civilized ku # 39 ~ a walk in the forest #7

Traces and evidence of a different world • click to embiggenThe picture that is the subject of today's entry is, for me, a very interesting one. It addresses a sentence written by Graham Clarke in his book The Photograph - '...they return art photography to a popular forum, releasing it to deal with the terms of our existence rather than the idea of formal content divorced from the world of its meaning.' FYI, the 'they' he refers to are various so-called postmodernist photographers.

I mentioned in an earlier entry that what observers 'read' and subsequently get from a picture is based, for the most part, on the their own life experience. The photographer creates a world that the viewer may enter and explore at will, right up to the limits of his/her ability to use their imagination in coaxing meaning from the signs/signifiers found in all pictures.

My imagination was greatly influenced by my upbringing in a Roman Catholic environment. All of my education was presented to me on a platter from the hands of 'people of the cloth' - nuns, brothers and priests (Jesuit) or lay persons so chosen to reflect their RC sensibilities. Part of what I took away from the experience was two-fold - a sense that things were not always (if ever) what they seemed to be, and, a deep and abiding sense of curiousity/need to find out. The main influences were 'mission babies' and the Jesuit propensity to pose questions and then let you figure it out for yourself - just like Brian (from Monty Python's Life of Brian) said, '... You don't NEED to follow ME, You don't NEED to follow ANYBODY! You've got to think for your selves ...!'

Both of these qualities have certainly provided me with a couple of personal assets which dovetail nicely with postmodern sensibilities. One could say that, from a very early age, I was predisposed in life to wrestle with the terms of our existence and to look beyond the idea of formal content divorced from the world of its meaning - in the context of 'life', read 'formal content' to mean 'accepted' dogma (art, religion, politics, culture).

Since my Art is more than just personal entertainment and is an extention of who and what I am, it just seems that I am, by nature and nurture, a postmodernist through and through. While many who distain postmodernism in Art dismiss it as an adopted affection, nothing could be further from the truth. In my particular case, (and I am sure that of many others) I was a 'postmodernist' in thought and action (life and art) long before I even heard the term.

And that's why a walk in the forest # 7 is interesting to me. Amongst the many emotions and questions that the picture creates for me, I am curious to know why someone who lives in the largest wilderness in the lower 48 would chose to build a fire ring and bench on an upper level of an abandoned mill - although I must admit that the tree growing through an opening is a very nice touch.

I came across this scene near the end of my walk and it was interesting to encounter signs of human construction in the midst of decay and destruction. I also wonder if the constructor had a direct or legacy connection to the mill - a relative who worked there, perhaps. Did the mill's demise effect them personally?

On the other hand, maybe it's just a hangout for teenagers - it is hard to access and not visible from ground level. It would be a great place to cop a first feel, smoke a little dope or drink some beer without too much chance of adult interference.

Who knows? - but, that's exactly what interests me because I am drawn to pictures which '...seek[s] meaning in what is to hand, so that the camera is part of a constant probing and measure of one's terms of existence; the daily rhythms and objects of everyday life.' (again from Graham Clarke).

civilized ku # 38 ~ a walk in the forest #6

Traces and evidence of a different world •click to embiggenThe little red things, which were scattered in clusters in some areas throughout the mill, at first encounter seemed to be organic - like small leaves/buds. Upon further reflection it became apparent that, whatever their composition, they were used to make the dyes which were then used to manufacture colored paper. In civilized ku # 37 there is a cluster of black ones at the bottom of the picture.

Before the mill (which was situated up-river from the village) closed, the good citizens of Au Sable Forks knew exactly what color paper was being made on any given day because the Au Sable River was that same color.

I am certain that these little things are not organic in as much as they are still around nearly 40 years after the mill closed. One of the many reasons that the mill closed was because of its inability to meet environmental regulations. No doubt, one of the regs had to do with whatever pollutants the discharge of the by-products of these little things created.

civilized ku # 37 ~ a walk in the forest #5

Traces and evidence of a different world • click to embiggrnYesterday's entry prompted this reply - re: All art works either in service of or as a challenge to the status quo/prevailing cultural paradigm. One way or another it's part of the language of meaning of any picture - from Paul Maxim - 'Horse-pucky. Sadly, you've once again lapsed into making statements that simply echo restrictive postmodernist sentiment. The above is one of those "either / or" proclamations that, when translated, simply means that "you're either with me or against me". There ain't no middle ground here, folks, so pick your side carefully. This is a fight to the (cultural) death!...

But, on the other hand, Tim Atherton stated - '... as you say, all art is political (as is all life)'

Now, I come down with Tim because I actually believe it to be so - all art, as all of life, is political. I don't believe that there is any act that doesn't not have consequence (great or small). Whether you are 'with me or against me' really isn't the point at all - rather, the point is everything you do matters and, as Dylan says,

We live in a political world,
Love don't have any place.
We're living in times where men commit crimes
And crime don't have a face

We live in a political world,
Icicles hanging down,
Wedding bells ring and angels sing,
clouds cover up the ground.

