Hoboken Almanac - The Neophyte - April

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The Neophyte - April - June, 2002

The neophyte updates his column sporadically with whatever he finds interesting.
You can e-mail him here - shawn@hobokenalmanac.com
copyright © 2002 by Shawn Liu
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May 9th, 2002
A Point of View
That's the title of the book, by the late Ralph Steiner. I've learned about it from the bibliography section of David Vestal's The Art of Black and White Enlarging. This is what Vestal says about A Point of View:

"Photographs and text by a rare, pleasantly unpompous photographer with strong opinions. We are lucky to have him."

I have no idea who Ralph Steiner is, except that Vestal has assisted him and is now editing some manuscript by him. I trust Vestal's judgment and ordered the book from Amazon's used bookstore (under the name zShops) for $29.95 (including a $5.00 shipping and handling charge). I was lucky - most people are selling the book with a ridiculously high price of at least $140. The cover has some scratches, but the book itself is intact and well preserved. A stamp print on the first page reads "Milwaukee Art Museum" and its address. And on the inside of the back cover there is a library envelope. The I.D. of the book is "779 SteR 1978 C.2." I hope the library has another copy of it, because everyone should be able to read this book.

I don't usually read the text of a photo book - they're usually some academic bullshit trying to explain to us how the photographer is great and why we should revere the photographs because they are Art or important social documents. This book didn't do that. The preface by Willard Van Dyke is pleasant and short, giving us some sort of historical background to understand who and what Steiner was and did. The following thirty pages of Steiner's words read like a good novel. I would like to share some parts of it with you. Here is a section when he describes a class he has taught at a "Communist-dominated photo league" -

"... at the first lesson I asked the students to leave their cameras at home but to take paper and pencil to record what they saw in the seventies and eighties on fashionable Park Avenue. Then they were to do the same on Park Avenue near Harlem underneath the New York Central Railroad elevated tracks. [...] At the second session of my class one student after another read almost identical notes: 'Along expensive Park Avenue live the capitalist rich in unearned luxury and elegance. Under the railroad the downtrodden victims of the rich live in misery.'

'Yes, but what did you SEE?' I asked. So I read them what I had seen and taken down on paper. The monotonous rows of expensive apartment houses seemed a city of the dead. The windows of the rich looked out, front and back, on dull facades and unimaginative architecture. Visually and functionally it was what architects were calling 'a high-class slum.' The sidewalks were almost deserted. Every so often a taxi would draw up, and a woman would scurry into the black hole of the doorway. Once in a while a small boy in his St. Botolph's private school uniform would be herded home by his nanny. But uptown, under the railroad, life bubbled. Children chased each other under pushcarts. Mothers screamed at them and went on bargaining for merchandise. Two boys with sticks and garbage-can covers dueled like knights of old. I was finished - fired - kaput because I could not see the two Park Avenues through a thick volume of Das Kapital."

On the topic of "originality," Steiner quotes Flaubert, and here I quote the quote:

"To express what one wishes, one must look at things with enough attention to discover in them what has never been seen before by anyone else. That is what is meant by originality."

Steiner candidly shares with us his opinions and experiences in becoming a photographer, filmmaker and earning a living. The stories are interesting - his life was interesting. He writes well, and he has a sense of humor. I do not agree with his stressing in photographic techniques, I prefer what Vestal says in his book, The Craft of Photography, "Only weak pictures need perfection. Strong ones can survive considerable faults." That's not to say the photographs in the book are weak - they are as equally engaging as the words of Steiner. Try to find it in your local library, and if you can afford it, buy the book.

April 29th, 2002
Back East Picture Show
The first official film festival in Hoboken, the Back East Picture Show, started on April 25th at the Hudson Street Cinemas. There was an article about it in the latest issue of Hudson Current (April 25-May 1), and it tells us that the festival is founded by Maria Perfetto and Anthony Costanza. Mr. Constanza is a filmmaker, and he has made a movie (Welcome to the Family), submitted to different festivals, and was rejected by all of them. So he thought, "why don't we start our own festival?" Why not? They have received 135 entries for consideration from all over the world, and 50 movies were shown during the 4-day festival. Mr. Costanza explains how he has selected the movies,

"Film is a visual medium, so visually it's got to be appealing. I don't care how great the screenplay is or how great the acting is - it's got to be aesthetically pleasing. That's my opinion. The next things are the script and the acting. And I'm more forgiving of the acting than the other two things."

Makes me wonder: is the first ever Hoboken Film Festival a silent movie festival? That would be interesting - even the old silent movies have some audio track of music and sound effects, and I wonder how the audience would react to movies with no sound at all. Heck, maybe it's just me, real movie lovers must only care about the visual, and then the story and dialogue, and then the acting. As for sound? Who gives a shit, eh?

I have always thought that film (as much of a audio medium as a visual one) is just another way of telling a story. So the story itself is just as important as the way we'd tell a story. With film, we tell stories with images, dialogues and acting, and I would imagine (and hope for) each element to be just as important as the other. Not to put things in order, but a good story or screenplay is the basis of a good movie; and a screenplay is like ingredients in cooking, and the actors are the cooks. The visual and audio presentation is important, but need it be "appealing"? I hope not. If that is the case, I guess we can put away John Cassavetes' film. Actually, what is "appealing" anyway? I guess that depends on the judges' mood of the day.

A movie comes to mind: On the Waterfront (filmed entirely in Hoboken). Elia Kazaan is a great director, and he was exceptional in that movie for allowing Brando's acting to take over the scenes. The famous taxi scene, for example, was not particularly appealing visually, and the dialogue, specifically the line, "Charley, Charley, oh Charley, wow" isn't the most spectacular. But Brando delivered the line in such a way that it changed the mood of the scene, our understanding of his relationship with the brother, and the direction of the film. More: Brando's voice is crucial in his acting, and that reminds me of one of the most chilling moments in a theatre: his chanting of "the horror, the horror." Subtitle would not do here.

I missed the festival. Instead I went to see the movie Y Tu Mamá También, which, visually, probably does not appeal to most people, especially in comparison to the director's last movie, Great Expectations (though both had the same cinematographer). I'm not sure if the movie would have made it into the Hoboken Film Festival, but it was an excellent movie.

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