diptych # 111/ civilized ku # 2848 ~ it gives me something to do

Warhol Museum lobby ~ Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggen
fire extinguisher ~ • click to embiggen
Warhola Recycling ~ Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggenWhen in Pittsburgh, PA, one of our must-visit places is The Andy Warhol Museum (the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist), although, true be told, we don't always make it there. On our recent trip, we did make to the museum since the Cinemascapist wanted Hugo to see it.

I have always been a fan of a lot of Warhol's work, primarily his paintings and silkscreen works. His films give me a big yawn and a snooze (kinda like his Sleep movie) and his Velvet Underground (Warhol was their manager) music stuff, especially his Exploding Plastic Inevitable events, make me want to puncture my eardrums. I'm with Cher - who walked out midway through a Velvet Underground show - when she said, "It will replace nothing, except maybe suicide."

After this recent visit, I came away with overriding impression that if ever there was an artist who was pulling it out of his ass (making it up) as he went along, it was Warhol. Often, when asked why he did what he did, his reply was, "It gives me something to do." / "I just do art because I’m ugly and there’s nothing else for me to do." and "Art is what you can get away with." or "Art? That's a man's name." FYI, none of the preceding should be constructed as a negative comment, re: his art.

The thing I admire / like most about Warhol is that he believed that art is everywhere. In fact, he stated, "When you think about it, department stores are kind of like museums." A sentiment with which I totally agree.

Be all of that as it may, Hugo also got see Warhola (Warhol's name before he dropped the "a") Recycling, Andy's Nephew's junk business, located a few short blocks from the Warhol Museum. Andy's older brother was also in the junk business. Apparently, junk runs in family genes. All of which I find to be rather ironic inasmuch as many, both in and out of the art world, think Warhol's art is junk.

diptych # 110 ~ Art on a wall

pictures on walls ~ Warhol Museum • Pittsburgh, PA / dining room • Harrington Park, NJ • click to embiggenOn his website, Conscientious Photography Magazine, in a review of the book Tranquility, Jörg M. Colberg wrote:

The problem with photography is that regardless of whether you, the photographer, believe that what you point your camera at to make a picture is actually in it, large parts of your audience will do just that. Photography’s descriptiveness is its strength and its curse. People will see a photograph of a person as that person, or as a photograph of that person, even if what you’re interested in is something a lot more universal than that. In much the same fashion, a photograph of some place becomes that place, resulting in some people actually watching over whether certain places, let’s say Appalachia, is depicted in the proper way.

If photography wants to be a true art form it will have to engage in a world that at least acknowledges the fact that the visual description of whatever was in front of a camera lens .... does not in fact describe the actual topic. In other words, you can engage with Tranquility as photography, or as art that happens to use photography ... That said, if we accept that photography is – or maybe more realistically: can be – art, then we have to treat it as art – and not as merely photography. To somewhat loosely paraphrase David Campany, photography describes what is (or rather what was the moment the picture was taken), art (-photography) alludes to what could be or maybe should be.

To paraphrase Sigmund Freud (or so it is claimed), Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar which implies that at other times a cigar is something more than just a cigar. In essence, and with much fewer words, that just about sums up what Colberg was writing about. And, for the most part, I would agree with his idea that "if we accept that photography is ... art, then we have to treat it as art – and not as merely photography.

I also believe that Colberg is writing about an idea I have written about many times on this blog - that the best pictures are those which are both illustrative (depicting a reality-based referent) and illuminative (implying something - Colberg's topic - beyond that which the pictured referent describes). IMO, when a picture evinces both qualities, what you end up with is art that happens to use photography. That is to write, Fine Art as opposed to Decorative Art.

However, that written, when it comes to grasping the implied in a picture, the door to interpretation / understanding is wide open inasmuch as many, if not most, viewers of a picture take it at face value with little thought given to what else it might be about. And therein lies the dilemma.

Consider this from Ansel Adams:

We don't make a photograph just with a camera, we bring to the act of photography all the books we have read, the movies we have seen, the music we have heard, the people we have loved.

Adams, of course, was referring to the making of a picture. However, I would apply the same notion to viewing a picture - when viewing a photograph, we bring to the act of viewing all the books we have read, the movies we have seen, the music we have heard, the people we have loved.

