My Leica Year — The Film: Vantage Point

The Film: Vantage Point

John Szarkowski wrote in his book, The Photographer’s Eye, about “Vantage Point” and the role it plays in photographs. By approaching a subject from above or below, by standing too close or too far away, we can gain insight. His words:

“If the photographer could not move his subject, he could move his camera. To see the subject clearly—often to see it at all—he had to abandon a normal vantage point, and shoot his picture from above, or below, or from too close, or too far away, or from the back side, inverting the order of things’ importance, or with the nominal subject of his picture half hidden.

From his photographs, he learned that the appearance of the world was richer and less simple than his mind would have guessed.

He discovered that his pictures could reveal not only the clarity but the obscurity of things, and that these mysterious and evasive images could also, in their own terms, seem ordered and meaningful.”

I feel exactly this way about photographing in black and white. For me, monochrome photography is another vantage point—while color is the “normal” one. And like climbing a tall building or laying on your belly to get a fresh perspective, its power to reveal can be… well… pretty astonishing.

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This is another in a series of posts I’ve been writing on using film during the Leica Year project. One more left to wrap up and then I’ll move on to The Lens and The Camera. And that’ll be that. Thanks, as always, for hanging with me.