civilized ku # 19 ~ an affection for life

Spring from my kitchen window • click to embiggenSpring has finally begun in earnest.

In his essay, Truth and Landscape, Robert Adams states; "Landscape pictures can offers us, I think, three verities - geography, autobiography, and metaphor. Geography is, if taken alone, sometimes boring, autobiography is frequently trivial, and metaphor can be dubious. But taken together, as in the best work ... the three kinds of information stregthen each other and reinforce what we all work to keep intact - an affection for life."

urban ku # 59 - the terms of our existence

City Island views - The Bronx, NY • click to embiggenFrom this past weekend's itinerary, City Island is a small island approximately 1.5 mi long by 0.5 mi wide. It is part of the New York City borough of the Bronx. City Island is located at the extreme western end of Long Island Sound, south of Pelham Bay and east of Eastchester Bay. Stepping Stones Lighthouse, marking the main shipping channel into New York, is off the southern tip of the island, near the Long Island shore.

The truly odd thing - I would even go so far as to say, positively disorienting thing - about City Island is its quaint New England fishing village feel and look. A drive or walk down its main street, City Island Avenue, which is lined with small speciality and antique shops and about a billion seafood restaurants, does nothing to dispell the notion. So it's odd when you keep reminding yourself that you're in The Bronx. You know, the home of The Bronx Bombers and Yankee Stadium.

French fry tossing • click to embiggen Photo by The WifeNot that you really have to keep reminding yourself - there are plenty of visual cues. Most of those cues are people. There are no cute grey-haired salt-o'-the-earth New England grannies or Barnacle Bills the sailors dotting the cityscape. The population is predominantly hispanic and black. It is, don't forget, the Bronx.

The residents have also managed to create an indigenous form of wildlife-based entertainment - the seagull french fry toss. From my limited observation, it seems to be requisite ritual at all the waterfront eateries, especially those with menus brimming with artery-busting deep fried seafood.

In any event, City Island is a very interesting place. One I never knew existed. If you are ever anywhere close at hand, make it a must see.

That said, my urban ku # 59 look at City Island reminded me of the following from The Photograph by Graham Clarke (Oxford Press);

The images of Eggleston, Callahan, and Berman are examples of a new kind of art photography, which looks towards postmodern engagements with meaning and the nature of representation. Moving beyond a concern with the 'pure' and the aesthetic, they produce an imagery dedicated to the continuous probing of the terms of our existence ... they return art photography to a popular forum, releasing it to deal with the terms of our existence rather than the ideal of formal content divorced from the world of its meaning. Their images have an underlying ambiguity fed by a deep lyrical sense of the human context of photography's focus.

Update on Tuesday, May 1, 2007 at 08:56AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Jim Jirka wrote;

A man is with his boss as they are talking while having lunch.

The Man: " Only Baseball players and hookers live in the Bronx"
The Boss: " My wife is from the Bronx"
The Man Sqirming: " What position did she play?"

Fishkill, NY

Garden of earthy delights • no embiggen - it's a Polaroid

Spring 'blossoms' in Fishkill, NY - along the lower Hudson River Valley.

It was Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, I was on the road again and I had run out of film so I took a Polaroid picture as a nod towards alternative process photography.

There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described. ~ Garry Winogrand

Antonio Pires

click to embiggenDear Mark Hobson
 
My name is António Pires and I am living in Lisbon, Portugal.
 
I wouldn't show the attached photo to anyone, had I not seen your civilized ku # 13, of March 27. May be the subject isn't "noble" enough, or academic enough. But if the subject is good enough for a photographer to post an image of it, well, why not me? Thanks for helping me have one less prejudice.
 
I am not a photographer, I just take photos. When I looked at the scene, the composition was pleasant and so I took the photo. And that illustrates my way: I don't make images, I rather try to find nice, good, pleasant, images in the environment. So to speak, the images are already there, what I have to do is to find them.
 