Or, as has it been suggested (on this blog and elsewhere), the making and the viewing of a picture is a two-way street - traveled on by the maker and the viewer. Unfortunately, no matter how broad and rich / involved the boulevard that the maker may have traveled down, if a viewer has only traveled down a narrow, vapid and one-way alley, there is most likely apt to be a considerable disparity between the grasped and the intended / implied meaning (topic) to be found in a picture ...

.... a cigar will forever be just a cigar and a picture will be just a picture.

diptych (selection) # 17-18 ~ reality

under a bridge # 1 ~ Strip District / Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggen
under a bridge # 2 ~ Strip District / Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggenParaphrasing Richard Avedon:

The pictures have a reality for me that the people pictured referents don’t. It is through the photographs that I know them. ~ Richard Avedon

diptych # 109 / civilized ku # 2847 ~ you can get anything you want ....

fried rice ~ Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggen
Pittsburgh sports ~ Strip District / Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggenHome to meat, produce, seafood vendors, sidewalk food vendors, bakeries, restaurants, bars, clubs, sports memorabilia vendors (indoors and out) and more, Pittsburgh's Strip District is draws crowds day and night and in all kinds of weather..

civilized ku # 2846 / diptych # 108 ~ protect the camera

girder ~ Strip District / Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggen
under bridges ~ Strip District / Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggenThe Pittsburgh metropolitan area - Pittsburgh is known as the City of Bridges - more than 4,000 bridges (reputably more bridges than in Venice, Italy), a great opportunity for a picture making project. I wish I had more time to pursue it.

Unfortunately for the people who travel on them, at least 20 percent of the bridges are structurally deficient, including one of the city's main arteries. That bridge has a large structure built under it to catch any of the falling concrete so it won't hit the traffic underneath it.

So, were I to pursue a Pittsburgh-based bridge picture making project, it would seem that having a hardhat / protective gear would be as important as having a camera.

civilized ku # 2844-45 ~ coasting

buildings ~ Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggen
backyard ~ Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggenHaven't really gotten into and urbanism picture making frame of mind at this point inasmuch as I'm just picking low hanging fruit, picture making wise. Heading out today to see if I can get in the groove.

diptych # 107 ~ suburbanism / urbanism

fake / real ~ Harrington Park, NJ / Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggen
Thunderbird Cafe ~ Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggenSince Saturday last, the wife and I have been moving about the planet. specifically the NE of the good ol' US of A. After a day in north Jersey and a day in south Jersey, we are currently squatting in Pittsburgh PA where we will be for the remainder of the week.

The trip is mix of a little bit of business and a lot of pleasure - Thanksgiving with family and friends, hockey games with family and friends (in person and broadcast), and all around just hanging out. There will be plenty of time for picture making with an emphasis on urban referents, something I don't normally have a lot of opportunity to picture.

Looking forward to it and I'll be posting entries of some results thereof.

diptych (selection) # 8-13 ~ fabricating camera angles

bridge and bramble ~ Plattsburgh, NY • click to embiggen
late Autumn color ~ Lake Placid, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
Vermont view ~ Lewis, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
steeple ~ Pittsford, NY • click to embiggen
shed / vine ~ Whalenberg, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
motorcycle / house ~ Glens Falls, NY • click to embiggen

There is a lot of talk about camera angles; but the only valid angles in existence are the angles of the geometry of composition and not the ones fabricated by the photographer who falls flat on his stomach or performs other antics to procure his effects. - Henri Cartier-Bresson

I am continuing along the merry road of my diptych (selection)* project, which is essentially a multiple choice exercise in the "... recognition, in real life, of a rhythm of surfaces, lines, and values" (Henri Cartier-Bresson) - as is all of my picture making. That written, as I make my multiple choice selections, I am also holding true to my continuing picture making habit of not fabricating angles by means of physical gymnastics.

That is to write, 92.5-94.9% of all of my picture making has been performed by lifting a camera to my eye while standing fully upright.

The primary reason for that habit is really quite simple - I picture what I see and, for the most part, I see, picture making wise, standing upright. The other 5.1-7.5% of the time, picture making wise, I make pictures at eye level, albeit that that level might be while sitting or horizontally reclining.

In any event, it is safe and accurate to write that, when a referent pricks my eye and sensibilities, I picture it in the exact same body posture I was in when I first noticed it.

*FYI For those who haven't read it, the work-in-progress Artist Statement is HERE