decay # 30 ~ on liking real life

Rotten crab apples • click to embiggenIt has been opined, somewhere by someone (I forget), that one of the problems with criticism (to critique) is that critics often appropriate that which they are critiquing. As far as I can determine, what that means is that the critique of whatever becomes more important that the whatever that is being critiqued. In essence, the critics steal the show.

IMO, that is exactly was has happened to the medium of photography, Art Division. The academic lunatic fringe has appropriated the medium of photography by decreeing that concept - the idea behind the image, not the image itself - reigns supreme. In simplest terms, it doesn't matter what you picture as long as the concept / theory behind it interesting (aka, obtuse, arcane, self-referential art theory). Or, in other words, the words that can be written about a picture (better yet, a body of work) are much more important than the picture(s) itself.

This state of affairs is way whacked.

If all of this tenure-tract, publish-or-die, closed-loop-self-stimulation, theoretical-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin bloviation were confined to the "hollow-ed" halls of academia, wherein they all talked to themselves, the world would be a better place. But nooooo - as these pinheads have swarmed over the curatorial class, they have slowly but surely appropriated the museum/gallery world and shaped it into their own ego-centric version of what matters.

In stark contrast to this academic mania, the former MOMA photography department curator, John Szarkowski, was an accomplished picture maker in his own right. Without a doubt, for him, pictures, not picture theory, mattered most. That is not to say that he was a picture-is-just-a-picture guy - his visionary promotion and elevation of Eggleston, Shore, Winogrand, Arbus, Friedlander, and many other "postmodern" picture makers belies than notion. But, nevertheless, he demonstrated time and time again that he really liked pictures.

In fact, Szarkowski's tenure at MOMA was viewed as flawed by some precisely because he deliberately avoided exhibiting the work of most, if not all, of the emerging darlings of the academic photo-theorist world. Case in point, while he could hardly have been unaware of the one-million-dollars-a-picture darling of that world, Jeff Wall, Wall's work never graced the walls of MOMA until after Szarkowski's departure. One could legitimately think that part of Szarkowski's decision not to display Wall's work was based on Wall's statement that one should, at all costs, avoid picturing anything that one actually cared about - you don't want any of those pesky personal feeling about a subject to get in the way of photo theory.

In any event, as far back as 1967, writing in his introduction to the New Documents exhibition, Szarkowski stated:

Most of those who were called documentary photographers a generation ago ... made their pictures in the service of a social cause ... to show what was wrong with the world, and to persuade their fellows to take action and make it right ... A new generation of photographers has directed the documentary approach toward more personal ends. Their aim has not been to reform life, but to know it. Their work betrays a sympathy - almost an affection - for the imperfections and frailties of society. They like the real world, in spite of its terrors,as a source of all wonder and fascination and value - no less precious for being irrational ... What they hold in common is the belief that the commonplace is really worth looking at, and the courage to look at it without theorizing. - all italic and underline emphasis is mine

It almost seems that Szarkowski's "without theorizing" was a prescient / pre-emptive strike / warning against academic lunatic fringe photo-theorist tsunami that was incubating - one might even say, "festering" (like a boil) - just below the surface of the times. Did he understand that an infectious pandemic of photo-theory criticism would soon begin its relentless spread of appropriation in order to gain mastery over a medium of which none were actual practitioners?

Quite frankly, this situation reminds me of our current economic crisis - a crisis fermented and driven by economic theorists from the halls of academia - pinheads who never actually practiced any "economics" themselves and, much to our dismay, upheld the theoretical concept of economics over its everyday all too human practice.

A pox on all of them.

BTW - how many of you consider yourself to be "new documentarians"? That is, picture makers directed toward the idea that you "like the real world", that "the commonplace is really worth looking at" and that it is "a source of all wonder and fascination and value".

And, most critically, that if you have "the courage to look at it without theorizing" you might even have the ability to "know it".

decay # 29 ~ get real pt. 2

Lemon, apple core, and peppers • click to embiggenWith just a few responses, yesterday's comments have generated - at least in my mind - enough fodder for a week's worth of topics. So, let us start with this one -

It seems that some have inferred from yesterday's entry that I think that the medium of painting has no relevance to nor offers any lessons for the medium of photography. Nothing could be further from the truth.

A couple recent cases in point -

1) As Craig Tanner correctly pointed out, my entire decay and disgust series intentionally pays more than a little homage to the Flemish Still Life Masters - painters, one and all.

2) Add to that my recent entry, man & nature # 101 ~ the most influential photog of the 20th century (who never made a photograph) which highlighted an article about the influence of a painter and his paintings upon the photographic world and several of its most prominent practitioners.

