urban ku # 99 ~ avoiding the bends

Decompression chamber • click to embiggenAfter about 1,000 miles of weekend travels that included such highlights as 60 miles of stop-and-go traffic on the Jersey Turnpike, creep-and-crawl on a Philadelphia "express"way and 2 deja vu all over again visits - one with college boy, one with college girl - to 2 different but identical Target stores (hundreds of miles apart), I'm soooo happy to be back in the real world.

The trip did feature a good Philly cheesesteak and a very eclectic restaurant meal where we got my 83 year old mother-in-law rather toasted on fine wine. And, of course, the princess daughter is now officially a college girl.

It's official • click to embiggenThe only really disturbing experience of the trip came after the dorm move-in when we were walking about campus - a traditional picture-perfect ivy/brick/granite hallowed halls park-like campus set in a very tony urban neighborhood - and noticed that all of the parking lots were filled to the brim with SUVs. Of course, the plates indicated that most were from places that feature very rugged and challenging terrain and inhospitable weather - you know, places like Pennsylvania, Virginia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Maryland and the like, so I guess it's easy to understand why all these vehicles were so needed by their owners.

Actually, it's times like that that make me wish I were driving an 18-wheeler filled with the rotting carcasses of dead Emperor penquins (the ones dying as result of global warming) - enough of them to leave one on the hood of every SUV in the parking lots.

urban ku # 98 ~ higher education

Red, white and blue • click to embiggenWe're off to see the wizard - the car is packed and the princess-daughter has said her goodbyes. We're heading out for Philadelphia and the college drop-off. On our return, we're detouring to college-boy's new off-campus apartment to check that out.

And then, it's back home to our empty nest.

civilized ku # 54 ~ a brief history

Salad bar, pizza, wings, pies and internet access • click to embiggenBeau Comeaux wrote; ... I find myself less interested in imagery where someone with a camera has found a subject of visual interest and rendered it plainly. This is, in effect, simply "pointing at" the subject. As a photographer, saying, "I liked the way this looked. Here, you look at it." I have coined a phrase for it: "plagiarizing nature." ... This "pointing at" style? of photography seems to be limited arbitrarily by the history of the medium. I get much more excited by new uses or approaches to image-making ... Perhaps this could be the start of an interesting conversation about the medium and its varied permutations ... Your thoughts?

From its inception, the medium of photography has had its status as an Art form challenged by the accusation that the medium was little more than a lowly artisanal (or mechanical) trade that produced 'documents' - detailed 'copies' of the contingent features of the actual world (plagiarizing nature). 'True' Art (idealized forms that were not copies of imperfect nature), it was said, was always characterized by its distance from the contingent features of the actual world and the amount of obvious mental/intellectual effort the Artist infused into the work. None other than the Royal Academy in London and the Academie Royal de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris declared this to be so.

The result of all of this, photography-wise, was the movement known as Pictorialism. Pictorialist Art was intentionally and self-consciously 'arty' and the pictures most often displayed a soft-focus technique that suppressed the contingent features of the actual world. Pictorialists also favored 'difficult' printing techniques and they used brushes, sponges, pencils, etching needles, etc., on the negative and print to add layers of 'handcrafting' to their work. Pictorialists were driven to even greater heights of retched excesses in an effort to separate themselves from the hordes of snappers that George Eastman unleashed upon the photographic world with his easy-to-use Kodaks.

As always happens, all good things must come to an end and Pictorialism eventually gave way to the the influences of Modernism most notably at the hands of Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz (who championed Strand). Strand's approach to picturing was based on what he considered to be the inherent qualities of the medium - direct, optically sharp images filled with details of the contingent features of the actual world. He also believed in the modernist idea/ideal of 'truth to materials', aka, 'medium specificity'.

Medium specificity suggests that significant Art is created by concentrating on those characteristics inherent in a medium. It also tends to feature the means of depiction over what is depicted and, most often, highlights those characteristics of a medium that separate it from other art forms.

The eventual result of medium specificity in the medium of photography in the Postmodernist world is what has been come to be known as the 'snapshot' aesthetic (pointing-at style) - an approach to picturing that suggests a photographic gaze of 'detachment' and 'coolness' and one that seems to let the camera 'do its thing' so to speak. One, that retro-like, returns photography to its origins of 'copying' the contingent features of the actual world. One which gives the appearance of an invisible hand of the photographer.

Now, I would be the first to admit that, in the age of digital picture making, the term 'medium specificity' is a moving/evolving target. One could opine that, with the ease of digital manipulation (Photoshop is just brimming with 'pictorialist' tools), Pictorialism - third-wave edition - is rearing its head (some might say, 'ugly' head) once again.

Beau, your pictures are a fine example of the New Pictorialism and maybe, just maybe, the Art world is ready for a swing away from the decades of the 'cool' Postmodern photographic gaze.

Update on Tuesday, August 28, 2007 at 11:00AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Beau Comeaux wrote; "... The far flung after-effects of the German coolness and detachment (as initially? proffered by the Bechers) has worn me down a bit as of late. The ironic pointing to empty, banal spaces has run its course for me, failing to interest or engage me.

