man & nature # 94 ~ sitting here hoping

Moon Valley Farm, Au Sable Forks ~ Scottish Highland cattle • click to embiggenIt was sunny and quite pleasant yesterday with temperatures in the 20s. A good day for getting out and making some not-very-cold pictures. This morning I'm sitting here with bated breath and crossed fingers hoping for the 16-20 inches of snow predicted for today.

The wife was scheduled to leave this AM for 6 day tour of NYC and New Jersey: Weds.-Sat., Brooklyn to visit her new nephew; Sat., Monclair, NJ. for her brother's 50th b-day party; Sun.-Tues, south Jersey to visit her mom. However, due to severe winter storm warnings posted for this AM, she got out of town last evening.

In any event, here's hoping for a severe winter storm. The light snowfall that is suppose to be the leading edge of the big storm has already started.

FYI, maybe you've read about this - it's making the rounds of blogs - and I just thought I'd pass it along for your viewing pleasure. It's a single picture titled, We're All Gonna Die - 100 meters of existence. The 100 meter long picture is the culmination of 17 months of work by Simon Hoegsberg.

And speaking of big, in a weird kind of way this picture surfacing at this time comes right on the heels of my discovery of this little gem - the GigaPan Epic. This amazing (and very inexpensive) device together with its companion software GigaPan Sticher automatically pictures and seamlessly merges up to thousands of overlapping images into one gigantic one-gigapixel (or larger) panoramic picture.

Check out this 6.2 gigapixel picture by Julian Kalmar. Or go to gigapan.org and check out the Obama Inaugural Address pano and zoom right in on the president. This picture is made from 220 separate images.

This stuff is really neat. I have always been a fan of panoramic pictures and have made plenty in my day using a variety of equipment; 35mm Widelux, 120 Widelux, 35mm Roundshot, and, most recently, just about any camera I own by stitching multiple overlapping images together with software - the same technique that The Cinemascapist uses to create his Cinemascapes.

The GigaPan Epic is so inexpensive that it's hard for me to resist, but .... it does require a computer upgrade to an Intel-based Mac. That's something I have been studiously avoiding for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that all of computer/software stuff is working just fine, thank you very much. I am extremely loath to get myself into the upgrade black hole. However, I do need(?) a new laptop ....

Speaking of the upgrade black hole, I have had to dump using Firefox. The latest version (3.0.2) that automatically downloaded and install is a real piece of work. It's a bloated memory hog and has proven to be very unstable - it crashes all the time. I am not alone - a simple google of "firefox sucks" will point you to host of users with similar issues. It's just another example of a good product gone bad. It's so loaded with "features" that it has, IMO, become useless.

So, it's back to Safari for me (which seems to be working just fine).

A pox on all I'm-doing-it-because-I-can software developers, with a special spot in Hell for cell phone software developers - it's a phone you morons. Why can't I just buy a f**king phone - you know, one that doesn't have little tiny exterior buttons that take a picture every time I try to get it out of my pocket or turn off (or on) the ringer at the same time?

Although I must admit that I like the idea of a twitter enabled cell phone so I can use it for the sole purpose of asking those software morons, "What are you doing in Hell?"

civilized ku # 154 ~ REAL pictures

Lights in the night • click to embiggenWith Super Bowl XLIII only a few days away, it's only natural that my thoughts turn to the relative absurdity of the Art World. Which, in its own way, merely mirrors that of the World at large or at least as the mass-media would have us believe.

The mass-media has increasingly slouched towards being little more than purveyors / promoters of the next big thing. It has adopted a Super Bowl mentality of hyping the hype. Glitz. Glam. Marketability. It's all about Bright Lights and Stardust. Infotainment rules.

IMO, the slide started at about the same time as the Big-3's (ABC, CBS, NBC) decision to make their news operations more profitable. Ever since then, in true free-market fashion, money became the thing and the sizzle became much more important that the steak.

That said, let's get on to the Art World, Photography Division where, IMconsideredO, a similar evolution has taken place.

