decay # 37 ~ the agents of death and the perveyors of fear

Mouldy bread and gourds • click to embiggenNow that the good 'ole US of A has started down the road to healthcare reform, it's worth noting one of the more idiotic statements from the Party of NO! (No Social Security, No Medicare, No Civil Rights, No Financial Market Regulation, No new taxes - we don't need no stinking bridges). Here’s what Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House — a man celebrated by many in his party as an intellectual leader — had to say:

If Democrats pass health reform, “They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing civil rights legislation. - from this PAUL KRUGMAN commentary

That may be a statement of fact, inasmuch as the Democratic Party pretty much lost the south as a result of passing that legislation - a situation that the Party of the Purveyors of Fear cynically exploited much to their political advantage. However, what is implicit in Gingrich the Newt*'s statement is another fine and clearly stated example of the Party of NO!'s crass and callous political cynicism.

Who in their right mind would use the occasion of the enactment of the Civil Rights Act as an example of what not to do?

Answer: Cynical and crass politicians who put their interest (getting re-elected) ahead of that of the people and, as is becoming more and more apparent - a fair number of racist/bigoted teabaggers (AKA, scumbaggers)

And while we're on the topic of "the people", I sat through many hours of yesterday's congressional run up to the vote on healthcare (on CSPAN) and, if heard it once, I heard it a 1,000 times from the Party of NO! - "We're not listening to/ignoring the voice/will of the people."

These Party of NO! morons seem to have forgotten that we live in a representative republic. "The people" do not make legislation or laws. "The people"'s representatives make legislation and laws. And those representatives, elected by "the people", become members of deliberative bodies of government (at all levels) where they are suppose to deliberate, debate, and decide upon (as opposed to just saying, "NO!") what is the right thing to do.

They are our representatives, not our running-dog lackeys. The good 'ole US of A is not run by referendum like, say, the state of California - hey, California, how's that referendum thing workin' out for ya?

Fortunately, there have been a number of times in the history of America's deliberative bodies when, the majority did the right thing even if it was contrary to the will of "the people". Doing so undoubtedly cost them votes and even seats in deliberative bodies of government. Doing so undoubtedly left them vulnerable to those who enflame the basest passions of "the people".

However, doing so has, much more often than not, resulted in the greatest good for the greatest number of "the people".

* from the Austin Lounge Lizard's song, Gingrich the Newt:

Gingrich the Newt's a disgrace to the name
When true newts see him they feel so ashamed
He's the black sheep of the newt family
The one rotten fruit on the newt family tree
Newts don't prey on other newts; in that they don't believe
And you will never catch a newt with something up his sleeve
They're tolerant to different environments and so
They don't send little newties to the orphanage to grow
What kind of newt wears a suit and a tie
And frightens small children as he rushes by?
But we admit that his suit suits him good
Much more discreet than a sheet and a hood
A newt may be cold-blooded but he won't go to extremes
And you can trust a newt to be exactly what he seems
Newts are sorry if you're sad; they're happy if you're gay
But Gingrich is perverse, and worse
He's proud to be that way
Gingrich the Newt is puffed up like a toad
So full of himself that he's bound to explode
And then we'll raise up our tails in salute
A fitting tribute
To that horse's patoot
Gingrich the Newt

BTW, when you follow the link to the Lizard's site be sure to click on LISTEN/WATCH and listen to/watch the video Too Big To Fail. And, if you've got the time, also listen to Shallow End of the Gene Pool, which may go a long way to understanding Gingrich the Newt.

decay # 35 ~ come on, Olympus, get on with it

Tomato paste, lemon, & corks • click to embiggenAfter but a few short hours with the EP-1 I have come to several conclusions about the thing.

First and foremost, it makes an absolutely first-class picture - noticeably superior in every way to those made by the E-3 or any other Olympus DSLR. According to a number of reviews, the sensor in the EP-1:

The Olympus E-P1's technology compares quite well to other similarly priced digital SLRs, and also to some that are more expensive and higher resolution ... the point here is that the Olympus E-P1 virtually eliminates the advantage that APS-C has had over Four Thirds ...

Now, to be certain, I have never been very concerned with "the advantage that APS-C has had over Four Thirds" simply because, for my picture making purposes, the pictures produced by my various Oly DSLRs (and my prodigious Photoshop / printing skills) have been much more than adequate, thank you very much. As anyone who follows The Landscapist knows, I am not known to wax poetic about the technical quality of a picture. What matters for me and what I do wax poetic about is the poetic qualities to be found in a picture.

It should be noted that, when I state that the image files from the EP-1 are "noticeably superior in every way to those made by the E-3 or any other Olympus DSLR", what I mean is that although the average non-photographer viewer of my pictures will never, ever notice a difference between my E-3 prints and those from the EP-1, the EP-1 image files themselves are much easier to work with than the E-3 files are in order to obtain the printed results than I want.

