National Anthem ~ TD Garden / Boston, MA • click to embiggenThe rendition of the National Anthem (USA) at the TD Garden in Boston yesterday, was a particularly impassioned one. Under the circumstances, that was not exactly unexpected.

Having purchased tickets for the event on Monday, before the marathon bombing, I was in Boston with Hugo expressly for the Pens / Bruins hockey game. We left for Boston Friday AM and as we came closer to Boston in the early afternoon, it became apparent that the game might canceled or postponed due to the manhunt mandated lockdown / shelter-in restrictions in place. Nevertheless, we motored on with the intent to check into our hotel 20 miles outside of Boston and wait to learn about the fate of the game.

Due to my inattention, we bypassed our hotel exit and it wasn't until downtown Boston came into view that I realized my mistake. One thing and another, we ended up on the mostly deserted streets of downtown Boston. It was more than a bit eerie and a little surreal.

Eventually, despite our extreme visual conspicuousness, we did get out of the city without any run-ins with the law. We ended up at our hotel and we learned latter that the game had been postponed until 12:30PM the next day.

So, we stayed around and went to the game. Everything worked out well for us - as opposed to the Boston fans inasmuch as the Pens beat the Bruins - and all is now right with the (hockey) world. Unfortunately, the same can not be said for those in Boston who were killed, maimed, or otherwise impacted by the events of last week.

Children's books / Halal Meat ~ Keeseville, NY - in the Adirondack Park / Queens, NY• click to embiggenSo I'm tinkering with the idea of a picture making project based on an academic paper, Babes and Bitches: the femme fatale with her historical, mythical and biblical origins and her afterlife in popular culture, written by Liesbeth Grotenhuis*. Liesbeth is from Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where I assume she both lives and teaches.

That written, my mental tinkering primarily revolves around my desire to undertake a constructed-picture (as opposed to found pictures) project. I have nothing against constructed pictures per se. After all, I made a living and commercial career out of making constructed pictures for advertising and marketing. However, making them for fine art sake is whole nuther kettle of fish.

As most know, I have spent virtually all of my personal picture efforts in the cause of making straight (found) pictures. My M.O. has been both discursive and promiscuous (also see here), although, not entirely without focus inasmuch as I continue to flesh out as many as 9 individual theme-based bodies of work.

Nevertheless, there has been an ongoing low-level background murmur, an itch if you will, which keeps nagging me to make some made pictures. While I'm certain that part of that murmur/itch is a throw back to my commercial picture making days, there is also a very strong desire to give making fine art made pictures a go.

The whole thing is kinda like Jeff Wall's statement (see his MOMA exhibit here), only in reverse:

“I think my relation to photography is changing. For a long time it was necessary to contest the classical aesthetic of photography as too absolutely rooted in the idea of fact, and the factual claim made by photography both within and outside of art. I accept that claim, but I don’t think that it itself can be the foundation for an aesthetic of photography, of photography as art. The way I thought I could work through that problem was to make photographs that put the factual claim in suspension, while still creating an involvement with factuality for the viewer. I tried to do this in part through emphasizing the relations photography has with other picture-making arts, mainly painting and the cinema, in which the factual claim has always been played with a subtle, learned and sophisticated way. This was what I thought of as a mimesis of the other arts, something that could uniquely be done as photography. What I began to realize later was that this mimesis was of course taking place on the foundation provided by photography itself. So, slowly, it was possible to turn toward photography itself, as an equal player in the mimetic game. Now I see the possibility of developing a mimesis of photography, as photography.” ~ Jeff Wall

I'll keep you posted, re: my mental tinkering on this subject and its possibilities.

Work product • no embiggenOnce again, some might wonder where I've been. At least one of you, Jimmi Nuffin, was driven to write:

I know you have a life and things to do…BUT…could you PLEASE post something for those of us who don't?

Now I am certain that most if not all of you weren't that desperate. Nevertheless, I do apologize for being remiss in my posting endeavors ... BUT ... as Mr. Nuffin acknowledged, I do have a life and, at times, it does get in the way of getting done everything one might wish to get done.

