David Pye and the Workmanship of Risk

For some while now I've been meaning to write a post about books in pairs. I have a quirky tendency to shelve books next to other books that I sense they fit with. Sontag sits next to Barthes, Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word is shelved next to John Berger's Ways of Seeing. Why? I guess sometimes the pairings are obvious—Catherine Drinker Bowen's Francis Bacon: The Temper of a Man next to The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral, of Frances Ld. Verulam by Francis Bacon Reprinted from the De Luxe Artists' Editions of the Peter Pauper Press; sometimes it's because the two books nurture or amplify each other, sometimes it's because I feel they balance each other out or contradict. I like it when books contradict; I want to see each one's view from that differing angle. I guess it has no real meaning...it's just a personal idiosyncrasy. I'm still not sure I'm ever going to inflict that particular essay on you.

But as I was thinking about it again I was poking around on Amazon seeing what's in print and what's not, and I came across David Pye's lovely little book The Nature and Art of Workmanship again. This rare little gem hasn't always been easy to get in the 53 years since it was published, so I thought I'd just throw out another recommendation for it for whatever it's worth. Pye was Professor of Furniture Design at The Royal College of Art in London from 1948 to 1974, and this book pertains mostly to furniture...on the surface. The book is really about the philosophy of craftsmanship, however. Read it with a flexible and open mind, and you can apply many of his ideas to many other fields, to many arts and most crafts. It can be easily seen as pertaining to the "crafting" of photographs (fine art prints, at the very least) and in some ways, I think, even cameras(!). I know that ever since I first read it I've found it helpful to think of his concepts of "the workmanship of risk" and "the workmanship of certainty" with regard to photographing—in a way it's what Garry Winogrand is talking about in this marvelous and thought-provoking little video.

Right now, here, today, I'm not going to jump into the deep sea of talking about photography's relationship to craft, either historically or the way it's been changing again lately. It's a big subject. In any event, this is not a book that's directly about photography. But it's one of those rare books in which someone who's been thinking for a lifetime about a subject he knows deeply makes an attempt to share his hard-gained wisdom with others. In that way it's the opposite of much of the cookie-cutter, research-and-regurgitate, processed, pasteurized book product that passes for being publishable all too often these days. I certainly enjoyed it when I read it, and I treasure it on my shelves now, and I recommend it to you with feeling if it sounds like it might appeal.

Mike

[Yr. Hmbl. Ed. is taking a break this week. Originally published in 2009.]

Comments

[Thomas Walsh]

You might want to also take a look at Bowen's "Miracle at Philadelphia". It is an outstanding book on the Constitutional Convention.

[Rob de Loe]

The Winogrand video was worth watching. Thanks for the link Mike.

At one point he says this:

"There isn’t a photograph in the world that has any narrative ability. Any of them. They do not tell stories. They show you what something looks like, to a camera. The minute you relate this thing to what was photographed, it’s a lie. It’s two dimensional. It’s the illusion of literal description."

My first reaction to this was strongly negative. If photographs don't have narrative ability, then what's the point? But on thinking about it more, I think he meant something different. Photographs absolutely tell stories. It's just that the photographer can't control what that story is going to be. It's the viewer who writes the story when looking at the photograph.

The other highlight of the video was that in two years in Los Angeles he'd already shot 4,000 rolls of film -- so let's say 144,000 frames. He died with how many thousands of unprocessed rolls left behind? With access to digital, Winogrand would have left millions of images behind.

[peter]

and which book would you pair it with?

[Peter Marquis-Kyle]

Shelved next to 'The nature and art of workmanship' (which I agree is a gem) I have 'The nature of design', also by David Pye. Both of them are the nice little 1960s Studio Vista / Reinhold paperbacks. I recommend both.

[Hank]

Speaking of Garry Winogrand, this is one of my favorite “interview” videos with him.
https://youtu.be/PmwkWV4rwto