civilized ku # 2864 ~ dead or dying

red pepper ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenEdward Weston had his pepper and I have mine. Unlike Weston and is my ongoing wont, I prefer to picture my produce in some state of decay.

However, like Weston, I believe ....

"... that the camera should be used for the recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether polished steel or palpitating flesh. To see the Thing Itself is essential ... The quintessence revealed direct without the fog of impressionism ... This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock. Significant presentation – not interpretation."

In writing / speaking about his Pepper No. 30 picture, Weston stated that he had "just created the essence of a green pepper. More than a green pepper, for it is unadorned, unsullied by a superficial phase or transitory mood." And, it is perhaps on that notation that he and I differ (ignoring his BW to my color).

Although, without trying to parse his meaning of "superficial phase or transitory mood", I could assume that he and I don't differ at all inasmuch as one of the reasons I picture produce and other food stuffs in some state of decay is because I am very much intrigue by those referents' transitory phase, not mood.

As I read / understand his words (here I go, parsing), re: "superficial phase or transitory mood", I believe Weston is most likely referring to making a picture with a picture making "fad" which is concurrent to the era of the picture's making. After all, Weston did gain early fame by making pictures in the soft-focus, romanticized manner of the Pictorialists. A "fad" or "phase" from which he subsequently escaped.

Weston's notion of "significant presentation – not interpretation" seems to fit quite nicely with Eric Fredine's comment on the recent entry, diptych # 121 / civilized ku # 2846, wherein the topic at hand was concerned with print making (aka: presentation:

What matters to me is the moment of exposure - what's photographed and how it's photographed. Many people struggle mightily with this point of view arguing that it's their 'interpretation' of the image defines their art. But no amount of 'interpretation' will save a poorly conceived image (insert obligatory AA quote* here) and often just comes across as affectation. Those people are often falling prey to the insecurities that gripped many pictorialists at the turn of the century.

*For those not in the Know, the Ansel Adams quote Eric refers to is - "There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept."