ku # 523 ~ a couple new things to consider
Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at 10:04AM 
The quiet before a storm • click to embiggenA few things of note have passed my way recently so I thought I'd pass them on to you for your consideration.
The first item came via an email from Tyler Monson with the subject line, Fellow from Seattle. I did not know Tyler prior to this missive and the photo that was attached together with the text was ... well ... a bit off beat. 
Tyler Monson, I presume • clickThe text read; "One hand for the camera, the other for a triple espresso...and not a drop spilled nor opportunity missed." The picture is on the left.
Undeterred, I followed the link to his blog.More Original Refrigerator Art, about which he states - "where a new image is posted every day, and words are few". That seems to be the case - there is no way to leave a comment, there does seem to be a picture a day, and his words are very few and far between.
IMO, his pictures are well worth the time spent viewing them. They are not of the new-way-of-seeing variety - they are very much in the postmodern idiom of cool and detached - but, that said, I find them to be very interesting and involving. Visually, the pictures are rather "formal", which I tend to like. There are occasional flirtations with humor - I laughed out loud at a couple pictures. IMO, it's very good stuff. But, 'nuff said from me. I am interested in reading what you might have to say.
Item # 2 is from Joe Reifer. His blog is one that I follow on a regular basis - it/he introduced me to the genre of night photography which, at its best, I also find interesting and involving. Joe's NP niche is junkyards by the light of the full moon. He also dispenses interesting photo tidbits from time to time.
That said, Joe recently posted 2 entries of recent work, Salvage Yard II & III, in which, IMO, he has made some very interesting and very involving pictures. Again, IMO, he's on to something big, something very big. The work has made such a dramatic impression upon me that I am going to write a full-blown review of it asap.
But, I don't want to give away the store here. Again, I would like to read your thoughts on the work.
FYI, I am trying, here on The Landscapist, to encourage critiques from you, the reader, about the photography of others (or mine) as a means of:
a) communicating about pictures in a manner related to content, not the tech crap or lame "I like the way you composed ... cropped ... used a GND .... etc. crap that is most often encountered on the web.
b) helping those who need and/or want to escape the inanity of item a) in order to start understanding the real capabilities / power of the medium so that they can develop their own personal way of seeing, aka, vision.
IMO, the best "education" one can get for the development of a personal vision is one based on looking at the pictures made by others and, starting with the ones that you don't understand / get, discuss your thoughts and questions with others on the same learning path. In short, work at it. Learn something new.
Despite what the it's-a-visual-art simpletons think, what a picture connotes is as important - in the Art world, more important - as its visual referent and/or its visual form. It's the idea(s) beneath the surface and how well the picture / picture-maker communicate that idea(s) that matters most.
Forget all that technique stuff, that really is the easy part. As has been stated by many, once you have an idea, the manner in which to express it flows naturally.
Don't be shy. Take a look at both links and let me / the rest of us know what you think. Then we can discuss it. who knows what we might learn.
Reader Comments (6)
I'd have to say that I enjoyed Joe Reifer's photos more than Tyler Monson's. Tyler's are a bit too cool and detached for me. I can appreciate the formal compositions in some of them and the humor, but overall they just don't speak to me.
I subscribe to Joe's blog too and I really like his night photography. These latest two groups are especially good. I like the light; a kind of false daylight. If you looked at them quick you might think they were taken in daylight, but there's something wrong or different about it. Then you notice those weirdly smeared clouds and the occasional star trails.
I wouldn't call Joe's pictures cool or detached; although they are definitely postmodern, they have a lot of feeling in them, at least to me. Loss and nostalgia are a couple of words that come to mind.
Many of your Ku photos surround the central subject(s) with an awesome sense of movement/depth..."quiet before the storm" is a perfect example, as the river leads to the adk brown guard rail suggesting a road in front of the sloping mountain and narrowing banks...all creating this sense of motion, leading to a vanishing point of sorts at the bend in the river. My eye returns to the bend/bank itself and the white pine also leaning slightly toward the vanishing point and the tea-colored water and bed of stones just beneath the surface...constant motion. If I were to "select" personal favorites from this series, I think my choices would lean heavily toward those that capture this idea of movement/motion you create...guiding the viewer toward and around subjects, always creating this feeling of depth and reality of place that never feels overly composed.
