diptych # 77 ~ the possession of a camera can inspire something akin to lust

lid with coffee / onions in bowl ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

... the need to photograph everything lies in the very logic of consumption itself. To consume means to burn, to use up - and, therefore the need to be replenished. As we make images and consume them, we need still more images: and still more ... the possession of a camera can inspire something akin to lust. And like all credible forms of lust, it cannot be satisfied: first, because the possibilities of photography are infinite; and, second, because the project is finally self-devouring ... Our oppressive sense of the transience of everything is more acute since the camera gave us the means to "fix" the fleeting moment. we consume images at an ever faster rate and, as Balzac suspected cameras used up layers of the body, images consume reality. Cameras are the antidote and the disease, a means of appropriating reality and a means of making it obsolete. ~ Susan Sontag - The Image World

OK then. While I will buy into the idea that we live in image saturated world, the idea that we live in an image world, a world where reality has been appropriated and made obsolete - via the machine which makes them - by images / imagery, not so much.

Sure, innumerable humans spend significant time playing in a make believe world of images, aka: video games. However, I am not accquainted with anyone who has taken up permanent residence therein or, for that matter, believe that those image worlds are actually real (insane or mental ill excepted). Reality based, perhaps. Realistic, perhaps. Real, not so much.

And, most certainly, in a vast social media world, one which is largely image based, numbers of people beyond measure view billions of pictures everyday - facebook alone admits to 6 billion uploaded / posted pictures a month = 2 billion a day. But to claim that people are consuming those pictures, as in burning them up (destroying), is bit of a stretch. The idea of consuming them, as in absorbing or being engrossed in, can fly with me. And so can the idea that those "consumers" want / have a desire for those images to replenished on a regular, if not hourly, schedule.

But again, that still begs the question, how many of those "consumers" consider those images to be their reality, one in which they reside? Representations of reality, certainly. Living vicariously for a moment or two, certainly. Permanent residence therein, not so much (previous exceptions noted) - but all the gods of heaven and earth help them if they do.

All of that noted, Sontag's point, re: camera possession inspires ... lust (I assume a lust for making pictures) .... if one defines lust as an overpowering desire or craving for making pictures, I find the notion less than credible (compulsive-obsessive disorder excepted). If one defines it as ardent enthusiasm / zest for making pictures, I believe, without reservation, that usage of the word would accurately describe most serious picture makers, myself included.

My ardent enthusiasm / zest for making pictures most likely floats / swims around in the deep end of the pool. Not many days pass during which I do not make a picture. On some days I make many pictures (today's diptych pictures as an example). That written, I do not have an overpowering desire / craving to make those pictures. Far from it - I do not climb out of bed in morning, my aged skeleton emitting creaking and cracking noises, craving to make a picture. The thought of making a picture only occurs to me when my eye and sensibilities see / encounter a picture making opportunity.

And, I can write, with absolute conviction and belief, that the results of those picture making activities in no way replace, diminish, or otherwise compete with my participation in and utter appreciation for living in the real world of actual experiences. That world has not been made "obsolete".

In fact, making pictures, makes me very aware of what's going on all around me, more attuned to the world than I might otherwise be. And, I never let the act of making a picture interfere with the participation in and enjoyment of the moment. I can also unreservedly write that my pictures of life being lived add considerably to my appreciation of life being lived. So, my picture making endeavors, instead of being "self-devouring", are actually quite self-reinforcing, re: a life well lived and well appreciated.

If that's lust, I say, "Bring it on."

diptych # 76 ~ appearances

sink / kitchen counter ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK / Phonecia, NY - in the Catskill PARK • click to embiggen

Freed from the necessity of having to make narrow choices (as painters did) about what images were worth contemplating, because of the rapidity with which cameras recorded anything, photographers made seeing into a new kind of project: as if seeing itself, pursued with sufficient avidity and single-mindedness, could indeed reconcile the claims of truth and the need to find the world beautiful. Once an object of wonder because of its capacity to render faithfully as well as despised at first for its base accuracy, the camera has ended by effecting a tremendous promotion of the value of appearances. Appearances as the camera records them. ~ Susan Sontag - The Heroism of Vision

It would seem, to my mind and sensibilities, that Sontag's consecutive use of the word "appearances" is meant to imply both meanings of that word:

1. the way that someone or something looks.
2. an impression given by someone or something, although this may be misleading.