We live in a political world,
Wisdom is thrown into jail,
It rots in a cell, is misguided as hell
Leaving no one to pick up a trail.

We live in a political world
Where mercy walks the plank,
Life is in mirrors, death disappears
Up the steps into the nearest bank.

We live in a political world
Where courage is a thing of the past
Houses are haunted, children are unwanted
The next day could be your last.

We live in a political world.
The one we can see and can feel
But there's no one to check, it's all a stacked deck,
We all know for sure that it's real.

We live in a political world
In the cities of lonesome fear,
Little by little you turn in the middle
But you're never why you're here.

We live in a political world
Under the microscope,
You can travel anywhere and hang yourself there
You always got more than enough rope.

We live in a political world
Turning and a'thrashing about,
As soon as you're awake, you're trained to take
What looks like the easy way out.

We live in a political world
Where peace is not welcome at all,
It's turned away from the door to wander some more
Or put up against the wall.

We live in apolitical world
Everything is hers or his,
Climb into the frame and shout God's name
But you're never sure what it is.

Eventually, you do have to 'take sides', either by action or inaction, but make no mistake about it - inaction is a political act.

civilized ku # 36 ~ a walk in the forest #4

Traces and evidence of a different world • click to embiggenYesterday, James Robinson wrote (in part) -'There's no doubt that I bring my own experiences with decay to these photos. I have held jobs that revolved around removing/replacing dacay. Those jobs had a major impact on my life and the lives of the individuals I worked with ... Therefore there is a profound love/hate relationship for me with these photographs that I am so drawn to ... I'm angry at the environmental impact and the toll most likely paid by the workers with their immediate and long-term health. But I think that is what defines true art for me now--gritty reality that makes you uncomfortable because you are so drawn to it and hopefully even a little pissed off by it.'

Tim Kingston also mentioned that he felt '... Sorrow, perhaps , not just for the environmental problems to come, as this scene decays, but a sense of sorrow for the lives forgotten and all the hardship they experienced.'

Both of these comments reflect a sense of the 'political' meaning that can be found in these pictures if one's sense and sensibilities are so inclined to 'find' them. If not, they may be just visually interesting pictures of decay. For me, the pictures satisify both my intents (in making) and my motivations (for making).

Recently, on another site that shall remain nameless, the author suggested that he tends to not like art that is politically motivated because, for the most part, once the 'political' is removed from the equation, what remains is generally 'awful'.

IMO, this notion is flawed for two primary reasons -

1) It suggests that some art is politicial and some is not - at least by intent. While that is true enough, it really doesn't address the fact all art is political whether the intent is there or not. All art works either in service of or as a challenge to the status quo/prevailing cultural paradigm. One way or another it's part of the language of meaning of any picture.

2) It also suggests a notion of 'compartmentalization' of intent and effect - that somehow the 'lanauage of meaning' can be separated from the work itself. That the picture can be stripped of that language and then somehow be evaluated as an object devoid of meaning. This notion is pure rubbish - it suggests that the author has little understanding of what constitutes good/great Art.

Art is art with meaning.

PS - mucho thanks to those have 'given back' to me with comments and feedback on this series of pictures.

civilized ku # 35 ~ a walk in the forest #3

Traces and evidence of a different world • click to embiggenBack in the early 80s, when I was a technical consultant to Sally Eauclaire, author of The New Color Photography, I had my first comprehensive introduction to ... well .... the new color photography. The book was a very complete overview of emerging Fine Art photographers and their pictures - Michael Bishop, Harry Callahan, William Christenberry, Langdon Clay, Mark Cohen, John Divola, William Eggleston, Mitch Epstein, Emmet Gowin, Jan Groover, David Hockney, Les Krim, Helen Levitt, Kenneth McGowan, Joel Meyerowitz, John Pfahl, Stephen Shore, Sandy Skoglund, Eve Sonneman, Joel Sternfeld, Boyd Webb and lots more. A NY Times review of the book (from 1981) can be read here.

My 'job' was to help Sally with matters technical. At the time she was a well-respected Art critic in the field of painting but not photography - she knew absolutely nothing about the mechanics and techniques of the medium. Enter me, to fill that role.

The result of it all was that I had the privilege and pleasure to view the portfolios of just about anyone who was an emerging anybody (see list above). Now, I was not a 'new color' virgin - I had seen some stuff in NYC galleries but for the most part, I was of the what-the-hell-is-going-on-here mindset regarding the stuff. It seemed to be more of an 'experiment' than a movement. A blip on the photographic radar screen.

Working with Sally on her book changed all that - I began to learn how to 'read' pictures. I began to understand that what was visible was not all there was to 'see'. Very much in the fashion of there's more than meets the eye. Pictures started to become deep and rich.

What I realized the most out of this experience was that, how 'deep and rich' a picture was, was up to me - in most cases, more so than it was up to the photographer. What a revelation.

