civilized ku # 31 ~ Small is beautiful - let me count the ways

Oh Canada • click to embiggenHugo became an international traveler over the Memorial Day weekend. He picked up a little French, wandered the streets of Old Montreal, had the bejesus scared out of him at the Montreal Science Centre's IMAX presentation of Dinosaurs 3D ("...dinosaurs going to eat me...") and discovered that Canada is about more than 'hockey guys' - on the drive to Montreal he sang the opening lines, "On Canada..." repeatedly.

I, on the other hand, had my ongoing desire for a Smart car enflamed to passion level 10. Hugo also asked, "Me get one too?". Little does he suspect that by the time he reaches driving age, a Smart car (or slightly larger variants like the Toyota Yaris, et al) may be the only choice he has.

The Smart car is sold in 36 countries around the planet. The gas-guzzling U.S. is not numbered among them. However, Mercedes (Smart is a division of Mercedes - can you even imagine Cadillac or Lincoln having such a product?) states that the car will be available in the U.S. in early 2008. Time for me to queue up.

Re: today's picture - can you even comprehend the number of ways in which small is beautiful in these pictures?

Update on Wednesday, May 30, 2007 at 09:42AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comments: Paul Maxim wrote; "Don't look for me when you're "queing up". I have absolutely nothing against smallness and I abhor waste. I do, however, drive an 8 - cylinder Jeep. Why do I drive such a vehicle? Simply because I'm 6' 6" tall and slightly claustrophobic. I also hate flying and so tend to do a lot of driving (our son lives in Nevada). Besides, with all the 18 wheelers running around out there at over 70 mph, a vehicle like the one pictured would be squashed like a bug and no one would even know that anything had happened! It would look like a skunk flattened on the highway ..."

My response - The Smart Car is certainly not for everyone or for all driving situations. Urban use is their strong suit, but for me, it would also be of great use in my daily 2-lane driving around the countryside along with short hops (20 miles or so) on an interstate which has a very uncongested flow of traffic.

civilized ku # 30 ~ Small is beautiful

Someone's little piece of heaven on earth • click to embiggenJust outside of town, sandwiched between the elk ranch and the granite quarry on Rt. 9, is this little gem. Over the past few years, it has been slowly remodeled into what you see here. In someone's opinion, it is a little piece of heaven on earth, and, BTW, it's not a summer home, it's a full-time residence.

What this house and home brings to mind is a book - Small Is Beautiful, Economics As If People Mattered by E. F. Schumacher - which was published in 1973 soon after the energy crisis of the same year rattled American's (and the world's) cages. In the opinion of The New Republic, the book is ...Enormously broad in scope, pithily threads from Galbraith and Gandhi, capitalism and Buddhism, science and psychology. It has also been called ... the perfect antidote to the economics of globalization. As relevant today as when it was first published ...

Schumacher was a British economist who was amongst the first to point out that our economy was unsustainable. He also believed that the workplace should be dignified and meaningful first, efficient second, and that nature is priceless.

Schumacher's economic ideas where fueled to great extent by Keynes, Galbraith, and 'Buddhist' economics. In a quote near and dear to my heart, he states that "... [the modern economist] is used to measuring the 'standard of living' by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is 'better off' than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption. . . . The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity."

I really like the part about The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. I like it a lot.

In a later book - A Guide for the Perplexed - Schumacher, in somewhat of an aside to his main point, wrote about art. He suggests that there is a lot of confusion about the nature and meaning of art (sounds familiar). In order to clear this up, he states that one must consider art with relation to its effect on human beings.

He thinks that most art fits into one of two categories - entertainment, that which is created to primarily effect feelings, and propaganda, that which is created to effect our will. For the most part, this concept jives with the idea (derived from the book, Einstein's Space and Van Gogh's Sky, Physical Reality and Beyond) expressed by me here on The Landscapist that art is divided into two categories - decorative, that which is created to turn the mind off, and, fine art, that which is created to engage the mind.

I have posited that the best art is that which combines both of the latter properties, art that is both decorative and informative, that which I strive for in my pictures. Schumacher also believes in a combination of entertainment and propaganda which appeals to amn's higher intellectual and emotional faculties with the intent of communicating truth.

