有朋友讀了我上星期寫陶博特書架照片的網誌，注意到文末我對他的高傲數落了幾句，於是見面時就對我說：「想不到你那麼討厭Talbot哦！」哈！咁又唔算係嘅。像我這樣的平庸材料，對於天才型年紀輕輕就已學聞天下的人物(家裡又富有)，妒恨之餘也總是有些羨慕佩服的。即以陶博特為例，他的照片大抵以《開著的門》(The Open Door, 1844)最為人知；在我個人來說，攝影發明者而又有照片傳世的主要是三人(其餘二人為法國人Louis J.M. Daguerre和 Hippolyte Bayard)，當中對攝影把握得最精深的還是首選陶博特。
陶博特最初試驗攝影術時從直接用光產生圖像的photogram入手，很快就得到成功。不知道是否因為轉將感光物料放入鏡箱內藉鏡頭曝光的第二步試驗先時不很理想(因為光量大幅減少的緣故吧！)，他做了很多的photograms，而且探索了這種圖像的用途及可能做成的視覺效果。例如他做了很有立體效果的photogram，也想到即使是負像也有其可用之處。我最喜歡的一張是他將從居住的巨宅(香港的所謂豪宅真是蚊肶同牛肶)的花園收集來的杉樹針葉灑在感光紙上再曝光而製成的(見圖)，一方面可以見到他嘗試即興與不全控制的後果(絕大部分的照片都有這些成份)，另一方面又看到那近乎葉落如雨的景象，很是耐看。
Ed,
ReplyDeleteJust finished a summer camp with local secondary students playing photograms, will upload their masterful works later.
B
Blues:
ReplyDelete好的, 拭目以待
真巧，剛看見新聞報導「新派」Photogram，用X光製作：
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1299379/Extraordinary-x-ray-images-flowers-seen-before.html
Photopiggie:
ReplyDelete多謝晒, 雖然唔算係真正嘅Photogram，都幾令人驚喜!
還有adam fuss, 用光記錄了純粹的動作。我也很喜歡Talbot這幅，我也曾用相機拍攝到相似的圖像 http://kiwong.wordpress.com/2007/10/16/粉嶺的水墨情調/ ：＞
ReplyDeleteHi Ki,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing.
在Geoffrey Batchen的書《Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph》(2016)讀到下面一段，他認為此照是打破一切圖像製作傳統的作品：
ReplyDelete"… offer a new kind of image altogether. The photograph makes it look like as though the needles are tumbling through space in front of a camera, falling from top to bottom of the picture plane, apparently caught in an instant of light-sensitive exposure. But we have to remember that this is a contact print, produced when Talbot scattered some needles across his horizontal sheet of prepared paper, so that they lay there statically in the sun long enough to leave an impression…. Despite the slowness of his exposure times, Talbot here found a way to represent contingency, eventually to be regarded as an essential characteristic of his medium. But a picture of this kind also collapses any distinction between figure and ground (as well as between up and down), and its edge becomes an arbitrary cut within a field of potentially infinite elements rather than a rational frame surrounding a discrete object. It's a picture, in other words, that decisively breaks with all received conventions of picture making."