ku # 514 ~ ugh

Vernal water • click to embiggenSorry for the late entry. It's been one of those days.

Spring is springing out in earnest. Grass is turning green. Buds are on the trees. The ground is turning soggy as everything has thawed. We even had a run of 80 degree days. All in all, it's quite pleasant. That despite the fact that, while I was in a meeting in Lake Placid this AM, a decent snowfall was happening.

Part of the reason that this was "one of those days" is the last minute hustle to get out a 200 page book to the printer - no, not a photo book, an Adirondack tourism piece. Next week is press proofing in Lancaster, PA. Any one out there in the neighborhood who might like to get together, drink some beer, and talk about equipment and stuff?

ku # 513 ~ see spot run

Hazy Spring view of Whiteface above the Au Sable • click to embiggenI recently read an interesting comment by the esteemed photography critic, A.D. Coleman, from a piece he wrote about Emmet Gowin:

Most photographers working within the snapshot aesthetic have gone the way of intentional incoherence, and have adopted the arrogance necessary to defend this posture. Emmet Gowin is one of the few who have accepted articulate communication as the obligation of the artist, and he has taken from the snapshot those qualities which increase the accessibility of his message rather than those which obfuscate it. (ed. emphasis added)

The idea of "articulate communication as the obligation of the artist" runs rather contrary to oft-voiced expression of, "I'm doing it for me. As long as it pleases me, I'm happy." - to which my response is simply, "That's nice." Apparently, this attitude is what Coleman refers to as "arrogance".

However, I hear that attitude much more as a response to a criticism, not of incoherence, but rather of a dumbed-down attempt at "pictured" coherence which is little more than an appeal to a base or simplistic emotion - a picture with high-impact visual appeal but with little or no intellectual / emotional content. I don't read this attitude as arrogance, rather, I see it as ignorance, or, perhaps more accurately, as a withering defense of a photographer's inability to create an "articulate" picture.

Personally, my preference in pictures runs towards the complexly articulate end of the spectrum. Although, as I have stated many times, I like pictures best when I can have it, at least to some significant extent, both ways - illustrative and illuminative.

A question for you - how "articulate" do you like your photography? By "your photography", I mean the photography that you make and the photography of others that you like.

ku # 512 ~ faking it

Scraggy pine at dusk • click to embiggenFYI, the "test" ends later today. So far, there are no exact answers.

However, there have been a few interesting remarks:

Markus Janousch asked; "Interesting. What is more "faked/staged": bringing the bucket into the kitchen, setting up a kitchen around a bucket in the garden or merging two pictures taken at different locations and times into one?"

Ron Tom stated; "The Joy is fake because anybody who chooses to impose creative limitations on an artistic medium doesn't really know how to experience Joy."

These remarks are definitely related. Ron's statement is pretty much on the mark - anyone is free to do whatever they want with a given medium - obviously, that includes "faking it" with photography. That freedom, of course, does not preclude anyone else from liking or disliking - and so stating - what an artist has created with his/her artistic freedom.

Markus' question, regarding different forms of artistic freedom - photography-wise, raises interesting questions. Ones that are much on the minds of many in the photo world. IMO, bringing an object into the kitchen or creating a kitchen set in the garden (much more ambitious than the aforementioned set up) are both tried and true still life techniques. A still life picture is traditionally thought of as a picture of a "staged" or "manufactured" arrangement of things. No one really questions the truth or realness of the pictured referents. There is nothing new at work here.

Merging two pictures taken at different locations and times into one, when the intent is to create a picture that would be the same as that created by the aforementioned traditional still life methodology, is, IMO, merely a modern still life methodology that differs from the traditional only by means of process. In other words, the resultant pictures looks exactly the same no matter how they were created and they all possess and project the same level of truth and realness.

However, that said, we all know that merging two pictures (or more) taken at different locations and times into one can create a picture which creates a 'new' reality simply because separately pictured elements can be merged in ways that defy or differ from the "real" - in the case of my decay pictures, I could photograph a rusted car and placed it on a plate on my kitchen counter and the result, if skillfully created, could be a new reality along the lines of Jerry Uelsmann.

Hmmmm ....

ku # 511 ~ Spring # 4

Monument Falls on the Au Sable • click to embiggenI haven't quite figured it out yet, but I have a growing unease(?) / dissatisfaction(?) / question mark (?) / something or other (?) with my "pure" ku picturing.

It seems that pure natural-landscape pictures aren't doing it for me right now. Without some sign of humankind as an element, the pictures seem somehow "incomplete" or "empty". Despite this, I am still "seeing" ku possibilities whenever I go out to picture but I think it will take a bit of continued picturing to sort this out.

Part of my uncertainty most likely can be explained by a comment made by Christof Hammann on my recent Pictue window - less is more entry; "I think Robert Frank, and I concur with him, laments the influence that this deluge of pictures has on the perception of everybody. Every single visual experience, be it direct or representational gets steadily devalued and diluted in intensity. This is physiologic adaptation at work."

In short, too many cameras and too many pictures leading to a visual information overload - in my case, too damn many natural-landscape pictures. They're everywhere, they're everywhere and the overwhelming bulk of them are rather uninteresting. I think that my angst, whatever it is, is a general feeling of a "it's all been said" kind of thing rather than a particular feeling about my own ku.

Maybe. I think. Or, maybe not. I just don't know. Any thoughts?

Then again, re: "it's all been said", every once in awhile amongst all the visual babble, some pictures of note emerge and capture my attention - check out Nature/Disorder pictures from Mary Dennis - and lift my spirits. While it may be true that it has all been said, it seems that there are still those who manage to see things that are well worth seeing.

