civilized ku # 2078 ~ survival
Wednesday, February 15, 2012 at 09:47AM ;)
Bank and church ~ Keeseville, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenOn yesterday's entry, civilized ku # 2077, John Linn wroted/asked:
Interesting bit of trivia regarding Jackson. Of course his work is not associated with the Adirondacks like Seneca Ray Stoddard or Bierstadt. Not sure if you agree, but their work was more in tune with your MO than most contemporary photographers. Search Google for "adirondack photographer" and you will get lots of pretty picture sites, but not much which is "being true" to use your words.
So thinking about this, do you feel any responsibility for documenting life in the Adirondacks in our time (your hundreds or thousands of pictures surely will be of interest to historians in the future). How accessible will your pictures be in 50 or 100 years? ... will your prints survive?
Do you ever think about this?
Re: the first notion - the work of Stoddard / Bierstadt being more in tune with my picturing MO - is an easy one to respond to. While I have never set out to emulate the work of either picture maker, I would nevertheless agree with John's assessment. Especially so, regarding Stoddard. The statement in the product description of the book Exposing the Wilderness: Early-Twentieth-Century Adirondack Postcard Photographers (a book which really helped me view/place my Adirondack work into some form of perspective) ...
The first third of the last century is considered by many collectors and historians to be the golden age of postcards. From that era the author has chosen six upstate men who recorded everyday life in small towns, popular resorts and tourist areas - and anywhere else that caught their fancy, from logging camps to train wrecks...
... is as accurate a description of my Adirondack Picturing MO as could be (minus the logging camps and train wrecks), especially the "anywhere(/thing) else that caught their fancy" part. Just as the 6 "postcard" photographers did, I live in in the Adirondacks and make pictures (of everyday life) where I live (my life).
That said, the aforementioned manner in which I picture where I live leads directly to John's second statement/question ...
I have thought about "this", if by "this", John means will my pictures survive (in any form) and will they be of interest (artistically and/or historically) to anyone in the future? - questions that are, IMO, borderline meaning of life-ish.
To be precise, my hope and wishes are emphatically tilted toward answering "Yes" and "Yes" to John's 2-part question. In order to accomplish that end, I have set a 2012 goal for myself - organize my work into manageable categories / folders, create small yet representative folios of work from those categories, and get them seen by as many appropriate organizations - historical societies, museums, galleries, etc. - as possible. Raising awareness / pique some interest and start the ball rolling, so to speak.
Doing so is not exactly a monumental task, but it is going to require a substantial amount of focus and effort. After all, as John accurately surmised, I have 1,000s of Adirondack pictures - in fact, approaching 4,000 - to edit, categorize, and then print as "teaser" folios.
My organizational umbrella for this task and presentation is that of a Modern Postcard Picture Maker, even if I don't make postcards as such.
FYI I do not feel any "responsibility" for documenting life in the Adirondacks. However, I do feel a responsibility to represent what I picture in as true/real a manner as the medium and its apparatus allow.
Reader Comments (1)
Wow, Bierstadt is an awsome name for a place, at least if you speak German.
I love how the church is located on a kind of pedestal. Kind of an "underwater/above the surface" effect. Like a ship.