FYI

On a somewhat lighter note than the past few topics, this just in - Digital cameras are good for the environment. Take it for what it's worth, it's not exactly the result of in-depth research but it sounds good.

PS I should mention that the headline is a bit misleading. What it should say is 'Digital cameras are less harmful to the environment.'

urban ku # 66 ~ beauty/melancholy

Spring color on a perfect spring evening • click to embiggenI had to make a grocery run last evening before a late dinner. Instead of taking the BasketMaster (because a zillion pound bag of dog food won't fit on the BM), I decided to take a car and venture well outside of the village to see what there was to be seen. After all, it was a 'picture-perfect' spring evening.

As I was clicking about, here and there, some NPR (Nat'l Public Radio) program or another was airing on the car radio. I was intent on watching, not listening so I wasn't really paying attention .. until I heard this - 'We haven't seen a blue sky in 20 years.'

Now I was listening.

Turns out that it was a Chinese woman speaking (through an interpreter) about the effects of Chinese industrialization on her village. Her story was simple - a little over 20 years ago, quite a number of coal-burning factories sprung up in and around her village. Now, the air is acrid and black. Everything is covered with a fine black ash. Respiratory deseases are commonplace and death rates per 100,000 have skyrocketed.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who hasn't been living deep down an unregulated free market hole in the ground - China is about to pass the U.S. as the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases but I think we still hold the honors in the carbon dioxide emitter race. Be sure to raise your arms in 'victory' and hold your heads high, fellow Americans.

China surpassed Canada in the first two months of this year as the largest exporter to the United States. In an interesting counterpoint of sorts, an official from the aforementioned woman's village noted that the U.S. has, for all intents and purposes, exported its industrial pollution to China. Still want lots of stuff but none of the mess that comes from making it (or the expense of cleaning it up)? Send the jobs offshore and let somebody else live with it.

But of course, the earth 'lives with it' no matter where the stuff is made.

In any event, as I was picturing last evening, all of the above was on my mind (more so than it usually is). It made it quite difficult to enjoy the moment knowing that people are suffering and dying because 'market forces' are demanding more and more stuff.

Follow that up with a piece in this AM's newspaper about the demand for ever-bigger homes (dispite shrinking household family size) in the U.S. - and I quote, 'Our kids have more stuff. They need more living space.' said Valerie Astle. And this - ...the growth in big houses is fueled by suburban home buyers seeking luxury, rather than big families needing space. And, American homes, on average, are nearly twice as large as in many European countries ...

In case you're wondering why I can't just take 'pretty landscape pictures' and be done with it, there it is. Every time I point my camera at the natural world around me, I know that what I am picturing is literally fighting for its life from the ever-increasing onslaught of human 'desire'.

Call it 'market forces', 'climate change', 'the economy', or whatever. Pick a rationalization of your own choosing, but I can't look at it any way but this - Death by desire - people killing the planet and each other over the 'right' to have more stuff.

PS - enjoy the pictures and, oh yeh ... have a nice day.

Update on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 12:17PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comments: the wife wrote; "A hundred years ago, Freud wrote in Civilization and it Discontents (I think this was the book where he explored this idea) that the two main drives for humans were to attain eros and thanatos - love and death. It didn't make much sense to me in college, but it seems to play out in real life..."

Update on Thursday, May 24, 2007 at 10:18AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comments: Paul Maxim wrote; "... While we've disagreed on what constitutes relevant artistic (or personal) expression, we are in complete agreement on this topic ... I must admit that I'm very pessimistic when it comes to the "problems" you describe. I don't see the world in general recognizing the inevitable consequences any time soon or even before it becomes too late to do much about it. People - especially Americans - will always believe that someone "in charge" will fix things before it actually does become too late. After all, we do still enjoy blue skies here, don't we? Not to worry - the government will do what's right and take care of us ... And if that doesn't scare the beejesus out of anyone with half a brain, I don't know what will......"

