This is an index, for whoever finds it useful: 3:10 - Eve Sonneman, Real Time 10:36 - Jan Groover, Laboratory of Forms 12:04 - Robert Adams, Time Passes 17:35 - Guido Guidi, Fiume 24:19 - Paul Graham, The Present 28:36 - Duane Michals, Sequences 30:09 - Joh Gossage, The Pond 35:20 - Paul Graham, A Shimmer of Possibility Amazing video Alec, so instructive. Thank you so much! I resonate with this theme, and find these works so powerful
Just put together a photo book and thought about this video a lot while I was doing it. When I first started editing I only ever took one photo from a sequence that had been shot close together, but there are several spreads in this book where I include two from a sequence, and used that to bring the viewer into the space a little bit. Really helpful.
RUclips is such a difficult place to try to put out content like this, but for someone with a more prominent place in your field, it helps carve out an audience for this -- beyond the how-tos and reviews a lot of people have to resort to not to be completely ignored. I hope you continue to do these talks and help prove these kinds of deeper dives have a place in the online discourse. In the meantime, I am eating this up and am hungry for more. Thank you!
Great stuff. It's all about the space and silence in between. The way photographers have dealt with temporal and spatial sequencing to convey a time passing shows the difficulty and impossibility of catching the ethereal and the ephemeral in a single photograph (without depending too much on metaphor).
I have a lot or respect for Alex doing these videos and trying to help/educate people in these difficult times. I learned more from this video than any "qualified" art teacher I have ever encountered.
First I saw your Eggleston video, and now these. Thank you for sharing your thoughts in this wonderful format. Truly a pleasure to get this sort of content related to photography.
Thanks so much for putting these together. Essential viewing for all photographers, in my opinion. About 6mins in you pause before using the word glimpses and I thought (if you hadn’t already seen it) that Georges didi-Hubermans lecture by the same title, ‘glimpses’, would interest you. It’s also on RUclips. Hope you’re well Alec, have a good one!
These photo book discussions reveal so much about photography as a singular medium. Listening to you while being in cultural theory course in uni informs so much about looking at visual art. Thank you Alec, such a legend.
This is a fascinating and extremely enlightening video. Thank you so much Alec for taking the time to do this! What a wonderful collection of books you have.
Thank you, very luring and hypnotizing, educational and inspirational. And yet sometimes I can’t help myself and think that with your amazing knowledge and calming asmr voice you probably would be able to narrate streetview on google maps or random iPhone photo album. No bad pictures in this world, just “difficult” or “personal”.
Thank you for a wonderful video. Diptychs as similar yet slightly different moments in time are fascinating in the photo book medium. I purchased Hajime Kimura's book Path In Between just over a year ago and I haven't been able to put it down. Every time I read it I discover something knew and yet, I'm left with more questions when finished.
Alec I appreciate these talks. For the younger audiences, we get to know other photographers that aren’t in the public eye, and how their work that inspires you . As someone who hasn’t taken a photography history class like you, this helps me learn so much more. Thank you Alec!
I’m enjoying your talks tremendously so thank you Alec. It’s so interesting to how photographic devices are used with such great effect. It is certainly something to think about.
I loved you magnum course. Personally it was a life changing experience! So full of lessons and inspirational. So much value! P.s. you can see that the two photos of the man with the cat are different because the cars on the bridge behind him are moving and are placed in different positions.
Thanks so much for this video and your time using this format. Your differentiation between a time 'flicker' and narrative answered questions i had about sequencing. It doesn't look like i'm alone in thinking that you're a very engaging teacher. Lots to think about here.
You showed me some new ways of looking at the world today, and of being in it too. At a time when I'm thinking about which direction to take my own photographic practice in, these spaces for reflection and thought you're creating are a joy. Thank you!
Flickering time vs narrative time. Subtle but so profound. It was my first time to see most of the books you presented and learned a lot. Just began your online course on Photographic Storytelling on Tuesday and it's a soothing meditative experience to learn. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on photographing spaces and buildings, both exterior and interior, which I very much enjoy in your books.