I hope that doesn't sound too cynical - it's simply that I am tired of seeing that type of work. I am always ready to explore the farther reaches of the medium and it's possibilities (whatever that really means these days). I suppose what I'm really talking about here is the straight rendering of a subject isn't really telling me anything other than an accurate (I know the fallacy in labeling photos as accurate!) depiction of what was before the camera ..."

civilized ku # 53 ~ What? # 5

Bananas, peqaches, raisins and pickles • click to embiggenIt would appear from the 2 comments on yesterday's entry that urban ku # 97 is a picture that, for some, transcends subject matter.

IMO, transcending subject matter is a very far cry from setting aside subject matter. But that idea might be too much of a parse for some, so let's not go there now.

Instead, how about this re: the real/truth in photography;

For spectators (the viewers of the photographs), Barthes explains that there are two elements involved when viewing a photograph. One element is the studium. The studium is a "kind of education (civility, politeness) that allows discovery of the operator." It is the order of liking, not loving. News photographs are often simple banal, unary photos which exemplify studium because "I glance through them, I don't recall them; no detail ever interrupts my reading: I am interested in them (as I am interested in the world), I do not love them."

The second and far more interesting element for the spectator is punctum ... "that accident which pricks, bruises me." It is the unintentional detail that could not not be taken, and that "fills the whole picture." Barthes says there is no rule that can be applied to the existence of studium and punctum within a photo except that "it is a matter of co-presence." These are the photos which take our breath away for some reason that was completely unintended by the photographer (or by the subject, for that matter). It is at the moment when the punctum strikes that the photograph will "annihilate itself as medium to be no longer a sign but the thing itself." And the object will become subject again ... While most photographs offer only the identity of an object, those that project a punctum potentially offer the truth of the subject. They offer "the impossible science of the unique being." ~ all quotes are by Robert Barthes from Camera Lucida

Comments please.

urban ku # 97 ~ what? # 4

Tugging a boat on the beach • click to embiggenIt seems as though some have assumed, because I believe that the medium of photography is inexorably linked to the real, that I have somehow dismissed the fact that photographs cannot 'transcend their subject matter'.

Nothing could be more wrong. Anyone who has followed The Landscapist for any length of time knows that I believe the best photographs are those which illustrate and illuminate, denote and connote, have studium and punctum.

For that matter, just read the blog title subhead - photography that pricks the unthought known.

Acknowledging that the medium of photography is inexorably linked to the real in no way limits its ability to transcend the visual literalness of any given picture's referent for, as Graham Clarke writes in The Photograph;

"The most obvious of photographs is fraught with complications and contradictions, and we can analyse and read it in a way that takes account of these. For all its acknowledged literalness, the photographic image retains a dense and, in many ways, wonderous capacity to mean ... Merely by announcing its subject, the photograph grants both meaning and significance. The banal, the marginal, the momentary are given status withing an assumed cultural register ... it can make anything important. It has the capacity to move between extremes - philosophical, cultural, social. The pphotograph is free of limits, just as its subject matter is infinite. The 'moment' is thus its greatest asset, for the 'moment' is always unique, and it is the moment that the photograph brings into focus."

And, it is that moment which is inexorably linked with the real.

civilized ku # 52 ~ What? # 3

Lobby mural at the Northwood Inn • click to embiggenApparently, the best way to set subject aside (with straight photography) is to look at paintings.

Me, I don't think it's possible, in the medium of photography, to divorce subject from meaning/denoted from connoted. Visually, photography deals best with the "real". I like the way Winogrand put it -

"I like to think of photography as a two-way act of respect. Respect for the medium, by letting it do what it does best, describe. And respect for the subject, by describing it as it is. A photograph must be responsible to both."

urban ku # 96 ~ what? # 2

A pile of aluminum boats • click to embiggenIn the medium of photography, in which a picture is inexorably linked with that which it depicts, how does one set aside subject matter?

I believe it is near impossible to do so, especially so re: the discussion referenced in yesterday's entry, straight photography. It is pretty much a given that photographers toiling in the "straight" vernacular by and large make pictures in a straight-forward manner - pictures in which the photographer's hand is well hidden. They point their camera at the thing(s) they wish to denote and, in a sense, let "Kodak do the rest".

I have always operated on the assumption that the photographer pointed his camera at a thing(s) that he/she wanted me to "see". Whether he/she wanted me to see it for its own denoted values/properties, or, whether he/she presents it as a visual vehicle that may transport me to a thing(s) un-seen, - IMO, the best pictures function on both levels - I don't see how the observer can set subject aside.

Maybe in the hollowed halls of academia, where the fetish of 'concept' reigns, subject can be (and is) set aside but isn't that what leads to the making of pictures that are mostly self-referential academic crap?

urban ku # 95 ~ what?

Old boat in an old boat yard • click to embiggenA couple of weeks ago, over on Muse-ings, Tim Atherton wrote about somebody else who wrote; "It is my belief that most contemporary American color photographers are not only working with a medium, but they are also working within a tradition, or a way of seeing ... the overwhelming current practice and art-world presence of what I can only describe as “straight” contemporary American color photography. Most photographers working in this genre are pursuing aesthetics and concerns that were initiated in the 1970s, and have changed very little over the past thirty years. Different photographers incorporate different approaches, and embrace or abandon concept and/or narrative to varying degrees, but aside from subject matter, there is often little else that distinguishes the work ..."

This notion has been rattling around in my head ever since and it seems to me that the entire construct is hanging by very precarious thread - the razor-thin caveat of subject matter aside.

How does one view a picture and set subject matter aside?