ku # 511 ~ Spring # 4
Friday, April 11, 2008 at 08:32AM 
Monument Falls on the Au Sable • click to embiggenI haven't quite figured it out yet, but I have a growing unease(?) / dissatisfaction(?) / question mark (?) / something or other (?) with my "pure" ku picturing.
It seems that pure natural-landscape pictures aren't doing it for me right now. Without some sign of humankind as an element, the pictures seem somehow "incomplete" or "empty". Despite this, I am still "seeing" ku possibilities whenever I go out to picture but I think it will take a bit of continued picturing to sort this out.
Part of my uncertainty most likely can be explained by a comment made by Christof Hammann on my recent Pictue window - less is more entry; "I think Robert Frank, and I concur with him, laments the influence that this deluge of pictures has on the perception of everybody. Every single visual experience, be it direct or representational gets steadily devalued and diluted in intensity. This is physiologic adaptation at work."
In short, too many cameras and too many pictures leading to a visual information overload - in my case, too damn many natural-landscape pictures. They're everywhere, they're everywhere and the overwhelming bulk of them are rather uninteresting. I think that my angst, whatever it is, is a general feeling of a "it's all been said" kind of thing rather than a particular feeling about my own ku.
Maybe. I think. Or, maybe not. I just don't know. Any thoughts?
Then again, re: "it's all been said", every once in awhile amongst all the visual babble, some pictures of note emerge and capture my attention - check out Nature/Disorder pictures from Mary Dennis - and lift my spirits. While it may be true that it has all been said, it seems that there are still those who manage to see things that are well worth seeing.
Reader Comments (8)
I hear you. I'm a newish photographer and I'm already slamming up against the wall of "what the hell am I supposed to capture that will be any different than what has already been captured?"
To be sure, part of that is my own sick need to be "utterly unique and original", but I resonate with you nonetheless.
Oh well - Off to make pictures!
I suspect that what's really happening is, thanks to the web, we're all learning what photo editors have known for years - there's a lot of stuff out there and most of it isn't all that interesting. Once upon a time, they were the only ones who saw it all. Now we all do.
Perhaps it is about the images with which you can best capture your feelings about the subject. For me, that is about pure natural-landscape. I see subjects with the touch of humans in them but don't seem able to adequately reflect what I see & feel in a photographic image.
Love that series by Mary Dennis, too.
I agree about the information/photographic overload. It's frightening at times. I think you have to make a committed and very concious effort to remove yourself from it for periods of time or it will suck you in and make you feel like shit. A very small, insignicant piece of shit. Which of course, Mark, you are not. While every photograper has the right to head in which ever direction they choose with their work, let me just say that I would deeply miss your pure ku images if you decided to stop creating them. But, hey, it's your journey....
Thanks for the nod to my disorder. It's such a tangled mess out there. ;-)
"what the hell am I supposed to capture that will be any different than what has already been captured"
Read Paul Butzi's "Art is a Verb". Most of what I capture is probably no different or better or worse than what tens of thousands of other photographers capture. But the process of capturing the images adds joy to my life and brings me peace of mind. If someone else likes the pictures too, so much the better.
Sometimes it really is about the journey.
The typical answer to that despairing sentiment of "It's all been done before!" would be a stubborn "Yes, but not by me!", somehow implying that you only have to put enough of yourself in the picture to imbue it with meaning and beauty.
I think that is wrong.
On the contrary, the photos that have spoken most eloquently to me are those where the photographer has stayed out of the way an lets the world impress itself on his medium. Robert Frank (again!), The New Topographics and the Bechers are such examples.
I was not the first chef to create a Hollandaise sauce, although I'd like to think that I've created some memorable interpretations of that particular recipe in the past and I hope to do so again.
I see no shame in revisiting the familiar and the comfortable.
It feels like I too have "painted myself into the corner" with my Man Made Wilderness statement of intent. There doesn't seem to be much point in showing an unaffected natural world when humans are so hard at work desecrating it. Could picturing it really make a difference? Unlikely. But it has to be done, nonetheless.
My added constraint has lately been to work as closely to home as possible. There is still plenty of rampant development in this part of the world (central Virginia) that somehow needs to be a part of my continuing work. At least the development taking place in my home county is not of the uncontrolled, hideous type we see many other places. But there is no stopping it, nor should we really attempt to.
When you figure out this need to show human impact, let us know Mark. I too can't go back to the simple tried and true views that purport to show a landscape unaffected by human "progress" without feeling slightly guilty. I do it, but there is some anxiety that maybe there are "limits to growth," and I don't want to be fiddling around while Rome burns to the ground.