My response - Paul, it's comforting to know that we can cross artistic party lines and agree on something really important. But, regarding your 'beejesus scare', and since we are both fellow New Yorkers, keep an eye on the just created NYS Office of Climate Change, which is tasked with 3 primary missions: cleaning up energy-generating plants and reducing transportation and home/business energy consumption.

The department is headed by Jared Snyder, former assistant attorney general in environmental protection. He stated (yesterday at the Adirondack Research Consortium conference in Tupper lake) that, "... climate change is something that should keep us all awake at night ... we need to take aggressive action and in New York it starts with the governor."

I don't know what political side of the aisle you are on, but I will state that, with Eliot Spitzer at the helm, things will get very 'interesting'. And I welcome the fact that some states are taking matters into their own hands and dealing with issues that the current administration in Washington won't.

PS - and don't forget Bill Clinton.

crafted ku # 6 - they're everywhere # 2

No use crying over water over the dam • click to embiggenAt one time they were everywhere in the Adirondacks - dams, that is. It seems that every river and stream was harnessed for one use or another, ranging from logging and power to recreation.

The dam pictured here is in my hometown of Au Sable Forks. It was first built and used to power the iron ore mill (none other than Benedict Arnold owned a mine here), which in turn 'powered' the village. Later the mill was converted to paper product production and the dam served that industry as well. Today, it just stands there although it does help create some nice recreational water above its confines.

There are still quite a few (most likely, hundreds) dams hanging around on the rivers. They are a form of the 'living history' of the Adirondacks and they fit right in with a book I am reading - Down To Earth, Nature's Role in American History. The author, environmental historian Ted Steinberg, 'offers a bold new critical synthesis od American environmental history ... by demonstrating the myriad but all too often unacknowledged ways in which familiar historical events have been intimately tied to the transformation and exploitation of the natural world ... [he] places the enviromment at the very center of our story ... [he] reminds readers that many critical episodes in our history were, in fact, environmental events ...' - from the book's dust jacket.

The premise of the book is simple - the causal effect of the environment in shaping human history. In effect, turning history on its head - looking at the nature world, not as a backdrop to human events, but rather, as one of the primary shapers of human events.

When viewed through the lens of the environment, one particularly stunning example of this 'causal effect' is the natural world's considerable influence in creating slavery, the Civil War and the eventual defeat of the Confederacy.

Think in these terms - without question, the environment in the South - length of growing season, days of sunshine, rainfall, average temperature, soil quality, etc. (aka, the climate) - was the primary reason southerners turned to a 'one-crop' agricultural economy based on cotton (and to a lesser extent, tobbaco). The agricultural particulars of growing cotton/tobacco, especially the labor-intensive system of land rotation which required ongoing labor at the lowest possible cost, was ideally suited to slave labor. Bingo! Slavery seemed like a damn good idea. And, it's also interesting to note that slavery has never taken hold in a cold northern climate.

Most obviously, the institution of slavery was a primary causal instigator of the Civil War and, fittingly, in a form nature's poetic justice, it was the South's slavish (pun intended) devotion/commitment to King Cotton that came back to bite it in the ass - with it's land tied up in the production of cotton, there was little land left or the economic inclination to grow food. Once an effective naval blockade of southern ports was in place, the South was literally straved to death. General Lee wondered as early as 1862 whether starvation, more than enemy forces, might prove the greater threat to the South. In the end, it was starvation (military and civilian) which brought the South to its knees.

What about military action, you might ask? Sure, but in the latter half of the war, many of the South's military decisions were based on/restricted by it's inability to keep its troops (and horses) fed.

What an idea - the course of human events as decided by the landscape. The moral of the story is evident - ignore or abuse the environment, it's gonna get you in the end.

PS - in case you missed a slightly subtle moral herein, be aware that the decisions to grow just cotton/tobacco and use slave labor to do it were based on unregulated market forces. Seems like the much-idolized 'invisible hand' didn't get it quite right.

ku # 472 ~ gardening casualty on gravel, grass and soil

Gardening casualty/'square' root of 3 • click to embiggenEvery once in awhile a single topic takes hold of the photog blog arena like a virus and it seems that everyone must comment on it. Witness the recent Jeff Wall Affair.

