man & nature # 119 ~ more from a rainy Spring day

Asgaard Farm ~ Au Sable Forks, NY • click to embiggenAsgaard Farm is the former home, farm, and studio of Rockwell Kent.

ku # 563/64 ~ what really matters

Blue sky reflection and tree stump • click to embiggenIn the next week or so I hope to visit NYC to see a photo exhibit at MOMA - Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West. The exhibit is comprised of 150 pictures (dating from 1850 to 2008) by 70 photographers that, according to one review - Mythic West of Dreams and Nightmares, "evokes that tension between myth and reality" regarding the American West.

The reviewer, Ken Johnson, opines that the exhibit:

... ultimately presents an all-too-predictably bleak view of America’s realization of its Manifest Destiny ... [W]hile photographers paved the way psychologically for transcontinental expansion in the 19th century, 20th-century modernists like Minor White and Ansel Adams helped to shape a new romantic poetry for an intensely industrialized society ... [A]fter World War II, however, that picture could no longer be sustained. It became a cliché for the tourism and real estate industries ... [F]or landscape photographers of the 1960s and later the West became a place where despoiling by industry and commerce could be revealed at its most unvarnished ...

As many of you already know, there is little if anything in that synopsis regarding the historic trajectory of landscape photography with which I would disagree.

I also tend to agree with Johnson's assessment regarding the "all-too-predictably bleak view of America’s realization of its Manifest Destiny" as depicted by "landscape photographers of the 1960s and later". The then (1960-1975) cliche-breaking work of photographers working under the banner of New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape has been continually practiced / emulated to this day and, in the process, become a bit of a cliche in its own right.

IMO, it should be stated (as a sort of withering defense) that the cliche is sustained and somewhat justified in as much as the continued (and really f**ked up) attempt to implement the American realization of its "Manifest Destiny" provides far too many "New Topographics" picture making opportunities. To ignore those opportunities and retreat into flights of landscape fantasy does not do justice to the medium's capabilities / possibilities re: truth and the real. Nor, for that matter, does it contribute in any meaningful way to our current notion of reinventing the American Dream - re: change we can believe in / hope.

That said, Johnson asks questions and, in doing so, presents a challenge of sorts:

Why does the exhibition project such a dim vision? Is it impossible for serious contemporary photography to see something better? Is failure and disappointment the real, unavoidable story? Or is it another myth, a paradoxically reassuring narrative to which many high-minded people now unthinkingly accede? If so, what would be the alternative? That could be an unknown worth exploring.

These questions/challenges have been on my mind for quite a while. Check out urban ku # 49 ~ a new place for some of my thoughts on the matter (dating back a couple of years) - and be sure to notice how I used the word "hope" long before that guy sitting in the White House did as well as an early example of a stutter step diptych.

Now, I could wax poetic and acerbic for days on end regarding how I believe that my pictures are an outstanding example of what is "worth exploring" as an alternative to the "dim vision" of "contemporary photography" but, not wanting to fall into the trap of making "sanctimonious declarations" that imply that I have "a higher calling" or that I am " blessed with divine insight", I will cite the work of Mary Dennis - a picture maker whose eye, IMO, is looking in all the "right places" for a new sense of hope.

Specifically, check out Mary's Display / Nature/Discordant / Scenic 1 & 2 / Road folders.

IMO, and in spite of its surface appearances which evince a nod towards more traditional pictorial / romantic methods of presentation with her use of color/contrast/saturation (however true and/or accurate they seem to be), that work avoids descending into "sappy sentimentality" and camera-club cliche. I have the distinct sense that Mary addresses her referent(s) with a genuine feeling of respect that "preserves its authenticity but still allows the photography-observer to move well beyond the 'actuality of the real world'".

In viewing her pictures - most of which are of the commonplace, I am never left with the impression that she is attempting to raise up the notion of despair but rather that she has a sense that all is not lost if we can only look in "the right places" - the very "authentic" ones she is showing us - in order to remember / relearn what really matters.