Thanks so much for these Alec!!! I enjoyed your blog tremendously and was sad to see it end! So I hope you will not end these when lecturing becomes doable again!
definitely read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics for more on the expression of time through a series of images. that little gap between frames is a whole other artistic medium in itself. it makes time elastic and brings it under the artist's control in ways that a single image can''t.
This has opened a whole new world of photographic possibility for me. Incredible and insightful. Loving diving into these books and ideas along side you. Thank you for sharing your wealth of knowledge and resource.
Love to hear your interpretations and your stream of consciousness about the narrative/time sequencing. Your videos are very worth the attention of us that keeps learning the art of photography. Thanks!
I felt completely the same when I first saw the Paul Graham ‘man walking cat’ series 36:16 trying to compare the two portraits and if they were actually different. For me, you can just make out a car travelling from right to left on the bridge in the background giving that flicker of time between the images. Thank you so much for doing these videos Alec, you are always so inspiring and thought-provoking in your work and teaching.
I love your subtle way of showing what books can be. Thank you so much, much appreciate that you invest your valuable time to help us improving our way of seeing, taking photos and telling stories in books !
Hi Alec, can’t thank you enough for taking the time to share your knowledge in such a clear, didactic and generous way. I hope these lessons are in some way an enriching experiencing for you going forward. Many many thanks
After a nice morning walk, I'm sitting down and listening intently. Your video on Eggleston brought a much needed nuance to his work that was truly inspiring to me! Thank you for this!
Really exceptional content here. Very much appreciate your delivery style and overall presentation, makes it very comfortable and easy to understand. This and your talk about The Democratic Forest have made me start to consider the intention behind my photos and also just the contrast of photos as art and photos as production. I hope you continue to put out more of these.
Time Passes is the title of the second section of ‘To the Lighthouse’ by Virginia Woolf. Fitting. I’d not seen Adams’ book before. Brilliant lecture, thanks.
@@AlecSothRUclips I’m just looking into this more, apparently To the Lighthouse was Adams’ favorite novel. He said “I wish I had time to commit large parts of it to memory.” I’m not surprised, it is a transformative piece of writing.
I'm enjoying your class on Magnum Learn and these videos immensely. Your teaching has filled my free moments these past few weeks. I appreciate this content immensely. Thanks for your work.
im quite thankful to find your videos showing and explaining people's work more detailed than I've ever seen. Also thankful that you mentioned that these work are "difficult" to understand for I certainly have a hard time to understand the narrative and quality of the photo and work. It reminds me of a question I've had for a while that some work requires knowledge of the artist, the history of that artist or philosophy of the person to then appreciate the art work. I hope to try this kind of photo sequencing and building a narrative to learn first hand what it means.
Love the way you teach Alec. Not just explaining or interpreting what’s readily apparent, but also bringing out the nuances in ways that enhance understanding and appreciation of photography. Would love to see you ramble about poetic time. And highly recommend your Magnum course, well worth it imho.
This has been by far the best lesson on photography I’ve ever had. The ideas and explaination are invaluable. Thank you so much, all the way from Australia.
Thank you very much for this Alec ! It overwhelmed me with renewed juvenile enthusiasm for going out there taking pictures. It is not often that i can feel inspired like this especially with photography stuff. Your videos here and the Magnum video courses did the trick, so please continue ! (this is my first comment ever on YT after many lurking years. Sorry for the potato English just a not so well articulate frog leg eater here).
I came to know you through the Magnum video of your work with a loop of George Bush audio quotes... I must have watched that 25 times. Your work is some of my absolute favorite and I'm so glad to see you more present in the youtube space, your voice and perspective are SO needed and appreciated ❤
Thanks a lot for sharing these thoughts. This is one of the first videos I've seen on this channel and I'm definitively grabbed. To me, it opens up the possibilities of narration, but also redistributes the cards of the beautiful and the ugly. This is not about straight esthetics, but about the feeling and the mind. I think I will learn a lot here!
Thanks Alec for continuing with the series! I find your presentations to be an excellent addition and extension of your Magnum Learn course, which I enjoyed totally. Great bonus is that you’re making your point on the basis of the books to which most people don’t have access and which are highly regarded pieces of art. Really look forward to the future presentations and learning from an expert in the field. Cheers.
