ku # 701 ~ wherein I put myself on a pedestal

Back road trees ~ in the NE Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenOn yesterday's entry, ku # 498 ~ rain drops, "Tom Frost" (no link provided) made a request:

I'd be interested in comparisons you might make with the picture you posted here with Robert Glenn Ketchum's "Order from Chaos" series, or almost any of Eliot Porter's nature pictures, many of which were in the Sierra Club book "In Wilderness...." or the the "Intimate Landscapes" book.

To be clear, I am not exactly certain that I know what kind of comparison Mr. "Frost" is looking for but, nevertheless, I'll give it a go.

I am not intimately familiar with RGK's work although I do have a more than just a passing fancy awareness of it, the Order from Chaos pictures in particular. I don't own any of his books nor have I seen any of his prints. Although, I do know that his Order from Chaos prints were Cibachromes that, by his intent, exhibited saturated color so extreme that one reviewer stated that "they verge on artifice".

The work of EP - in the form of his book, In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World - has been on my bookshelf almost from the day it was published back in 1967. I have seen a number of Porter's prints (at the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY). And it is worth noting that his dye transfer prints exhibited, by his intent, color much more in keeping with the true as found in the natural world.

It comes as no surprise to me that TF asked for a comparison between my picture and those of both Ketchum and Porter. Assuming that one casts Porter as "The Master", both Ketchum and I would be cast as "Disciples" - Ketchum readily admits that his visits and correspondence with Porter were a great influence on his interests in color and the natural world. I would, if pressed on the matter (such as "TF" has done), admit to Porter's influence upon my picturing making inasmuch as, when I first viewed his book, I saw it not so much as an "inspiration" as I did as an "affirmation" of something I already knew about color and the natural world.

However, that said, I believe that, while my pictures, Ep's pictures, and RGK's pictures exhibit many similarities on a visual level, if they were to be displayed (intermingled) together, there would be no difficulty in discerning the authorship of the individual pictures. That's because even though we all have pictured the same (or very similar) referent, our intent and vision have differed to a remarkable degree. And those differences are obvious to a remarkably noticeable extent in our pictures.

Simply stated - perhaps too simply stated, I would suggest that Porter was more the scientific observer (trained/educated as such) who had an affinity for the natural world (and its preservation) than he was the artist who had an affinity for that same world. Ketchum, on the other hand, was most definitely an artist (trained/educated as such) who, while he did have an affinity for the natural world, was more concerned with using that world during his Order from Chaos period to make statements about art than he was with issues of "preservation of the world".

It must be stated, relative to the preceding paragraph, that, indeed, Porter was an artist and that Ketchum eventually became quite involved, picture making wise, with "the preservation of the world". But, the fact is that he just wasn't that into it during his Order from Chaos period which, I might add, he lost interest in when he recognized that he was headed toward an artistic dead end - statements about art wise.

Where do I fit in to this mix? Well, I'm a bit of Porter and a bit of Ketchum and a whole lot of Me.

Like Porter, I am a picture maker who has always have had an affinity for the natural world and its attendant issues of preservation so I tend to make prints that are as close to the real as the medium allows. Unlike Porter, I am truly interested in art issues, ideas, and notions.

Like Ketchum, I am interested in making art and statements about art, Photography Division, so, again like Ketchum in his Order from Chaos period, I make pictures that exhibit more than a bit of an "anti-landscape" aesthetic (AKA, "snapshot" aesthetic), or, as I like to call it - an anti-pretty picture aesthetic. Unlike Ketchum (in his Order from Chaos period), I am not headed toward a deadend, because, like Porter, my first interest is the natural world itself (and our relationship to it).

Like both Porter and Ketchum, I am interested in exploring notions of seeing, perception, understanding, truth, and the real. Unlike them, I do come at it in my own unique way.

What I find most interesting about the comparison, now that I have been requested to think about it, is all three of us have made interesting pictures of essentially the same referent that, despite their similarities, are, in fact, markedly different.

Comments

[Matt]

I assume when you say "natural" world that you take that term at its widest possible meaning — the natural creation, the human creation, and every mix of the two in between?

For what it's worth, I think the connection between your work and Ketchum's is purely a similar subject. If I had to insert your work between two photographers it would be Adams and Porter. And don't worry, I mean Robert, not Ansel.