"Vaguely stealthy creatures": Max Kozloff on the poetics of street photography

Afterimage, Winter, 2002 by Martin Patrick

The critic Max Kozloff frequently reminds his readers of the inherent instability of meaning within the photographic medium. In an early essay (from 1964) he considers "the aesthetic situation in photography to be extremely fluid. Alarmingly but justifiably, anything goes." To the great benefit of Kozloff's criticism, he does not eliminate the manifold ways of discussing photographs nor overly narrow his concerns. Instead, Kozloff manages to avoid the dead end of formalist dogmas in favor of conveying his own rapt attention in front of a wide, almost startlingly diverse range of material. It is one's acute awareness of Kozloff's own deep belief in the nearly limitless potential of photography that lingers after reading his essays. Kozloff explicates this belief most convincingly in a number of his essays on "street photographers," among them Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and William Klein. This essay focuses on such material in particular and several of the many issues and questions it raises, as well a s discussing the deft manner in which Kozloff attempts to create verbal equivalents to the near-acrobatic visual images of these artists.

Kozloff repeatedly recognizes that it is just at the moment when a photograph verges on complete incoherence that its ability to provoke thought and convey beauty is much more profound in its implications. Street photographs are simultaneously random and precise, existing both as social documents and aesthetic treasures. Kozloff, in his ongoing critical project, attempts to come to terms with what he has called the "enigmas and illuminations of photography." (1)

The opening passage of Kozloff's essay "The Privileged Eye' states: "consider an action photograph in which one or a bunch of figures is on the move. No matter how visually explicit, its story content is moot. Because it's unnaturally congealed, the pictorial activity becomes literally equivocal in its drive or purposes." (2) Kozloff proceeds to try to discover what might be at stake in such images, however equivocal, as they retain the ability to snare the viewer: "if their 'truth' quotient weren't so high, they could not deceive as indiscriminately as they often do. But if they were outright fictions they wouldn't grant me the privilege of feeling that I can hold the world, sporadically, in a set of miniature durations." (3)

With the particularly evocative image by Cartier-Bresson entitled Alicante, Spain (1932), Kozloff speaks of being propelled into a state of "fruitful perplexity ... here I am saying that not knowing, a decided lack of knowledge can become a value in itself.... if there is any such thing as a revelation that does not explain its content, this is an example." (4) Cartier-Bresson himself in his famous statement "The Decisive Moment" of 1952, declared that

In photography there is a new kind of plasticity, product of the instantaneous lines made by movements of the subject. We work in unison with movement as though it were a presentiment of the way in which life itself unfolds. But inside movement there is one moment at which the elements in motion are in balance. Photography must seize upon this moment and hold immobile the equilibrium of it. (5)

For the street photographer it is integral to the act of making photographs to be on the lookout, the search or the prowl to be "vaguely stealthy creatures" (6) in Kozloff's words. When Frank was no longer on the road, he soon had to move on to other approaches to photography in an act of reinvention of his process. It seems no accident that both Frank and his contemporary Klein turned toward film--motion pictures--to escape the more restricting aspects of still photography.

Kozloff uses a Baudelairean eloquence to recount a type of photographic practice that is characterized by its energetic emphasis on blur and grain, a kind of tortured and heavy-handed romanticism eked out through incremental fragments and shards. As he remarks on Klein: "The world he depicts which has come apart--fissures everywhere and eruptions of crud--was for him a visual discovery." (7)

The street photographer moves. This movement is the photographer's essential task, because the street, particularly that of New York City, is rarely static, and the watchful eye must stare, yet proceed to store thousands of glimpses. Some will be held up, magnified and singled out for attention later while others will line binders, file drawers, photoboxes, portfolios and remain hidden away. (Or, in fact, in the case of Garry Winogrand, his late work amounted to several barrels full of unprocessed 35mm film canisters.)

Photographer Joel Meyerowitz has remarked on the act of photographing:

It's like going out into the sea and letting the waves break over you. You feel the power of the sea. On the street each successive wave brings a whole new cast of characters. You take wave after wave, you bathe in it. There is something exciting about being in the crowd, in all that chance and change--it's tough out there--but if you can keep paying attention something will reveal itself--just a split second--and there's a crazy cockeyed picture! (8)