civilized ku # 2726 ~ what is art?

AM light ~ Toronto, CA • click to embiggen

Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know. ~ - Groucho Marx

The wife and I are off to rural Canada - the Rideau Lake area - tomorrow morning (Monday) for a week of R&R. During the week the wife will be hitting the big 50 so on the big day we'll visit Ottawa for a celebration. And since our cottage has an internet connection, I will be posting during the week.

civilized ku # 2725 ~ a century (minus a few months) later

fire escape ~ New York, NY • click to embiggenSteichen / milk bottles ~ New York, NYPursuant to yesterday's entry in which I presented a few excerpts from Susan Sontag's writings, re: the medium and its apparatus, here's another which, IMO, very accurately forecast what transpired in the decades following her writing:

In photography's early decades, photographs were expected to be idealized images. This is still the aim of most amateur photographers, for whom a beautiful photograph is a photograph of something beautiful, like a woman, a sunset. In 1915 Edward Steichen photographed a milk bottle on a tenement fire escape, an early example of of a quite different idea of the beautiful photograph. And since the 1920s, ambitious professionals, those whose work gets into museums, have steadily drifted away from lyrical subjects, consciously exploring plain, tawdry, or even vapid material. In recent decades, photography has succeeded in somewhat revising, for everybody, the definition of what is beautiful and ugly ...

A few points: I don't if the preceding was written before or after the 1975 landmark exhibition, The New Topographics at the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, but it was certainly presented at or very closely to that date. However, that exhibition was the beginning of a ground breaking shift in, as Sontag wrote, "revising .... the definition of what is beautiful and ugly."

I would however, take issue with the idea that it revised it "for everyone". Of course, if by "everyone" Sontag meant (as quoted yesterday) "ambitious professionals, those whose work gets into museums, she was right on the money. I would also include in that everyone, institutional curators and gallery owners/directors. Without a doubt, the New Topographics aesthetic sensibility rules the Fine Art picture making world to this day.

Also without a doubt, my picture making truly follows in a direct line from those early practitioners of the New Topographics genre.

All of that written, what haunts me, re: my work, is the idea Sontag put forth in stating that ".... having an experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it, and participating in a public event comes more and more to be equivalent to looking at it in photographed form ... Today everything exists to end in a photograph."

I picture things on almost daily basis. One might even state, as Sontag wrote, compulsively. Not that I believe there is anything amiss in that endeavor but .... I have to wonder, as I have for quite some time, am I substituting pictures for actual experience?

Certainly, I make pictures because I am stimulated to do so by an actual experience - in Sontag's words, a public event* - which has captured my eye and sensibilities. However, I must admit that after making a picture, I seldom stop in order to smell the roses of that which triggered my picture making activity.

In fact, what I do, more often than not, is savor the finished result of that picturing, the finished image/print, after the fact of its making. One could accurately state that I appreciate, primarily but not completely, the picture more than I did the actual encounter with the pictured referent. And, I do not think that I am alone in this MO.

So, I have a question for all of you out there. Am I alone or do any of you do the same, i.e., appreciate the picture more than the public event that you witnessed and recorded?

ANSWERS PLEASE. After all, this works better as a two-way street of give and take.

*Public event does not mean an event such as a parade, concert, sporting game, or other gathering with a specific activity with a gathering of people. In Sontag's context, a public event simply means anything that can be seen and pictured - trees, water, flowers, cats, dogs, clouds, buildings, et al. Anything that is available to be seen. Like, as an example, the fire escape pictured in this entry.

civilized ku # 2724 / what is a photograph? # 11 ~ Today everyhitng exists to end in aphotograph

spilled milk ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
what is a photograph? # 11 ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenSusan Sontag had much to write/ state, amongst many other things, about photography. Her writings on the medium and its apparatus (aka: its conventions, language, and traditions) were provocative and in some quarters quite controversial. And, as with most of her writing, it was set against her critiques of modern society, culture, and politics. Nevertheless, IMO, the collection of her essays, Sontag's seminal work on photography - On Photography, explores a host of interesting topics and ground on the subject:

Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution. Poignant longings for beauty, for an end to probing below the surface, for a redemption and celebration of the body of the world - all of these elements of erotic feeling are affirmed in the pleasure we take in photographs. But other less liberating feelings are expressed as well. It would not be wrong to speak of people having a compulsion to photograph: to turn experience itself into a way of seeing. Ultimately, having an experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it, and participating in a public event comes more and more to be equivalent to looking at it in photographed form. That most logical of nineteenth-century aesthetes, Mallarmé, said that everything in the world exists in order to end in a book. Today everything exists to end in a photograph.

