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Favourite angling books

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The book that combines insights into the art of angling with general reflections about life is a book to savour. The book that accomplishes this with literary skill in a quiet understated way is a book to treasure. Over a lifetime of angling, as a boy in the seas off Brazil, as a man in quiet shady streams in north-west Britain, I have read many angling books. Of these I would like to mention a few ‘in despatches’. I hope the reader will forgive the parochialism of my choice of books. But angling is really about place and identity and therefore it is quite natural that ones’s chosen books reflect one’s local world.

My first book choice published in 1863, is ‘The Art of Trout Fishing on Rapid Streams, comprising a complete system of fishing the North Devon Streams, and their like”, by H.C. Cutcliffe, F.R.C.S. Cutcliffe’s understanding of the development of trout behaviour across the angling season and its effect on the manner of angling and the type of fly dressing required is extremely detailed, written from the standpoint of a naturalist who must have spent many hours watching trout activity in small remote streams. A surgeon by profession, Cutcliffe applied similar skills to his angling: attention to detail based on observation, argument based on logical thought. For what is noteworthy about this book is that it could have been written today. Looking at any recent copy of a fly-fishing magazine, you could be excused in thinking that the prevalence of gold or silver tinsel or brightly coloured feathers is part of a modernist trend in fly-dressing. Not so. Cutcliffe had thought through the need for what we now call attractor patterns when fishing fast streams 160 years ago. For example, his pattern ‘XXXV’: Body: Hare’s flax dyed yellow. Rib: Gold twist. Hackle: The most brilliant yellowish red obtainable – to be fished in June.

What makes this book invigorating is that Cutcliffe wrote it against the trend of his times. Rivers were fished with small subdued drab flies many of which we now recognise as ‘north country flies’. Fine for the quieter waters of big rivers, so reasoned Cutcliffe, where trout have choice of station and sufficient time to investigate food items, but not so for fast rolling streams where station and time are of the essence to a trout’s life chances. For Cutcliffe the art of deception lay in understanding by how much one needed to ‘sex up’ a fly to make it conspicuous enough to attract a trout but at the same time by how much to avoid making the fly so odd to a trout’s sensibilities as to propitiate the opposite effect than that intended. After reading this book, one is left thinking that there is very little new in fly-fishing. But of course, as the late Lord Denning said, ‘that argument does not appeal to me in the least. If we never do anything which has not been done before, we shall never get anywhere.’

I am indebted to a very fine angler and fly dresser for introducing me to my second choice of book. Louis Noble gave me a copy of ‘Let’s Fish the Clyde’ by Robert C Sharp when I was taking some instruction from him on the art of the wet-fly ahead of my first visit to the Clyde with him in 2007. Since then I have fished the upper reaches of the Clyde, from Thankerton Bridge all the way up to the ‘Waters Meet’ at Daer Waters, on many occasions and each occasion necessitates in me a bout of dressing flies ‘Clyde-style’. Fishing ‘Clyde-style’ is not just a matter of pattern choice, (as for example in May I would always include Black Spiders, Medium Olives and Sand Flies in my fly box). It is also a matter of what we today call a ‘mind-set’. Flies are dressed very sparsely and, importantly, are slim. In a size 14 or 16 hook, the fly should be as delicate as a natural. The Clyde demands a certain type of approach particular to that river, as indeed do all rivers. We learn this over a life-time of visiting different rivers. The act of fly-dressing prepares me for the trip and in this ritual I open this little book and my mind is taken back to the Clyde.

The third book confirms my parochial side to book choice. ‘Flyfishing the Welsh Borderlands’ by Roger Smith published in 2011 has become a favourite of mine. Spending a good deal of time on the northern Welsh Border streams myself, learning about the anglers of yesterday and their fly patterns, such as the Rev. Edward Powell and Cosmo Barrett, instills in me a sense of tradition and history, of place and community. After all isn’t it this sense that lies at the root of why we fish?

