man & nature/civilized ku ~ walking the tightrope of art

Two places in the gloaming - Golf Course, Peru, NY • Old City, Montreal CA. • click to embiggenOn the face of it, this statement from Robert Adams (the other photographer named Adams) seems to suggest that picture making is all about (to paraphrase Winogrand) how the view looks photographed.

One does not for long wrestle a view camera in the wind and heat and cold just to illustrate a philosophy. The thing that keeps you scrambling over the rocks, risking snakes, and swatting at the flies is the view. It is only your enjoyment of and commitment to what you see, not to what you rationally understand, that balances the otherwise absurd investment of labor.

However, if you are familiar with Adams' pictures (click, >Enter>Artists>Robert Adams), you know that he has spent most of his time photography-wise picturing the American West, making pictures in which evidence of the hand of humankind on the landscape is quite apparent. And, if you take the time to read the interview, Photography, Life & Beauty on the above link to Adams on PBS, you will also know / learn that, for Adams, making pictures is much more than just the view.

All of that said, I must confess that I have been pondering these very sentiments of late. To be precise, especially the one about "enjoyment of and commitment to what you see" vs "what you rationally understand:. To wit:

Making a not too big leap of interpretation of Adams words, I take them to mean that he is talking about not only the view itself but also about one's pictures of it. And, without equivocation, I must say that I really enjoy and am committed to those views that I picture and how they look pictured. Especially the how-the-views-look-pictured part - I really like looking at my pictures.

Certainly, my pictures cause me to think and feel - they evince a plethora of emotional and intellectual sensations - "what I rationally understand", AKA, my "philosophy". There is ample evidence that this is also true for others as well, but .... that said, and even though I completely agree with the words of Sir Joshua Reynolds that "A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts", I hang my pictures (and those of others) on my walls because I just flat out like the way they look. To my eye, they exhibit a vision of beauty.

So, in a very real sense, Adams is right - the thing that keeps me coming back (to picture making) is my enjoyment and commitment to what I see. BUT ... this in no way negates the importance, in the making of Art, of "seeing" beyond the surface of things - making pictures that are much more than just something enjoyable to look at.

After all, in the aforementioned Adams' quote, he writes of a "balance" and he makes it very clear that that balance is one between the view and what you rationally understand / a philosophy. Or, in other words, between what the view and what you think and want to say about it.

The Content (the referent) of my pictures may not be of "views" which are considered by traditional criteria to be beautiful, but I believe that I make pictures that evince a beauty of Form - the visual language I use to suggest, communicate, and reinforce an underlying sense of the beauty to found in that which I picture (part of the the implied/inferred meaning of my pictures).

And why make pictures of that which I consider to be beautiful? As Adams states, Beauty "is the confirmation of meaning in life" and that "It’s the traditional end of art", and I completely agree with those sentiments.

That said, I have no interest in making pictures that are "merely" about the beautiful. The world is a much more complex place than that. If photography, Fine Art Division, is to fully engage life and what it means to be human, then it must address that complexity.

And that is why I try to imbue my pictures with a sense of ambiguity and tension.

The hand of humankind that is in evidence in many of my pictures can be viewed from the perspective of its destructive side - it's use as a means to defile and pillage, to create ugliness and degradation to the landscape around us and, hence, foster a feeling of human despair, ennui, and even nihilism. In some cases, this is exactly what I mean to imply.

But, always with the use of a visual language that creates beautiful Form, I also mean to imply/suggest that all is not lost, AKA, Hope - that the hand of humankind can also be used to transform and create beauty and delight, to elevate and inspire, and to grow and renew.

I want the viewers of my pictures to be acutely aware of that dichotomy inherent in the human condition - the possibilities of the creative and the destructive power of humankind.

That's the balancing act that also keeps me coming back to the act of making pictures.

FYI ~ a short cautionary tale

It would kind of dumb not to mention the momentous and historic events of yesterdays' USofA presidential election.

I am quite pleased that we have a black man with the very strange (to most Americans) name of Barrack Hussein Obama as President-Elect of this country. Even if it is for no other reason other than he is a black man with a very strange name. This country needs to be slapped upside the head, given a wedgie, and a swift kick in the ass. In addition to the fine fix that we find ourselves in, this is just one more way to do any or all of those things.

That said, here's my tale - I'm child of the 60's. Actually I'm / was a coming-of-age teen/young adult of the 60's. During that tumultuous time, the times they were a changin' and their were many, including myself, who were filled with a sense of the power of hope and the promise of change. Incredibly large gatherings of people, mostly young and white but with a very healthy mix of all ages and ethnicity, marched in the streets and came together in demonstrations for all manner of causes and change.

There were charismatic leaders who fueled the ideas of hope and change - King and Kennedy (Bobby) were 2 whom I admired. And we, the people, drove a sitting president from office.

In a very real sense, nearly half a century later, we find ourselves in a similar place. Of course, on the plus side you have to grateful for the fact that the present charismatic leader has actually achieved his goal of the presidency as opposed to having his head blown apart. And, the fact that all of those gathering in Chicago didn't have their heads bashed in by the authorities. (did anyone catch the irony of a Mayor Daley actually inviting a throng to gather in downtown Chicago?)