Although, that said, I am now faced with a tempest-in-a-teapot dilemma of sorts. Without question , the E-3 is the far superior piece of equipment but the EP-1 produces image files that are "better".

So, now what?

The EP-1 is, quite simply, not an E-3 / E-30 replacement. As an example, I can't even imagine putting my 50-200mm lens on the EP-1 - not unless I can attach the camera strap to the lens because otherwise I would worry that the weight of the lens would rip the lens right off the camera body. And, example # 2, whereas the E-3 is weather-sealed, the EP-1 is not.

At this point in time I can only imagine the EP-1 as an ultimate walking-around camera - with the 17mm pancake or the 20mm pancake attached it is a terrific picturing making machine.

So, now what?

I guess I am condemned to waiting for Olympus to just slap the new sensor into an existing E-3 / E-30 body. What could be more simple or make more sense than that, right? Which means that it probably won't happen - no, Olympus (not unlike every other camera maker on the planet) will most likely dick around for the next year or so developing a new marketing-driven body to house the new sensor.

decay # 34 ~ an f2.8 detour of sorts

Asparagus on Italian plate • click to embiggen

(Tuscan style) decay # 33 ~ it's everywhere

Decay, Tuscan style • click to embiggenNo matter where you go, there you are.

Somehow it just seems appropriate to begin a stream of Tuscan pictures with a picture of decay since so much of Tuscany - primarily the nearly century old (and older) manmade parts, the really interesting parts - is in the state of decay, albeit a truly beautiful state of "preserved" decay.

decay # 31 ~ another good folio question

Blueberries and radish • click to embiggenPlease keep those cards and letters coming with questions and/or suggestions about the Folio project.

TJ Avery asked. "Can you post some guidlines for folio creation? I.e. how big, how many photos, etc.? I'm sorry, but I'm pretty new at this and I'm not entirely clear what a folio is."

No sooner had TJ asked the question than he supplied a really good answer - a piece by Brooks Jensen, What is a "Folio"?

Jensen's Wakarimasen folio is make up 16 prints/pictures with a title sheet, intro sheet, and a colophon (a kind of "credits" info normally found at the back of a book / folio) sheet. His images are approx. 7×9" printed on approx. 8×10" paper. The prints are made to archival standards - pigmented inks on acid-free paper. His folio case uses a few "fancy" touches - embossing and die-cut - which add a bit of "class" to the thing (nice, but hardly necessary).

Jensen sells the folio for $145 US.

Jensen also signs and numbers his folios by printing edition. This means that, like a book, there maybe a number of "editions" - 1st printing, 2nd printing, and so on. He reserves the right to do so for a number of reasons; new printing technologies may offer improved print quality or he may eventually have a different printing "interpretation" that warrants a new edition.

With the method of numbering that he employs, he is essentially offering open edition folios - although each folio and edition are numbered, there may be an unlimited number of editions issued. This promiscuous idea runs contrary to the established gallery system which places high value (read - $$$$$$$$$$ value) on very limited editions - typically, 5-10 prints.

Jensen's open edition approach is the same as mine when it comes to folios - keep on printing and selling them, even after the cows come home and the sun goes down (and hell freezes over). After all, that's the point of one of the medium's unique and defining characteristics - an unlimited number of originals.

All of that said, keep in mind that all of the folio variables mentioned above (and any other you can think of) are up to the discretion of the individual artist. Print size, paper type, printing method, type of folio case, to sign and number (or not), limited edition / open edition, and price are all up to you.

The most important thing is to just do it.

decay # 30 ~ eternity

Fuzzy noodles • click to embiggenWhen you die, what will happen to your pictures? Will anyone care? Do you care?

decay # 32 ~ sometimes life is not ...

Cherry pits and fuzzy fruit salad • click to embiggen ... a bowl of cherries. While it's certainly true that I did eat a bowl of cherries yesterday, life (computer-wise) was anything but a bowl of cherries. Sometimes life is just the pits.

A very long story, short - I spent the entire day wrestling with the installation of the Epson 7800 software. There actually was a point at mid-afternoon that I seriously began to contemplate a return to film and the wet darkroom. That was right about the time that I discovered that the print driver /software for my Epson 2200 had somehow been modified to something I did not recognize. That was after: a) 3 phone calls to Epson support re: the Epson 7800, b) 1 phone call to Apple support after Epson support informed me that I would have to re-install my system software in order for the Epson to work, and c) a trip to Plattsburgh for a USB cable because their was a known issue with the 7800 and firewire.

At that point the Epson 7800 still wasn't working - some kind of "communication" error - and to discover that my Epson 2200 software had morphed into something unusable ... well, you can pretty much guess what I was feeling at that point. And, not to mention that it didn't help at all that my playoff beard is at the stage where it's getting kind of itchy.

