man & nature # 21 ~ scratch my back with a hacksaw
Monday, July 28, 2008 at 08:47AM 
The Grand Prix Motor Lodge • click to embiggenOver the entire course of my life, especially so in my adult years, I have experienced quite a number of "coincidences". You know, you think something then something like it happens. You think about someone you haven't seen in a while and, shortly thereafter, the phone rings.
These type of things happen to me in bunches - 2, 3, sometimes 4 "coincidences" in a row over a couple of days. Then, nothing for weeks or even months. And, no, this is not anything that I can control. I don't think /dream winning lotto numbers, trifectas, etc. I can't wish something to happen and make it so. They are just "coincidences", although I am convinced that that word is no longer the right word to describe the experiences.
That said, Yesterday's "coincidence" left me not knowing whether to cry or wind my watch. I was ready to buy Sam a drink and get his dog one too. I felt like I had been cow-kicked.
Why is that, you might ask? Well, consider this - after making yesterday's entry, more on "plain seeing", I left the house to run some errands in Plattsburg - have a 24×36 print made, buy some Summer reading, and then play a round of golf. On the drive to Plattsburg, I was thinking about today's entry which was going to be in response to Stephen Connor's comment on the topic of plain seeing:
Um, sadly, "plain seeing" may draw attention to the referent, not to the artist, but it makes crap art. Turn with me now to plate 15, from "Cape Light" by Joel Meyerowitz. It's a swimming pool, some chairs, a beach umbrella, and the horizon. Pretty darn plain, if you ask me. Anybody REALLY think the average photographer would take a photograph as beautiful as this of this scene? Anybody think the hand of the artist isn't visible? Anybody really think "the referent" is all that matters here?
I had a link ready to go to some of Meyerowitz's work so that you could see Plate # 15 and other pictures that I felt would support my position re: Meyerowitz's photography. I also had the above picture selected to accompany the entry. It was going to be something like this:
I think the photography of Joel Meyerowitz is an excellent example of plain seeing. His pictures are very often about stuff that appears to be nothing important. To the untrained eye, they also seem to be rather randomly composed. To my eye and sensibilities, they appear to have been made rather effortlessly and they make me feel like I am seeing what he saw in a very plain way.
Now, I know that Meyerowitz uses an 8×10 view camera so also know that his pictures are not made "effortlessly" and, in all probably, that they are not randomly composed. I also know that these pictures evidence more than a little relationship to his NYC street photography approach to picturing.
So, Stephen, in this case, I am acutely aware of the hand of the artist, and no, I don't think that the average photographer "would take a photograph as beautiful as this of this scene". Nor do I think that the referent is the only thing that matters in his pictures. However, none of that says that the pictures are not plain seeing the the sense that I tried to make plain in yesterday's entry.
But, let the coincidences begin:
1) When I made the
2) Yesterday afternoon, as I perused the photo magazine section for Summer reading, I found the current issue of Focus and, low and behold, it contained an interview with Joel Meyerowitz. I flipped to the interview and the first thing I read was this:
It's important to be able to read your entire body of work for the discoveries of who you were at that moment in your consciousness. Was I as conscious then as I am now? No, I'm only as conscious as I am now because of then, because the past allowed me to explore things in a very narrow focused way.
note; the italic emphasis are his, the bold emphasis are mine.
For those of you who didn't read yesterday's entry, compare that to this from that entry - written before I found the magazine - to understand the "coincidence" and why the hairs on the back of my neck were beginning to tingle:
I also that seeing clearly is an after-the-fact discovery for the photographer. For virtually every photographer who is making a body meaningful pictures, there was a process of discovery, of learning, about their chosen referent. The work we see is the work that results from an extended examination by the photographer of a referent that they now know something about ...
3) Ok. I have finished my errands and it's off to the golf course where, after 15 holes of playing alone, a nother solo golfer comes up behind me and asks to finish out the round with me. So we do it together with a bit of casual chatting. He's from Boston and in the area on a 5 month job working on the installation of some giant wind turbine farms (he seemed like he was from the managerial class, not the labor class). He and few other workers are living some temporary housing with which they were not very happy. Looking for different housing was what brought him to Plattsburg and this gold course.
Fast-forward. We wrap it up and go to our cars, pack up, and head out, he before me. A short distance on down the road, I come up behind him and we continue on our way until he arrives at his temporary housing - none other than the Grand Prix Motor Lodge.
That was it. Way to much "coincidence" for me. You could have scratched my back with a hacksaw. I didn't know whether to cry or wind my watch. I felt like I had been cow-kicked or beaten like a rented mule. I definitely needed a drink and I was going to buy one for Sam and his dog too.
PS - I would highly recommend buying the current issue of Focus if for no other reason than the Meyerowtz interview. It is very interesting and has lots to offer re: growing as an artist.
Reader Comments (2)
Hi, Mark,
I probably over-stated my case regarding "plain seeing" in my original comment. It's a way of photographing that I heartily endorse, actually.
In connection with this idea, if you haven't seen it already, you might hunt around for a copy of the July 28th edition of The New Yorker. Good article in there on research into the nature of insight. I'd post a link, but the article isn't in their on-line edition.
Thanks for the Meyerowitz link, and the last couple of posts. I clearly was coming at this from an unintended direction with my original comments.
Whilst I struggle to verbalise why, it is this sot of photography that I'm really enjoying looking at recently. It's a long way from what I feel I can create myself: one can but perservere.