Or, if the phrase "what really matters" upsets your relativistic-sense apple cart - the idea that "what really matters" is, well, relativistic in nature, then how about this - she illustrates and illuminates a sense that all is not lost and if we can only look at the overlooked and learn/see what it has to teach us, the world just might be a better place.

And, IMO, although Mary's pictures address many of the same referents typical of New Topographic pictures, her work rejects, or does not fully embrace, the world-weary cynicism that is one of the so-called hallmarks of New Topographics style pictures. She pictures as if what she pictures really matters in and of itself, as opposed to just what it might signify - although, IMO, if you look at it "with your head at a certain angle" (thanks for that one, Gordon). it signifies much worth considering.

The only problem with Mary's work (and that of quite a few others) is that it has yet to be discovered by the Art World, Photography Division. IMO, that is simply because that world is still held captive to the academic lunatic fringe and their gallery/museum minions who prize the connoted - the more obtuse / self-referential / convoluted, the better - over the actuality of the denoted.

ku # 563/64 ~ stutter-steps in time: the decisive moment - what moment was that?

A tangle of bare branches • click to embiggenYou may have noticed that I have recently been playing with diptychs. This is nothing new for me - on and off, I have been "playing" with diptychs and triptychs for quite some time.

In the past, most of my whatever-tychs have been comprised of related but distinctly different pictures - more of a story / sequence about a place/thing. The related pictures might have been made over an extended period of time - up to an hour or more of an "in depth" exploration of a place/thing. IMO, the resultant whatever-tychs evidence a sense of "looking around" a place/thing.

The most recent diptychs differ from the previous efforts in that they are created from nearly identical pictures that have been made just seconds apart which, IMO, creates a sense of quick "glimpses" rather than "in depth" looking. And, in keeping with my snapshot aesthetic, creating / fostering the sense of seemingly quick, spontaneous, and thoughtless "glimpses" is what I am after.

However, I am also seeking to make pictures that deal with an expanded sense of time beyond that of a "normal" picture which, as we all know, "freezes" a given moment in time. In a real sense, a single picture stops time in its tracks, potentially preserving / isolating it for all time (one of the mediums inherent characteristics). My intent is quite simply to remind the viewer that time moves on.

That said, I am also screwing with the time-honored photographic notion of the decisive moment - a notion that has been alternately interpreted to mean 1) that moment when the essential activity/motion in a scene is "ideal" or 2) that moment when all of the elements in flux in a scene come together in a pleasing compositional arrangement.

Generally speaking, I subscribe to neither interpretation. For that matter, I do not particularly subscribe to the notion of the decisive moment at all. IMO, whatever you choose to picture, whenever you choose to picture, elevates that moment to a "decisive" moment. Hence, my anti-single-moment decisive moments - quite perplexing, right?.

In any event, this notion of anti-decisive-moment diptychs is a notion that's gaining a lot of traction with me at the moment (ha, ha, ha, get it?). IMO, it is another key element in my snapshot aesthetic whereby I have been attempting to create, in the minds of the viewers of my pictures, a sense of beauty-beauty-everywhere - all-you-have-to-do-is-just-look.

For the photographers in the viewing crowd, there is another message / meaning to be found in my pictures - if you can just get over the idea of the "perfect" picture (the "perfect" light, "perfect" composition, "perfect"/iconic subject matter, the "right" camera, the "right" lens, the "right" filter, et al), there are pictures to be found just about anywhere, at any time, at any place you happen to be.

As Minor White stated:

Vision without association - pristine vision.

And, while you're at it, consider this regarding "snapshots" from Duane Michals -

Because of my involvement with my photographs, it is difficult for me really to see them objectively. Talking about them is like talking about myself. The only real idea that I have about them is that they are essentially snapshots. For snapshots, I feel, often have an inherent simplicity and directness that I find beautiful. The roots of my photographs are in this tradition.

However, I think that the photographer must completely control his picture and bring to it all his personality, and in this area most photographs never transcend being just snapshots. When a great photographer does infuse the snapshot with his personality and vision, it can be transformed into something truly moving and beautiful.