So, 1 more call to Epson support wherein I was informed that I had to download an older driver for the 2200, do an uninstall on the previous (now changed) version, install the new (old) version and pray. Then it was on to yet another uninstall of the 7800 stuff and 5th reinstall of the new driver and, once again, pray some more. There were, of course, about 10,000 computer shutdown / restarts along the way and 1 system software update thrown in for good measure.

Long about 5:00PM - I started this adventure at 9:00AM - my prayers were answered - both printers were up and running and everything was working just as it was suppose to work. Only the computer gods/gremlins know why, after repeatedly repeating the same steps over and over and over again, the damn things finally decided to work.

decay # 31 ~ wherein I double down, po-mo wise

An imaginary/imagining/imaging porthole • click to embiggenAs we all know the web can be a domain of anonymity. Anyone can write anything and do so anonymously. For all any of you know, there is no actual Mark Hobson - at least not as perceived and presented here on The Landscapist. You have only my word(s) for it.

I mention this because of 2 recently posted comments - one from Vinegar Tom (the name of a feminist play), the other from (reputedly) none other than Terry Eagleton. Eagleton, you may recall, was snagged off by me in a recent entry.

Now the only thing I can say for certain about the 2 entries is that they both originate from the same place - the University of Southhampton in England. Other than that, I really can't say if Terry Eagleton actually left this comment attributed to him:

Oh, come on. Don't be such bullies, you people. Anyone who can write "photography that pricks the unthought known" in their banner heading clearly has language issues. Give him a break.

The pictures are nice, aren't they? Although perhaps faking the Holga corners is a little too knowing, dare I say even a touch too po-mo, for some tastes. Perhaps Mark is saying "Look, I know and you know the frame is a convention, and to emphasize this I'm going to pretend, in a purely rhetorical trope, that these pictures were made with a completely different sort of camera, something which both you and I know not to be true, yet at the same time can accept as an aesthetic foregrounding device, if you will. The images are seen as if through an imaginary/imagining/imaging porthole, allowing the play of differance in the arbitrarily placed frame." Or maybe not.

Maybe. Maybe not. But, in any event, it's a bit flattering to think that my nice pictures may have been given a look and a mini review by someone who is regarded by some as Britain's most influential living literary critic. Not an Art Critic (Photography Division) perhaps but, nevertheless, whoever he/she is, he/she is on to my artful stratagem / artifice, re: my aesthetic foregrounding device, aka - my emphasis on the convention of the frame.

That said, because Terry - that's Terry with a "y", not an "i" (as I misspelled it, although the comment was attributed to Terri Eagleton [why do I feel like I'm going down the rabbit hole?]) - asked that I be granted a break, I'll extend one to him/her - their is no reason to assume that a literary / cultural theorist might be acquainted in any great detail with the history of the medium of photography. He/she may be more familiar with it than most (and I suspect he/she is) but it is certainly not the object of his/her life's work.

That may explain why he/she referenced my "Holga corners", rather than my black filmic border, as my "aesthetic foregrounding device". Although, that said, the vignetted corners are intended as a somewhat rhetorical trope to create the feeling of "an imaginary/imagining/imaging porthole". But, that trope derives from my intention to mimic the manner in which the human eye sees - sharp at the center of the field of vision, less so at the periphery. BTW, you can imagine my surprise when, investigating the history of the medium, I discovered that I had re-invented P. H. Emerson's idea of Naturalistic Photography.

That said, I realize that the comment attributed to Eagleton may have been nothing more than a thinly-veiled ruse (maybe, maybe not) to get me to explain my meaning as opposed to the meaning derived by him/her/whomever thereby illustrating and illuminating the concept that "nothing is ever fully present" in my pictures. That any meaning therein is "always somehow dispersed, divided and never quite at one" with themselves. That my pictures exhibit, in fact, all pictures intrinsically must bow to différance - they can never fully summon forth what they mean, but can only be defined through appeal to additional pictures (or words), from which they differ and therefore, meaning is forever deferred or postponed through an endless chain of signifiers.

OK, fine. Point taken. But, not conceded if for no other reason than the real Eagleton has issued an "indictment" centered on relativism - theorist's and postmodernity's rejection of absolutes. When referencing cultural theory, he opines that it -

....fails to deliver. It has been shamefaced about morality and metaphysics, embarrassed about love, biology, religion and revolution, largely silent about evil, reticent about death and suffering, dogmatic about essences, universals and foundations, and superficial about truth, objectivity and disinterestedness. This, on any estimate, is rather a large slice of human existence to fall down on.

IMO, that's one statement that I do not find to be dispersed, divided or not at one with itself. It's a statement about which I can say, "What he said!" as opposed to, "Say what?"