In essence, that dual-meaning usage succinctly and word-frugally entraps the modernist era debate (and beyond), re: the medium's claim to truth - does/can the medium's capability of rendering reality* realistically also convey truth (or, at the very least, a truth)?

I come at that debate from the school of thought that the medium's inherent / intrinsic characteristic as a cohort of/with the real is; a. what distinguishes it from other visual arts, and, b. what enables a practitioner thereof to make images which represent the appearance of the real which are quite true to that reality. And, in addition to a picture's visual true-ness to that which is illustrated (the referent), that same picture can also convey / illuminate (the implied) a truth (meaning) which transcends the pictures visual truth.

The fact that a picture can also lie / be untruthful / misleading through deceptive - sometimes called "creative" - visual techniques and tricks is somewhat beside the point. Spoken/written words can be truthful, spoken/written words can be untruthful. The existence of neither word-state negates the existence of the other.

In any event, in my picture making endeavors I am drawn to the appearance of things as they are and, in the making of my pictures, I attempt to create visual representations which speak to the truth of what is.

* please park your dance-on-the-head-of-pin notions of reality where the sun don't shine.

diptych # 75 ~ diner breakfast / 2 views

Breakfast views ~ Phonecia, NY - in the Catskill PARK • click to embiggenA picture is worth a thousands words, even if they are the same 2 words over and over again.

diptych # 74 ~ some stuff / on safari

green bottle / floor sweepings ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK / Chaffey's Lock, CA • click to embiggenre: my green bottle / floor sweepings diptych:

Nobody ever discovered ugliness through photographs. But many, through photographs, have discovered beauty ... what motivates people to take photographs is finding something beautiful ... Nobody exclaims, "Isn't that ugly.! I must take a photograph of it." Even if someone did say that, all it would mean is: "I find that ugly thing ... beautiful." ~ Susan Sontag from her essay, The Heroism of Vision

In her essay, The Heroism of Vision - one of her better essays, re: photography - Susan Sontag got a lot right (IMO) about the medium of photography and its apparatus*:

There is a particular heroism abroad in the world since the invention of cameras: the heroism of vision. Photography opened up a new model of freelance activity - allowing each person to display a certain unique, avid sensibility. Photographers departed on their cultural and class and scientific safaris, searching for striking images. They would entrap the world, whatever the cost in patience and discomfort, by this active, acquisitive, evaluating, gratuitous modality of vision. Alfred Stieglitz proudly reports that he had stood three hours during a blizzard on February 22, 1893, "awaiting the proper moment" to take his celebrated picture, Fifth Avenue, Winter. The proper moment is when one can see things (especially what everyone has already seen) in a fresh way.

While I don't necessarily agree with every point Sontag makes in this particular essay, there is much to agree with (like the preceding excerpts). And even with those ideas and notions which seem a bit over the top / a bit of a stretch, there is, at the very least, considerable food for thought.

*apparatus = conventions, vernacular, and traditions - not gear)

diptych # 73 ~ the art of war / what the camera cannot interpret

Canadian War Museum ~ Ottawa, CA • click to embiggenWWI war painter
war paintings / Canadian War Museum Collection ~ Ottawa, CA • click to embiggenWWI war photographer
war photographs • click to embiggenLast week on a rainy day, while in the Rideau Lakes Region, the wife and I took Hugo (his 2nd visit) and his friend to the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. If ever there was a place for 2 nine year olds to be on a rainy day, the CNWM is it.

I was quite impressed by the few war paintings on exhibit in the museum. Little did I know, until I reached the museum gift shop, that the handful of paintings I viewed were barely a drop in the bucket from the 13,000+ war paintings in the museum's collection. It was in the gift shop that I came across (and purchased) a book, Canvas of War, an overview of the museum's collection, albeit a 110 painting drop in the bucket. And, the artwork depicted therein, is, in a word, amazing - a diverse range of painting styles / genres and mediums.

