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Let Your Subject Lead
By Craig Breil
Looking back to my college years, budding young "artist" that I was, one instructor (not to get all Tuesdays with Morrie on you) in particular, most
influenced my opinions and ideas about photography, Bill Rauhouser. A kindly gent of 76 (a remarkably spry 76), he was a driving force/advocate for
photography in Detroit during the early 60's, opening the first such gallery in probably all the Midwest. He had been teaching at the College of Creative
Studies (while I was there in 1995) for about 25 years. His career in photography was to eventually span 65 years.
You can imagine, he was held in high regard, all of his classes were required for graduation, Photosensitometry (let me tell you I just barely passed this one)
and photo history were among them. Any of my peers would describe his teaching style as candid and frank. He was strict, fair and impartial, much like his
photo work. This is not to say he was inflexible. Anecdotally, I remember taking one of his exams, usually three essay style questions of which you were to
pick two; now, Bill's teaching philosophy required, rightly so, needing to know everything he mentioned in lectures, so study everything. Well… on this
particular test, I knew only enough to write an essay about one of the questions - the other two…nothing. I had been obsessed with Alfred Steglitz and gallery
291 that semester, spending a lot of study time on his ideas and the photographers he influenced. Much to my chagrin, none of questions included anything about
Alfred Steigletz…NOTHING. I must have sat there blank, eyes glazed, mouth slightly open for 30 minutes, trying to squeeze something out, come-up with a way to
expound upon the few facts I did know (essentially bluff my way through it). I sat there a little while longer and finally thought "The hell with it," and I
started my essay with: "I realize this is not the answer to the question you asked, however, as I am not able to write in a meaningful way about either of
these two subjects… here is everything I know about Alfred Steigletz, Camera Work, and 291 (all things we covered in class)." I figured I was just sitting
there, wasting my time. Why not put something intelligent down instead of jabbering on, writing something we would inevitably both know was cow plop? I
got the exam back and I'll be damned if he didn't give me a B+. Just like that, no rebuke for the obvious, just some comments…"insightful", "you need to
rethink this", "you've got it". I held on to that exam for nearly six years.
In retrospect, this kind of non-linear, selective thinking, was a reflection of Bill's photographic process - acceptance of the abstract. We spend a lot of
time as photographers assigning meaning to our images, thinking of them as something we have created. In my opinion, believing we are creating when we make
a photograph verges on hubris, we are verifying a subject's existence. We may place them in esthetically pleasing positions but allowing yourself to believe
you are "creating" takes away from the subject. As photographers, we are not important in comparison. Certainly, our egos/interpretation/experiences guide
our choices but what we really do as photographers is select less than a second of time in the existence of a subject to record. Allowing the nature of an
idea to come through in an instant is the informed and practiced "art" of selection.
Photography is actually pretty easy to learn - it's making the right choices as a technician that comes hard. The truly great photographers don't, in my
opinion, mythologize their role in the process. The strongest images are always lead by the subject and not the photographer.
Craig Breil Bio
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