Incredible to have your perspectives on other photographers' works available. Some of these concepts echo those in Scott McCloud's book 'Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art'. While it is obviously a very different medium, comic book artists utilise similar techniques, with 'flickering' moments integrated into a larger narrative context. Thank you for sharing.
I'm a huge fan of Understanding Comics. I think the section where he talks about the simplified circle face vs. nearly photographic faces is particularly useful for photographers.
@@AlecSothRUclips I’ve never read it from a photography perspective but I think I’ll have to go back to it now. That is interesting... it reminds me of the concept in your ‘Pictures and Words’ of how much we want the viewer to use their imagination and how much we want to explicitly show. Would love to hear your thoughts on that section. Thank you for your time and reply!
The portrait of the man under the bridge in a shimmer of possibility by Paul Graham that you were trying to figure out if it's a flicker of time has a small detail that gives it away. It's the car on bridge in the background. In the first photo the car is to his right, the second photo the car is to his left.
Thank you again, these are great. Please carry on! A semi-dayli visit to your library is amazing. On the subject of the video, I love the idea of exploring time, and change in my own work. Although im at the oposite i guess to what you are talking about here, I enjoy photographing change that takes place on a longer slice than these instances, usually months, but some of my projects last years. My friend and semi mentor in Iceland where im from, Einar falur, documents time, and has his focus on milenial time, photographing in the oldest civilisations like in Egipt and in Varanasi, along with contrasting it with his own experience of time mooving. I recomend looking at his work, its amazing. Thank you again, look forward to the next one!
It's unbelievable that stuff like this is now available on the internet. You're one of my idols and I appreciate you taking time to make these.
Try CAMERA too
Thoroughly enjoying these. Thanks for taking the time. ❤️
You're a brilliant teacher, Its an honour to learn even through RUclips.
That's so nice to hear. Thanks Ethan
You’re a legend. Making me want to slow way down and evaluate everything. Not just in photography either.
Thanks Bryan
I keep rewatching this video. Your thoughts and observations are so beautiful. Thank you for the art you share with us.
This is an index, for whoever finds it useful:
3:10 - Eve Sonneman, Real Time
10:36 - Jan Groover, Laboratory of Forms
12:04 - Robert Adams, Time Passes
17:35 - Guido Guidi, Fiume
24:19 - Paul Graham, The Present
28:36 - Duane Michals, Sequences
30:09 - Joh Gossage, The Pond
35:20 - Paul Graham, A Shimmer of Possibility
Amazing video Alec, so instructive. Thank you so much!
I resonate with this theme, and find these works so powerful
Just put together a photo book and thought about this video a lot while I was doing it. When I first started editing I only ever took one photo from a sequence that had been shot close together, but there are several spreads in this book where I include two from a sequence, and used that to bring the viewer into the space a little bit. Really helpful.
RUclips is such a difficult place to try to put out content like this, but for someone with a more prominent place in your field, it helps carve out an audience for this -- beyond the how-tos and reviews a lot of people have to resort to not to be completely ignored. I hope you continue to do these talks and help prove these kinds of deeper dives have a place in the online discourse. In the meantime, I am eating this up and am hungry for more. Thank you!
Thank you Jamie
Also - there's a need for this exact type of content, there's a void you are filling.
I’m learning so much from these videos. Thank you 🙏
I could listen to your voice for hours, very soothing. I loved your LBM Podcasts! Please keep these videos coming.
Great stuff. It's all about the space and silence in between. The way photographers have dealt with temporal and spatial sequencing to convey a time passing shows the difficulty and impossibility of catching the ethereal and the ephemeral in a single photograph (without depending too much on metaphor).
Of course, it's the medium's very nature to "catch the ephemeral" and fix it permanently. But to _express_ it is something else.
I have a lot or respect for Alex doing these videos and trying to help/educate people in these difficult times. I learned more from this video than any "qualified" art teacher I have ever encountered.
First I saw your Eggleston video, and now these. Thank you for sharing your thoughts in this wonderful format. Truly a pleasure to get this sort of content related to photography.
Thanks so much for putting these together. Essential viewing for all photographers, in my opinion.
