man & nature # 118 ~ rainy Spring day

Spring rain on a country road • click to embiggenToday was a classic rainy Spring day - one of my favorite times to get out picturing. I had quite a bit of success. More to come.

FYI, as most know I live in the Adirondack village of Au Sable Forks. The French name comes from the early French Canadian settlers who came down from the provence of Quebec seeking jobs in the limbering industry. As is evidenced by today's picture, the name is very appropriate; Au -to/at/on, Sable - sand.

ku # 563/64 ~ what really matters

Blue sky reflection and tree stump • click to embiggenIn the next week or so I hope to visit NYC to see a photo exhibit at MOMA - Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West. The exhibit is comprised of 150 pictures (dating from 1850 to 2008) by 70 photographers that, according to one review - Mythic West of Dreams and Nightmares, "evokes that tension between myth and reality" regarding the American West.

The reviewer, Ken Johnson, opines that the exhibit:

... ultimately presents an all-too-predictably bleak view of America’s realization of its Manifest Destiny ... [W]hile photographers paved the way psychologically for transcontinental expansion in the 19th century, 20th-century modernists like Minor White and Ansel Adams helped to shape a new romantic poetry for an intensely industrialized society ... [A]fter World War II, however, that picture could no longer be sustained. It became a cliché for the tourism and real estate industries ... [F]or landscape photographers of the 1960s and later the West became a place where despoiling by industry and commerce could be revealed at its most unvarnished ...

As many of you already know, there is little if anything in that synopsis regarding the historic trajectory of landscape photography with which I would disagree.

I also tend to agree with Johnson's assessment regarding the "all-too-predictably bleak view of America’s realization of its Manifest Destiny" as depicted by "landscape photographers of the 1960s and later". The then (1960-1975) cliche-breaking work of photographers working under the banner of New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape has been continually practiced / emulated to this day and, in the process, become a bit of a cliche in its own right.

IMO, it should be stated (as a sort of withering defense) that the cliche is sustained and somewhat justified in as much as the continued (and really f**ked up) attempt to implement the American realization of its "Manifest Destiny" provides far too many "New Topographics" picture making opportunities. To ignore those opportunities and retreat into flights of landscape fantasy does not do justice to the medium's capabilities / possibilities re: truth and the real. Nor, for that matter, does it contribute in any meaningful way to our current notion of reinventing the American Dream - re: change we can believe in / hope.

That said, Johnson asks questions and, in doing so, presents a challenge of sorts:

Why does the exhibition project such a dim vision? Is it impossible for serious contemporary photography to see something better? Is failure and disappointment the real, unavoidable story? Or is it another myth, a paradoxically reassuring narrative to which many high-minded people now unthinkingly accede? If so, what would be the alternative? That could be an unknown worth exploring.

These questions/challenges have been on my mind for quite a while. Check out urban ku # 49 ~ a new place for some of my thoughts on the matter (dating back a couple of years) - and be sure to notice how I used the word "hope" long before that guy sitting in the White House did as well as an early example of a stutter step diptych.

Now, I could wax poetic and acerbic for days on end regarding how I believe that my pictures are an outstanding example of what is "worth exploring" as an alternative to the "dim vision" of "contemporary photography" but, not wanting to fall into the trap of making "sanctimonious declarations" that imply that I have "a higher calling" or that I am " blessed with divine insight", I will cite the work of Mary Dennis - a picture maker whose eye, IMO, is looking in all the "right places" for a new sense of hope.

Specifically, check out Mary's Display / Nature/Discordant / Scenic 1 & 2 / Road folders.

IMO, and in spite of its surface appearances which evince a nod towards more traditional pictorial / romantic methods of presentation with her use of color/contrast/saturation (however true and/or accurate they seem to be), that work avoids descending into "sappy sentimentality" and camera-club cliche. I have the distinct sense that Mary addresses her referent(s) with a genuine feeling of respect that "preserves its authenticity but still allows the photography-observer to move well beyond the 'actuality of the real world'".

In viewing her pictures - most of which are of the commonplace, I am never left with the impression that she is attempting to raise up the notion of despair but rather that she has a sense that all is not lost if we can only look in "the right places" - the very "authentic" ones she is showing us - in order to remember / relearn what really matters.

