If you're familiar with the photographer Jay Maisel, you're familiar with his teachings on light, gesture, and color in photography. While he did not invent the word gesture, he certainly expanded the use of the word as being an important concept in photography. I actually first heard it applied in photography during my first workshop with my friend (and mentor), Arthur Meyerson. Arthur is an accomplished professional photographer in the commercial and fine art worlds, and an excellent instructor. Both he and Jay Maisel were strongly influenced by another one of my favorite photographers, Ernst Haas, who was a master of color photography, and a master of the combination of light, gesture and color.
While all three elements are important, and I encourage you to dive into Jay's words about light and color as well (starting with his introductory words on the Peachpit Press site for his book "Light, Gesture, and Color (Voices That Matter)", in this post I'll focus on Gesture.
Jay writes about searching the dictionary and thesaurus to see how the definitions and words match up to his understanding of Gesture. The word he feels comes the closes it "essence" but I'll share with you here an excerpt to dive deeper into his definition:
"Gesture is the expression that is at the very heart of everything we shoot. It’s not just the determined look on a face; it’s not just the grace of a dancer or athlete. It is not only the brutalized visage of the bloodied boxer. Neither is it only limited to age, or youth, or people, or animals. It exists in a leaf, a tree, and a forest. It reveals the complicated veins of the leaf, the delta-like branches of the tree, and when seen from the air, the beautiful texture of the forest.
It reveals the essence of each thing we look at: human, mineral, or animal, or brick, stone, or metal. It doesn’t stop there. We see it in clouds, crowds, magnificent mansions, and humble huts.
We have been shooting gesture all our lives but we didn’t have the nomenclature or the compulsion to categorize it.
We have always wanted to find the “it-ness” of anything we shoot. We want to get as deep into the subject as we can.
I call it gesture. You can call it anything you like, but it involves identifying and working to get to the heart of everything you see. I said, see, not shoot, because as you become aware of it, your “seeing” will intensify your “looking” and deepen your shooting.
You will, in time, see and show others not just the superficial, but the details, the meanings, and the implications of all that you look at: the wetness, reflectivity, and power of water; the subtlety of clouds; the texture of the bark of the tree; the delightful surface of a finished piece of wood; the smoothness of a baby; the rough, ragged face of the aged; or the aerial perspective of diminishing clarity in a series of mountains."
Looking deeper into everything we shoot to find the expression at the heart of everything we shoot, or the "it-ness" is indeed extremely important. Jay's words challenge us to slow down and take our time until that expression reveals itself to us. There is a quote I remember form Ernst Haas and I'm paraphrasing here but basically he stated that we don't take photographs but we are taken by them.
I took a look for a few photographs of mine that I think have Gesture in them and included them in this post. In what way do I see gesture in these images? I think the best way to answer that question is to say that without certain elements, none of these photos would be all that interesting. They all speak in some way and each has an element that provided an "essence." In the shot of the umbrellas on the beach, the man's legs poking out provide the human element and a bit of humor; the shot of the mural in San Francisco would be completely boring without the legs that make it look like a giant is doing gymnastics off of the top of the building; and finally in the shot of a sunrise at White Sand, while it's a beautiful sunrise, the people silhouetted against the sky provide a deeper feeling to the image that adds emotion.
The advice here is to look, feel, observe, move around your environment and wait until you see that essence or emotion or whatever it is that truly excites you and connects with you, and then "be taken" by what you're seeing and click that shutter.
I invite you to explore the images and words of Jay Maisel, Arthur Meyerson, and Ernst Haas for more inspiration and learning, in particular if your passion is color photography.
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