IMO, there's something a little weird going on when an economist, a theoretical physicist and a psychologist (the last two are the authors of Einstein's Space/Van Gogh's Sky) seem to have a much more succinct idea of what art is than most artists are able to express.

So, how about contemplating this (from Schumacher) the next time you're thinking about creating meaningful art (not to mention a 'righteous' way of living) -

"The way in which we experience and interpret the world obviously depends very much indeed on the kind of ideas that fill our minds. If they are mainly small, weak, superficial, and incoherent, life will appear insipid, uninteresting, petty, and chaotic. It is difficult to bear the resultant feeling of emptiness, and the vacuum of our minds may only too easily be filled by some big, fantastic notion – political or otherwise – which suddenly seems to illumine everything and to give meaning and purpose to our existence. It needs no emphasis that herein lies one of the great dangers of our time."

civilized ku # 29 ~ Event trail

County fair grounds exhibit trail • click to embiggenLast evening, I finished another of my bargain-bin 'adventure' novels. This one - The Balance of Power by Richard North Patterson - was different from most I read in that it is a political thriller. It was also over 600 pages, making it not exactly a quick read.

The basic plot line is about gun control and tort reform and the systemic political intrigue whirling around these issues. The author obviously did his homework with exhaustive in-depth research on both sides of the aisle. According to the book-jacket praise, Patterson 'has a keen eye for how Washington really works ... his portrait of the gun lobby is right on...', and, the book presents '... a heartfelt understanding of the effects of gun violence on our society ...'

In the interest of full and fair disclosure, I should note that those 2 items of praise were tendered by Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy respectively - a detail that is sure to capture the interest and resolute attention of some in the audience.

Interestingly though, the only interest group refusing to be involved in interviews and background research was the NRA - that's the Nat'l Rifle Assoc., for those of you not familiar with the intricacies of the gun issue in the USA. (A quick aside - why are they called a 'rifle' association? They spend most their time, efforts and money 'protecting' the 'right' of the people [in a A well regulated Militia, no doubt] to own rapid-fire handguns, assualt weapons and organ- shreading, 'cop-killer' bullets - the weapons of choice for drug thugs, criminals, batterers, and wackos intent on committing mayhem.)

All of that said, the book was an interesting, captivating, sobering and somewhat depressing read. But, my point is this - Even though the book is a fiction, it engages the reader with and raises awareness of many truths about our society here in America. In his acknowledgements, Patterson thanks his publisher for '... believing that there is a place for serious popular fiction on controversial political and social subjects ...'

Sounds an awful lot like photography's recent(ish) fascination with 'constructed' pictures which articulate concerns relating to contemporary global experiences, doesn't it?

civilized ku # 19 ~ an affection for life

Spring from my kitchen window • click to embiggenSpring has finally begun in earnest.

In his essay, Truth and Landscape, Robert Adams states; "Landscape pictures can offers us, I think, three verities - geography, autobiography, and metaphor. Geography is, if taken alone, sometimes boring, autobiography is frequently trivial, and metaphor can be dubious. But taken together, as in the best work ... the three kinds of information stregthen each other and reinforce what we all work to keep intact - an affection for life."

civilized ku # 18

Red wheelbarrow with water and shadow • no embiggen - it's a polaroid

Even though this is a Civilized ku, I'm feeling anything but civilized at the moment. I'm sitting here on the Group W bench - along with all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! - feeling downright mean and ugly myself. And, just like Arlo, 'I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL.'

Who do I wanna KILL? The bloody sods out there in the software world (Adobe in particular) who always mess with my finely-tuned print parameters when 'upgrading' Photoshop.

I always resist upgrading. There has to be a damn good reason for me to move from one version of an app to the 'next best thing'. If I have something that is working for my needs, I hang onto it with a near death-grip. I never want to let go because I know the pure agony I'll face with an upgrade. And that agony is almost always associated with color management.

I just upgraded to CS2, not CS3, CS2. Why? Becasue CS was working just fine, thank you very much. BUT, because of client issues - most are using the CS2 Suite - I have been unable to open files (InDesign, Illustrator) which were created in CS2 in CS. So..... a couple weeks ago upgrading was inevitible.