Now, let it be known that I enjoy and appreciate visiting galleries and museums in to order to view pictures. It can be a very rewarding and a most stimulating experience. The best of exhibitions can really get the juices flowing and it should be understood that, despite what I am about to write, I don't intend to give up gallery/museum crawls until I'm 6 feet under - even if, before that time, the wife has to push me around in a wheelchair.

Re: Art World absurdity, Photography Division

Let's start with this:

There are no minor leagues in photography. Your pictures are either as good as the greats, or they're not. Period. (and welcome to the big show) - Priscilla Ferguson-Forthman

In theory, I completely agree with this statement. Period. (and welcome to the big show). In actual practice, I think that it full of gaping holes. Period. (and welcome to the little show).

Right from the start, let me make it perfectly clear that one of those gaping holes is not the intellectually lazy sophism most often heard regarding what is and is not Art - the notion that "it is all in the eye of the beholder". That's unadulterated bullsh*t. Period. Unless, of course, the eye of the beholder is the one which is firmly embedded in Father Time. Period.

Without knowing anything else about Priscilla Ferguson-Forthman other than her preceding statement, I assume that "the greats" she is mentioning are those whose work has survived the test of time (and maybe even those who work seems poised to do so at this time). That seems to be a pretty safe assumption as far as assumptions go - so, for what it's worth, I'll just go ahead and base my speculations on that assumption.

It is on this point - good as the greats - that, IMO, her statement starts to leak water, re: her hero-worship (implied, not stated) gold-standard of what constitutes good pictures.

There was a time - before the advent of photography's admittance to the big show - when pictures where exhibited on a much more level (democratic?) playing field than they are today. The stakes ($$$$$$$) where so much lower then than they are now in the high-powered / high-priced world of Art. A time when the steak was more important than the sizzle. The pictures were at least as important as the maker, if not more so.

In a very real sense, the medium of photography seemed to flourish in a much more invigorating environment than it does today. For much of its fledgling years - in fact, its first century - it operated well below the radar of the Art Establishment. With only a few notable exceptions, high-priced Art galleries and high-powered museums just weren't interested in any sustained and committed fashion.

So, picture makers, to include many of the "greats", just carried on and exhibited whenever and wherever they could - small "off-Broadway" galleries, bohemian coffee houses, small bookstores, libraries, schools, movie theater lobbies ... the list went on and on. Photography seemed to be breaking out all over the place. It flourished in way - actual prints on walls - that the web, even with all its quantity, simply can not match. Not even close. Period.

BTW/FYI, I repeatedly kick myself in the ass every time I think about passing up an opportunity to buy a print, not a poster or a reproduction, of a J. P. Morgan portrait made by by Edward Steichen in 1903 for the princely sum of $600. The year was around 1980 and the place was an exhibit in the art department at Sibleys department store (Rochester, NY). That's right - the art department in a department store.

Think about that one for minute or two - a department store with an art department selling pictures made by "the greats". The mind boggles, especially in light of today's Art World, Photography Division, at the idea of buying made-by-the-greats pictures in a department store.

In any event, here's my point - unless you are a devotee of hero-worship, one has to wonder, even in the aforementioned heydays of picture exhibitions, how many "greats" were simply overlooked/undiscovered. IMO, given the present hero-worship mentality of the high-priced gallery / high-powered museum world where $$$$$ matters, there are even greater legions of "greats" out there that are just not seeing the light of exhibitions lights.

More's the pity. I, for one, long to see good pictures made by the non-hero/non-"great" picture makers out there. My picture viewing diet is overly sweet with work from the hero-worshipped "greats". I want to see work that is not preceded by layer upon layer of hype about its "greatness". I want to see a vastly expanded "gold standard" of what is "good" work.

It's out there. I know it is. But I also know that it has a snowball's chance in hell of ever being exhibited on any of the hallowed walls of the Art World, Photography Division. I also know that I stand a snowball's chance in hell of finding it on the web - unless I wish to devote all of my remaining days (and nights) on earth to that tedious and exhausting effort.

But here's something else I also know and it is one of the most depressing things I know - if I were to announce here and now that I am opening an actual brick and mortar photo gallery with web-based marketing (say, something like this) - a veritable "minor-league" (welcome to the little show), in defiance of PF-F's assertion - and put out a call for print portfolios, they would be very slow in coming. That's because it seems that, with of the web and its ease of posting pictures, not that many picture makers actually make prints anymore.