Regards
 
AP

I really appreciate little email missives like this one from Antonio. The reasons for that are numerous but this email brings to mind a bit from Robert Adams' essay Making Art New;

"Why are important areas of life geting past us? Why, for example, do we have so few pictures of family life in America? ... The only thing that denies us these pictures is a lack of commitment to go out and get them - to be absurd... to be unable to explain, to endure our friends' pity ... to do it. 'Most expressive discoveries are made in old familiar subject matter," the art historian A. Hyatt Mayor wrote. "The really original artist does not try to find a substitute for boy meets girl, but creates an illusion that no boy ever met a girl before." Photography is by nature on intimate terms with old familiar subject matter; all that remains is for us to create new illusions in the service of truth."

The essay is from Adams' book, Beauty in Photography published by Aperture. The book is a short and sweet little read of 8 essays. It should be on your list of must-reads and it is available from my Shameless Commerce Division by clicking on the Photography Books link in the Nav column and then clicking through to Overstock.com.

Thanks Antonio. It's great to know that I connected with you in some way.

FYI

Ana, Chuck and Jim answered the bell and have posted new photographs in the Guest Photographer Forum. Much thanks. Be sure to check them out and leave a comment or two.

FYI ~ the Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

Porch pillar and red truck
Laundry basket and sun light
Pinhole photograph with 90mm lensWorldwide Pinhole Photography Day is fast approaching. Put the date - April, 29 - on your calender, poke a hole in something, mount it on your camera and pinhole away. It's fun, it's easy, it's pinhole-a-riffic.

WPPD is organized (if such a thing is possible) by pinholeday.org. If it strikes your fancy you can send your PPs to them for inclusion in their WPPD gallery. You can PP from WPPD's past on their site.

What I'd like to see is for a bunch of you guys and dolls to give it a shot (or more) and send the results to The Landscapist. I'll start a Pinhole/Alternative Process Forum if there is enough interest. I think that it's good to get out and try something different every now and again.

Come on, give it a try. What do you have to lose except your rigid adherence to photographic perfection?

BTW, re: Pinhole photograph with 90mm lens - the 90mm lens is not on the camera. It's on the porch railing along with a lupe. All photos - 4×5 Type 59 Polaroid.

urban ku # 58

A little piece of bark • click to embiggenI have come to realize that I really loath the very idea of 'idealized forms'.

Think about it. How much of your life is spent admiring and pursuing 'idealized forms' - the perfect mate, the perfect house in the perfect neighborhood, the perfect car, the perfect clothes, the perfect vacation, the perfect camera, the perfect lens .... ? If I might be so bold as to suggest, what a perfect waste of time and creative energy.

Pictures of 'idealized forms' have always driven me batty. They get up under my skin and irritate the living hell out of me. I have frequently explained this agita in terms related to the pictures themselves - acting as an 'art critic'. The pictures were/are 'trite', 'cliched', 'sentimental', 'pretty', 'pandering to the lowest common denominator', etc. All of which, as far it went, was/is true.

But, I have come to understand consciously what I have always understood intuitively - that what really gnawed at my craw was/is the fact that most of the pictures which pissed me off had nothing to do with 'real' life. Most of the pictures, in fact, stood/stand in direct contrast to 'real' life.

In wallowing in the fields of "idealized forms', they refute and devalue the realities of everyday life.

You know the life I mean. The one which you live each and every day. The one with the dust balls under the bed with the sagging mattress. The one with toil and trouble. But, it is also the one with joy and happiness which comes from 'some things money can't buy' - things that can be experienced only by looking life square in the eye and, for lack of a better term, embracing and dealing with it.

Now, when it comes to picture making and picture viewing, many seem to think that pictures which depict 'real' life are somehow 'ugly' and 'depressing'. They fail to make even the slightest effort to find the beauty in truth. Better to escape into the realm and easily grasped false hope of 'idealized forms' than to 'work' at finding true hope in all which surrounds one's self.

Beauty in pictures is more than just what lies on the surface of the media.

That said, I have given the keys to the Guest Photographers Forum to many but it remains an under utilized asset here on The Landscapist. Where are the beautiful pictures, gang? Don't let Aaron's pictures intimidate you. Come on, get on board. If you have not been invited to post in the GPF but would like to participate, just send me an email.