Or, if the phrase "what really matters" upsets your relativistic-sense apple cart - the idea that "what really matters" is, well, relativistic in nature, then how about this - she illustrates and illuminates a sense that all is not lost and if we can only look at the overlooked and learn/see what it has to teach us, the world just might be a better place.

And, IMO, although Mary's pictures address many of the same referents typical of New Topographic pictures, her work rejects, or does not fully embrace, the world-weary cynicism that is one of the so-called hallmarks of New Topographics style pictures. She pictures as if what she pictures really matters in and of itself, as opposed to just what it might signify - although, IMO, if you look at it "with your head at a certain angle" (thanks for that one, Gordon). it signifies much worth considering.

The only problem with Mary's work (and that of quite a few others) is that it has yet to be discovered by the Art World, Photography Division. IMO, that is simply because that world is still held captive to the academic lunatic fringe and their gallery/museum minions who prize the connoted - the more obtuse / self-referential / convoluted, the better - over the actuality of the denoted.

man & nature # 116/17 ~ it pisses him off

Plastic bottle, fence, and moss • click to embiggenMany of the pictures of Minor White and Duane Michals are intended to be presented as a sequence - as diptychs, triptychs, or short narrative "stories". This approach to picturing as always interested me, most likely because my first photography job - to be more accurate, my US Army MOS (military occupation series) - was as a photo journalist.

An aside - The US Army trained me to be a supply clerk, a position that I never held. After training and arriving at my duty station in Japan (to which I was assigned as a supply clerk), I was immediately assigned by personnel as a draftsman (making charts and graphs) because of my ever-so-brief civilian experience in architectural studies. That job was excruciatingly boring, although it must be said that it was infinitely better than humping the boonies in Nam.

Long story, short - Being in a foreign land (that also happened to be home to a zillion camera makers) and bored as hell, I bought a camera and started making pictures (FYI, I processed the very first roll of color slide film I ever shot). In a matter of a few months, I started winning US Army photo contests and, as a result, just like that, I became a US Army photo journalist. My entire "training" in things photographic at that point was reading my camera manual - therefore knowing to center the in-camera exposure needle - and following some film processing instructions.

So, with that level of training, you can imagine my utter gut-twisting surprise and horror when (20 minutes prior to my first assignment) I was handed a beat up old 4×5 Speed Graphic as my Official US Army Photographic Equipment - say what? ... loading sheet film, the concept of parallax, a handheld light meter, rangefinder focusing ... say what?

In any event, as a matter of survival and not getting my butt chewed out, I needed to figure out how to make pictures that worked together to tell a story. Many of the "stories" appeared in Stars & Stripes and other Army pubs as "pure" pictures stories - a short couple-sentence intro and some photo captions but without any lengthy text. The "stories" succeeded or failed based solely upon the pictures and how they worked together to tell the story. It was a true out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire, learning-under-fire (pressure, not bullets) experience.

All of that said, I was making pictures that were intended to be presented in sequence long before I knew the names, Minor White and Duane Michals, or had access to any any of their ideas on the subject:

A sequence of photographs is like a cinema of stills. The time and space between photographs is filled by the beholder, first of all from himself, then from what he can read in the implications of design, the suggestions springing from treatment, and any symbolism that might grow from within the subject itself. - Minor White

It is curious that I always want to group things, a series of sonnets, a series of photographs; whatever rationalizations appear, they orginate in urges that are rarely satisfied with single images. - Minor White

I think of them (photographers) as being newspaper reporters, and myself as a short story writer. ~ Duane Michals

I was an OK photographer at reportage, and to be a photographer then meant you had to do that, so when I did an exhibit where I began to tell stories half the people walked out ... Things that are now considered almost traditional to do in photography schools, I was the first one to do them! I'm saying that because I know when things get written up, in books on sequences, I'm just a footnote. It's outrageous, and it pisses me off! ~ Duane Michals

ku # 563/64 ~ stutter-steps in time: the decisive moment - what moment was that?

A tangle of bare branches • click to embiggenYou may have noticed that I have recently been playing with diptychs. This is nothing new for me - on and off, I have been "playing" with diptychs and triptychs for quite some time.

In the past, most of my whatever-tychs have been comprised of related but distinctly different pictures - more of a story / sequence about a place/thing. The related pictures might have been made over an extended period of time - up to an hour or more of an "in depth" exploration of a place/thing. IMO, the resultant whatever-tychs evidence a sense of "looking around" a place/thing.