It was not until this AM that I got to "testing' print output from PhotoShop. And, of course, nothing works the way it used to. My test prints look like they were made by an idiot. Now, I know I'll eventually get this figured out - I always do. Nevertheless, 'I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL.'

Update on Friday, April 20, 2007 at 01:09PM by gravitas et nugalis

I'm better now. I've taken my meds and things are looking all bright and cheery. My prints are in the ballpark and all that's left to do is to find the right seat.

civilized(?) ku # 17 ~ teenage postmodernism

Teenage Postmodernism • click to embiggenAs is often the case when I am reading something about photography and postmodernism, I run into some gobbly-gook which seems a bit obtuse. Consider this -

ASIDE - it might be helpful (or confusing) to know that simulacrum means an image or representation, an unreal or vague semblence.

...the Beaugourg Centre is a condensation of key postmodern themes: a monumental cultural and social implosion which causes a vacuum of meaning. It is a kind of mediafied black hole which draws in society, only to turn it inside out, creating an arch simulacrum: a copy of meanings and experiences that have no orginals."

Upon reading this, my first thought was to wander aimlessly, but thoughtfully - one could say 'contemplatively' - about the domicile only to stumble upon the above pro-filmic moment that seemed to somehow relate to the aforementioned excerpt. The question is, "How?"

I think the explantion is found in this little bit of bewilderment; '(in photography) ... any attempt to find some prior space of meaning can only be a naive illusion. All is just an image. A discourse of representations without origins: or rather, representations that are now theorized as orgins. For we are within the realm of the reality effect. The photographer doesn't capture an image of the world on celluloid, only an image of that which is already an image."

To cut to the heart of the matter (in English), I think what is being expressed is that in our media saturated culture, our brush with 'reality' is increasingly experienced through pictures. For many (most?) actual reality has been replaced by the 'reality effect' of photographs. In effect our knowledge of 'the real' is gained not by experiencing the thing itself but rather, through representations (simulacrum) of the thing. The meaning (there's that pesky notion again) of things is gained, not through experiencing the thing itself, but through the vicarious sensations derived from the representation (picture) of the thing - therefore, the representation becomes the origin of meaning.

Think about it. How much of your 'knowledge' of the actual world is not based on representations of that world? How many photographic images do you see in a day, a week, a month, a year, a lifetime? Magazines, television, movies, your photographs and those of others, the list goes on and on.

In a very real sense, All is just an image.

In another sense, it's all just a bunch of academic bs.

Mix and match or take your pick.

PS - So, how much of your personal 'knowledge' about things (life) is derived from your contemplation of your photographs? Is your photography part of your quest to 'understand' (gain info about the 'meaning of things' [life])?

Update on Tuesday, April 10, 2007 at 10:41AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: In response to "Is your photography part of your quest to 'understand' (gain info about the 'meaning of things' [life])?", Lori Witzel wrote; "...I think it's more about one aspect of mindfulness that echoes the Dutch memento mori painters, that echoes certain Buddhist-inspired Asian arts and crafts -- the taking in of the fullness of something while also taking in its evanescence, and (if I'm having a good moment/day) being transparent enough to share that with others while not weighing it down with myself.

Or maybe it's just too much fun to see and share what the world is full of...and all the aforementioned is just a convenient rationale!"

civilized ku # 16 ~ contemplation?

Spring time light • click to embiggenOver on photomusings Paul Butzi has been ruminating over the course of several posts on 'contemplation' and 'contemplative cameras'. At the root of it, the premise seems to be that some cameras create/help foster a more 'contemplative' picturing experience. Paul states, "If our goal is to have our photographic process be contemplative, and some cameras are more supportive of this than others, then it makes sense to invest some time and energy in understanding what features (or synergistic combinations of features) tend to add to the contemplative experience and what features tend to diminish it."

This notion is antithetical to my approach to picturing which is much more along the lines of Nike's exortation to 'just do it'. I find it much more advantageous when picturing to be in a 'receptive' rather than a 'contemplative' state of mind.

I know others feel the same. Consider this email which arrived yesterday with the subject of "?????".

Aaron wrote, 'so am I missing the point or is it just subconscious?

people comment a lot on my photos about things that make sense after I read what they say, but were not true intentions??? is it just something their mind see's or am I really creating it that way, just subconsciously???

example: the 3rd panoramic I uploaded to your site yesterday... someone complimented me on the great composition and juxtaposition of the "strong" boulder on the left and the "weak" fallen birch that takes the right 2/3rds...

