tuscany # 86 / ku # 642 / man & nature # 254 ~ poetry

Sunlight at the bottom of the steps ~ Viliano, Tuscany • click to embiggen
Sunlight on the side of the road ~ Wilmington, NY • click to embiggenOnce again Matt Dallos has offered us an interesting comment in his answer to the question, has photography failed you? (FYI, his answer was, "yes"):

.... I have just run into too many situations in the past 12-18 months when what I was seeing in the world and what I wanted to show about the world just couldn't be done with photography... I have found a new place for photography. It will become my poetry, showing what cannot and should not be explained.

I have always thought that photography was akin to poetry. Like good poetry, pictures can be lyrical, complex, and seemingly inscrutable with meaning(s) that requires delving into the feeling(s) they traffic in in order to "understand" their meaning(s). Good pictures, like good poetry, can open the door to many interpretations and, as such, they often ask as many questions as they pose answers. And, as is true of the best of Art, the more "experience" (in life, in the Arts, etc.) the viewer brings to the proceeding, the more can be gained from it.

That said, as I have mentioned on many occasions, in the medium of photography (unlike many of the other Arts), there is the tradition of the artist statement, which can be an invaluable aid in "interpreting" pictures.

Many of the simple-minded in the crowd object quite strenuously to the artist statement, most often on the grounds that they do not want to be "told what to think" or that a picture(s) that "needs" an artist statement is somehow faulty in as much as the artist has not made his/her intent perfectly clear. That, my friends, is pure unadulterated BS.

An artist statement is intended to let the viewers of an artist's work have a peek into the mind of the artist - what was on their mind as they made their work. It is not intended as a how-to-view-this-art instructional manual. One should take the artist statement for whatever worth the viewer judges it to have and the viewer should always do what people with a brain do - think for yourself when viewing a piece(s) of Art.

That said, let me be perfectly blunt - with one caveat: in my experience - those who object mostly vigorously to the idea of an artist statement, are generally those who could not write even the simplest of one for themselves.

BTW, I almost always read an artist statement after I have viewed any given work. That said, I always read an artist statement when one is available.

Comments

[the wife]

So a rhyming couplet is a diptych, and a limerick is a diptych inside a triptych? Have you done a series on the Man for Nantucket?

[Svein-Frode]

Very much agree with you Mark on this one!

[J]

But is it a "real" man from nantucket or merely a pretty one? :)