That written, what surprised, amazed, and somewhat befuddled me was the fact that the genesis of the collection stems from two Canadian enterprises - in WWI, the Canadian War Memorial Fund and, in WWII, the Canadian War Records program - which commissioned (CWMF) and hired (CWR) artists to record Canada's wartime contribution on land, at sea, in the air, and on the homefront in paintings. Artists who were sent to the battle front / theaters of war in order to create from firsthand personal experience, as opposed to from combatant's memories and recounting, images of war.

Now, for all I know, those enterprises may have also commissioned / hired photographers to accomplish the same ends, But I think not, given that the aim of the enterprises was stated as to create what "the camera cannot interpret."

It would be easy for me to go all postal, verbal wise, over the camera cannot interpret thing but, in fact, that notion was part and parcel of the then prevailing wisdom of the art world - the camera records, the brush interprets / painters are artists, photographers are cameramen. So, it would be foolish to go off halfcocked over a previous art generation's failure to understand and appreciate the camera's ability to interpret.

In any event, I questioned whether the medium of photography had the means, hardware wise, to produce "quality" pictures in and of a wartime environment, WWI specifically. So, I did a little research and come to learn, my misgivings were totally misplaced. Not only are there thousands of high quality photographs from that war, but included amongst them are hundreds of color photographs as well.

Holy Autochrome Lumiere, Batman. Who would have thought?

All of the preceding written, I am left with the thoughts of paintings v. photographs. Thoughts somewhat along the lines of that expressed by the fictional character of the young photographer, Holgrave, in Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables. To wit, his remark about a daguerreotype picture:

... while we give it credit only for depicting the merest surface, it actually brings out the secret character with a truth that no painter would ever venture upon, even could he detect it.

So I wonder. Are the war painting too decorative? In a sense, too interpretive for their own good, re: the telling of the "true" story of the horrors of wars? Are the war photographs too realistic to ever serve as decoration? In a sense, too true for their own good, re: to difficult to bear in the interest of being considered as art? Do the paintings, with their resolute beauty as objects, "sugar-coat" the reality of war? Are the photographs mere "documents" which cooly record that same reality?

And, is the painting of the marching soldiers any more (or less) emotionally charged / convincing than is the photograph of the 3 soldiers taking a break on the battlefield? What about the painting of the relaxing airmen versus the photograph of the raucous soldiers? Is the notion of camaraderie stronger in one over the other? Is the detailed specificity of photography more or less emotionally powerful than the somewhat abstract universality of painting?

The only thing I am certain of, re: the preceding questions, is that I would dearly love to view an exhibit which feature the best of both worlds. Now that would both interesting and engaging - visually, emotionally, and intellectually.

BTW, opinions on / answers to the the previous questioned are encouraged.

diptych # 72 ~ day and night (I'm back)

flowers ~ Chaffey's Lock, CA • click to embiggen
chip wagons ~ various locations / Rideau Lakes Region, CA • click to embiggen
wartime emergency food wagon - forerunner to the chip wagon? ~ Canadian War Museum / Ottawa, CA • click to embiggenAfter a two week hiatus, blogging wise, I'm back. One week was occupied by hockey camp transporting / observation and the other week to a birthday trip return to Chaffey's Lock (Rideau Lake Region in Ontario, CA) where one of my birthday gifts was a visit to the hospital in the lovely village of Perth to tend to a return of my AFib. The only casualty of my hospital visit was the time lost - the visit killed a day - which had been allocated to a picture making pursuit of the so-called chip wagons which are found throughout the lake region.

Chip wagons are made of resurrected conveyances / vehicles - most often delivery trucks, aka: wagons, of one kind or another - which have been converted into roadside food stands. The featured edible at chip wagons are french fries, aka: chips. Other menu items are also available, with a heavy emphasis on those food stuffs which can be deep fried in grease. As is evidenced by those depicted in the chip wagons triptych, the chip wagons have a great deal of character, if not healthy eating.

FYI, one common chip wagon menu item, which I sampled for the first time, is poutine*. Poutine is a common Canadian dish, originating in Quebec, made with french fries, topped with a brown gravy-like sauce and cheese curds. Not exactly what the doctor ordered but quite tasty nevertheless.