3) The good lord willing and the creek don't rise, I will be visiting Tuscany and the city of Florence in the near future where I will (gasp) be immersing myself in Renaissance Art and it's difficult for me to imagine that I won't learn something that I can bring to my picture making.

Let me also go on record, here and now, once and for all, and state that it would be foolhardy at best, disingenuous at worst, to even think that 2 mediums which share the exact same real estate - the 2-dimensional surface of a print / canvas - share no aesthetic or visual values.

However ... what really got me going about the statement(s) by "one of the world's foremost nature and wildlife photographers" was the word, "brushstrokes". Simply put, there are no brushstrokes used in either the making or display of photographs. None. Zip. Nada.

For purposes of this discussion let's disregard the whole question of what Art is and what it isn't (as per Paul the-resident-contrarian Maxim's advice) and focus on terminology and reference.

If "one of the world's foremost nature and wildlife photographers" had stated, using terminology and references specific to the medium of photography, that "blurred antelopes become" streaks of light and color smeared across several moments in time, I might have been less inclined to have reached such an elevated apoplectic state like the one I found myself in yesterday AM. That would be because my agitation stemmed - and still does - from the fact that the only compliment of high praise that so many photogs who come from the camera-club / photography-as-decoration side of the medium can give to a photograph is to say that it is "painterly", or, "it looks like a painting", or, how about, let's say, "it becomes a Sumi painting", or, "a Seurat come to life".

Praising a photograph because it resembles a painting brings to my mind this little bit of astute observation:

There aren’t twelve hundred people in the world who understand pictures. The others pretend and don’t care. - Rudyard Kipling

IMO and to the point, here's one of photography's medium-specific characteristics that "one of the world's foremost nature and wildlife photographers" seems to be missing / not understanding / not caring about - photography's inherent and inimitable relationship with/to time.

That's a medium-specific relationship that in no small part helps define photography as a medium that is not like painting - a medium with its own specific identity, potentialities, capabilities, and characteristics. Medium specific potentialities, capabilities, and characteristics which, as practiced by some over the previous century or so, have pulled the medium of photography out from under the shadow of the medium of painting and enabled it to stand on its own 2 feet - no excuses, no apologies, and no comparisons to painting required, thank you very much.

Personally, I would think that it would be much more helpful, not to mention accurate, to reference the blurred antelopes relative to photography's ability (relative to its relationship with/to time) to illustrate things that the eye can not see. In this case, light and color smeared across seconds of time as opposed to say Edgerton's milk drops frozen in a fraction of a second in time. And, I don't know why, but I feel compelled to state that neither of these medium specific capabilities have absolutely anything to do with "brushstrokes".

Some may consider it a personal failing on my part, but I just can not get by the notion - and I emphatically make no apologies for it - that doling out photography-that-looks-like-painting compliments and aspirations is little more than intellectual laziness / ignorance regarding the medium's unique intrinsic potentialities, capabilities, and characteristics.

IMO, when that lack of intellectual rigor is dispensed by "masters" of the game to students of the game, a very real dumbing-down of the medium's unique intrinsic potentialities, capabilities, and characteristics takes place. And that dumbing down affects both the student's ability to explore and understand the medium's uniqueness both in their picture making and their picture viewing. In my mind, that is not a good thing.

But, on the other hand, I understand that it is much easier to dole out the photography-painting comparos than it is to wrap one's mind around this:

What Photography means to me: I believe in doubt as an essential tool for an effective search of that which, if it may not be called truth, of truth may be a fair approximation. A search that brings about a continuous change of perspective and that transforms the moment, by nature weak and fragile, into an extraordinary building element of a conscious existence. The change and the revolution of thought, of the basic view of life, its continuous refinement, its incessant updating and growth in values, are indelebly fixed in a photographic image. A fragile, almost intangible, support, which shyly confronts the power of the flow of time, representing for all time that which shall never be for all time: the moment.

A revolutionary technique of expression because it relates to time in an absolutely special way; the image, with its multiple meanings, can only be found if it exists in the phographer before it is fixed on film and must then be reconquered when it becomes an image to look at. A search within a search, a continuous collection of moments for the moment which in the photographic moment will be fixed forever. - Kamir

On the other hand, I really believe that it is worth both the time and the effort that it might require to get real about photography's inherent and inimitable relationship with/to time.

pretty decay

Decay still life ~ scanner photography • click to embiggenA few years back I started a decay project that I let slide. It involved finding dead/decaying things from the world of nature, bringing them into the house, and scanning them on my scanner.

As you may be able to discern from these scanner pictures, I did not rely solely upon the scanner for light. The things were given a bit of accent lighting from my studio strobe modeling lights. The black background was, in fact, a large piece of black foamcore mount board that was suspended above the scanner.