About 6mins in you pause before using the word glimpses and I thought (if you hadn’t already seen it) that Georges didi-Hubermans lecture by the same title, ‘glimpses’, would interest you. It’s also on RUclips. Hope you’re well Alec, have a good one!
Thanks Murray
I learned a lot through this video. Don't underestimate yourself, you're a good teacher. Thanks for making time to educate us.
These photo book discussions reveal so much about photography as a singular medium. Listening to you while being in cultural theory course in uni informs so much about looking at visual art. Thank you Alec, such a legend.
I enjoyed all your little lectures so much and would love to see more!
This is a fascinating and extremely enlightening video. Thank you so much Alec for taking the time to do this! What a wonderful collection of books you have.
I'm very lucky, thanks for watching Claire
It's like going to a weekly book editing class. Thanks Alec! Opening new worlds of photography.
Cant believe this is free. Thank you, Alec!
Thank you, very luring and hypnotizing, educational and inspirational. And yet sometimes I can’t help myself and think that with your amazing knowledge and calming asmr voice you probably would be able to narrate streetview on google maps or random iPhone photo album. No bad pictures in this world, just “difficult” or “personal”.
These discussions seem personal yet casual, making them effective as a RUclips video.
Thank you for a wonderful video. Diptychs as similar yet slightly different moments in time are fascinating in the photo book medium. I purchased Hajime Kimura's book Path In Between just over a year ago and I haven't been able to put it down. Every time I read it I discover something knew and yet, I'm left with more questions when finished.
Alec I appreciate these talks. For the younger audiences, we get to know other photographers that aren’t in the public eye, and how their work that inspires you . As someone who hasn’t taken a photography history class like you, this helps me learn so much more. Thank you Alec!
Thank you so much for your time and for sharing all these books.
Thank you Alec. You are a wonderfull teacher. I started watching your Magnum course and it's pure joy and bliss. Have a nice day.
Thank you!
Everything I now know about sequencing I learned from Alec.
I’m enjoying your talks tremendously so thank you Alec. It’s so interesting to how photographic devices are used with such great effect. It is certainly something to think about.
Wow, this is amazing that you're providing these for free here!! Really love hearing what you have to say!
What an outstanding lesson. Alec you have such a wonderful generosity of spirit and knowledge. Thank you for creating these !!
thank you very much for the time spent doing these and sharing it
You are a wonderful educator. Thank you!
so grateful to be able to listen to you, thank you
The most soothing voice in Art! You’re a born educator...please keep the lessons coming.
Aw, thanks Sham.
I loved you magnum course. Personally it was a life changing experience! So full of lessons and inspirational. So much value!
P.s. you can see that the two photos of the man with the cat are different because the cars on the bridge behind him are moving and are placed in different positions.
Embarrassed I miss this! But glad you got something out of the course nonetheless
@@AlecSothRUclips don’t worry, glad to be helpful! Thanks to you for making it and also to continue to sharing your knowledge with us, priceless!
This is exactly what I've been looking for, for quite some time now. So good
Thanks so much for this video and your time using this format. Your differentiation between a time 'flicker' and narrative answered questions i had about sequencing.
It doesn't look like i'm alone in thinking that you're a very engaging teacher. Lots to think about here.
Thank you for taking the time to do these Alec - fabulous to get your perspective on the work of other masters....
thank you, i really appreciate your videos.
please upload more :)
Your talk is very helpful! Thank you for your efforts. Please give more talks.
You showed me some new ways of looking at the world today, and of being in it too. At a time when I'm thinking about which direction to take my own photographic practice in, these spaces for reflection and thought you're creating are a joy. Thank you!
That's great to hear
Flickering time vs narrative time. Subtle but so profound. It was my first time to see most of the books you presented and learned a lot. Just began your online course on Photographic Storytelling on Tuesday and it's a soothing meditative experience to learn. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on photographing spaces and buildings, both exterior and interior, which I very much enjoy in your books.
Thank you Daisuke
Thank you Alec, these are wonderful
So great, thank you.
I just took your Storytelling course on the Magnum Photo website. I loved every minute of watching you work. Thanks so much for all that you do.
Thanks so much for these Alec!!! I enjoyed your blog tremendously and was sad to see it end! So I hope you will not end these when lecturing becomes doable again!