The most recent topic, albeit a minor epidemic, involves the idea of Droit de Suite - a French term that translates as "Right of Continuation" or continuing rights - which is basically a market mechanism (or 'government cohersion' as the ever-whining privledged class likes to call it) for awarding an artist a piece of the profit action (a royalty) based on the public (dealers, auction houses, etc.) secondary market resale of their work. Typically, the 'piece of the action' is a relatively minor amount. In France, for example, the artist receives between 1% and 3% of the resale price.

As is often the case on the blog-o-spere, there is much mis/dis-information on the subject. If you are interested in a full account of of Droit de Suite, it can be found here.

I am not interested in responding to all of the various feints, dodges and outright distortions of the unfettered free market robber barons (Greed and Avarice Division - our motto, Nothing Exceeds Like Excess). The only point which I wish to make is simple - free-market nazis want to turn everything into a commodity, subject only to market forces. In their view, nothing is worth anything, more or less, other than the monetary price which it fetches on the open market. The market and its 'invisible hand' - you know, 'invisible', like the corporate special-interest lobbyists in DC - fixes everything.

And, oh yeh, what ever you do, don't piss off the priviledged class (the privledged class, not the wealthy class. There's a big difference between the two). Just trust the same market which commodified the earth's resources as nothing more than unfettered fodder for profit (and f**k the consequences).

For them the notion of a Moral Economy just doesn't exist, or, if it does, it serves as little more than a commie-pinko bogeyman who gets hoisted up the flagpole (and saluted) everytime the undeserving/underachieving/lazy-ass-SOBs try to 'steal' their money.

The phrase that comes to my mind is the one about people who know the (monetary) price of everything and the value of nothing. I guess that's why most of them sell their souls - and dragging anything else they can along with it in the process - to the devil.

Any questions?

Update on Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 09:31AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comments: Bill Gotz wrote; "I read the article "A Moral Economy" you linked to above. It hit me as the clearest statement I've hear of the right way, the moral way, to proceed in this world.

The question for me is how do I, as a landscape artist, begin to tell 'the story'?"

My response: Bill, I would think that the first step is to decide what 'story' you want to tell - most likely something which both concerns and interests you.

What was it you wanted?

Me, my hat and eye • No embiggen - it's scary enough at this size

Whatever you wanted
What could it be
Did somebody tell you
That you could get it from me,
Is it something that comes natural
Is it easy to say,
Why do you want it,
Who are you anyway?

Is the scenery changing,
Am I getting it wrong,
Is the whole thing going backwards,
Are they playing our song?
Where were you when it started
Do you want it for free
What was it you wanted
Are you talking to me?

What was you wanted? ~ Bob Dylan

Bill Delanney/Nothing & Doug Stockdale/Bad Trip-Sad Trip

Bill Delanney wrote; About four years ago, after a long illness, I decided to simplfy my life. I stopped watching TV, movies, and the news. Photography was something that had interested me in the past and I thought it would be fun to do again. Found the simplist camera I could find, started reading about subjects that interested me. Making those changes has had a big impact on my personal life. My approach to what I make pictures of are only the things that interest me. I don't have to make a living selling pictures. I'm not looking for perfect.I don't see perfect. I've never seen perfect. I find as much intrique and discovery in normal everyday things much more than traveling to the Grand Canyon or looking at or for calender type pictures. I don't make a picture until I discover something out there that moves me inside. I have to feel something. Those are the subjects I'll stop,relax, sit with and then I either get a "feeling" or I don't. If something tells me to make a picture, I will. Sometimes, nothing happens and I just move on. It's almost a "spiritual" feeling. I can sense something, but I can't define it. I kinda just blend in-I don't try and evaluate or really think- it just happens. It seems I'll see something and feel a connection somehow. The beauty of the holga and the pinhole is I don't have to think about anything. Sometimes I click the shutter or open the pinhole and sometime I don't. It's hard to see sometimes, I can't go looking for it... It just finds me. I want my pictures to take me to another place. My pictures are my memories of that place.