Ku # 509/10 ~ Spring # 3

Spring # 3 • click to embiggenJust to lighten the mood a bit, here's another glimpse Spring.

While I was busy absorbing the delicate colors of the sea of emerging buds, the wife spied some delicate lace-like ice on the small stream. But, one of the most intense signs of Spring is the emergence of those signature Adirondack dark tannic-brown streams. They're still very cold but, nevertheless, a sure sign of warmer times to come.

It finally seems that Spring has come in earnest.

ku # 508 ~ Spring? #2

Spring? # 2 • click to embiggenAnother sign of Spring? from Friday's all-day snowfall.

To be honest, these pictures were created at the higher elevations of the villages of Lake Placid and Saranac Lake. Some of the lower elevations don't have quite as much snow on the ground, but that is not to say no snow. Far from it.

Even though I'm a Winter guy and love the snow, I'm ready to break out the golf clubs - we were playing golf last year at this time. James' memory about last Spring is correct - it was early and very Summer-like in fact.

In any event, there's no use complaining. I'm just taking it one day at a time.

ku # 507 ~ Spring?

Spring? • click to embiggenYesterday it snowed all day. Tonight's (March 29) forecast low is 8 degrees. Somehow it just doesn't look or feel like Spring.

While a late-March snowfall isn't uncommon in these here parts, what is exacerbating the problem, spring look and feel wise, is the 12-18 inches of hard frozen snow on the ground - the result of a 3 day ice storm a few weeks back. The ground cover is rock hard and has seemed impervious to melting - not that we've had many daytime highs above freezing.

There was one really cool thing about the ice storm - late one night during the event, Hugo and I went outside and rolled marbles across the frozen snow. They rolled for 20-30 yards before hitting something that brought them to a stop. Cool.

Update on Saturday, March 29, 2008 at 06:23PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: James wrote: "... while I enjoy your decay series Mark, I miss the unique beauty of "the ku". And while I understand the need for change, I hope you continue to return to this project from time to time."

my response: Thanks very much, James. FYI, I haven't abandoned ku by any means - amongst being very busy with work, scanning and posting my early 8×10 pictures, and some uninviting weather, I just haven't gotten out to picture recently. No need to worry, there's plenty more ku to come.

Picture window ~ less is more

Picture window with fruit • click to embiggenIn the Vanity Fair article about Robert Frank, he opined that, "There are too many images ... Too many cameras now. We’re all being watched. It gets sillier and sillier. As if all action is meaningful. Nothing is really all that special. It’s just life. If all moments are recorded, then nothing is beautiful and maybe photography isn’t an art anymore. Maybe it never was."

After which the article's author opined, "And maybe it is his fault. Who would believe that a hairy little man could take snapshots of nothing and make millions of dollars?"

Now, we all know that Frank was not taking "snapshots" but, in fact, his pictures do project the appearance of snapshots. That appearance is a big part of their power - the picture's haphazard casualness implies that finding and picturing so many Americans (28,000 photographs) who didn't fit the mold of the American Myth was not a difficult task. They were everywhere, rather commonplace, in fact. Which, as it turned out, was what really pissed off those who were clinging to the Myth.

But, that said, back to Frank's statement about "too many images, too many cameras". This not exactly a new sentiment. Much has been said on the subject and there is no denying that we live in a visual-media saturated world. Throw in the zillions of people with cameras, many of whom lay claim to the moniker of "photographer" and you'd have to be blind (literally) to not notice the overwhelming clutter of pictures - a Tower of Visual Babble, of sorts.

Sifting through the babble is nigh unto impossible. There's no denying that some of the cream still rises to the top but one has to wonder if the embarrassment of visual riches, when taken together with all the visual garbage, doesn't have a deadening, or at least numbing, effect on the senses.

I have been thinking about this notion for a while. My interest in it has intensified recently as I began to scan my 'old' 8×10 color negatives. What I have realized is that during my 8×10 heyday, which spanned 2-3 years, I made approximately 50 negatives. That's a total of 50, not 50 keepers. Aside - I'm quite pleased to say that, upon revisiting these 50 negatives some 25 years later, virtually all of them are keepers.

Compare that number to the over 600 digital-format ku keepers that I have amassed in just the last 5 years - not to mention the thousands of slight variations thereof (bracketing, 'working' the subject, etc.). Of course, this vast difference in 'output' is not totally attributable to digital. These days, I'm working less and enjoying it more, so to speak - I do have much more time to picture for myself now than I did then but ....

Working with an 8×10 view camera, much more so than even with a 4×5 vc, is a very deliberate thing. One must be much more selective in one's selecting if for no other reason than the time it takes, start to finish, to make a single exposure - everything from loading film holders, to setting the camera up, focusing and composing on the ground glass, and, in the case of many of my 8×10s made at dusk, long exposure times (up to 20 minutes). It's not an exaggeration to state that exposing a single sheet of film can take between 45-60 minutes.

That said, it's the being "selective in one's selecting' that I wonder about with digital. The ease of digital - everything from shooting to viewing the 'contacts' - encourages blazing away in manner that, well, discourages being "selective in one's selecting'.

Does this mean that the mere act of being picturing prolific diminishes the prospect of making good/great pictures? I don't think so. Does it mean that there will be more pictures than there might be if everything were still analog? Most certainly, yes. But, does that mean that 'pictures, pictures, everywhere' will cheapen photography as an Art form? I don't know, but I do suspect that that is the real question in all of this.

Wanna venture a shot at an answer?

PS - does the notion of "too many images" being raised by a man who made 28,000 of them in 3 years seems just a bit odd to you?