In writing the above, Sontag's "today" was circa 1973-77. One can only imagine what her idea of today's photography / image saturated world might be. In that same era, Sontag also wrote:

Recently, photography has become almost as widely practiced an amusement as sex and dancing - which means that, like every mass art form, photography is not practiced by most people as an art. It is mainly a social rite .....

Holy twitter / flickr / tumblr / instagram / et all, Batman. I, for one would love to read/hear her thoughts on those "social rite(s)".

I am re-reading On Photography primarily because I am becoming rather fixated on the idea of what is a photograph? and I appreciate the fact that the book is not an academic term paper - according to one source, "Sontag's work is literary and polemical rather than academic." I'll second that idea.

In any event, re: the question what is a photograph?, Sontag has much to say relative to my preoccupation with the question. a few excerpts:

A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refuting it .... Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records. But this is the opposite of understanding, which starts from not accepting the world as it looks .... Any photograph has multiple meanings: indeed, to see something in the form of a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination. The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: " There is the surface. Now think - or rather feel, intuit - what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way." Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy.

I think I'm going to get much more out of this re-reading than I did the first time around. Highly recommended if you can stick with it.

diptych # 67 (civilized ku # 2722-23) ~ revenge

Spring buds ~ Jay, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
Spring buds / blossoms ~ Au Sable Forks, NY / Jay, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

idea 1 - I don't understand why people think everything has to have meaning. While painting the Mona Lisa did Leonardo Da Vinci intend for it to have greater meaning than a work of art that he made? ~ Devin J. Monroe

idea 2 Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art. ~ Susan Sontag

panoramics / civilized ku # 2718-21 ~ dumbing down pictures

interior panoramic ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
granite company ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
working in the ER ~ Allegheny Hospital / Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggen
death in ER ~ Allegheny Hospital / Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggenOne of the dumbest bits of picture making advice ever given and it's been given over and over again:

Each picture should have only one principal idea, topic, or center of interest to which the viewer's eyes are attracted. Subordinate elements within the picture must support and focus attention on the principal feature so it alone is emphasized ... A picture without a dominant center of interest or one with more than one dominant center of interest is puzzling to a viewer. Subsequently, the viewer becomes confused and wonders what the picture is all about. When the picture has one, and only one, dominant "point of interest," the viewer quickly understands the picture.

In my picture making life, I have made my fair share of panoramic pictures*, more so in my commercial picturing days, less so in my personal / art endeavors. Of those many pictures - certainly numbering the low 100s - 90% of them were interior panoramics which was the specialty niche I craved out for myself. And, if there's one identifiable hallmark of panoramic pictures - interior or exterior - it's that they contain a lot of visual information, most often multiple center of interest which are spread out over a fair amount of acreage, print wise.

Interior panoramics were most definitely my picturing thing. I was - and still am - captivated / fascinated by the amount of information, visual and otherwise, which can be crammed into an interior panoramic. In addition to a central visual interest, there can be multiple areas of other interests, all of which - in the best application - can combine to tell a very rich story. Even without an obvious central interest, the pictures still work to draw a viewer in.

And that is exactly what my clients liked because, unlike a quick read and move on picture, my interior panoramics held a viewer's attention much longer than a "conventional" view of only part of a similar scene. In the advertising game, it's all about getting a viewer's attention. Better yet, is getting that attention and holding it beyond the quick look. Interior panoramics accomplished that end quite well.

That written, despite all of the visual information / various centers of interest, no one has ever been dazed and confused when viewing one of my interior panoramics. Viewers never had to wonder what the picture(s) were about. In most cases, they readily dove into the pictures' "complexity" and had a rewarding times swimming about.

All of that written, I don't believe panoramic pictures are an exception to the "one center of interest" rule. Any picture, any format, can be visually dense, complex, involving and completely successful as a good/great picture. Sure, a host of boobs and simpletons will run screaming in terror from a picture which requires an effort to "get it". But so what? Is that really the viewership you want to make happy and/or have your pictures appeal to?

FYIThe two top pictures in this entry were made with multiple frames stitched together in Photoshop. The interior pano was made from 8 separate frames, the exterior pano was made from just 4 frames. The bottom two pictures were made with a Widelux 1500 medium format film camera - 2 of my many pictures from the A Day in a Life of an Urban Hospital book. One thing nice about using a panoramic camera for such a project is that my pictures ended up on a lot of two-page spreads.