FYI, I would be sorrily remiss if I did not give a tip of the hat regarding my notion of stutter-steps in time to Mary Dennis who, a few years ago, was herself briefly (to the best of my knowledge) playing with diptychs made with nearly identical pictures made only seconds apart. There is currently no evidence of that work on her website so I don't know whether or not she gave up the ghost with that stuff. If she has, more's the pity but, one way or the other, moment to moment, I'll carry on.

Update on Thursday, March 26, 2009 at 12:19PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Mary Dennis wrote: "The ghost is always lurking Mark. I think that time, its passage (in chunks big and small) and how it swallows everything is always present in my mind as I photograph. The diptych and triptych are a perfect format for illustrating that passage aren't they? I've always likened them to a sentence where a single photo feels more like a phrase or a dangling participle sometimes."

ku # 561/62 ~ avoiding the label of "fartster"

Fallen log with moss and weeds • click to embiggenIt's a bit odd that of all of the photographers who have a had an influence on how I see the world (and there any many), two - with whom my picturing drives and desires most closely match, Minor White and Duane Michals - are conspicuously absent from my photo book collection. For whatever reason, no explanation for that oversight comes readily to mind.

Lots of words have been spilled on paper and screen describing and dissecting the work of White and Michals but, to keep it simple, it is reasonable and accurate to state that their picturing activities were/are concerned with making pictures that are not considered just "mere" documentation but, rather, with making pictures that explored/explore mysteries and questions surrounding the human condition.

Minor White was much given to doing so by pursuing Alfred Steiglitz' notion of equivalents - pictures wherein the photographer -

...recognized an object or series of forms that, when photographed, would yield an image with specific suggestive powers that can direct the viewer into a specific and known feeling, state, or place within himself. ~ Minor White ~ Equivalence: The Perennial Trend

Duane Michals, while not exactly a devotee of the idea of equivalents, nevertheless stated:

I don't want to catalog images. I want to get into something that I can't truly describe. I might fail in the process, but it's where true creativity is born.

Whatever their similarities re: intent, White and Michals created/create their respective meanings / questions / suggestions by picturing (for the most part) very different subject matter. White most often pictured places and things whereas Michals concentrated (and still does) almost exclusively on making pictures of people - most often multiple pictures presented as sequential narratives.

Those differences aside, what White / Michals was/is interested in was/is picturing something that can not be photographed - feelings and thoughts. As White stated -

When a photographer presents us with what to him is an Equivalent, he is telling us in effect, "I had a feeling about something and here is my metaphor of that feeling." ... [T]he power of the equivalent, so far as the expressive-creative photographer is concerned, lies in the fact that he can convey and evoke feelings about things and situations and events which for some reason or other are not or can not be photographed. The secret, the catch and the power lies in being able to use the forms and shapes of objects in front of the camera for their expressive-evocative qualities. Or to say this in another way, in practice Equivalency is the ability to use the visual world as the plastic material for the photographer's expressive purposes.~ Equivalence: The Perennial Trend

And, therein, lies my connection to them and their work.

While I strive mightily to make pictures that are, on the 2-dimensional surface of the print, very illustrative, I also strive just as vigorously to make pictures that are very illuminative with regard to things that can not be photographed. Things such as "what it means to be human", or, "being in the moment", or ....

I do that because (as Michals stated) -

If you look at a photograph, and you think, 'My isn't that a beautiful photograph,' and you go on to the next one, or 'Isn't that nice light?' so what? I mean what does it do to you or what's the real value in the long run? What do you walk away from it with? I mean, I'd much rather show you a photograph that makes demands on you, that you might become involved in on your own terms or be perplexed by.

I want to make pictures that "makes demands" on the viewer so that they might "get involved on their own terms" precisely because they are "perplexed". I place deliberate emphasis upon being "perplexed" because being perplexed, when viewing photographs that I did not understand, was the very reason that drove me to explore the notion of getting beyond the camera-club obvious scheme of things when it comes to making pictures.

Those pictures made demands upon me - I had to think about them, not just look at them. I really wanted to know what the hell the point of the pictures was. Why the hell had the photographer (FYI, Michals considers himself "the artist formally known as a photographer") made them? What the hell was the picture maker trying to say / trying to tell me? What the hell was I missing?

