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« ku # 697 ~ vernal water & ice | Main | ku # 696 ~ Spring melt »
Monday
Mar292010

civilized ku # 449 ~ My world - And welcome to it

1044757-6320542-thumbnail.jpg
Onion and garlic • click to embiggen
A week or so ago I bumped into a friend / photographer/ my blog reader who, amongst other things, beseeched me to stop making pictures in and around my kitchen sink / counter. Needless to say, I made no promises.

My kitchen sink and counter have been very fertile ground for my picture making. Not by intention, inasmuch as my MO for picture making is to picture what I see no matter what or where I find it. Kind of like Adam Bartos expresses it:

“I don’t try to make pictures that refer directly to anything I have in mind, except in the way of self-editing a group already begun - or deciding where to go. When I’m photographing, I’m responding to what things look like, which is always different than what’s already in your head, even if you’ve managed to find what you were looking for.”

Quite obviously, one of my self-edited groups is my kitchen sink & counter stuff. My feelings about it are not unlike those of Steve Pyke's feelings about his space:

“The physical space I inhabit with people has always been interesting. There’s a reason I like to work in this space, it is very intimate ..... [I]t’s the space where usually we only allow loved ones. It’s a place to respect.”

I could probably wax poetic or obtuse, depending upon your POV, about my kitchen sink & counter stuff - both the self-edited group and its individual components - but, hey, that's not my job. My job is making pictures. It's the viewer's job to wax poetically or to wane witheringly regarding my pictures and I suspect the direction the viewer takes in that regard is based upon either "getting it" or not.

On a purely visual level relative to my kitchen sink & counter stuff, either your head is attuned to a picture's 2-dimensional organization of space (and its attendant visual energy) and the tension created by the framing or it's not. Both the organization of space, visual energy, and tension are created by relationships amongst shapes, color, and space that are independent of the specific referent pictured. That is to say that, when I look at a picture, I first see it as an "abstract" - much like the pure shapes, space, and colors of an abstract painting.

On the level of the referent to be seen and the connoted to be found in my kitchen sink & counter stuff, once again, I suspect that either your head is attuned to possibilities and the joys of plain seeing or it's not.

If it's not, oh well. If it is, it's kind of like My World - And Welcome To It ~ James Thurber and, like all good art, it can be a transformative experience that helps one make the leap from the specific to the the universal.

Reader Comments (4)

theimpossibleproject.com/ Polaroid is resurrected in Europe. go to sight and whet the appetite. what's being done is nothing short of wonderful. save yr backs

March 29, 2010 | Unregistered Commentermichael david sullivan

I'm glad you made no promises. Keep up the kitchen sink work.

March 29, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterBill Gotz

Keep up the good work. Everything "and" the kitchen sink.

March 29, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterTechfan

Yeah, stick with the kitchen sink.

March 29, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterFrank

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