*My primary workhorse cameras were Widelux cameras (140˚-150˚ fields of view)). I have since sold my Widelux 1500 (120 roll film) but I still have my Widelux F8 (35mm film). On occasion I rented a Roundshot 35mm film camera - they are all digital now - which was capable of making 360˚ pictures.

diptych # 66 (civilized ku # 2716-17) ~ feeling the current

interior / exeterior • late day light ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenIt was Renoir who stated, "You have to be cork, a cork in the current, You have to follow the current." It was his son, Jean Renoir, the renown film maker, who added, "Of course, the cork has to be a little intelligent, not completely stupid. It has to try to shift to the right or to the left so a to choose the moment when the current is best suited to it and to move a little in this direction, but the general direction is determined by events, by the current." Then, writing of currents, there is this:

The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above. ~ Cyril Connolly

I bring up the notion of the cork, the current, and the dark rapids of an underground river as a follow up to the recent being original / finding your vision entry (triptych # 18 ... variety is the spice of life / on being original). IMO, being like a cork (with a little intelligence, not stupidity) and flowing in the current of what you see in the dark rapids of the underground river part of life - got to get through that bramble patch of filtered seeing first - is a fine way to find your vision.

Of course, that course of action depends upon the corks ability to "feel it", because unless you feel it you will never understand it ....

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs. ~ Pablo Picasso

diptych # 65 (civilized ku # 2714-15) / civilized ku # 2716 ~ renewal

from the upstairs bathroom window ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
from the upstairs porch windows ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenSpring seems to have finally arrived. It was a long time coming this year.

Some people are still unaware that reality contains unparalleled beauties. The fantastic and unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself. ~ Berenice Abbott

triptych # 18 (civilized ku # 2712-13 + kitchen life # 51) / civilized ku # 2714 ~ variety is the spice of life / on being original

A sign of things to come ~ Toronto, CA • click to embiggen
train to NYC / kitchen sink / sidewalk puddle ~ somewhere along the line / Au Sable Forks, NY (itAP) / NYC • click to embiggenAmongst the rank and file of serious amateur picture makers - for purposes of this discourse let us agree that the desire to find one's own vision is one mark of a of a serious picture maker - the quest to be original and, most often, the frustrations of that pursuit are a commonly shared experience. On that topic, consider this:

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. ~ C. S. Lewis

I totally agree with the notion that "bothering" / festering about / being consumed by the desire to be original in one's picture making, aka: your own uniquely personal vision, is essentially one of the prime impediments to actually accomplishing that goal. To coin a hockey analogy (it is the Stanley Cup season), when a player is mired in a goal scoring slump, it is often said that in trying to break out of it they are holding the stick to tight. The solution, they are told, is to relax their grip, don't think about it, and just let it come naturally.

Of course, just relaxing and letting it flow is easier said than done. If it were as easy as falling off a log, we'd be living in a very different world.

That written, when it comes to picture making originality, there is, IMO, an easy fix ... once a picture maker accepts, truly accepts in the depths/core of his/her picture making being, that there is nothing in the world that is not acceptable as a picture making referent, that every thing is fair picture making fodder, then the game of finding one's vision can finally begin.

It never ceases to amaze and confound me that so many a serious amateur who has solved - at least to a much better than average degree of competence - the gear / technique issues, still point his/her camera at referents which are so utterly cliche. It seems to me that in doing so they are, quite simply, "playing it safe". Essentially rejecting 95% of what s/he sees and sticking with what s/he has already seen pictured. Better safe than sorry, seems to be operational dictum.

While it is true that everything that can be pictured has been pictured, the simple truth is that some of those things have been pictured over and over again while others not so much. And, even though it is often stated / written that no one sees the same thing in a exactly the same manner so therefore it is possible to bring one's own unique vision to a familiar referent, way too many picture makers who are trying to hang their hat on that tree end up making the equivalent of what Robert Adams called "the ten-thousandth camera-club imitation of a picture by Ansel Adams" - feel free to substitute the name of any well-known picture maker for that of Sir Ansel.

C. S. Lewis had it right when he wrote, "... if you simply try to tell the truth you will ... become original without ever having noticed it." Without attempting to discern what Lewis meant by "truth", it is my considered opinion that, in the realm of picture making, trying to tell the truth means trying to be true to what one sees and, in that seeing, seeing with eyes wide open. That is to write, wide open to the picturing possibilities which surround one's existence, minute by minute or, in the case of picture making, second by second.

Update on Thursday, May 8, 2014 at 11:24AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Frank (no link provided) wrote: "In that context I came across a quote from Francis Bacon that I noted down -

The contemplation of things as they are without substitution or imposture without error or confusion is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention

Or as I paraphrase in my mind - cut out all the elaborate and fancy post processing and just show it like it is.

my response: To be clear about "context" - when I wrote "trying to be true to what one sees" I was not, as has often been my wont, endorsing / recommending straight picture making. What I was trying to suggest was to see without the filter of exceptions / pre-conceptions / popular conventions between the world and your visual apparatus. In other words, find your own true way of seeing. Not picture making, but rather, seeing - looking at the world with an unfiltered gaze.