ku # 561/62 ~ avoiding the label of "fartster"

Fallen log with moss and weeds • click to embiggenIt's a bit odd that of all of the photographers who have a had an influence on how I see the world (and there any many), two - with whom my picturing drives and desires most closely match, Minor White and Duane Michals - are conspicuously absent from my photo book collection. For whatever reason, no explanation for that oversight comes readily to mind.

Lots of words have been spilled on paper and screen describing and dissecting the work of White and Michals but, to keep it simple, it is reasonable and accurate to state that their picturing activities were/are concerned with making pictures that are not considered just "mere" documentation but, rather, with making pictures that explored/explore mysteries and questions surrounding the human condition.

Minor White was much given to doing so by pursuing Alfred Steiglitz' notion of equivalents - pictures wherein the photographer -

...recognized an object or series of forms that, when photographed, would yield an image with specific suggestive powers that can direct the viewer into a specific and known feeling, state, or place within himself. ~ Minor White ~ Equivalence: The Perennial Trend

Duane Michals, while not exactly a devotee of the idea of equivalents, nevertheless stated:

I don't want to catalog images. I want to get into something that I can't truly describe. I might fail in the process, but it's where true creativity is born.

Whatever their similarities re: intent, White and Michals created/create their respective meanings / questions / suggestions by picturing (for the most part) very different subject matter. White most often pictured places and things whereas Michals concentrated (and still does) almost exclusively on making pictures of people - most often multiple pictures presented as sequential narratives.

Those differences aside, what White / Michals was/is interested in was/is picturing something that can not be photographed - feelings and thoughts. As White stated -

When a photographer presents us with what to him is an Equivalent, he is telling us in effect, "I had a feeling about something and here is my metaphor of that feeling." ... [T]he power of the equivalent, so far as the expressive-creative photographer is concerned, lies in the fact that he can convey and evoke feelings about things and situations and events which for some reason or other are not or can not be photographed. The secret, the catch and the power lies in being able to use the forms and shapes of objects in front of the camera for their expressive-evocative qualities. Or to say this in another way, in practice Equivalency is the ability to use the visual world as the plastic material for the photographer's expressive purposes.~ Equivalence: The Perennial Trend

And, therein, lies my connection to them and their work.

While I strive mightily to make pictures that are, on the 2-dimensional surface of the print, very illustrative, I also strive just as vigorously to make pictures that are very illuminative with regard to things that can not be photographed. Things such as "what it means to be human", or, "being in the moment", or ....

I do that because (as Michals stated) -

If you look at a photograph, and you think, 'My isn't that a beautiful photograph,' and you go on to the next one, or 'Isn't that nice light?' so what? I mean what does it do to you or what's the real value in the long run? What do you walk away from it with? I mean, I'd much rather show you a photograph that makes demands on you, that you might become involved in on your own terms or be perplexed by.

I want to make pictures that "makes demands" on the viewer so that they might "get involved on their own terms" precisely because they are "perplexed". I place deliberate emphasis upon being "perplexed" because being perplexed, when viewing photographs that I did not understand, was the very reason that drove me to explore the notion of getting beyond the camera-club obvious scheme of things when it comes to making pictures.

Those pictures made demands upon me - I had to think about them, not just look at them. I really wanted to know what the hell the point of the pictures was. Why the hell had the photographer (FYI, Michals considers himself "the artist formally known as a photographer") made them? What the hell was the picture maker trying to say / trying to tell me? What the hell was I missing?

At the time, the only thing that was obvious to me was that the pictures had to be about something more than what they visually depicted
Eggleston's Tricycle • click to embiggenbecause .. well ... to state the obvious, most of what was visually depicted did not exactly conform to time-honored subjects that were most frequently considered to be suitable subjects for picture making. I mean there must be something more than what is visually depicted that makes a picture of a tricycle worth $250,000.00, right?

In any event, the sensation of being perplexed incited in me a desire to explore, investigate, research, and hopefully learn more about the medium of photography and its picture making possibilities. And, I thank my lucky starts for that opportunity since it prevented me from becoming a fartster -

Michals is outspoken in his criticism of the current superstars of the photography world and has a particular lack of regard for fashion photography. He has gone so far as to come up with a term, 'fartster,' (first introduced in his article "Dr. Duane's Infernal Tongue and Cheeky Journal," published in the magazine 21) to describe "one who confuses fashion with art..." The word, both ridiculous and biting, plays with the idea that society has been transfixed for too long with the shallow pretenses of celebrity and personality. "Herb Ritts is a fartster, the Boston Museum is a fartster. ~ James A. Cotter, from his article on Duane Michals

I just knew that there was something more than what was visually depicted that I liked about Duane Michals.

Comments

[stephen]

Um, I don't think you want to refer to Duane Michals in the past tense. He ain't dead yet.

[gravitas et nugalis]

point taken and so amended

[Gordon McGregor]

I mean there must be something more than what is visually depicted that makes a picture of a tricycle worth $250,000.00, right?

Certainly makes for a fine question...