Pictures on paper. The web is Krapola-On-A-Stick by comparison. Period.

man & nature # 93 ~ constructing an edifice with meaning(s)

North Elba Town Hall ~ Lake Placid, NY • click to embiggenFor quite some time (measured in years) I have been festering upon the notion of the nature of the hold that pictures have on my eye, my mind, and my soul - a hold that is greater than and transcends that of experiencing the "real thing". That is, why a picture of a thing is most often a much more absorbing experience than the actual experience of the thing pictured itself.

Over the years and relative to the hold of pictures upon my eye, through the ongoing experience of making and viewing pictures which cover a broad ground of picture-making genres, it has become crystal-clear to me that I really like to make and view pictures that reflect the casual chaos of the world at large. Pictures that have lots of visual energy and make the eye dance hither and yon over the surface of a print and that never seem to let the eye settle on some convenient and/or conventional visual truth.

I prefer that my eye be challenged and consequently invigorated by the apparent disorganization of depictions of seemingly randomized reality rather than being lulled into a state of lazy (mis?)-perception by the apparent simplicity of classically composed pictures - pictures that are little more than a caricature the real world.

And, it does seem obvious and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that pictures which embrace the disorder of the real world require much more than non-committal glance in order to engender understanding and to divine their meaning(s). So, it should come as no surprise that a commitment to "more than a casual glance" should be "hook" for the mind and, hopefully, from there to the construction of a road map to the soul.

Now, all of that why-I-like-making/looking-at-pictures stuff said, my festering has been upon the idea of why I can't seem to "appreciate" the real thing nearly as much as I do the picture of the real thing.

Again, over the years, a number of explanations for this have surfaced from the clutter of writings about the medium of photography. Consider this one:

What we hope for from the artist is help in discovering the significance of a place. In this sense we would choose in most respects for thirty minutes with Edward Hopper’s painting Sunday Morning to thirty minutes on the street that was his subject; with Hopper’s vision we see more. ~ Robert Adams

and this one:

We take language into our minds; we read words in the same internal voice with which we think, remember, pray. But when we look at paintings or photographs, the reverse is true. If the image corresponds to our most intensely personal, yet archetypal, yearnings and memories, we don't take the image in, we move out of ourselves into the image, as though it were another world, a hologram whose forms of light are ghostly angels, or a dream whose physical reality is suggested by what we see on the surface of a canvas or a page. We connect with the image as though we had lost it within our own memories and are now surprised to find it represented outside ourselves, vital and luminous, charged with energy. ~ Jayne Anne Phillips

What these 2 statements mean for me is that; 1) I am not alone - there are others who seem to be able to learn more about the "real" through its depiction rather than its actuality, and, 2) I am not alone (pt. II) - there are others who seem to be able to learn more about the "unthought known" through the creations of the Artist as opposed to the contemplation of its manifest actuality in "real time".

IM-not-so-HO, the understanding of these 2 notions is a big clue regarding the nature of Art vs the nature of art. Art engages the viewer in the murky business of the discovery of what it means to be human. It seems crystal-clear to me that the best Art is as "messy" as the horse it rode in on.

Where as, art reveals little other than the "already known" in an attempt to tickle the pleasure-bone and, in most cases, divert our thoughts from the complexity of life. In a real sense, art seems to make an attempt to spruce things up and put a happy face on things, to simplify the complex (for the "simple"?).

My conclusions from all of this?

It is somewhat ironic that by picturing the "real" - in a sense, putting a barrier between myself and the actual experience of the real - I have come to greater understanding of the "real". And, in arriving at that understanding (one which continues to grow and evolve), I am much better able to experience and appreciate the "real" in real-time.

I am not only more fully able to enjoy looking at Edward Hopper’s painting, Sunday Morning, but I am also more fully aware of the possibilities to found in the actual experience of thirty minutes on the street that was his subject.

Any thoughts on the matter?

intimate/personal space #3 - where I sometimes sit and ponder

Bathroom #1 • click to embiggenWhile making my list and checking it twice, it occurred to me that I had better get this one done PDQ. The purple toilet is about to go the way of the dodo bird - maybe even today.