Despite this parochialism, it would be remiss of me not refer to the fine genre of fly angling literature from the USA. It is difficult to single out one particular book. Of the ‘how-to’ books, Sylvester Nemes on wet flies has influenced me as has Vince Marinaro on the dry fly and Swisher and Richards on ‘Selective Trout’. Of the more literary offerings, Gierach, Duncan, Leeson and Dennis all have a place in my book case. Forced to choose, I would plump for W. D. Wetherell. ‘One River More‘ published in 1998 which combines a folksy attitude reminiscent of many American writers with a style of prose that is beautiful in its thriftiness. ‘To find words (that) fit the beauty of the locales it inhabits’ is indeed a laudable approach.

Finally, I come to ‘Fishing and Thinking’ by A. A. Luce, published in 1959. I think this book, more than any other, is one of the the main reasons why I fish. The combination of detailed observations about  nature with deeper reflections about life affected me when I read this gem of a book in 1998. After all, are not all thinking anglers philosophers too?

 

 

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Dog training philosophy

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In our post-industrialised society there is a big danger that we take away from the dog an ability to take decisions. I often see cases where every facet of a dog’s existence is being micro-managed. Effective learning depends on experiencing the consequences of opting for wrong choices, that is ‘making mistakes’. [Read more…]

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Alex Titarenko

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It comes as no surprise that Shostakovich forms the aural backdrop to many of Titarenko’s photographs. Just as Shostakovich played with ambiguity, tonality and sharp contrasts, so too Titarenko’s images beg to be noticed, highlighting the edges and dark corners of visual experience.

Perhaps his best-known work relates to St Petersburg, but it is his more recent work about New York that best showcases his range of darkroom and in-camera techniques. Long exposures, camera movement, selenium, sepia and gold toning, solarisation, bleaching  – all come into play as Titarenko edges towards the limits of silver gelatin possibility.

Very interesting work….

 

New York Public Library ¢ Alexey Titarenko 2017

 

Fifth Avenue ¢ Alexey Titarenko

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What is ‘Seeing’?

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Photographers of a thoughtful demeanour probably take a keen interest in what we mean by ‘seeing’. Are there different types of seeing? Does each visual art have a particular mode of seeing? Is there a difference between ‘looking’ and ‘seeing’?

The English philosopher Roger Scruton attempted to answer these questions in one of the foundational texts in philosophical aesthetics – ‘Photography and Representation’ (Critical Inquiry 7:3; Spring 1981). Scruton argued that photographs cannot be artworks because, unlike paintings, they cannot ‘represent’, that is they cannot ‘sensuously embody … idea(s)’ in ways that give rise to aesthetic satisfaction. Put more simply, Scruton argued that a painter could inflect within a painting references to further thoughts, as for example one might see into Hopper’s painting, ‘Nighthawks’, thoughts about loneliness and alienation. Scruton called this type of seeing, ‘Seeing as’.

Figure 1. Nighthawks, 1942 by Edward Hopper; © The Art Institute of Chicago

A photograph however, Scruton continues, is tied to the visual scene it depicts. It cannot depict it in any other way than that state of affairs presented to the lens. The photographer can only ‘capture’ the objects within a frame as they appear but cannot inflect into the photograph references to further thoughts without departing from the photographic process and using non photographic (‘painterly’) techniques, such as burning, dodging, altering contrast and so on. In short, photographs cannot be ‘fictive’.

An obvious way to counter Scruton would be to argue that his conception of the photographic process is too narrow to encapsulate what photographers actually do. Defining the photographic process solely in terms of the photo-chemical or electronic process instigated by a shutter-release leaves out those bits of photography that give expression to a photographer’s visualisation of a scene. Many philosophers have used variants of this type of argument. Some however have argued that it is this very narrow process that makes photography so distinctive from other artistic enterprises. The causal link between photographs and the scenes that they depict gives photography its characteristic charm.

But is there not something more fundamental at stake here than mere quibbling about what we mean by photography? Scruton cleaves a sharp divide between ‘Seeing as’ and merely ‘Seeing’. This sharp distinction puts him in an untenable philosophical position: that ‘seeing’ is inert, incapable of sequestering thoughts by virtue of what is being seen.