The most recent diptychs differ from the previous efforts in that they are created from nearly identical pictures that have been made just seconds apart which, IMO, creates a sense of quick "glimpses" rather than "in depth" looking. And, in keeping with my snapshot aesthetic, creating / fostering the sense of seemingly quick, spontaneous, and thoughtless "glimpses" is what I am after.

However, I am also seeking to make pictures that deal with an expanded sense of time beyond that of a "normal" picture which, as we all know, "freezes" a given moment in time. In a real sense, a single picture stops time in its tracks, potentially preserving / isolating it for all time (one of the mediums inherent characteristics). My intent is quite simply to remind the viewer that time moves on.

That said, I am also screwing with the time-honored photographic notion of the decisive moment - a notion that has been alternately interpreted to mean 1) that moment when the essential activity/motion in a scene is "ideal" or 2) that moment when all of the elements in flux in a scene come together in a pleasing compositional arrangement.

Generally speaking, I subscribe to neither interpretation. For that matter, I do not particularly subscribe to the notion of the decisive moment at all. IMO, whatever you choose to picture, whenever you choose to picture, elevates that moment to a "decisive" moment. Hence, my anti-single-moment decisive moments - quite perplexing, right?.

In any event, this notion of anti-decisive-moment diptychs is a notion that's gaining a lot of traction with me at the moment (ha, ha, ha, get it?). IMO, it is another key element in my snapshot aesthetic whereby I have been attempting to create, in the minds of the viewers of my pictures, a sense of beauty-beauty-everywhere - all-you-have-to-do-is-just-look.

For the photographers in the viewing crowd, there is another message / meaning to be found in my pictures - if you can just get over the idea of the "perfect" picture (the "perfect" light, "perfect" composition, "perfect"/iconic subject matter, the "right" camera, the "right" lens, the "right" filter, et al), there are pictures to be found just about anywhere, at any time, at any place you happen to be.

As Minor White stated:

Vision without association - pristine vision.

And, while you're at it, consider this regarding "snapshots" from Duane Michals -

Because of my involvement with my photographs, it is difficult for me really to see them objectively. Talking about them is like talking about myself. The only real idea that I have about them is that they are essentially snapshots. For snapshots, I feel, often have an inherent simplicity and directness that I find beautiful. The roots of my photographs are in this tradition.

However, I think that the photographer must completely control his picture and bring to it all his personality, and in this area most photographs never transcend being just snapshots. When a great photographer does infuse the snapshot with his personality and vision, it can be transformed into something truly moving and beautiful.

FYI, I would be sorrily remiss if I did not give a tip of the hat regarding my notion of stutter-steps in time to Mary Dennis who, a few years ago, was herself briefly (to the best of my knowledge) playing with diptychs made with nearly identical pictures made only seconds apart. There is currently no evidence of that work on her website so I don't know whether or not she gave up the ghost with that stuff. If she has, more's the pity but, one way or the other, moment to moment, I'll carry on.

Update on Thursday, March 26, 2009 at 12:19PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Mary Dennis wrote: "The ghost is always lurking Mark. I think that time, its passage (in chunks big and small) and how it swallows everything is always present in my mind as I photograph. The diptych and triptych are a perfect format for illustrating that passage aren't they? I've always likened them to a sentence where a single photo feels more like a phrase or a dangling participle sometimes."

ku # 561/62 ~ avoiding the label of "fartster"

Fallen log with moss and weeds • click to embiggenIt's a bit odd that of all of the photographers who have a had an influence on how I see the world (and there any many), two - with whom my picturing drives and desires most closely match, Minor White and Duane Michals - are conspicuously absent from my photo book collection. For whatever reason, no explanation for that oversight comes readily to mind.

Lots of words have been spilled on paper and screen describing and dissecting the work of White and Michals but, to keep it simple, it is reasonable and accurate to state that their picturing activities were/are concerned with making pictures that are not considered just "mere" documentation but, rather, with making pictures that explored/explore mysteries and questions surrounding the human condition.

Minor White was much given to doing so by pursuing Alfred Steiglitz' notion of equivalents - pictures wherein the photographer -

...recognized an object or series of forms that, when photographed, would yield an image with specific suggestive powers that can direct the viewer into a specific and known feeling, state, or place within himself. ~ Minor White ~ Equivalence: The Perennial Trend

Duane Michals, while not exactly a devotee of the idea of equivalents, nevertheless stated:

I don't want to catalog images. I want to get into something that I can't truly describe. I might fail in the process, but it's where true creativity is born.

