decay # 14 ~ that was then, this is now
Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 08:33AM 
Spring is in the air • clcik to embiggenOf late, it seems that every time I turn on the tv, there's a documentary about photography and/or a photographer. Last night it was an Ansel Adams retrospective / love fest on PBS. The film has been around for a while but I had never managed to catch it.
Adams has often been referred to as Saint Ansel and this film adds another level of canonization to that Adams, the photographer, moniker. On the other hand, it puts a very human face on Adams, the person, by dealing pretty openly and honestly with his affair with a lovely young assistant, his near manic working style, and his party-boy drinking. I knew the man like to tip a few but I had never heard put the way it was in this film - he worked everyday of his life ... he never took a day off ... except when he was recovering from a hangover ... which was frequent enough.
I didn't learn very much new about Adams from this film but what I did learn was rather interesting. It didn't have anything to do with his pictures, per se, but rather his epiphany about life and Art as expressed by him in a letter to his closest friend, Cedric Wright:
Dear Cedric,
A strange thing happened to me today. I saw a big thundercloud move down over Half Dome, and it was so big and clear and brilliant that it made me see many things that were drifting around inside of me ....
For the first time I know what love is; what friends are; and what art should be.
Love is a seeking for a way of life; the way that cannot be followed alone; the resonance of all spiritual and physical things....
Friendship is another form of love -- more passive perhaps, but full of the transmitting and acceptances of things like thunderclouds and grass and the clean granite of reality.
Art is both love and friendship and understanding: the desire to give. It is not charity, which is the giving of things. It is more than kindness, which is the giving of self. It is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light of the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit. It is a recreation on another plane of the realities of the world; the tragic and wonderful realities of earth and men, and of all the interrelations of these.
Ansel
Much of what Adams expressed, re: 'what art (photography division) should be' - a recreation on another plane of the realities of the world, ... realities of earth and men, and of all the interrelations of these in order to turn out to the light of the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit, in essence, gibes with my a lot of my feelings on the subject.
That said, why do I think that Adams' pictures - and the pictures of those who continue to toil in the garden of Adams anachronisms - are, in today's world, very out of place?
Adams' view of the world during that time in which he was most productive in achieving his desire to "put his experience of a place" into his pictures (instead of making geographic records of it) was typical of the prevailing paradigm of the "American Century". America had conquered its wilderness frontiers. The industrial revolution was spreading its wings and its 'wealth'. We had won a world war and, despite the lingering effects of the Great Depression, America was on the move to what appeared to be a future of limitless possibilities - the future's so bright, I gotta wear shades.
And Adams' pictures reflected that paradigm with their representation of America - or to be most accurate, his preferred piece of it - as a place of awe inspiring majesty and grandeur, truly and verily, America the Beautiful. A place of virgin and seemingly endless frontiers. And, ironically enough, he accomplished this visual slight of hand by ignoring his feelings about 'the recreation on another plane ... the tragic realities of earth and man' and concentrating on only the 'wonder-filled' realities of earth and man.
I think John Szarkowski, an avowed Adams fan, said it best when he opined that Adams' pictures were the ultimate statement in a genre that had reached the end of the line. The American paradigm that Adams and his photography subscribed to no longer exists. The pristine (so called at the time, even though we were, even then, dumping all over it) and limitless American frontier - geographic and cultural - no longer exists.
There are many new 'realities in the world', especially in the natural world that Adams frequented in his photographic quest. In light of those 'new realities', photography and photographers have moved on to newer 'recreations on another plane of the realities of the world'.
Would I, if I could, have an Adams original hanging on my wall? In a heart beat - his prints are not only historically significant - both culturally and to the medium itself, but they are also, in and of themselves, things of exquisite beauty. However, my appreciation of them would be a melancholy affair dominated by feelings and realizations about what America the Beautiful has lost.
gravitas et nugalis
Featured Comment: James wrote: "At least twice a year, sometimes more, I travel to Las Vegas for work. Let me be blunt here...Vegas disgusts me. It is, in my opinion, the ultimate example of, to quote Mark, "dumping all over" America and squandering our resources. In August of '06 I stepped off my plane and was met by a glowing ad for "America", an Adams exhibit at the Bellagio. After my first day of work, I walked the length of the strip in 105 degree heat, a pilgramage of sorts, to see for the first time in my life not just one, but over fifty of Adams' original prints.