But, putting that aside, as I was watching last night's historic events unfold - the election outcome, the incredible number of people gathering to show their support and fuel the fires of the hope of change, the speech by Barrack Hussein Ombama - I couldn't help but have any sense of hope and change that I might have felt greatly tempered by the experiences of what I have witnessed since that 60s decade of hope and change.

Back then, just as now, the agents of hope and change (both the leaders and their followers) and, in fact, the very idea of change, are met with a vitriolic and hateful rhetoric from those who oppose it. Those who seek it are said not to be part of "the real America". They are said to destroyers of families and family values, to be in league with terrorists and those whose aim is to destroy America, to be thieves who will steal both your property and your wealth, and to be both villainous and beneath contempt.

Nevertheless, here we are. Where we will end up is anyone's guess.

Update on Thursday, November 6, 2008 at 12:35PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Mary Dennis wrote: "The irony of the current Mayor Daley issuing an open invitation to the democratic throngs to come into Grant Park is not at all lost on me. In August of 1968 I was nine years old sitting up in my bedroom window just outside Chicago watching numerous street fires burn up and down my street. I was scared shitless that my house was gonna burn and it darn near did. The emotion and immensity (dare I say gravitas?) of the event has been seared into my psyche. I am often floored by the circular nature of things and this is one of them."

civilized ku # 117 ~ a different kind of depth

Garden gate ~ Montreal< CA. • click to embiggenOne of the visual characteristics of Montreal's Old City that I really like is its unremitting grayness - it seems that everything is made of gray stone.

This appeals to the graphic designer in me because nothing makes colors pop better than when they are presented against / within a gray /neutral color field. Individual colors' ability to emerge from or recede into the 2-dimensional surface of a print are greatly enhanced with the visual presence of a neutral "backdrop" in an image. I believe that this visual phenomena is responsible for Matthew's response to and like of my autumn pictures (as mentioned in yesterday's entry).

I mention this little bit of color theory - simply stated, warm colors emerge, cool colors recede - because so many "photographers" are hung up on the idea that to get "depth" into a picture requires the use of "receding lines", "receding s-curves", and other such pictorial devices. Most are totally oblivious to the simple practice of using color as a device to create depth. In a picture, color is, in fact, more than just color.

Try this exercise with today's picture: click to embiggen and then let your eyes move around in the tight center space of the picture - the space that has the left side of the wall with red leaves, the grays of the roof / building / walkway / street, the blue sky, and the warm yellows (and yellow greens along the top of the wall).

Now, it just might be that over time I have "trained" my eyes to recognize the emerging / receding effect in a picture but, wham, bam, thank you ma'am, my eyes see an incredible amount of "depth". The sensation of depth is, in fact, accentuated by the receding lines of the garden path, however, if you cover that part of the picture with a couple fingers, the effect is not diminished in any way.

Not convinced? Click to embiggen yesterday's civilized ku # 114 picture. To my way of seeing, my first impulse is to get out the scotch tape and put tape over the cone and hydrant so that they don't fall off my monitor screen.

I just thought that I'd mention this little bit of info because, while some of you may be cognitively aware of these color effects, most may not and perhaps this might help explain something that you "feel" but don't quite "understand" when viewing a picture that uses these "rules" of color effectively. And, hell, once you "get it", it might even help you in way in which you see and picture the world around you.

FYI, I don't consciously "use" this color effect when picturing or consciously try to "find" scenes that evidence this color effect when pictured because, truth be told, my eyes/brain seemed to be hardwired to see in this manner as my natural way of seeing. Without a doubt, my eye is instinctively / intuitively drawn to such things.

Are any of you aware of this phenomena with yourself or your pictures?

civilized ku # 116 ~ Rue Saint-Paul E.

Picturing the Musee • Jardin du Chateau Ramezay ~ Montreal, CA. • click to embiggen

civilized ku # 115 ~ sitting pretty

Sunday Brunch, Marché de la Villette ~ Montreal, CA. • click to embiggen

civilized ku # 114 ~ a different kind of initial immediacy

Red hydrant, construction cone, and reflected light • click to embiggenAs I often do whenever we travel, this past weekend I brought along a couple of my photo books. I do so based on the premise that you never know whom you might meet. On occasion, in fact on quite a few occasions, this habit has yielded up some interesting and valuable feedback regarding my pictures and such was the case this past weekend in Montreal.

It should be noted that I was not looking for feedback from just anyone. In fact, I had a specific target in mind - the doorman / valet / greeter at our favorite Montreal hotel and all-around jolly good fellow
Matthew • click to embiggenby the name of Matthew. Matthew has come to be one of the primary reasons that the wife and I love staying at the Auberge du Vieux-Port. He always greets us and chats us up like long lost friends in manner that is so seemingly genuine that it can't be anything but that. And so it goes throughout our stay. I am quite certain that, when he leaves the hotel - it's a weekend job, he's actually a school teacher - the wife and I will be looking him up for dinner every now and again.