With this picture fast on the heels of purple couch, green throw, and a remote and in order to maintain and enhance my public image of savoir faire and good taste, I feel it necessary to point out that we are not purple people. While it is true that we did pick the purple couch, the complete suite of purple bathroom fixtures - toilet, sink, tub - came with the house. We replaced the tub a number of years ago, the toilet is next with the sink soon to follow.

FYI, this is a 100% found picture.

intimate/personal space #2 ~ it's a process

Purple couch, green throw, and a remote • click to embiggenUnlike yesterday's intimate/personal space picture, purple couch is a constructed picture.

bed #1 was an untouched found picture - no artificial favors added. purple couch was a result of thinking about what might constitute an intimate/personal space as opposed to looking for one. At this point in the proceedings, I suspect that the series will be comprised of a mixture of found and constructed scenes as well as a few that are found with a little bit of constructed added.

To that end I have begun to make a list of potential intimate/personal spaces. The list will serve 2 purposes; 1) a simple reminder of scenes for which to be on the lookout, and, 2) not finding same, constructing them.

As mentioned, one of the primary driving forces behind this activity is the desire to make more person-oriented pictures. IMO, making these pictures without a person in them leaves the viewers of the pictures with many more options and possibilities available to them in reading the pictures - much more open to interpretation and added meaning(s), much more ground for emotional and intellectual movement.

In addition to the aforementioned desire, another strong motivator is the desire to make constructed pictures. The bulk of my professional picture-making life was spent constructing pictures. Constructing scenes - small to large, simple to elaborate, still-life to people - for the purpose of creating a specific impression of one kind or another in the viewer's mind and emotions.

To state it simply, I really liked doing it and I really miss doing it. So, one way or another, I'm going to keep doing it.

Question: I know that I have asked before but I'll ask again - have any of you constructed any pictures? If not, any desire to do so?

PS yesterday's diptych was 500×1000 pixels, today's is 600×1200 pixels. I prefer the larger presentation but that said, it fits nicely on my screen. Any problems with anyone with the bigger size?

Update on Friday, January 23, 2009 at 05:30PM by gravitas et nugalis

Don's space • click to embiggen

Featured Comment: Don Cooper wrote: "I was thinking this would have been a great idea when I was in Vietnam. Everyone had their own "space" where their bunk was. Guys would have their bunks, a desk or table, ammo boxes for shelves and cabinets, some would stain the wood with shoepolish, have pictures, things from home. I wish I would have thought of that, each one its own story."

Hey Don, thanks for sharing this very intimate/personal space with us.

Update on Saturday, January 24, 2009 at 12:00PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Paul Maxim wrote: "Here's an idea: Why not place the "pepper glop" next to the remote (as long as you're doing "constructed" stuff)? You could call it "decayed space" or something."

my response: an interesting idea. I'll have to sit and ponder (see intimate/personal space #3) it for a while. Although I'm not sure what the wife will think about ... what a minute. What am I saying? I know exactly what the wife will think about it.

intimate/personal space #1 ~ messy intimacy

Bed #1 • click to embiggenA few days ago I was visually attracted to my bed. There was something about the disorder that made me think of quite a number of things - comfort, warmth, intimacy, rest, rejuvenation, just to name a few of the sensations that suggested themselves to me by way of the rumpled bed. I can't say that all of those feelings / sensations were apparent to me at the time but they are now, now that I have pictured the scene and looked at the pictures.

Looking at the pictures and letting myself get sucked into the sensations caused me to think that a series might be possible - hence, intimate/personal spaces.

So, I started wandering around the house looking for the kind of spaces that seemed at first glance to arouse visual and intuitive experiences that were similar to the rumbled bed picture. I made a fair number of pictures and they all turned out to be total failures except for one. I'll present that one in tomorrow's entry.

What that second successful picture made clear to me was that I was confusing "messy" with "intimate". In the bed picture, the bed was messy and I realized that it was the "mess" that suggested a human presence which led to thoughts of intimacy and warmth - unlike my unsuccessful pictures of the total train-wreck mess in the teenage girl's room.