I hope to return to the area in a few weeks in order to make a sizable dent in my chip wagon picture making aspirations. My only reservation is that I might put on a few extra pounds of body fat.

*poutine

diptych # 71 ~ weekend afternoons

Saturday + Sunday afternoon ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK / Old Montreal, CA. • click to embiggenI am spending most of this week as the hockey bus driver and hockey camp observer / evaluator (of Hugo's performance). Consequently, wordified blog entries will be scare - the wife has volunteered to be tomorrow's bus driver which may give me enough time to bloviate, re: art, Photography Division.

In the meantime, consider this:

I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100. ~ Woody Allen

pictures + words project ~ picture 11 • words j - apostate visual artists

picture 11 • click to embiggen
words j • click to embiggenIt should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time that I am not enamored of/by the Academic Lunatic Fringe (ALF), Photography Division. IMO, they are an ipso facto testament to Susan Sontag's notion regarding the revenge of the intellect upon art inasmuch as the ALF has turned the notion of meaning into a fetish. So much so that meaning reigns supreme over both the depicted referent and visual qualities to be had in a picture.

And, as the ALF would have it, the more self-absorbed the picture maker the better. Or, as one critic wrote: many photographers are like .... characters whose adventures, much like that of Oz in this telling, track like therapeutic journeys (follow your dream of self-actualization) instead of transcendent excursions (just dream!). The "I" is exalted and all important.

I am not alone in my feelings and thoughts regarding the ALF. Consider this from John Rosenthal:

Unfortunately, art in America has become an elitist preserve. This is partly the fault of a critical establishment which abandoned the enduring search for a common language - the language of love and loss and sorrow and remembrance - and began to speak, almost exclusively, in a specialized and opaque language that few can understand... speak primarily to a small New York audience. Outside of this extroverted realm ... the quiet, free-standing work of art is given little respect ...

Around the age of thirty it struck me that a continuous self-focus was an act of gossip - about oneself, to oneself. Turning one's gaze within might be an effective antidote to the national faith in material redemption, but by itself this habit of inwardness would only encourage a chattering of selves.

And then consider this - combination of commentary on and artist statement about a body of work:

....(he) investigates the family photo album employed as the visual infrastructure for the flawed ideology of the American Dream. Frustrated by the lack of images that document the true and sometimes troubling nature of his own familial history, he set out to create a new archive ... [U]sing photographs made over the last decade, and altered amateur photographs ... [I]n my story, these characters exist at the intersection of domestic duress and spirituality ... [T]hese images are a tangible manifestation of fantasy, memories and experiences acquired during my journey to adulthood, and function as a supplement to the family album assembled by my parents.

My very first reaction to reading - even before viewing the pictures - the above commentary / statement was that I hoped the picture maker is seeing a therapist. If he is, it's possible that the therapist might have suggested the picture making project as part of the therapy. Or, perhaps there is no therapist and the picture maker is just following his dream of self-actualization or whatever.

In any event, the B&W pictures made for this project are nice enough but ... for the most part, they employ a hodgepodge of tried-and-true image-altering techniques and imaging making styles. Throughout the sampling of work I viewed, there were hints and nods to the work of Jerry Ulesmann, Sally Mann, Diane Arbus, Duane Michals, and Alec Soth to name a few. None of which is to write that the work in question is either trite or valueless, but ....

... to be honest, for me, the artspeak is so annoying as to be off putting when it comes to viewing the actual pictures. But, of course, as is the wont of the ALF and so many of the MFA 'educated' picture makers, they just have to artspeak it up to make (annoying) manifest, direct and control, and embellish their precious idea of meaning. And, it seems to me, the commentary / statement artspeak is also serves to distract viewers from the fact that the pictures in question are most often very derivative in technique and style. Which is to write that, visually, there is very little that is new or unique on offer.

All of that written, I must admit to not knowing why I am, at this particular moment, seemingly so obsessed with the ALF and their MFA offspring. Most likely it has something to do with John Rosenthal's conclusion that:

...quiet, free-standing work of art is given little respect, apostate visual artists find themselves longing for an absent American discourse.