diptych # 48 ~ plucking notes

Porches and signs of autumn ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenI came across an interesting essay / book review on Jörg M. Colberg's Conscientious Photography Magazine website regarding Petra Wittmar's Medebach 2009 - 2011 book / pictures.

In the interest of complete disclosure, picture viewing bias wise, let me write that both Colberg's opinions regarding Wittmar's pictures and the pictures themselves are well within the wheel house of my picture viewing preferences of that which constitutes and defines good / interesting work. To be certain, not the only type / genre of picture preferences in my wheel house, but one that ranks in upper reaches of my picture making / viewing hierarchy.

That written, here are some excerpts from Colberg's essay:

.... If you look at photography to get first and foremost entertained, to get a quick and easy thrill, then it’s incredibly unlikely that Medebach is your cup of tea. It’s incredibly likely you will find these photographs “boring" .... I vehemently reject the correlation between a lack of visual drama and something being boring. Phrased alternatively, photographs with a lot of visual drama can still be incredibly boring, while the most minimalist pictures can contain large amounts of wonder (however you want to define that “wonder”) ....

.... The photographer’s approach...conforms to what most non-Germans typically think of as “German photography”: Carefully organized and seemingly distanced from its subject matter, using muted colours .... The photographs’ compositions are carefully considered, allowing the viewer to study the images carefully, looking for traces of what might be going on here.

No surprise, I'm in complete accord with those general thoughts and opinions. However, in an even more specific manner, I also agree with Colberg's thoughts and opinions on the depicted referents:

.... Given that so many of us live in places that have a Medebach feel to them (ed. - "dreariness, neatness", and the lack of "any kind of visual drama") – isn’t America’s Suburbia an even more extreme form of Medebach? – why would we want to look at pictures of them, when all we’d have to do is to look out of the window? For a start, we usually tend to not engage with the places we live in all that deeply. We do not look outside of the bubbles of our homes ....

One of the types of pictures which I especially like to look at (and "study" / contemplate) are those made by picture makers in relatively close proximity to their home environment - a referent with which they are very familiar and know in a manner that the casual observer / visitor does not. I consider the resultant pictures to be a visual form of insider information - perhaps more appropriately labeled as "in"sight - which, in the best of cases, imparts a very personal way to see a place / thing / people / event.

A manner of picture making which Colberg describes quite well:

As a photographic artist, you pluck certain notes from the world, and you then let those notes work together, to create your own sound.

IMO, hearing or being attuned to those "sounds" made by others can help one to be better attuned to the notes found his/her own world and consequently enable him/her to make their own very personal (and melodic) sounds.