Decay still life ~ scanner photography • click to embiggenThe thing about scanner pictures is the stunning amount of detail that can be had. And, if you scan at 2400dpi, the amount of enlargement that is possible is also rather stunning.

The biggest PITA though is dust - every single speck on the scanning surface is recorded in faithful detail. The only thing that saved me from going nuts with all the dust removal was the black background - I was able to select all the black with the Magic Wand and use the Despeckle function to deal with it rather easily.

In any event, once the snow is gone, I'm out the door scavenging for more scanner photography subject matter.

Have any of you every played with scanner photography?

decay # 28 ~ where's the disgust?

Fuzzy squash, squishy mushrooms, and frying grease • click to embiggenI am not in the habit of making middle-of-the-night pictures or entries but, as the song Psycho Killer by The Talking Heads goes:

I can't seem to face up to the facts
I'm tense and nervous and I can't relax
I can't sleep 'cause my bed's on fire
Don't touch me, I'm a real live wire

Just before turning in last evening, I was catching up on a little reading when I came across this:

By almost any measure, 2008 was a complete disaster for Wall Street — except, that is, when the bonuses arrived.

Despite crippling losses, multibillion-dollar bailouts and the passing of some of the most prominent names in the business, employees at financial companies in New York, the now-diminished world capital of capital, collected an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for the year.

That was the sixth-largest haul on record, according to a report released Wednesday by the New York State comptroller.

...Outside the financial industry, many corporate executives received fatter bonuses in 2008, even as the economy lost 2.6 million jobs. According to data from Equilar, a compensation research firm, the average performance-based bonuses for top executives, other than the chief executive, at 132 companies with revenues of more than $1 billion increased by 14 percent, to $265,594, in the 2008 fiscal year.

...On Wall Street, where money is the ultimate measure, some employees apparently feel slighted by their diminished bonuses. A poll of 900 financial industry employees released on Wednesday by eFinancialCareers.com, a job search Web site, found that while nearly eight out of 10 got bonuses, 46 percent thought they deserved more. ~ Ben White for the NY Times

Holy F**king S**t!!! I was nearly ready to pop. In fact, I was what you might call a real live wire.

Even after going out to the garage, getting a pitchfork and filing the tines to flesh-piercing sharpness, I still couldn't calm down. For a while I killed time (I was in a killing-type mood) on eBay searching for a guillotine but I still was tense and nervous and I couldn't relax. And that's when I noticed that my bed was on fire.

Holy F**king S**t!! What's a man to do?

That's when it came to me - decay & disgust. Make a picture. Make a blog entry. Maybe that will help. By the time I finish, sheer fatigue should set in.

So, here I am calmly typing away but I still can't help wondering - where's the f**king outrage?

I mean, come on people, these f**king morons (with a little help from their friends in DC) have destroyed so much of the American, no, make that WORLD economy, not to mention the loss of retirement savings and the jobs of so many decent hardworking people. And, to add insult to injury, after taking billions of the public's money (and still they hold their hands out for more), this is how they act?

Where's the f**king outrage?

Think it can't get any worse? Ha. In an unmitigated act of pure chutzpah, these vultures have the brass balls to state that they are not using our money to pay these bonuses. Holy F**king S**t!! Without our money they wouldn't have a pot to piss in. Just ask the robber barons from the vacant house formerly known as Lehman Brothers.

Where's the f**king outrage?

Where's the roaring swell of outrage, anger, indignity, and demand for accountability from the American public? Is everyone asleep? Or are we all just going to tuck our tails between our legs and go meekly off to slaughter like passive sheep?

I mean, what's a man to do? Or, more to the point, what can We, The People do to bring pressure to bear on our freshly-minted "historic" leader to summons up the balls to nationalize these institutions and put these bloodsucking bastards out to pasture? - preferably a barren one with hard-scrabble dirt, a few rocks, and a bunch dried up and/or poisoned wells. Get the picture?

If you ask me, it's time to get out the torches, the pitchforks, and the guillotines and get to work. And while we're at it, let 'em eat fuzzy squash.

OK, I got that off my chest. Now you'll have to excuse me - I have a bed fire to extinguish.

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.

decay # 26 ~ opinions are like ass holes, everybody's got one

Lemons, tangelo, knife, and candle holder • click to embiggenIn an email response to yesterday's entry, Tom Gallione asked:

I'm wondering if you would ever consider anything like a portfolio review?

It's a bit of coincidence that Tom asked that question because earlier yesterday I discovered that Tim Atherton and his blog, photo-muse are back online after a protracted absence. One of his recent entries was a kind of cross between a New Year's resolution list and a New Year's wish list and in it he wrote:

Less portfolio reviews and competitions where photographers pay through the nose for the chance to win a 10 minute exhibition or book for the lucky few, while the photorati are busy expanding their egos. They stifle so much imagination and creativity while only nurturing whatever is this months great new thing (which is usually last years great new thing) and which is quickly tomorrows fish and chip wrapper.

