civilized ku # 905 ~ a stiff bracing dose of the real and the true
Tuesday, April 5, 2011 at 12:20PM 
Knife, spatula, beet juice, and potato wedge ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenA change is in the air as Spring starts to make its presence manifest. Even though, for the past several days, snow was forecast for the region, all the weather could muster up, with the exception of some high-altitude elevations, was rain. That's a good indication that Spring has actually, not just "officially", arrived.
There is also another change in the air - that which is floating around in the air inside my head.
Over the past month or two, I have been struggling with making daily entries here on The Landscapist, Struggling, not so much picture wise, but rather, words wise. That struggle seems to revolve around the fact that I have, for the most part, stated what I want to say, re: the medium of photography, and I have no desire to start repeating myself.
That is not to say that, on occasion, I do not bump up against something that stirs me up to the point that I don't have something to write about the medium or in reaction to some specific nonsensical statement made by others about the medium. I think that I will have to dead and gone for that not to happen. Fortunately, at least for me and a some others, I am neither dead nor inclined to be gone.
One such recent example, re: bumping up against something wise, is my reaction to the re-broadcasting of the PBS / Ken Burns series, The Civil War. I have previously viewed (approximately 20 years ago) most of the series and, in that viewing, found it to be one of the most emotionally and intellectually depressing views of the human condition / experience I have ever encountered. The loss of life, maiming, mayhem, and savagery is almost beyond bearing.
What has struck me most this time around, viewing wise, is how powerful the rather technically crude pictures (made by a host of picture makers with the then severe limitations of the medium's mechanics) are at conveying that brutal look at the folly, suffering, and destruction created during the fog of war.
Last evening, the single thought that keep repeating itself as I viewed 2 episodes was that of how the idea of pictures, as accurate reflections of the real world - the medium's inherent, indelible, and unique characteristic as a cohort with the real, has been hijacked, twisted, and subverted by a host of academic theorists and ignored by legions of those who view pictures. IMO, what those dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin pinheads - theorists and picture viewers alike - need most is to be strapped into a chair, their gulliver's strapped to a headrest, lid locks on their eyes, ala Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, and be subjected to viewing a nearly endless loop - 24 hours worth ought to do it - of all the Civil War pictures from the series.
Maybe then, they might realize and recognize, as one author of a New Times Civil War era reporter wrote about Mathew Brady's exhibit, The Dead of Antietam -
Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and our streets, he had done something very like it.
IMO and simply put, those, who believe that the medium of photography is not fully capable of depicting reality and conveying the truth, are idiots wallowing - like pigs in academic / theoretical scented shit - in some perverse state of denial. Maybe the explanation for such stupidity is as simple the fact that, for many, the real world and truth are too much for them to handle.
In any event and all of that said, the idea of change in the air that is floating around in my head might end up looking something like this.
Reader Comments (5)
",,,might end up looking something like this."
I rather like the look of "picture windows # 60 ~ it was sunny day". It leaves your options open, while allowing viewer comments.
"NO WORDS"?.... YOU!?...... please......
As a regular visitor, but rare commenter, I look forward to your writing, musing and ranting.Sometimes, as a result, I fail to spend enough time LOOKING. I do look more at Carl Weese's Working Pictures, and at More Original Refrigerator Art. My vote would be for a generous mix.
I spent a little time looking at the work of Mathew Brady and his colleagues a couple years ago [via the 'Net] and was struck at just how good some of the images were -- both technically and aesthetically.
For the Civil War project, Brady was more the "project manager" and employed up to 20 men to work in the field. Brady stayed behind the fighting lines to photograph the camp & barrack scenes.
Previously, Brady had achieved commercial success as a portrait photographer. Check out his self-portrait on his Wikipedia entry. It's quite different to the stuffy portraits one normally sees from that era.
Some of the better Civil War and general American landscape images were done by the other photographer's in the Brady bunch e.g Timothy O'Sullivan and Alexander Gardner.
[Brady tended to put his name on the images produced by anyone in the group, one of the reasons the better photographers left.]
By the 1890's B&W photography had reached a very high standard, such as produced by one of the early female photographers Frances Johnston.
Mark, your comment:
"Maybe the explanation for such stupidity is as simple the fact that, for many, the real world and truth are too much for them to handle."
... made me think of the old "bread and circuses" line. I found this reference on the 'net:
http://www.corrupt.org/articles/brett_stevens/bread_and_circuses