In a comment to the previous post, a reader said, “I think previsualization is a redundant word….visualization more than fulfills the thought.” I agree. Ansel called it just “visualization”, and that ought to be good enough, right?
Still, I keep using the redundant form. I do it consciously, in spite of an admittedly prissy attitude I have towards tautological constructions – wooden logs, Jewish rabbis, free gifts, and (a triple, or at least two and a half) general consenses of opinion. I have two reasons.
The first is bowing to convention to avoid confusion. Everybody I know calls it previsualization. I don’t know about other parts of the country, but on the central coast of California, if you say previsualization, you communicate not only Ansel’s definition of visualization, but also a whole host of connotations: a certain view of the craft of photography, a reverence for a long tradition, and a broad image-making ethos, that, like pornography, I’d be hard-pressed to define, but I sure know when I see it.
The second, less important, reason is respect for by one of the great photographic thinkers, Minor White, who coined and promoted the word.
Now that I’m stuck with the word, I think there’s a way to turn it into a benefit. Here’s how: when we talk about previsualization, we’re talking about visualization before something, in this case the instant of exposure. The prefix emphasizes that there’s a specific instant that separates the visualization that we’re discussing from any other visualization that contributes to the final image. Thus, “I’ll use a Wratten 15 (G) filter to make the sky this shade of gray,” is previsualization, and, “Those clouds are printing a little flat; I’ll dodge the sky during the main exposure and burn it back in with a number three and a half filter,” isn’t previsualization, although it is visualization.
So….if I read you correctly….previsualization, I your mind, is before taking the shot….and visualization is after the shot….
It’s an interesting piece of bologna slicing….but I think it is slicing it a bit too thin.
While I agree with the, almost universal, misusage of the term previsualization, I do not think that one can then distinguish the definition…. Or redefine visualization to after the shot.
John, that’s close to what I’m trying to say, but not bang on. I’m agreeing that you could you the standard definition of visualization to cover what takes place before tripping the shutter. You could also use it to cover what happens during the printing process in the darkroom: if I do this, then I visualize the print looking like that.
I’m also saying that Minor White’s definition of previsualization applies only to the visualization done before exposing the photosensitive material. Your objections to using the redundant construction are quite valid, but I’m going to keep on using it for the reasons stated.
Jim
I see from Wikipedia that White went further than I had known: “…Minor White… divided visualization into previsualization, referring to visualization while studying the subject; and postvisualization, referring to remembering the visualized image at printing time.”
I can live with those definitions, with the clarification that previsualization takes place before exposure.
Jim
I’m not saying Stieglitz, or anyone, copied or re-worded concepts already defined by others. The early 30s was an active time of discovery and innovation in photography and many of the leading photographers of that era were “on the same page” as it were. But, in my opinion the meaning of these terms (visualization, pre-visualization, equivalent), that the photographer selects an exposure based on a prior intent and appearance of the final print rather than creating the work after the exposure, are the same and are interchangeable in that context. Much later, pre-visualization did take on a similar, but different, meaning.