But what if ‘Seeing as’ and ‘Seeing’ were but two parts of the same process, say ‘picturing’, to give it a different name with a wider connotation?  In that case, ‘Seeing’ would not be inert; it would simply be the start of a process called picturing. Its phenomenal (i.e non-conceptual) aspects would guides the mode of understanding by which we judge things to visually be what they are: objects, say. Picturing would involve a ‘Seeing’ with bare recognition and as we look more closely, the phenomenal content would provide further content for conceptual shapings by which perceptions come into a process of thought. For Scruton ‘Seeing’ is causal, that is, merely mechanical. But is it so unreasonable to suppose that ‘Seeing is more than this and indeed not exhausted by conceptual understanding but rather invoking a surplus of sense beyond this. The mode of understanding that arises from ‘Seeing’ is partly articulated through bodily dispositions that stem from navigating a picture through its perceptual forms. As Kant recognised, what is apprehended when we picture something is not just a perceptual shape, but a purposiveness ‘… (the) transcendental principle which represents a purposiveness in nature … in the form of a thing’.

A photograph therefore can be seen in terms of  an expression of a thought. If we make dubious distinctions between types of seeing, one for painting and one for photography, we get into a muddle. If we look more deeply into this muddle, we see that it comes from a curious habit that many philosophers have of limiting our understanding of things to cognitive understanding, that is, an understanding that involves propositional content. But more on this muddle in my next post….

If you would like to read a fuller treatment of this idea then you can find it here.

 

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HCB: ‘Decisive Moments’?

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Is there anything left to say about Henri Cartier-Bresson (“HCB”) 1  that has not already been said? Perhaps not. A Google search of his name returns more than 5 million results in half a second. But I can’t help feeling that there is more to be said, especially after reading a recent review by Sean O’Hagan on the re-issue of the ‘Decisive Moment’.  I have been looking at HCB’s photographs since my Dad introduced them to me in the early 1960’s and still now, after 50 years, they demand attention in a way that O’Hagan doesn’t seem to understand.

We may quietly agree with Gaby Wood when she writes, “The reason his photographs often feel numbly impersonal now is not just that they are familiar. It’s that they’re so coolly composed, so infernally correct that there’s nothing raw about them, and you find yourself thinking: would it not be more interesting if his moments were a little less decisive?” But Wood and O’Hagan, to name just two from countless many, make too much of this ‘decisive moment’.  “It cements an idea of photography that is no longer current but continues to exist as an unquestioned yardstick in the public eye: black and white, acutely observational, meticulously composed, charming”, continues O’Hagan.

But we have to look beyond picking off ‘black and white, acutely observational, meticulously composed’ features to really appreciate HCB. The thing about many HCB pictures is that it’s the totality of expression that gives them an extraordinary hold on us.  As HCB recognised:

“In a photograph, composition is the result of a simultaneous coalition, the organic coordination of elements seen by the eye. One does not add composition as though it were an afterthought superimposed on the basic subject material, since it is impossible to separate content from form. Composition must have its own inevitability about it” (my emphasis).

The composition provides a door through which vision is intensified 2, perhaps a door into the “optical unconscious” transporting us from daily clock time into internal (Bergsonian) time. It is interesting that Cartier-Bresson referred to André Breton’s idea in L’Amour Fou, that there is a continuous inter-play between our unconscious and what we see and that we see “coincidences” when the unconscious is made to work. 3 This ‘surreal’ quality is evident in this photograph, reminding us perhaps of 1 Corinthians 13-12 … ‘for now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then shall I know, even as also I am known’:

 

The power of HCB to induce both reflectivity and reflexivity is evident. Perhaps Kant came closer than anyone to understanding the transcendental principles involved in apprehending not just perceptual shapes but that which represents a purposiveness in ‘the form of a thing’ 4 as non-conceptual, but it is to Merleau-Ponty that we turn to the idea that we are deeply ‘intermingled’ with objects …“Perception … is the background from which all acts stand out, and is presupposed by them.” 5

We walk through life comfortable with the every-day and familiar.  Conscious awareness acts as a backlighting for life’s concrete experiences and events. However, as Merleau-Ponty reminds us  … “perception hides itself from itself… it is of the essence of (awareness) to forget its own phenomena thus enabling ‘things’ to be constituted.” 6 Because of some incongruity in the world’s usualness, we bring direct awareness to the unusualness, when prompted. Our perceptual cognition moves to the foreground because we are surprised and not exactly sure what we see. The always-already perceptual field is called into question and we must give attention to what otherwise we would not need to. Merleau-Ponty: “(it) slackens the intentional threads which attach us to the world and thus brings them to our notice….” 7.

