civilized ku # 2750 ~ SOS (Shit On a Shingle)

Fire pit ~ Duck Island / Lower Saranac Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenRecently, I encountered a series of pictures which were all made out of focus. A few of the pictures were nice enough to be visually interesting, others were little more than diffused (soft focus) variations on Mark Rothko paintings, albethey made with the tools and techniques of the medium of photography. After viewing the pictures, the primary impression imprinted upon my eye and sensibilities was one of a ho-hum variety.

The fact that the pictures are exhibited in a large-scale architectural installation which creates what one writer describes as "a seamless transition between both 'spheres' — the pictorial space and the exhibition space, between the installation in the center of the room and the classical presentation of the works on the outside. Visitors can enter the work to become part of an 'unpredictable' universe" strikes me as a kind of carnival fun house cheap trick - providing a venue in which the Academic Lunatic Fringe, Photography Division, can have their art sauce cake and eat it too.

And, writing of art sauce, dip your utensil of choice into this heaping serving of the stuff:

Through his use of extreme soft focus as an artistic device, he searches the observational parameters for the perception of images .... he questions the basic principles of photography: sharpness and recognizability. By leaving these parameters out of the image content, he breaks with conventional ways of seeing .... The photographic medium is distilled into light and darkness, confronting the viewer with infinity. A paradigm shift is occurring in fine art photography, from the documentary and representational to a new abstraction that radically questions the medium. With his resolutely blurred photographs, he is positioned at the crux of this contextual and aesthetic renunciation of apparatus-led seeing in favor of a nonrepresentational perceiving of the world. He has succeeded in creating a photography that goes beyond pictorial representation.

After reading the above, I was immediately reminded of Susan Sontag's quote which states that interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Placed in a fuller context, that quote is an excerpt from:

Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities. In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art ... Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world - in order to set up a shadow world of 'meanings.'

Now, to be perfectly clear, the out-of-focus pictures made by the artist are are exactly what they appear to be - out-of-focus pictures - and that's OK with me. If making and/or viewing such pictures suits your eye and sensibilities, I say/write, "Have at it." And I mean just exactly that. As Julian's grandmother often uttered, "For every pot there's lid." Follow your own picture making path and be happy. But ...

... enough already - leave the lid on the pot - with the he searches the observational parameters for the perception of images .... he questions the basic principles of photography: sharpness and recognizability. Really? It seems to me the picture maker is simply making out-of-focus pictures and - note to ALF - there is absolutely nothing new in that. And, guess what ALF, every picture maker searches the observational parameters for the perception of (their) images to one degree or another.

RE: searching for the observational parameters for the perception of images - Seriously? Who doesn't recognize the simple fact that some observers of pictures have severely attenuated observational parameters for the perception of images while others have expansive observational parameters for the perception of images. All of which leads to a very simple conclusion - some observers will 'get it', some will not. Duh.

And the idea that this picture maker may be testing and trying to expand the limits of 'getting it' or not, is neither ground breaking nor paradigm busting. It is, in fact, SOP for many picture makers, especially so, but by no means limited to, in the fine art world of photography.

In any event, those who have employed out-of-focus picture making were rarely, if ever, (paraphrasing) radically questioning the medium. They were, to repeat, simply making out-of-focus pictures as a means of expressing their particular manner of seeing. Nor were they questioning the basic principles of photography. They were, in fact, employing one of the basic principles of the medium - the ability to bring the object of their attention into focus or not.

That particular "artistic device" has been around since the dawn of the medium. The idea that he has succeeded in creating a photography that goes beyond pictorial representation is utter shit on a shingle. That notion belies the history of the medium and all of those who have strived and succeeded in going beyond pictorial representation. And the idea that he is positioned at the crux of this .... renunciation of apparatus-led seeing merely adds to the pile on the shingle - as far as I can tell, he made his out-of-focus pictures with an apparatus (as indicated, a large-format apparatus) which, in fact, allowed him to make out-of-focus pictures (either in camera or with after-the-fact processing).

If he or a critic need to turn all of the aforementioned use of the simple basic principles of photography into a steaming heap of flapdoodle and green paint, so be it but it annoys the living hell out of me. Nevertheless, there it is in all its glory - the revenge of the intellect upon art .

Again, to be perfectly clear, the pictures are what they are. Period. Use all of your observational-parameters-for-the-perception-of-images powers to determine whether you should like 'em or leave 'em. The choice is yours.

As for the ALF-led commentary surrounding the images, I leave you with this from Sontag:

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.