ku # 460 ~ mindset
Wednesday, February 14, 2007 at 09:42AM 
-10F on the Saranac River # 2 • click on photo to embiggen itTwo recent discussions, one over at Joe Reifer - Words and one at Art & Perception, got me to thinking about mindsets photography-wise.
In the A&P thread, Steve Durbin remarked that "There are different kinds of photography, and this one actually feels completely different to me from most of my other work. I’m in a different frame of mind doing it, I’m looking for different things, and I do very different things in the later processing of the image."
Over at JR-W, JR wrote that John Pfahl is one of his favorite photographers. Pfahl is one of my favs also and both JR and I are especially enamored of his Altered Landscapes - on the linked photo, Blue Right-angle, what appear to be markings on the photograph are, in fact, pieces of carefully placed tape within the scene.
In any event, here's the connection between A&P and JR-W/Pfahl. One wintery night in 1981, I was just hanging out in my loft when there was a knock on the door and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a friend (professor of design at RIT's School for American Craftsmen) with John Pfahl in tow. She wanted Pfahl to see my then work-in-progress project of urban landscapes photographed with 8×10 color neg and contact printed. So I obliged.
Across the hall we went to my studio and out came my box of prints. Pfahl, I am quite pleased to say, was interested and intrigued. We had a nice chat. What I found interesting about the whole thing though, was how befuddled Pfahl seemed to be by being in my commercial photo studio (surrounded by prints my commercial work - glam fashion babes in RayBans, food stylized to a fare-thee-well, Ithaca shotguns in hunter-wetdream dioramas, etc.) and, at the same time, viewing Art which was created by the commercial photographer.
There was definitely a disconnect for Pfahl - more than once, while viewing my urban landscape photos, he said, "...but you're a commercial photographer...". Now, I took this as a compliment of sorts. Obviously, he thought well of my Art. I assume that he also thought well of my commercial work. He just couldn't seem to fathom that both were the products of the same person.
Apparently, John didn't see a future for himself as a commercial photographer because...he is a Fine Art photographer. Addressing Steve Durbin's point about the "different frame of mind" it takes to mine "different kinds of photography", Pfahl seemed to hold with the notion of one mind, one frame of.
That seems distinctly odd to me, but then, unlike John Pfahl, I am not part of photography academia.
How many "frames of" do you have?
Reader Comments (2)
Mark, thanks for the reference and link to John Pfahl. I saw a print of Blue Right Angle years ago, I can't remember where or when, but was seriously intrigued. It's great to find out who and what.
Mark,
That's a very lovely photograph, I hope people are embiggening it to get the full glory!
I would think most commercial photographers who also do personal/fine art work would have at least two frames of mind. Doug Plummer, whose post followed mine on Art and Perception, talked a little about his very different attitude towards his "stick pictures", perhaps his most deeply personal work. I find it not only different from his commercial work, but quite distinct from other personal projects close to his heart, such as his folk dancing pictures.
I suppose the analogy in writing would be that one could write technical manuals, political essays, and poetry all with the same pen. The camera is a similarly flexible tool.