Whatever their similarities re: intent, White and Michals created/create their respective meanings / questions / suggestions by picturing (for the most part) very different subject matter. White most often pictured places and things whereas Michals concentrated (and still does) almost exclusively on making pictures of people - most often multiple pictures presented as sequential narratives.

Those differences aside, what White / Michals was/is interested in was/is picturing something that can not be photographed - feelings and thoughts. As White stated -

When a photographer presents us with what to him is an Equivalent, he is telling us in effect, "I had a feeling about something and here is my metaphor of that feeling." ... [T]he power of the equivalent, so far as the expressive-creative photographer is concerned, lies in the fact that he can convey and evoke feelings about things and situations and events which for some reason or other are not or can not be photographed. The secret, the catch and the power lies in being able to use the forms and shapes of objects in front of the camera for their expressive-evocative qualities. Or to say this in another way, in practice Equivalency is the ability to use the visual world as the plastic material for the photographer's expressive purposes.~ Equivalence: The Perennial Trend

And, therein, lies my connection to them and their work.

While I strive mightily to make pictures that are, on the 2-dimensional surface of the print, very illustrative, I also strive just as vigorously to make pictures that are very illuminative with regard to things that can not be photographed. Things such as "what it means to be human", or, "being in the moment", or ....

I do that because (as Michals stated) -

If you look at a photograph, and you think, 'My isn't that a beautiful photograph,' and you go on to the next one, or 'Isn't that nice light?' so what? I mean what does it do to you or what's the real value in the long run? What do you walk away from it with? I mean, I'd much rather show you a photograph that makes demands on you, that you might become involved in on your own terms or be perplexed by.

I want to make pictures that "makes demands" on the viewer so that they might "get involved on their own terms" precisely because they are "perplexed". I place deliberate emphasis upon being "perplexed" because being perplexed, when viewing photographs that I did not understand, was the very reason that drove me to explore the notion of getting beyond the camera-club obvious scheme of things when it comes to making pictures.

Those pictures made demands upon me - I had to think about them, not just look at them. I really wanted to know what the hell the point of the pictures was. Why the hell had the photographer (FYI, Michals considers himself "the artist formally known as a photographer") made them? What the hell was the picture maker trying to say / trying to tell me? What the hell was I missing?

At the time, the only thing that was obvious to me was that the pictures had to be about something more than what they visually depicted
Eggleston's Tricycle • click to embiggenbecause .. well ... to state the obvious, most of what was visually depicted did not exactly conform to time-honored subjects that were most frequently considered to be suitable subjects for picture making. I mean there must be something more than what is visually depicted that makes a picture of a tricycle worth $250,000.00, right?

In any event, the sensation of being perplexed incited in me a desire to explore, investigate, research, and hopefully learn more about the medium of photography and its picture making possibilities. And, I thank my lucky starts for that opportunity since it prevented me from becoming a fartster -

Michals is outspoken in his criticism of the current superstars of the photography world and has a particular lack of regard for fashion photography. He has gone so far as to come up with a term, 'fartster,' (first introduced in his article "Dr. Duane's Infernal Tongue and Cheeky Journal," published in the magazine 21) to describe "one who confuses fashion with art..." The word, both ridiculous and biting, plays with the idea that society has been transfixed for too long with the shallow pretenses of celebrity and personality. "Herb Ritts is a fartster, the Boston Museum is a fartster. ~ James A. Cotter, from his article on Duane Michals

I just knew that there was something more than what was visually depicted that I liked about Duane Michals.

civilized ku # 167 ~ everything and the kitchen sink

Oil, water, and sunlight • click to embiggenThere is a body of growing photographic evidence that clearly demonstrates that I have a somewhat un-natural relationship to our kitchen sink. Although, to be more accurate, the obsession is has more to do with what's in the sink as opposed to the sink itself.

When I am in our house (and other than the wife's lovely visage), the kitchen sink certainly ranks in the top 3 when comes to things that are most in my field of view so, in some ways, the attraction is understandable. In addition to that fact, it is also worth considering Minor White's statement that:

I am always mentally photographing everything as practice.

Do any of you have an "un-natural" relationship, photography-wise?