One of the ongoing topics of conversion that Matthew and I, along with the wife, engage in is that regarding my picture making. He has never seen me without a couple cameras hung on or about my body so it's a natural thing to talk about and he has always expressed a (once again) genuine interest in what I am doing photograph-wise.

So, upon our arrival last Friday, I gave him one of my photo books to peruse at his leisure. He accepted it with glee and delight in his eye and put it in his valet station drawer for later unhurried study. During the rest of Friday evening, every time the wife or I past him in the lobby, he had a few quick words about some facet of the book. He was obviously enjoying it - he took it home with him that night so that he could spend some time with the text - he was having some trouble with a some of the words. He speaks English very well but apparently some of my more obtuse use of the language had him stumped.

Late on Saturday afternoon, when the wife and I returned from the spa and visiting some neighbor shops and galleries, Matthew pulled me aside, returned the book and was very eager to give me his thoughts and impressions about it.

Now, let me clear about this - Matthew is not a photographer of any kind other than an occasional snapshooter. Consequently, there was not a single comment about vignetting, black edges, square, composition, etc. As far as I know, he has no artistic ambitions of any kind so he comes to looking at pictures with few, if any, preconceptions about what a "good" picture is.

In short, Mathew is my idea of "the perfect viewer". He just looks at and sees pictures through photography-expectations-free eyes.

And what he had to say simply blew me away. In a nutshell, he just simply seemed to intuitively understand virtually everything that I try to accomplish through my picturing making.

As an example, he liked my fall pictures best. He said that this was so because the pictures were not of the typical fall picture variety - no wall-to-wall sea of blazing color filling the frame, but rather little glimpses and snatches of fall color in otherwise color-sedate and most often overlooked scenes. He liked the subtlety and the fact that he wasn't being visually bludgeoned to death by the obvious.

He also mentioned that he really appreciated the wealth of subtle detail that all of my pictures exhibited, especially that detail found in the darker / shadow areas of my prints - a characteristic that many of you have mentioned as well. Because of this quality, Matthew found that he could spent lots of time "reading" the pictures once he moved beyond his initial impressions. He professed a sense of "savoring" the pictures and a feeling of "discovery" as he delved into the details. And, after having done that, that he could then "stand back" and view anew the entirety of each individual picture.

Matthew kind of summed it up by labeling all of these impressions and characteristics as my "style", my "way of seeing" which, I am absolutely delighted to say, pleased me enormously.

But, all of that said, here's the real point (as opposed to what some might see as an exercise is self-aggrandizement) of all of this - I have repeatedly pointed out to all of those who would listen that I deliberately have adopted (and adapted) a manner of "composition" that replicates that of the "casual" snapshot. Those who have an understanding / sense of design and the use and organization of space on a 2-dimensional surface know that my manner of "composition" goes far beyond that of the "casual snapshot", but that fact is not at all obvious to those who are, in all reality, "casual snapshooters".

I do this for the simple reason that I want to make my pictures accessible to a non-photographer audience much more than I do to the "photographers" amongst us. At first glance, I want my pictures to look like their (the non-photographer audience) pictures. I don't want that audience to have to work to get beyond the sturm und drang, the clang and clatter of technical / technique virtuosity and visual tour de force-s that so often turn the referent of a picture into something that it is not - a caricature of itself.

Rather, I want that audience to see my referents for what they are - something that can be seen and appreciated with apparent ease and no extraordinary effort. Something that, if one takes the time to notice it, is simply there for the taking - the surprises and delights to be found in the commonplace and in ordinary life.

That's why my experience with Matthew validated (for me) both my approach to picture making and this recently discovered bit of photo wisdom from Carl Robert Pope, Jr.:

I realized that people have a really intuitive relationship with photography and most people’s relationship with photography is through their personal documentation of their own history with their family and friends and their trips ... That informal way of composing is a really powerful strategy to use as a photographer to draw people in. The immediacy of a seemingly informal composition is a way of really speaking the language of people who have cameras, of the way we see our lives in pictures. I am always fascinated by that and always ready to use photography in that way.

and this from Robert Adams:

Why do most great pictures look uncontrived? Why do photographers bother with the deception, especially since it so often requires the hardest work of all? The answer is, I think, that the deception is necessary if the goal of art is to be reached: only pictures that look as if they had been easily made can convincingly suggest that beauty is commonplace. - Robert Adams

Without a doubt, I have always believed that the best way of seeing is seeing simply / simply seeing, or, at least creating the illusion when you are making a picture that you are doing so.

civilized ku # 113 ~ trying to communicate

A non-overcenter articulating aerial device, a church, and an envelope • click to embiggen

Update on Tuesday, November 4, 2008 at 12:15PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Mary Dennis wrote: "Ooh, a little envelope tucked under the lamp post.... This is the most interesting image of an hydraulic lift I've ever seen. And I'm not being facetious.... Quirky little details galore."

my response: I hope this doesn't make you crazy but ... your comment doesn't surprise me because I was actually thinking of you when I made this picture. And, it was the envelope that caused me to think of you.

civilized ku # 112 ~ it was the wife's idea

Waiting for my pedicure ~ Montreal, CA • click to embiggen