Set against the backdrop of one of the most extreme examples of indulgence and disgregard for the environment, I was left with a feeling best described as sadness for what has been lost. To steal from Mark's post, it was "a meloncholy affair" at best. Walking back to my room, past fake grass carpets and concrete cliffs in front of the Wynn and tourists taking gondola rides on a fake Riviera in front of the Venetian, it was one lame mirage after another in an America that looked nothing like the exhibit of the same name. I didn't feel better, but worse."
my response: yup.
decay
Reader Comments (3)
At least twice a year, sometimes more, I travel to Las Vegas for work. Let me be blunt here...Vegas disgusts me. It is, in my opinion, the ultimate example of, to quote Mark, "dumping all over" America and squandering our resources. In August of '06 I stepped off my plane and was met by a glowing ad for "America", an Adams exhibit at the Bellagio. After my first day of work, I walked the length of the strip in 105 degree heat, a pilgramage of sorts, to see for the first time in my life not just one, but over fifty of Adams' original prints.
Set against the backdrop of one of the most extreme examples of indulgence and disgregard for the environment, I was left with a feeling best described as sadness for what has been lost. To steal from Mark's post, it was "a meloncholy affair" at best. Walking back to my room, past fake grass carpets and concrete cliffs in front of the Wynn and tourists taking gondola rides on a fake Riviera in front of the Venetian, it was one lame mirage after another in an America that looked nothing like the exhibit of the same name. I didn't feel better, but worse.
"Yup".
Is that an informed "Yup", or a "Yup" born of too much bourbon? Well, it can't be the former (because no such evidence exists), so it must be the latter. Or maybe you were just too tired to think about it.
The venom being spewed by James is perplexing. OK, so he's been here a few times. Big deal. So have millions of others. And I get that he doesn't like it here. Fair enough. But how, exactly, does las Vegas "dump all over America"? How does this city "squander resources" any more than any other city? The only real resource at issue in the desert is water. Ours comes from the Colorado River and yes. it's an issue. But how many cities in America can say that over 80 % of residential water use is recycled? It all goes back into Lake Mead (after treatment, of course).
Yes, we have smog sometimes. Who doesn't. Yes, there are too many cars with too many idiots driving them (which makes us different than Boston or LA or DC - how?).
Are we cutting down large forests? Are we using huge amounts of land to grow corn to make useless ethanol? Are we poisoning the atmosphere with plants that emit chemmical byproducts?
Of course stuff is "fake" here. It's a giant Disneyland. Does Disneyland also disgust you?
Sorry, I don't get it. Las Vegas is no worse than most American cities and better than many of them. Is that good enough? Probably not. But to paint this city as the Sodom and Gomorrah of 21st century America is as ludicrous as it is uninformed.
No hard feelings Paul...I just read your post and then re-read my own. I have strong feelings about this because I feel like promoting a life of excess and creating an adult "Disney" of sorts is like flaunting our disregard for sustainable living, and I am not just speaking in terms of the environment. Many other cities aren't much better in that regard though, you are right...and I've worked extensively in places like Detroit, so I have seen what comes "after" so to speak.
I can't debate you on sprawl, water usage, damning up rivers, resource mangagement, etc. in and around your hometown. I meant no disrespect to you or the people who live in this area, all for their own reasons, some out of necessity just like people living everywhere. I was being honest about how this approach to living affects me personally, and about how I felt viewing Adams' work for the first time in that setting.
I realize now that my language could be offensive to people living in the area, like yourself...for that I apologize. I hate reading posts that are nasty for the sake of being nasty...that was not my intent at all.