In my particular case, one thing I had to get done - gotta raise money for more picture making gear, after all - was the project pictured in this entry. It's a direct mail marketing piece and (not pictured) the start of a related ad campaign. As you might guess from looking at the pictured piece, identifying and making arrangements for 9 different (and relatively far flung) locations, coordinating my schedule with those of 9 very busy subjects and then finally making the pictures is a time consuming activity.

And that's just the picture making part of the project. The design and production time is not measured in hours, it's measured (incrementally and cumulatively) in days.

In any event, it's mostly over but for the shouting. Consequently, I have a couple entries ready to go and, hopefully, Mr. Nuffin will have something to do with his life.

FYI, the pictured project from top to bottom:

1. back and front cover - lightweight card stock, front cover with embossed and foil stamped logo
2. inside spread (front)- 4 panel, tri-fold (accordion fold)
3. inside spread (back) - blank panel affixed to inside of back cover

CVPH pre-op ~ Plattsburgh, NY • click to embiggenTook the wife to the hospital this morning. She's now at home eating jello and feeling good.

Park # 1 ~ Queens, NY • click to embiggen
Park # 2 ~ Queens, NY • click to embiggen
Park # 3 ~ Queens, NY • click to embiggen
Park # 4 ~ Queens, NY • click to embiggen
Park # 5 ~ Queens, NY • click to embiggen
Park # 5 ~ Queens, NY • click to embiggenOne of the problems I have with one-off "greatest hit" pictures is the fact that, to my eye and sensibilities, I am usually left wanting more.

A single picture, no matter how interesting / involving it might be, seems to me to be like a phrase or, at best, a sentence. Whereas a picture essay or body of work seems much more like a paragraph or an extended narrative and, therefore, much more satisfying. More like a complete meal as opposed to a single course - there's a lot more meat on the bone to chew on.

That written, therein is the reason I regularly visit a site such as LENS/CRATCH (as an example) where the work of a picture maker is presented as grouping of related (by concept or referent) pictures. Not that I like all of the work presented, but, one way or another, I do get a very good feel for what a picture maker is attempting to say.

On the other hand, I also visit sites where pictures are not presented in a group but, nevertheless, come across as an ongoing narrative unified by a singular manner of seeing. John Linn's A Second Look is an excellent example of such a site. On his site, John's diverse referents are indeed unified by his consistent vision of what could be labeled as life observed. The net result for me is an ongoing interest in what he has to reveal about his everyday existence - not to overlook his rather refined visual sense of form and its resultant beauty.

In any event, in either case and to my eye and sensibilities, quantity = quality.

MetroPlus Health Plan ~ Queens, NY • click to embiggenOne thing that the life depicted in my life in pictures have in common is that everyone in the depicted life is either happy as a clam or incredibly self assured. If only real life were so swell.

But then again, pictures never lie. Right?

Deep Stationary / Arnold's ~ Queens, NY / Keeseville, NY (in the Adirondack Park) • click to embiggenFYI, an Aesop Fable The City Mouse and The Country Mouse

Making pictures is a very simple act. There is no great secret in photography...schools are a bunch of crap. You just need practice and application of what you've learned. My absolute conviction is that if you are working reasonably well the only important thing is to keep shooting ... [K]eep working, because as you go through the process of working things begin to happen. ~ Elliott Erwitt

PS. anyone have any idea what the hell "deep stationary" is?

The Face ~ Queens, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenOnce again I have come across a current NYC gallery exhibit which parallels one of my bodies of work. In this instance, it's my ongoing life in pictures body of work and that of Natan Dvir's Coming Soon. The difference between his work and mine is almost exclusively one of scale.

These recent discoveries of the-same-but-different bodies of work are starting to make me wonder and a bit crazy.

Part of my problem with others, with work based on a similar concept, beating me to the exhibition punch is the fact that I don't concentrate my picturing efforts on a single body of work. My M.O. is to keep quite a number of my bodies of work in play, picturing wise, over an extended period of time, building the body rather slowly. Whereas most of the others tend to dedicate themselves to a single picturing pursuit.

That written, there is absolutely nothing wrong with building a single body of work as one's main endeavor. Perhaps I need to pick a single body of work on which to concentrate in a determined, focused and exclusive manner.