It is this ‘prompting’ that is so evident in HCB’s photographs.

 

Take HCB’s photograph of the Village of Aquila, Abruzzi below. In this complex picture we have strong diagonals that transport attention backwards into the picture and forwards to the foreground; we have in the foreground the gestalt principle of similarity in the pairs of people; we have distinctive figure/ground relationships throughout the picture; we have the internal framing effects of the railings dividing the picture up into comprehensible units; we have the overall framing that includes the words ‘ORA PRO NOBIS’ (‘pray for us’). Despite its compexity, we take the scene in immediately. The whole is other than the sum of its parts – a thought embodied in perceptual form – and the thought for me is one of bondage and the inevitability in the lives of these people. 8

 

We can miss much in HCB by overly fussing over ‘decisive moments’. To be sure, every cliché has a kernel of truth, but what makes HCB so fascinating is the psychological depths invoked by his mastery of pulling together form and content in a way that prompts attention – the geometry of his work. ‘Decisive Moments’ are only a part of the HCB story.  Of course, as O’Hagan says, Frank, Eggleston, Meyerowitz and Winogrand took street photography into new pastures, but it is wrong to say that … ‘(Cartier-Bresson) cements an idea of photography that is no longer current’.  O’Hagan misses the point about HCB. His pictures have the power to complete us.

  1. References to HCB photographs: 1) Valencia; 2) Siphonos 1961; 3) Sardinia 1962; (4) Berlin Wall 1962; 5) Abruzzi, Village of Aquila 1951 ↩
  2.  “Street Photography – from Atget to Cartier-Bresson, Clive Scott;  I B Tauris, 2009,  49 ↩
  3. Cartier-Bresson,  L’imaginaire d’apres nature, Cognac: Fata Morgana; 1996 ↩
  4.   Kant, Critique of Judgement, Intro. v111, 31 ↩
  5. Merleau-Ponty, ‘Phenomenology of Perception’,  x–xi ↩
  6.   Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception P. 58 ↩
  7.   Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, xiii ↩
  8.   David Davies  – “How Photographs Signify”, in ‘Photography and Philosophy – Essays on the Pencil of Nature; edited by Scott Walden, 2010 ↩
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Bystander: A History of Street Photography

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This book has come in for quite some criticism, perhaps because it explicitly purports to be a ‘history of street photography’. Carefully researched and source-referenced historiography it probably isn’t, but it would be unfair to dismiss this book just in these terms as there is much in it of value.

Writing a history of something as amorphous as ‘street photography’, which is more an attitude than a genre, has its challenges, but Westerbeck does a pretty good job. It’s gratifying that the book starts where it should: Paris. The response to Baudelaire’ peculiar take on photography and the growing synergy between street photography and impressionism and street painting in the turn of the century melting-pot Paris surely laid the foundations to much that was to follow:  Atget and the photography of the street; surrealism that was to find later expression in Brandt and Cartier-Bresson; humanism through Doisneau, Erwhitt; realism through Brassai and thence to the ‘gritty realism’ of Frank, Klein and Winogrand.

And it’s here that the book falls down for me. Despite a promising start, the book does not really get to grips with the various ‘flavours’ ( I won’t say ‘schools’) of street photography. We get the odd glimpse at an attempt to analyse developments, such as the chapter on the ‘Chicago School’, but proceeding chronologically through time to the 1980s acts more show discontinuities rather than similarities. It would have been better to have traced the history of street photography through the lines of influence and against developments in the wider world of the arts and society. The sense of separation that the writers accord to street photography, separate from the context of social developments, means that we don’t really get a sense of street photography’s place in our culture, its worth.

Despite this however, I enjoyed the many anecdotal reflections, particularly from Meyerowitz, a photographer who I deeply admire. Well worth a read.

 

 

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Knut Skjærven

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Blow Up © Knut Skjærven

Blow Up © Knut Skjærven

Of course, good photographs should at one level speak for themselves, as this wonderful photograph by Knut Skjærven does. But, I venture to ask, why do they?