I am of a similar mind on that subject. It's just that, when it comes to the kitchen sink, mentally photographing won't satisfy my itch to scratch.

ku # 560 ~ a tiny hill of beans

Moss covered fallen log • click to embiggenHugo and I took a very short bushwhack late Friday afternoon. I was in search of somethings natural that had emerged from under the snow. Hugo was just having fun bushwhacking.

The outing was a success for both of us and later, when I was processing the pictures, I was continually haunted by a BW vision which was a compilation replay of 2 scenes from Casablanca.

The first part was the scene where Rick says to Ilsa:

...it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world...

and the second part was the closing scene where Rick says to Captain Renault:

...Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Although, in my BW vision, the dialogue was slightly modified to read -

...it doesn't take much to see that the problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy Art World ... Paul, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

In my mind, the vision was quite vivid and detailed although I must admit that I was having more than a little difficulty (and reluctance) envisioning The Landscapist's Resident Contratian in a dress (in the first part) due, in large part, to the fact that I've never met/seen the man (much less seen him in a dress or in the uniform of a French chief of police for that matter).

Now, without wanting to delve too deeply into the meaning(s) to be found in this vision or spend a great deal of time and money in therapy sessions, I think that the whole affair can be attributed to the unadulterated joy and pleasure I experienced from my little outing with Hugo during which I was just picturing without thinking (aka, not thinking without falling asleep).

I hope that all of you understand what I mean - because I hope that you know the feeling from personal experience - when I say that the joy and pleasure that I experienced while picturing was that of connecting with my subject by truly being in the moment. That "moment" was very visceral (of instinct, not of intellect) in nature. It was much more a feeling than a thought but, of course, that's only natural in as much as I was not thinking.

It was only later, when I was processing the pictures and therefore in a thinking mode, that I experienced a more thoughtful experience / reaction to a picturing-the-moss-covered-fallen-log-redux of sorts. While actually looking at the picture, I was able to experience a replay of the joy and pleasure that I experienced while picturing but with the difference being that I could not only feel it, albeit a trace of the the real thing, but I could also think about it.

And, as I thought about, what I was reminded of was early childhood memories of looking out of the a car window - catching only brief glimpses and snatches of bits and pieces of the Adirondacks - as my family traveled on summer vacations. That was a frequent enough experience that I am able to identify it as one of my nearly preternatural drives to picture not only what I picture but also how I picture it - in seemingly random and quick glimpses.

That memory / reminder was augmented in no small part by the childhood sense of delight to be found / had from exploration and adventure in even the most humble slices of the natural world - an "innocent" joy and pleasure that Hugo was experiencing in large doses during our short outing. And, FYI, exploration and adventure in even the most humble slices of the natural world was a frequent enough experience of my childhood that I am able to identify it as another of my nearly preternatural drives to picture not only what I picture but also how I picture it.

So it was, that amongst the many thoughts and emotions I was experiencing while viewing my picturing redux (the finished print), primary amongst them was feeling of well-being and a sense that "all was right with the world". And, so it was from that sense of "all was right with the world", I slipped into a mode of broad and generous magnanimity and it was from that viewpoint - however fleeting and/or illusory it might be - that my BW vision flowed.

civilized ku # 166 ~ it's like a beach party on ice

The Zambonis • click to embiggenHugo dragged the wife and I into Lake Placid this past weekend where the NCAA Div III Frozen Four (national hockey championships) was being held. His interest was 2-fold:

1) buying some clothes (the new bike was just a bonus).

2) seeing his favorite band, The Zambonis - the only band in the world whose two biggest influences are The Beatles and Wayne Gretzky.

The Zambonis were performing as part of the NCAA Championship hoopla and events. At first impression, it might seem that the group is little more than a novelty act but, in fact, they've been around (the world) since 1991 and they have garnered more sports and music industry awards than you can imagine - just read their band bio.

None other than Billboard says:

On paper, it sounds like a novelty: an album of songs that celebrate hockey. But in the hands of The Zambonis (a pop-rock quartet named after the ice-grooming machine), the concept is elevated to an art form that won’t melt under the heat of critics or music fans. Despite the specificity of the album’s theme, The Zambonis rock out like the best power pop units. What’s more, they have a sense of humor about themselves…A timely and surprisingly appealing release.

If you like power-pop music or hockey (or both) and the Zambonis are ever in your area, do yourself a favor and go hear them perform. A good time will be had by all.