Keep on rambling Alec! Much appreciated these talks!
definitely read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics for more on the expression of time through a series of images. that little gap between frames is a whole other artistic medium in itself. it makes time elastic and brings it under the artist's control in ways that a single image can''t.
This has opened a whole new world of photographic possibility for me. Incredible and insightful. Loving diving into these books and ideas along side you. Thank you for sharing your wealth of knowledge and resource.
Love to hear your interpretations and your stream of consciousness about the narrative/time sequencing.
Your videos are very worth the attention of us that keeps learning the art of photography.
Thanks!
I felt completely the same when I first saw the Paul Graham ‘man walking cat’ series 36:16 trying to compare the two portraits and if they were actually different. For me, you can just make out a car travelling from right to left on the bridge in the background giving that flicker of time between the images.
Thank you so much for doing these videos Alec, you are always so inspiring and thought-provoking in your work and teaching.
This might be my first comment in 15+ years on RUclips. I’m thoroughly enjoying these videos and hoping there are many more to come.
Thanks Kevin. I'm a RUclips virgin as well.
I love your subtle way of showing what books can be. Thank you so much, much appreciate that you invest your valuable time to help us improving our way of seeing, taking photos and telling stories in books !
you are the teacher I needed. looking forward to the talks yet to come! thank you so much!
Great video Alec, I hope to enjoy much more of these videos.
Hi Alec, can’t thank you enough for taking the time to share your knowledge in such a clear, didactic and generous way. I hope these lessons are in some way an enriching experiencing for you going forward. Many many thanks
After a nice morning walk, I'm sitting down and listening intently. Your video on Eggleston brought a much needed nuance to his work that was truly inspiring to me! Thank you for this!
Really exceptional content here.
Very much appreciate your delivery style and overall presentation, makes it very comfortable and easy to understand.
This and your talk about The Democratic Forest have made me start to consider the intention behind my photos and also just the contrast of photos as art and photos as production. I hope you continue to put out more of these.
So stoked we get another one of these. Thank you!
another wonderful video! you are educating us here in such an easygoing manner. i am making notes of every video of yours.
Time Passes is the title of the second section of ‘To the Lighthouse’ by Virginia Woolf. Fitting. I’d not seen Adams’ book before. Brilliant lecture, thanks.
Thanks. Adams quotes Woolf in the book too.
@@AlecSothRUclips I’m just looking into this more, apparently To the Lighthouse was Adams’ favorite novel. He said “I wish I had time to commit large parts of it to memory.” I’m not surprised, it is a transformative piece of writing.
I'm enjoying your class on Magnum Learn and these videos immensely. Your teaching has filled my free moments these past few weeks. I appreciate this content immensely. Thanks for your work.
Thank you for this! What I was looking for and you just gifted us all.
Great inspirational video! I just had a new idea to try out with my street photography, thank you! Really exciting :)
Thanks a lot for sharing this. Very inspiring, especially the part about Robert Adams!
Gave me a lot to think about. Thanks
These are amazing. Thank you for taking the time and sharing them.
Invaluable content, really thought provoking and nourishing in a time like this. Thanks!
Adams uses the tide to show the changes that time produces. The photograph book is quite beautiful.
Thanks again for doing these Alec. Really great and so refreshing. Good inspiration as well.
Loving these -- soon as I finish one I seem to head back to my bookshelf and absorb again the books of Alec.
im quite thankful to find your videos showing and explaining people's work more detailed than I've ever seen.
Also thankful that you mentioned that these work are "difficult" to understand for I certainly have a hard time to understand the narrative and quality of the photo and work. It reminds me of a question I've had for a while that some work requires knowledge of the artist, the history of that artist or philosophy of the person to then appreciate the art work.
I hope to try this kind of photo sequencing and building a narrative to learn first hand what it means.
Thank you
This Video just blew my mind. Thank you.
Amazing Alec, Love your course as well!! thank you for sharing your knowledge !!
Thanks for another amazing video Alec! I really enjoying this!
Love the way you teach Alec. Not just explaining or interpreting what’s readily apparent, but also bringing out the nuances in ways that enhance understanding and appreciation of photography. Would love to see you ramble about poetic time. And highly recommend your Magnum course, well worth it imho.