BTW, today's picture is made with 4×5 Polaroid Type 59 film.

Update on Tuesday, May 1, 2007 at 09:00AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Paul Maxim wrote; "Jeez, Mark, evertime I think you might be returning to some semblance of rationality, you go and post something like this. Can you hear yourself? What in heavens name does "reality" (whatever that term means to you personally) have to do with how I or anyone else makes photographs? If I don't choose to photograph small trees with the bark falling off, does that mean that I can't see the beauty in everday life? If "beauty" for me is found in the red cliffs of Zion National Park, does that in some way diminish my efforts? Am I refuting the reality of everday life if I choose to photograph there? Does such an image have absolutely no "meaning" because someone else shrugs it off as simply a pretty picture? What kind of arrogant nonsense is that?

I have no problem with those who wish to photograph "real life", just as I have no problem with authors who claim to write about "real life". But it's their version of reality, not mine. I don't go to Barnes and Noble to buy books about the grisly details of everday existence - I can see that on my own whenever I walk out the door. True, there is much in our daily lives that is joyful and priceless. And it's often worth capturing photographically. But it's not, in general, what inspires me and I certainly don't expect it to inspire anyone else."

urban ku # 57 in which I be thinkin' bout thinkin'

Knarly tree trunk • no embiggen - it's a Polaroid

I like reading, as a break from the heavier stuff, books which might be described as 'pulp fiction' - books purchased from the discount bins at the big-box bookstores. My main criteria for selecting them is that they have a military weapon/vehicle (submarines are my favorite) on the cover or a Sam-Spade type description on the book flap. In short, pure escapist stuff.

In my most recent read, I have run into a protagonist by the name of Easy Rawlins (a black man who's always telling people it's 'Rawlins, not Rawlings. Our family lost the g when we was runnin' so fast to get outa Tennesse.'). Ease, as his friends call him (that's short for 'Easy', which, in turn, is short for 'Ezekiel'), always has lots of stuff on his mind, something which one of his friends reminds him is "...the problem with most'a you black mens, Easy ... White people think we stupid but it's the other way around. We got so much on our minds all the time that we ain't got no time for little things like exactly what time it is or the rent. Shit. Here he askin' you about long division and you thinkin' about Lisa Langly's long legs, who you gonna have to fight to get next to her, and why this big ugly white man think anything he say gonna make a bit'a difference to you when you get out on the street."

A little later in the story, which, BTW, takes place in South Los Angeles just at the end of the 1965 riots, another of Easy's friends, Ronette, tells him, "That's why you always frownin, Easy, studying somethin' till it don't even look like what it is no more..."

So, you might be wonderin', what's this got to do with the price of photographic tea in China?

Well, I been thinkin' bout thinkin' bout photography and sometimes I be thinkin' I be thinkin' too much. Ronette's right. It is possible to be "studying somethin' till it don't even look like what it is no more."

I think that's the problem with 'pure' postmodernist photography - it don't even look like what it is no more. Extreme postmodernists won't let a picture be just a picture even though sometimes that's all, or almost all, it is. That's why I am not a card-carrying postmodernist.

Nevertheless, I be thinkin' bout that (but, hopefully, not too much). Thanks Easy, Jackson, Ronette and Walter Mosley (the author of Little Scarlet).

Update on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 at 12:50PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comments: Chuck Kimmerle and Chantal wrote;

CK - "I think academics could learn a thing or two from Ronette. I was just talking with an art student who was frustrated with his recent end-of-year portfolio eval because he was told he needs to explain the meaning of EVERY single image in the grouping. From looking at the portfolio, some images surely had meaning, but others were just beautiful and/or interesting scenes.

Too bad art students have to be taught in such a strict regime. Of all departments, they should be the ones with the most freedom of expressions. Oh well....thank you Ronette."

C - "W. Mosley is one of my favorite fiction authors.....Easy is an 'easy' character to love.

Too much thinking can often get in the way of good photography. 'Shut up and shoot' is what I tell myself. It takes effort, but sometimes it's just best to shut the inner voices up and get on with the picture taking."