There is so much else to a good photograph than the sum of its components.

It has nothing to do with beauty or the specific content of the photograph or the tonality or indeed any individual ‘property’ of the image, although these things contribute. They may be necessary but they are not sufficient. These things attract your attention, but they do not in themselves give you an aesthetic experience. The individual qualities of the photograph invite you to sit at the dinner table but you don’t get to taste the delicious food by doing nothing more.

The aesthetic experience occurs when you become engaged in recreation with the photograph. This is actually quite complex, but as the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said “…the only simplicity to be trusted is the simplicity to be found on the far side of complexity.”

At first, there is the encounter with the photograph as an object of experience, pre-cognitive if you will. Then there is a physical feeling – the photograph is objectified as being the subject of the feeling; a relationship of distance is recognised. This gives rise to a conceptual feeling which is the subjective reaction to the physical feeling, the distance. Other emotions and memories enter the arena of experience and thereby a relationship to the photograph evolves. It starts to become part of you. A fresh feeling emerges from the contrast between the ‘conceptual feeling’ and the ‘physical feeling.’ Finally the resulting relationship is contrasted once again with the ‘physical feeling’ giving rise to a ‘completed unity’. The energy behind this process, called ‘Concrescence’ by Whitehead, is causa sui,  that is, self-generated.

At heart, therefore, is an interplay, a recreation, between the photograph and you such that the photograph establishes a you that is different in some way from the you of a moment ago. The extent to which this happens depends upon the ability of the photograph, acting as a whole, to set up the aesthetic experience.

And this particular photograph is very successfully at setting up such an aesthetic experience. We can analyse the components of it that create something ‘other than the sum of its parts’, of course, but the end result is that it is complete in-itself – causa sui.

So, yes this image speaks for itself at one level. But it opens up much more if you are quiet and listening.

 

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Presidio – Stephen Shore

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© Stephen Shore

© Stephen Shore

A picture that stops me.

Gerry Badger identifies Shore with the “quiet photo”. To a certain extent he is right, (although Shore has bridged many genres in his long career). For me his images are particularly compelling because they start quietly, but get louder like an underground train approaching at speed.

You look down this street. Telegraph post shadows cut across, suggesting a divide. The dog checks your thoughts. The man stands there, unmoving, passive and staring. The fence hems you in. It is late evening. What to do? A moment of doubt opens.

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Beachy Head by Tony Ray-Jones

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© Tony Ray-Jones

© Tony Ray-Jones

A young man and woman embrace, seemingly oblivious to everyone around them. They are intimate and gentle, locked into a private world – a love affair, a love scene even. A very private act in a public space. But although the lovers hold centre-stage, the photograph is not principally “about” them.

We see the other trippers looking out of the frame, presumably at Beachy Head’s chalk cliffs. Their faces betray unease. Everyone is quiet, pensive and above all avoiding the love scene that is playing out, as though there is an unspoken agreement at work – an act of collusion. Very English! “No sex here please, we are British”!

So the photograph is about the relationship between the lovers and the other trippers. The lovers with life-unlived, care-free; the trippers with life-lived, care-worn.

But that’s not all. A parallel scene is being played out:

“Photography is the process of rendering observation self-conscious” Berger explains, “What it shows invokes what is not shown”.  1.  What is shown is clear: the lovers and the travellers, (the “also-rans”). But what is not shown? The lovers have a different destiny to the travellers. The two groups are bound to different fates. From premises, consequences flow. The lovers look forward in time, entwined within a common fate. The travellers look back, remembering their own past experiences which are now unfolding before them in the guise of the lovers, momentarily halting the remorseless succession of moments. The former with Future; the latter with Past. We see ourselves as simultaneous members of both groups. With a foot in each camp we are caught between them, between past and future: outside of time and place.

  1. Understanding a Photograph by John Berger; Penguin 1967; ISBN 978-0-141-39202-8
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Intersections by Josef Koudelka 1976

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Uninterminable sameness. The road travels straight and up, beyond and over (to a difference, perhaps?). The man seems unsure. He is at a crossroads, but is turning to the right. Deep down he realises it is already too late for change.

A wonderful picture by Koudelka.

© Koudelka

© Koudelka

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