I just went into the woods...walked around and saw many good spots, but the one I chose to shoot just "felt" right. I really don't think about composition AT ALL! Is that wrong??? I just like the way things "feel"...like deep down inside...it feels right...whether it be the photograph(ing) or the post-processing?!!'

The thing that gets me is Aaron's question, 'Is that wrong?"

Now Aaron's a photo-neophyte. He has been serious about picturing for only about 6-8 months. His photo 'education' consists of; several conversations with beer (with me), two 5-hour-car-ride photo "seminars' (with me), and most important, thousands of 'just-do-it' exposures. It's worth mentioning that he also spent a couple years during his home schooling apprenticing with me doing graphic design which gave him a huge headstart computer skill-wise.

Aaron can thank his lucky stars that he's learning in the digital domain. Except for the expense of purchasing a good dslr, he was already set up with a high-end digital darkroom and high-level skill set therein. Consequently, he could shoot his a** off and play with post-shoot processing to his heart's content, something he has pursued with a passion (maybe an obsession). Suffice it to say, he has crammed about 5 years worth of my early photographic 'fooling around' into a few short months.

Good for him. And, in answer to the question, No it's not wrong.

That said, my take on the 'contemplative' thing is this - do your 'contemplating' without a camera anywhere in sight. Be 'contemplative' while viewing your own pictures and those of others. Be 'contemplative' while reading about the aesthetics of the medium of photography. Be 'contemplative' while making decisions about what to picture (in a body-of-work/project sense) and how to do it (in a technique/techincals sense).

Then, camera in hand/on a tripod/perched on the top of your head/whatever, go forth and 'just do it' until it 'feels right'.

Frankly, IMO, if you can't 'just do it' and figure out for yourself (with a little help from your friends) when it 'feels right', maybe jigsaw puzzles might just be a better way to past the time. Then, at least when you finish one, you'll know that you 'got it right'.

civilized ku # 15 - the one-eyed monster

One-eyed monster • click to embiggenSize matters,or so it seems in the Art world these days, especially in the medium of photography.

I've never been a fan of big prints (see quiet photography), but then again, I always thought that 20×24 inches was big. Now I know better - 12×18 feet is a big print. Sure, I've seen my photography printed to 40×60 inches (printed by Kodak's in-house pro lab using a liquid-gate enlarger) for display in the Kodak Gallery (now gone) in NYC, but those photographs seemed to be big just for big-ness sake, not for any real aesthetic reason.

Then, about 2 years ago, the wife and I were doing a gallery crawl in NYC and we came across the photography of Massimo Vitali. One of his beach scenes, printed to approx. 6×8 feet fried my brain. It just 'worked' in so many ways - from a distance, moderately close, up close, whatever, the effect was varied but no less captivating. It got me to thinking.

So, I thought and thought and eventually, nada, I stopped thinking about it. Then the Jeff Wall thing erupted and, once again, I started thinking. Thinking about BIG.

Then and now, much of my thinking has been done right next to my 8×10 one-eyed monster which is situated within arms length (literally) of my digital darkroom throne. It just stands there, with its silent gaze, beckoning and taunting - although, I swear I can ocassionally hear a faint refrain along the lines of "try getting that from your digital crap", and, "film is not dead, film is not dead...".

In case you're wondering about the 'monster' moniker, it's simple - everything about shooting 8×10 is monsterous. The cost of film and processing, the cost of a high quality film scanner for 8×10, the cost of the processing power to handle really monsterous files, the cost of printing BIG and not to mention the increased size of my bulging hernia.

Fortunately, my investment in the equipment was made years ago. Fortunately because, for example, at current prices, you can either buy 10 8×10 film holders (how many I have) or, say, a Canon 5D body.

Nevertheless, the time has come to pack it up and put it in the car. Not as my primary weapon of choice, but rather so it's there when I'm picturing with my digital crap and I just know that what I'm picturing is screaming,"BIG, really BIG."

PS - not to scare the wife, but...I intend to 'restage' the Which came first? pro-filmic moment, because I want to see it 5×5 feet on the dining room wall.