Thanks Craig
This has been by far the best lesson on photography I’ve ever had. The ideas and explaination are invaluable.
Thank you so much, all the way from Australia.
Thank you very much for this Alec ! It overwhelmed me with renewed juvenile enthusiasm for going out there taking pictures. It is not often that i can feel inspired like this especially with photography stuff. Your videos here and the Magnum video courses did the trick, so please continue ! (this is my first comment ever on YT after many lurking years. Sorry for the potato English just a not so well articulate frog leg eater here).
Juvenile enthusiasm! Love that!
These are such a treasure. Thank you, Alec.
Another fascinating talk. Thank you for doing this! It’s always amazing to see how important sequencing is, and to see how it’s used.
happy to come across this.
Super interesting! Please do more of these 🙏
Thanks again! Another interesting ramble... Given me food for thought on narrative and sequencing. Would love to see/hear more on sequencing...
I really appreciate this series. Fascinating and inspiring. Thank you
Love these videos, very cathartic. Please keep putting them out.
it's so great that you've decided to do this! thank you! :)
I so deeply appreciate this.
I came to know you through the Magnum video of your work with a loop of George Bush audio quotes... I must have watched that 25 times. Your work is some of my absolute favorite and I'm so glad to see you more present in the youtube space, your voice and perspective are SO needed and appreciated ❤
Thank you Jane
These talks have been super motivating !
Thanks for sharing your vast knowledge and for making these times a little better! ✨
This is fantastic Alec, really appreciate your way of presentation and the careful analysis you put into this. Keep them coming!
Thanks a lot for sharing these thoughts. This is one of the first videos I've seen on this channel and I'm definitively grabbed. To me, it opens up the possibilities of narration, but also redistributes the cards of the beautiful and the ugly. This is not about straight esthetics, but about the feeling and the mind. I think I will learn a lot here!
Thanks Alec for continuing with the series! I find your presentations to be an excellent addition and extension of your Magnum Learn course, which I enjoyed totally. Great bonus is that you’re making your point on the basis of the books to which most people don’t have access and which are highly regarded pieces of art. Really look forward to the future presentations and learning from an expert in the field. Cheers.
Thank you Pawel
Alec, this was really great. Thank you so much for yet another really interesting video. You have a gift for teaching!
Loving the videos! Thank you
Incredible to have your perspectives on other photographers' works available. Some of these concepts echo those in Scott McCloud's book 'Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art'. While it is obviously a very different medium, comic book artists utilise similar techniques, with 'flickering' moments integrated into a larger narrative context. Thank you for sharing.
I'm a huge fan of Understanding Comics. I think the section where he talks about the simplified circle face vs. nearly photographic faces is particularly useful for photographers.
@@AlecSothRUclips I’ve never read it from a photography perspective but I think I’ll have to go back to it now. That is interesting... it reminds me of the concept in your ‘Pictures and Words’ of how much we want the viewer to use their imagination and how much we want to explicitly show. Would love to hear your thoughts on that section. Thank you for your time and reply!
The portrait of the man under the bridge in a shimmer of possibility by Paul Graham that you were trying to figure out if it's a flicker of time has a small detail that gives it away. It's the car on bridge in the background. In the first photo the car is to his right, the second photo the car is to his left.
yes, others have noted, thanks
@@AlecSothRUclips Thank you for making these videos. They're wonderfully educational. Please keeping making them!
Thank you again, these are great. Please carry on! A semi-dayli visit to your library is amazing.
On the subject of the video, I love the idea of exploring time, and change in my own work. Although im at the oposite i guess to what you are talking about here, I enjoy photographing change that takes place on a longer slice than these instances, usually months, but some of my projects last years.
My friend and semi mentor in Iceland where im from, Einar falur, documents time, and has his focus on milenial time, photographing in the oldest civilisations like in Egipt and in Varanasi, along with contrasting it with his own experience of time mooving. I recomend looking at his work, its amazing.
Thank you again, look forward to the next one!
this is an amazing resource, thank you for sharing and being an inspiration!
thanks for this video, Alex! It resonated with me, was very curious to follow.