That mess seemed like it would be ripe for the picking but all it/I produced was pictures of a mess. There was no intimacy, no warmth, no comfort, no nothing like any of that. It was just a mess. One could certainly assume human activity of some kind was associated with the mess but that was not the kind of human presence I am after.

In any event, one of the prime motivators driving this series is the desire to get a lttle more person oriented, a little more intimate and little less distant with my subject than I have been with most of my previous stuff (with which I will continue).

FYI - I see this as a series of diptychs.

decay # 27 ~ pepper glop

Saran wrapped peppers with zucchini and lemon • click to embiggenOne thing that I have discovered with my decay series is that, during my selected subject decay/fermenting process, things decay in a different manner if they are sealed in saran wrap than if they are exposed to the air.

ku # 552 ~ remaking America

Delicate ice @ -6˚F • click to embiggenI didn't have much to say yesterday regarding the historic (give the word a rest already) event taking place in Washington, DC. In fact, because I was sick to death of all the media hype leading up to the event, my only participation during the event was to listen to the new president's inaugural address on the radio.

IMO, the address is what I have come to expect from then-candidate, now-President Obama - long on rhetoric, short on specifics. To be fair, I really didn't expect him to deliver a policy-wonk address, but, if he is going to truly seize the moment for "change we can believe in", he's got to get down to brass tacks PDQ/ASAP.

IMO, a broad non-specific mandate "to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America" just isn't going to cut it. Now, don't misunderstand, I want for the new president to succeed in leading the "remaking" of America. But he's got to start giving us specifics about the lay of the land he wants to lead us into.

I, for one, am not at all interested in "remaking" America into a redux of the one that has landed us in the mess in which we currently find ourselves. That was an America in which it actually made sense after 9/11 for the then-president to exhort us to "go out and shop" as an antidote to what ailed us. Which, in fact, is exactly what so many "loyal" Americans did to wretched and irresponsible excess which, in turn, helped lead us into a promised land of near economic ruin.

To his credit and to my sense of hope, he did speak of the possibilities of "what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose and necessity". The emphasis is mine. I did so because of something I read (by Robert Hughes, from his book, Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America) a number of years ago:

The fact remains that America is a collective act of the imagination whose making never ends, and once that sense of collectivity and mutual respect is broken, the possibilities of American-ness begin to unravel.

Essentially, Obama and Hughes are saying the same thing - imagination + commonality of purpose = common good.

imagination - IMO, and I am not alone, imagination has been sorely lacking in America, especially so in the last decade or so. To be more precise, what ever imagination existed, it was employed by the business class for sole purpose of expanding their wealth and well-being - imagining ways to accrue more and money money in whatever manner possible (as long as it did not require hard work) and f**k the common good. In addition to the many borderline-illegal financial schemes, some employed their imaginings to dreaming up a zillion meaningless/frivolous next-big-things with which to separate the suckers - AKA, the consumer class - from their money.

And, of course, let's not forget those legions of loyal American suckers without whom much of the covetousness inspired spend-and-get nonsense would not have been possible. Those near compulsive consumers whose imaginings were limited to how to acquire the next-big-frivolous-thing in whatever manner possible. Mortgage the house (and your future)? Sure, why not? You gotta love that funny money.

commonality of purpose - The "possibilities of American-ness began to unravel" decades ago when America's moronic grand dad stated that "government was the problem", which is essentially tantamount to proclaiming that "it's every man for himself". The public square in America was deemed to be a place fit only for free-for-all excesses. The idea of the "common good" came to mean something along the lines of, what's good for ME is the common good.

Witness the ridicule heaped upon Hillary Clinton and her mention of the notion that it take a village to raise a child. And, it's worth noting that most of that ridicule came from those swell beady-eyed-zealot folks who proclaimed that government - the BIG village - was the problem and that it takes an unregulated free-market - the free--for-all - to raise a child.

To me, remaking America involves getting our collective head out of the spent-and-get gutter and on to the business of defining what constitutes the common good. And then using our imaginations to do what's necessary to foster, reward, and protect that commonality. Otherwise, you might just want to use your imagination to picture what it will be like to stand in line for a ticket for the next merry-go-round ride to a redux of the bankrupt American "dream".