The unassuming magic
The view through the 50mm lens is, as we’ve established, basically the world in front of us, but a little more focused. A little tighter, a little like when we squint at something that catches our eye out of the whole “blooming buzzing confusion” of the world, to borrow that phrase from the pragmatist philosopher William James. The 50mm encourages us to focus, to narrow down, to pick and choose, and all this requires that we think. This is the whole magic, I think, the subtle, unassuming pedagogic power of the boring old 50mm.
This is all a little abstract, I think. Or at the very least vague. To concretize it a little bit a personal account is probably helpful:
As I noted earlier, when I find myself aesthetically confused I often default back to shooting a 50mm. In part because this is the focal length I’ve worked with most but also because that specific visual signature of the 50mm forces me to have to think more critically about what I’m photographing, and how I’m photographing. The slight telephoto of the 50 means I have to be selective, about subjects, about compositional decisions, about what I do or do not include in the frame. In short, I’m forced to really think about putting photographs together. Facing the buzzing confusion in front of me I am confronted with the necessity of choice. I can’t possibly include everything. The lens forces the need to narrow my focus and work intentionally. To some degree we could argue that one also has to do this with any lens, and we would be right (again, the pedagogy of every focal length), but the slight telephoto of the 50 forces our hand in a way that a wider lens doesn’t. It structurally excludes much of the world due to its given 45 degree field of view. We have no choice but to be thoughtful and selective.
At the same time the neutral perspective of the 50 means that I don’t have to think too much about perspective issues, distortion, compression, etc etc.. I don’t have to worry about straight lines looking weird if the camera isn’t held at the right angle, or things in the background looking weirdly distant in ways that they don’t to my eye. What I see in front of me is roughly how the image will look when translated by the optical rendering of a 50mm lens. This frees me up from having to put mental energy in to thinking about how certain aspects of the world in front of me will be warped or distorted by the camera’s specific translation of the scene. What I see is what I get, in a sense. The less I have to think about the more I’m able to remain focused on the deeper content of my images. Things like subject matter, narrative, symbolism etc can all stay in the front of my mind in order to further lean in to that focused and intentional approach that the 50 encourages. By the same token, I’m also not able to use tricks of perspective as a crutch to add “visual interest” to an otherwise mediocre image. The lens again forces me to have to work, to plumb the depths of my own vision.
So these two parts of the visual signature of the 50mm, a neutral perspective and a slight telephoto turn out to encourage us to photograph in a way that has much to teach about making images. It encourages focus, intentionality, thoughtfulness, by forcing us to have to buckle down and really think about how we are putting photographs together from out of the broader tapestry of our experience. This builds an approach to image making that is applicable to the whole craft, to our whole engagement with the photographic process regardless of whether we stay with the 50 or branch out from there. If this isn’t profoundly pedagogical I don’t know what is.
