Telephoto lenses and orientalising Asia
Comments: 4
A friend who lives in Taiwan sent me a link to a blog by Michael Turton called “The View from Taiwan.” In an entry called Digicams — going with the telephoto Michael’s musing on what digital camera he might next buy leads him to this fascinating thought:
Probably somewhere a cultural critic has written a learned tome about how the telephoto lens overdramatizes the effect of crowding in Asia, orientalizing it visually for westerners (where the telephoto is used to emphasize space, as in the stereotyped shots of endless lines of telephone wires lining empty western highways). But for me, even after all these years, a telephoto lens and a crowded city still says Asia……
I’d never really considered that. And now I’m wondering where that essay on telephoto lenses, geography, and orientalism might be.
(Thanks for the link, James.)
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Posted to General Rants • 2006.02.20 (Mon) • 21:45
Comments
Posted by Kristen 2006.02.20, 23:03
I suspect that essay is in your head, Mr. Hedley, waiting in the wings (just behind your right ear, you know) to come on stage. Don’t let it miss its cue.
Posted by Jim O'Connell 2006.02.21, 17:59
Fascinating idea.
Much of it stems from the shots that already exist that have become a dialog of the place. When people look at photos of Asia, they’re first tuned to those images that reinforce a stereotype they already held, those things that are so different from what they know. Asia’s thronging crowds of people certainly fit that. The visual compression of a telephoto lens makes it all seem more so.
When those same people show up here with a camera, they’re likely to reinforce that stereotype, via those same clichés.I find my telephoto lenses all but useless in Tokyo, but I do instinctively reach for my longest lens as I head down Omotesando dori on a Saturday when I reach that point near the bottom of the hill where it then banks back up to Harajuku—like everyone else, I see that same impossible sea of people that we know so well through so many photographers’ 200mm lenses. It’s a fun shot.
Tokyo and other cities in Asia that I’ve been to are walking cities though, built on a tremendously human scale. In Tokyo’s neighborhoods, you’re never more than a short walk from a convenience store and in Beijing’s hutongs, the public restrooms are always a stone’s throw away. For cities like these, you’d better have a short normal (28, 35, or 45mm) lens on your camera, or you’ll miss the real honesty of the place.
Clichés are hard habits to break. A few of my least favorite these days are the “put a halo on George Bush” meme and the “people walking by a freakishly big head in an advertisement,” but then again, I posted one of those to Flickr today… (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimoconnell/102391063/ )
Every city has these shots, though, so I wouldn’t chalk it completely up to Orientalism - certainly there are far too many tourist shots of that poor gargoyle in Paris from “just the right angle” or views of the flatiron shot from where Steichen stood in 1905. (Bonus points for fog.) Most of it is forgivable, the language of the amateur.
Posted by Peter Marquis-Kyle 2006.03.17, 11:16
Wasn’t this genre of photography invented by Andreas Feininger in New York in the 1940s? — see http://www.artnet.com/artwork/3276167/andreas-feininger-5th-avenue-at-lunchtime.html
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