James
Today's photo reminds me of many peaceful places, I have enjoyed. The large rock is frustrating me, because I can't figure out how to reach it. I would love to sit on it and feel as though I'm part of the serenity your photo captured.
When I drop by here from time to time, I can usually be sure of finding something of value.
Tyler Monson (previously unknown to me, along with no doubt thousands of others...) is an interesting character for sure. The kind of person that you feel (hope) has unplumbed depths of remarkable experiences and tales to tell. I found his collection of diurnal imagery quite refreshing viewing; there is wit there and also pathos. Like you, I'm attracted to that style of working, call it post-modern or whatever, and his take on the US is one I - as someone in the UK - finds fascinating. For me Gifts, Knives, Adult Movies' sums up the US very neatly.
One I shall continue to watch.
Joe Reifer's work I've followed for many years; for a long(ish) time I subscribed to his feed, but you know I felt after a while there are just so many junk yards at night that I felt I could take. That's not to say that there aren't some truly wonderful images in his collections but I was glad to see some diversions into other areas on his new site. I'm going to keep an eye on his work again and see how I get along with it.
I guess my overwhelming feeling with collections like this is that here we are seeing an awful lot of 'work in progress' that may, or may not, lead to anything lasting. The thrill of finding a collection that shows that 'spark' of meaningful creativity amongst the imagery is what keeps me trawling through the endless photoblog universe. Both of the sites you highlight fit the bill.
Pre-web, you really only ever saw collections of photographers' images that had stood the test of time - or critics - to be assembled in a printed monograph or on a gallery wall. If any photographer whose name appears in any history of the medium had felt compelled to post a picture every day, would people view their legacies differently?
Monson has an intelligent and artistic eye, with a sense of humor, as you say. Perusing these city vignettes, one is led to imagine a back-story that took him past these places and prompted him to take these shots. I also like the formality, which often conveys a feeling of distance. However, there's emotional variety rather than consistent pomo detachment. In addition to the humor, there are strong tinges of nostalgia (the framed portrait, the old door) or sadness, even loneliness (the night sky, the coastscape), plus appreciation of beauty (the shadows and flowers, the plant behind a translucent window). The contrasting portraits from Memorial Day, of course, say a lot.
[Here, by the way, is where I would disagree with the thrust of the previous post. My immediate reaction to Monson's photos is to wonder whether I in that spot would have made that photo, or how I would have made it differently, and why. That is my route into trying to empathize with or understand the photographer, and I think it's an authentic route for any visual artist. And if it were my work, I would like to hear that sort of initial reaction from viewers, as well as more articulate thoughts that might emerge through conversation.]
Regarding the Salvage Yard: I've been intrigued with night work since I (re)started in photography, and would probably be going out with the Nocturnes if I still lived in the Bay Area. I normally tend to like the light-painted and strangely colored work less, but in Joe's series it's perfect for suggesting an eerie, post-apocalyptic world where the only life is what remains in the machines. Having spent time in junkyards myself, I can also easily relate to the fun of "Hey, here's another one!" exploration. Has he found himself in the desert?
Being a fellow "Fellow from Seattle", I was compelled to visit "More Refrigerator Art" hoping that I might get some images of the city that I have come to call home. There are few images that can be specifically identified as Seattle, most indeed are captioned as being somewhere else. But I was not disappointed. Tyler's images speak to me about the urban landscape,and even in the absence of human figures they speak of the experience. The landscapes repesented appear inhabited. This in contrast to the images presented by Joe Reifer's which appear to deny human habitation in a scary kind of way.
Like so many others, with the dawning of the digital age, I have been attempting to make and post to cyberspace, an image a day. If you care to take a peek the images from the past couple of months, along with even fewer words than Tyler includes, are at
http://www.pipilio.smugmug.com/