At the time, the only thing that was obvious to me was that the pictures had to be about something more than what they visually depicted
Eggleston's Tricycle • click to embiggenbecause .. well ... to state the obvious, most of what was visually depicted did not exactly conform to time-honored subjects that were most frequently considered to be suitable subjects for picture making. I mean there must be something more than what is visually depicted that makes a picture of a tricycle worth $250,000.00, right?

In any event, the sensation of being perplexed incited in me a desire to explore, investigate, research, and hopefully learn more about the medium of photography and its picture making possibilities. And, I thank my lucky starts for that opportunity since it prevented me from becoming a fartster -

Michals is outspoken in his criticism of the current superstars of the photography world and has a particular lack of regard for fashion photography. He has gone so far as to come up with a term, 'fartster,' (first introduced in his article "Dr. Duane's Infernal Tongue and Cheeky Journal," published in the magazine 21) to describe "one who confuses fashion with art..." The word, both ridiculous and biting, plays with the idea that society has been transfixed for too long with the shallow pretenses of celebrity and personality. "Herb Ritts is a fartster, the Boston Museum is a fartster. ~ James A. Cotter, from his article on Duane Michals

I just knew that there was something more than what was visually depicted that I liked about Duane Michals.

ku # 559 ~ get real

Natural things that emerge from under the snow • click to embiggenMost often when photogs make pictures of patterns in the natural world - usually in the form of a "close up" - those pictures are described as abstracts or some other phrase that includes a variation on the word "abstract".

This labeling practice has always struck me as rather odd because, other than as reference to the medium of painting - specifically, Abstract Painting - there is nothing "abstract" about the pictures at all. After all, unless some extreme technique has been employed in a picture's making, it is, first and foremost, on its 2-dimensional surface a picture of a real, not an abstract, thing.

This labeling notion was on my mind relative to yesterday's picture while I was both making it and processing it. The same notion rose again to the fore this AM when I came across an online article titled, Seeing Like a Painter. The piece was not published for painters but rather it was written by a photographer for the photography audience. The photog in question is often called "one of the world's foremost nature and wildlife photographers" (or words to that effect) and is currently offering workshops ($4,000 a person) that attempt to "effect a transformation in the way photographers see, to revolutionize their approach to shooting".

In order to achieve that "transformation", advice such as this is offered:

When the positive and negatives spaces become co-equal in your imagination as you compose the shot, you have seized control as an artist and are not merely grabbing images but creating them. You are thinking in terms of form and line, not of things ... once you begin to study the compositions of the masters, you will see opportunities in the real world, where blurred antelopes become brushstrokes, a foggy ridge becomes a Sumi painting, or leaves blowing in a snowstorm are a Seurat come to life.

Oh, boy. Scratch my back with a hacksaw. Just what the medium of photography needs - another "master" leading people astray - if you want to be a good photographer, study painting.

Doesn't this "master" know that, since its inception, the medium of photography has struggled to be considered as Art primarily because it was considered to be inferior to that other 2-dimensional medium called "painting" - in a nutshell, because it was considered as an anybody-can-do-it, you-push-the-button-we-do-the-rest entertainment for the masses? Or as this "guru" states, "merely grabbing images".

Doesn't this "master" know that, in its early years, the medium tried to gain admittance to the World of Art by applying a wide range of "artistic" effects (AKA, painterly effects) to photographs? And that that movement basically prevented the medium from gaining its own medium-specific identity which only came about when photogs started emphasizing the medium's unique relationship to and with the world of the real (real "things")?

Apparently not. As is evidenced by the notion that real things should become "brushstrokes" and that real things should also become "a Sumi painting" or a "Seurat". Not to mention the idea that you should think about "line and form" and not the about the "thing" you are picturing.

Now, if I were to conduct a workshop titled How To Kill Your Native Creativity By Building Nearly Impenetrable Walls Between You and Your Subject, I would also add to that what-to-think-about advice the idea of thinking about anything and everything technique and gear oriented. You know, heap on as any things as possible that might divert your attention from the object/subject of your eye's and camera's gaze - put as much stuff as possible between you and the "thing".

