about viewfinders. I have been struggling with switching to mirrorless and after a lot of fiddling and thought, I have realised that when I use an OVF (perhaps because of my experience with film(??), I engage the right side of my brain in visualising the ultimate image that I am to create. But when I look through an EVF, I see a computer screen and process it through the left side of my brain. Thus, the viewfinder I use greatly influences the creativity I engage in the photographic process, which is why I ultimately much prefer using OVFs over EVFs; I simply enjoy it more as a visual creative process. I suspect the same happens when I view images that have been printed (which I enjoy) vs those that on a screen(meh) but to a lesser extent. I'd love to work out a way of confirming my thinking by a more scientific analysis but doubt I'll ever get around to it.

[John Camp]

You do have to factor in the possibility that 99 percent of the stuff you encounter online, including photographs, is crap.

[George Andros]

Joe Kashi's experience brings to mind an Art Buchwald column from the early 1960s in the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune (RIP) in which he describes the "Four Minute Louvre".

[Daniel]

Factor in age and things change.
What we could take in and concentrate on while distractions were around us changes as we age.

Also different for women than for men.

[MikeR]

What a "heavy" topic.

I just let my New Yorker subscription lapse, as I'm still working on the November 2020 issue, and want to catch up. I also get two monthly magazines from aviation organizations of which I am a member, and Outdoor Photography.

If something on-line interests me, I'll print it.

My art skills are abysmal, except when working with the exercises in Betty Edwards book, which I bought about 35 years ago. (I also don't touch type. The two may be connected.)

At family parties, my wife is fond of rounding everyone up to "draw a tree" or "draw a house" and then inferring a personal or psychological explanation.

Reading works of art informs reading photographs. And making photographs. At an Andrew Wyeth retrospective some years ago, I just got "lost" in one sequence that depicted through working drawings and studies how his "Groundhog Day" evolved. It influences my own practices, even though I'm not very good at it. Stieglitz's "Equivalents" series still yields nothing for me. What's the BFD with it, anyway?

[Richard T]

Not sure if it's worth the overhead, but would love to use an Amazon UK affiliate link for the book recommendations and provide a bit of support (many thanks for the Betty Edwards suggestion, looks really promising)

[Stan B.]

Well, that's the whole purpose of physical prints and photo books (now, more than ever)- to slow things the F down! Otherwise, why seek out a photobook, let alone buy one, in the first place? As someone who's purchased a few hundred photobooks throughout the years, I can attest that they can almost become like trusted friends who reflect your current: mood, state of mind, disposition. They allow you to reflect on times past and present, contemplate future endeavors, raise and help resolve your own ongoing issues, photographic and otherwise...

[John]

John Camp is far, far too generous.

This makes the worthwhile essentially impossible to find.

Drowning in dross inevitably diminishes our attention span. Also, the ability to separate good from bad. Especially if the good is "quiet".

A technology driven process accelerated by the shift in the meaning of 'editing'.

From selecting and showing the best, to altering the appearance of an individual onscreen photograph, using Photoshop, etc.

[Michael J. Perini]

When I find a good article I almost always read it to the end. sometimes I even save them for re-reading or sharing with others.
But John Camp makes the important observation that now that EVERYONE can be instantly be 'Published' there is an enormous amount of crap that one must wade through to find the nuggets that are becoming like needles in the big cyber haystack. So bailing after a few paragraphs becomes essential defense mechanism in saving your time for Ideas and writing that deserves it.
I always liked your idea of 'enforced' time with good photographs.
A good way to remember to slow down the pace and enjoy.
It is also good advice for miking photographs. When I make a frame, i often ask myself, does this subject deserve more time? Can I do better? ----I can't always, but sometimes I can.

[Alan Whiting]

I did the exercise, figuring I certainly have ten minutes to spare. I found that if I decide to look at a photograph (instead of saying, "That's a picture," and moving on), I'll spend 20 to 30 seconds studying it. After that, I find myself describing and analyzing it to myself verbally--as in using words--like, "the smooth texture of the glove contrasts with the rough sand on his back," and "the picture would be more powerful without the distracting background; but then it would be a different picture, saying something different." So this L-mode and R-mode analysis is at best an oversimplification.

[True, and everyone's different. Kudos to you however for "letting your mind go where it will," whatever that is. One thing I might do if I were you just as an experiment is to try looking at a few pictures until you get past that analysis/critique stage, and then see what happens. Get to the point where your mind wanders. Have you ever looked at a picture for half an hour? I suspect your analytical mode would naturally exhaust itself at some point. Just a guess. --Mike]

[xf mj]

“Boxers Training on the Beach” is an amazing capture. I am grateful to learn about its photographer, Pierre Crocquet, who has unfortunately passed. And the picture, of course, makes me curious about the people in the shot, and life and regions outside my currently pandemic-bound corner of the world. To gaze at good photographs now is my only form of travel, to imagine interactions with people that are living and breathing a rich, everyday offhand life. Thanks for the link, and those three minutes.

[Jon]

Mike, I really appreciate this article. I followed the link to Sroyon and decided to give feedback as he requests. I am copying it here since it may interest you. Please feel free to ignore it if not appropriate for TOP. Tx. Jon

Great exercise SROYON. I landed here because of TOP. I had no problem carrying out the exercise and realized that had you not asked us to take the time I would have only glanced at them and maybe hovered a little over the "The Lovely Ms Sinclair" (what a beautiful portrait and model!) and"Bhoot Chaturdash". What I find most interesting is that I consider myself to very different usually. Whenever I go to art or photo galleries/museums I am often accompanied by wife and/or daughters. My wife and one of my daughters usually "race" through the exhibits while I "spend forever" (their words not mine) studying each individual piece.

What I have come to realize is that the mass of images available online has trained me to flick over them unless something grabs me. That is why I hardly spend any time on Instagram, Flickr, etc. and prefer to look at galleries put up by photographers since they have at least attempted to curate properly.