Consider this from Graham Clarks's book, The Photograph - 'The intelligibilty of the photograph is no simple thing; photographs are texts inscribed in terms of what we may call 'photographic discourse', but this discourse, like any other, engages discourses beyond itself (emph. Ed.), the 'photographic text', like any other, is the site of a complex intertextuality, an overlapping series of previous texts 'taken for granted' at a particulat cultural and historical conjuncture.'

In other words, the viewer uses his/her experience ('texts' taken for granted) to construct the language of meaning that they get from a photograph. IMO, the greater your 'experience' in all things, not just photography, the greater your appreciation and understanding of Art, photography division.

Update on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 at 09:53PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comments: Bill Gotz asked: "What is it about decay? Why do many of us find it interesting? ... Is it that decay implies a history and so brings forth a rich set of thoughts and question?"

James Robinson suggested: "...Henry Miller wrote the following, and I think it applies to our interest in dacay, as there is nothing quite so "humble":

'In the humblest object we can find what we seek--beauty, truth, reality, divinity.'"

My comment: good question, interesting answer.

civilized ku # 34 ~ a walk in the forest #2

Traces and evidence of a different world • click to embiggenIn the introduction to American Series by Neal Rantoul, Joe Deal writes - 'The most basic question any photographer has to answer is what to photograph ... There are a variety of ways to answer that question, but often the first impluse is to try to find something extrordinary and to take a picture of a time and place unlike any other, one hopes ... Another way to answer the question, the one adopted by Neal Rantoul, is to be more open and accepting of the world as it presents itself to the camera and of one's passage through it.'

American Series is a book of 10 image-based chapters. Each chapter is a series of photographs which came from a single walk in a specific space, town or neighborhood. Each sequence reveals the great variety of subjects present in any given place or in the time it takes for a short walk.

Again from the intro - 'Each series unfolds in a way that is similar to the way in which we normally experience a place for the fist time. As our gaze and our attention shift from one thing to another we start to collect impressions that merge into a sense of place.'

civilized ku # 33 ~ a walk in the forest

Traces and evidence of a different world • click to embiggenA few days ago Aaron 'discovered' - on Flickr - that my little village of Au Sable Forks has a 'secret' buried in the woods. His excitement, photography-wise, knew no bounds. So, yesterday, around 12:30pm, I got a phone call that he was at the mill and I should get my butt over there asap.

The abandoned mill is big rambling affair which I would estimate to cover about 400-500,000 sq. ft. It has been abandoned for almost 40 years. When it was first built, it was an iron ore mill. This region, extending from Lake Champlain, was the first 'steel' capital of North America - I'm talking Revolutionary War era - Benedict Arnold owned a mine here and many of his war exploits (the good ones) were conducted on Lake Champlain. He is honored around these parts as a hero with an astrisk. When the 'steel' industry moved elsewhere, paper became king at the mill until competition and environmental issues shut it down.

The mill is truly 'buried' on the forest - 40 years of grow has hidden it almost entirely from view even thought it sits on the banks of the West Branch of the Au Sable.
Aaron in one of the mill basements • click to embigggenWhile we were picturing, fly fishermen were in the river and we couldn't see them unless we hacked our way right up to the river bank through dense brush and trees, Needless to say they couldn't see the us or the mill either.

I came back from our walk in the woods with quite a number of good pictures. Viewed together they create, IMO, an interesting 'world'. So, it is my intent for this week on The Landscapist is to post one diptych a day. There will be a minimum of words, at least on the diptych entries, and emphasis on 'creating a world' based on the mill. I want to see if it is possible, on the web (the 'flow' thing and all), to actually 'create a world' with a series of pictures.

The presentation will visually follow this post - a broad view together with a more intimate view.

So, please let me know what you think as the series progresses.

civilized ku # 32 ~ creating a world with invoice and dead fly

Dead fly with invoice • No Embiggen - it's a Polaroid

There has been much discourse and discussion on The Landscapist regarding truth in photography and words with pictures. Recently, I mentioned an intro essay by Mark Kingwell from the book Burtynsky - China titled, The Truth in Photographs, in which Kingwell deals rather nicely with truth.

Here's a passage which struck a chord with me - Photographs are not multiple depictions of some single reality, waiting out there to be cornered and cropped, and somehow relugating, even in cornering and cropping, how/what the image means. Rather, photographs offer multiple meanings. The presented image is not a reflection, or even an interpretation of a singular reality. It is, instead, the creation of a world.

Yikes ... holy cow ... scratch my back with a hacksaw - I don't know if I have ever read/heard so simple and direct a statement which seems to encapsulate the core/root idea of Art.

In the case of picturing, one is not capturing the world, one is, in fact, creating a world (my world and welcome to it). The phrase 'creating a world' explains, on so many lelvels, good Art - again, in the case of picturing, so many are creating one-dimensional worlds which are filled with the already-known. Worlds which are shallow, not deep. Worlds which are impoverished, not rich. In short, worlds which display no imagination, which we all know, because Mr. Einstein said so, is more important than knowledge.

Imagination - the source of all creativity and originality - is the single most important tool in a photographers kit - both for creating and 'reading' worlds.

Think about it. More on imagination to come.