Douglas Stockdale wrote; This project results from of a number of my personal experiences. My first experience was from my childhood riding with my father in Arizona, I had commented on the three white crosses that I saw at an road intersection that we had just passed. He told me that the crosses were for the three people who had been killed in accidents at that corner and that the state had put them there as a reminder to other drivers. That apparently left a strong memory.

Now many years later, I had, while traveling in some remote sections of the country, the sudden recognition again of the roadside memorials, but now they are very individualistic and unique. These are no longer nondescript white crosses but memorials, some very elaborate, some very plain, erected by those who are still here in memory of those who have left.

I have presented Bill & Doug together here for several reasons. First, lest anyone think I have gone off the deep-end regarding constucted pictures, I offer them as fine examples that found referents are still alive and kicking with considerable vigor. Second, both have projects/series that are little gems of focused vision.

Bill Delanney has several mini-series portfolios which are simple delights. The above pictures are from Pictures of Nothing. Also of special interest to me are Heavenly Food and a wonderful look at Barbershops. Bill's pictures are an excellent example of the power of simple observation coupled with focused concentration.

Doug Stockdale's project, Bad Trip-Sad Trip, also gives testament both to the power of simple observation and to the added kick of words. The fact that I read these words a few days after Mother's Day seemed to give them that much more impact.

Much thanks to Bill and Doug for their submissions to The Landscapist. It's a privilege to present their pictures and I would like to extend an invitation to both to participate in the Guest Photographers Forum on a continuing basis.

FYI ~ a new link

I've added a new link to my list of Links of Interest link in the Navigation sidebar.

This is a link to 5B4 - Photography and Books. The blog is dedicated to mini-reviews/information about photo books - books of photographs, not books about how to take photographs.

Caveat - a word of caution. If you are like me and have a love of photo books (IMO, one of the best ways to improve your own photography skills, both creating and viewing), you might want to give control of your wallet to a tightwad who won't let you go on a spending spree like a kid in a candy store.

I have also added a few descriptions to my links. More to come.

civilized ku # 29 ~ Event trail

County fair grounds exhibit trail • click to embiggenLast evening, I finished another of my bargain-bin 'adventure' novels. This one - The Balance of Power by Richard North Patterson - was different from most I read in that it is a political thriller. It was also over 600 pages, making it not exactly a quick read.

The basic plot line is about gun control and tort reform and the systemic political intrigue whirling around these issues. The author obviously did his homework with exhaustive in-depth research on both sides of the aisle. According to the book-jacket praise, Patterson 'has a keen eye for how Washington really works ... his portrait of the gun lobby is right on...', and, the book presents '... a heartfelt understanding of the effects of gun violence on our society ...'

In the interest of full and fair disclosure, I should note that those 2 items of praise were tendered by Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy respectively - a detail that is sure to capture the interest and resolute attention of some in the audience.

Interestingly though, the only interest group refusing to be involved in interviews and background research was the NRA - that's the Nat'l Rifle Assoc., for those of you not familiar with the intricacies of the gun issue in the USA. (A quick aside - why are they called a 'rifle' association? They spend most their time, efforts and money 'protecting' the 'right' of the people [in a A well regulated Militia, no doubt] to own rapid-fire handguns, assualt weapons and organ- shreading, 'cop-killer' bullets - the weapons of choice for drug thugs, criminals, batterers, and wackos intent on committing mayhem.)

All of that said, the book was an interesting, captivating, sobering and somewhat depressing read. But, my point is this - Even though the book is a fiction, it engages the reader with and raises awareness of many truths about our society here in America. In his acknowledgements, Patterson thanks his publisher for '... believing that there is a place for serious popular fiction on controversial political and social subjects ...'

Sounds an awful lot like photography's recent(ish) fascination with 'constructed' pictures which articulate concerns relating to contemporary global experiences, doesn't it?