Yep. Sure thing. That's the ticket to "seizing control as an artist" in the medium of photography.

When I think about the medium of photography and its many possibilities, I tend to think along these lines:

The cumulative effect of one hundred and thirty years of man’s participation in the process of running amuck with cameras was the discovery that there was amazing amount of significance, historical and otherwise, in a great many things that no one had ever seen until snapshots began forcing people to see them. - John Kouwenhoven

For me, there are 2 operative notions in that statement; 1) the idea of "snapshots", that is to say, pictures that are or appear to be casually created and composed. A characteristic that gives "easy access" to viewing a picture as opposed to having to get past the initial impression of technical virtuosity, and, 2) the idea of "forcing people to see them" - I am all for the idea of "forcing" (via the notion of "easy access") people to see the "significance ... in a great many things that no one had ever seen", but if you want someone to see the significance of something that is real, I don't see how turning a photograph into something resembling a painting helps in any fashion.

No, when it comes to dancing with the partner you brought to the dance, I enjoy dancing with the unique-amongst-the-visual-arts characteristic that the medium of photography brings to the Arts Dance - its inherent and inimitable relationship to/with the real.

ku # 558 ~ interesting melting ice patterns

Melting ice on river rocks ~ Saranac River • click to embiggen

A photograph draws its beauty from the truth with which it is marked. For this very reason I refuse all the tricks of the trade and professional virtuosity which could make me betray my canon. As soon as I find a subject which interests me, I leave it to the lens to record truthfully. - Andre Kertesz

ku # 557 ~ and they taste good too

Where we get our beef • click to embiggenThis past weekend was delightful. On Saturday it was shirtsleeve weather and Hugo and I got out and about to do a picture project - Things That Emerge From Under the Snow.

The idea was inspired by Saturday's Coming to the surface picture which was made Saturday morning as a one-off picture. However, after processing it, I realized that with a spring-like melt going on there was probably a lot of stuff coming to the surface. So, off we went and in the span of about 2 hours we found a veritable gold mine of things that were coming to (or at) the surface.

It occurred to me as I was picturing away that I was accomplishing exactly what you are not suppose to do for the SoFoBoMo project - I was making enough pictures in an afternoon to make a photo book.

And here's the thing about that - it sure seemed on Saturday that picturing things that were coming to surface was going to be limited to an afternoon. The snow was disappearing fast and later that day, and all through the night, it rained steadily. By Sunday morning, virtually all the snow was gone except for those gargantuan piles of plowed snow.

The point of the matter is that given a little inspiration and a window of opportunity it really doesn't take very long - an afternoon will do - to create an interesting (IMO) mini-body of work that is photo book worthy. It made me think that it would fun to organize a SoFoBoDa project.

In any event, I am currently processing about 20-25 pictures of things coming to (or at) the surface. I start posting them tomorrow. That said, as I sit here at my computer we're getting about 5" of new snow ....

FYI, on Sunday we took Hugo up to the farm for a barnyard stroll and to pick up a 1/4 of a cow - a portion of which we had for Sunday dinner.

ku # 556 ~ sharp focus

Sunset light on birch and mountain • click to embiggenI must confess that I haven't felt much like writing about things photography for the past couple of weeks. The primary reason for that (as far as I can surmise) is a preoccupation with what seems like the major world events of my lifetime - this fine mess that we find ourselves in. Although, I am also quite busy with a couple large client projects as well.

Nevertheless, writing about things photography seem just a bit beside the point right now. Picturing does not - I am making pictures at about my normal pace although that activity currently seems to lack a bit of focus.

Maybe what I need to do is create my own SoFoBoMo project in order to shake out the cobwebs or whatever the fog is that seems to be enveloping me. Something completely new and different from what I've been doing. Maybe something that involves pictures of people. I am actually rather good at that and I haven't done anything that focuses on people in a long time.

Maybe it's time to haul out the studio strobe equipment and get to work.