Now, I must admit that my feelings about portfolio reviews fall somewhere in the vicinity of Tim Atherton's take on them, although, to be fair and honest, I have never actually had a portfolio review. I have been asked to give and have given portfolio reviews, but, I have never felt the need to have one for myself.

The reasons for feeling so are many but prominent amongst them are 2 in particular -

1) The simple fact is that a portfolio review is just the opinion of a single person and any review is more often than not apt to be a demonstration of that reviewer's personal bias about your pictures. Now, I'm not necessarily suggesting that their opinion of your work is not any better or more valuable that that of your mother but, then again, maybe it isn't. And, unless your mother is a scum sucking mercenary, her review is apt to be a whole lot less expensive than a "pro" review.

But, what if you have 2 reviews of the same work from 2 different reviewers? One says that the work really reaches / touches them and the other says that it leaves them cold. What then ... a game of Eeni, Meeni, Miny, Mo?

2) Even if the 2 reviewers give you lucid and meaningful reasons why they do/don't like your work, what then? Do you fine-tune what is suppose to be your vision to accommodate their tastes?

How many cooks does it take to spoil the broth? Or, as Ricky Nelson crooned in his song Garden Party:

But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well.
You see, ya can't please everyone, so ya got to please yourself

Unless your desire is to make commercial art, where the point is to please the client, IMO, the point of making Art is to be yourself, follow your own muse, and not chase after the tail of someone else.

All of that said, I am not saying that no one would/could benefit from a portfolio review. I guess it all depends on where your head is at and what it is that you might be looking to get out of a review.

And, for all I know, Tom Gallione may have benefited mightily from a portfolio review. I can't say but what I can say is that his work has matured immensely since the last time I viewed it. IMO, it is well worth spending the time to check it out via the above link. While doing so, make special note of his Noon (What I Saw While They Ate Lunch) series - a true delight.

PS - anyone out there had a portfolio review? If so, was it of any value?

decay # 25 ~ think of it as a sawhorse kind of thing

Squash, apples, and leaves on fine china • click to embiggenYesterday's statement that if you can't "explain" in words what you're doing with your camera, chances are very high that you're not doing something worth talking about may have seemed a bit harsh to some. And, depending on how you read it, it may be just that.

But, as is usually my wont, I did leave a bit of wiggle room in the statement with the caveat of "chances are very high" which, of course, leaves hanging the very low possibility that one might be doing something with one's camera worth talking about even if one can't explain in words what it is you are doing.

Without a doubt, the human race has quite a few constituents who work by the seat of their pants without knowing precisely what's in those pants. Hell, if I had $5,000 for every time I heard the answer to the question, "why'd you do that?" with one variation or another of, "because it felt/seemed like the thing to do", I'd have more money than I do now.

That said, and IMO, many of those who are making pictures that are worth talking about even though they can't do so themselves are suffering not so much from a lack of the ability to do so but rather, a lack of intensive art school "education" (whatever the source of that education). Such an education crams a lot of art stuff into your cranial cavity where some of it is bound to stick, for better or worse, for subsequent retrieval.

An example of "better" retrieval would be when you call upon that stuff in order to better understand and appreciate a work of art (of your making or that of others). An example of "worse" retrieval would be calling upon that stuff just so you can have something intelligent sounding to say, even if it's not relevant, when someone asks you what it is you are doing with your camera.

But here's the thing - the fact that you can't articulate exactly what it is that you are doing with your camera does not preclude me from getting way more out of what you're doing than you ever intended or even hoped for. I can retrieve some of that art stuff from my head and use it to "read" your pictures. Doing so most often enriches my experience when viewing and/or discussing the work of others. I look at it as an added "bonus" to whatever the visual experience might be.

And, I want to make this perfectly clear, no matter what the added intellectual experience might be, most times it doesn't matter a bit if the visual experience doesn't strike a chord with me.

Case in point is today's picture from my decay series. I am certain that there are some out there who are simply not very interested in pictures of decaying food no matter how many references I might make to Flemish Still Life Masters, the concept of vanitas, or any other art stuff. I am equally certain that there are some who are (to include those from a big gallery in Montreal who have offered me a solo show of my decaypictures).

But I digress. If the picture, in and of the presentation and the depicted referent themselves, does not draw me in and demand that I keep on looking, the chances are very high that my desire to haul out the art stuff and become further engaged is pretty low. Despite what the lunatic academic fringe thinks - that pictures are mere courtiers to words - what Artists who use cameras do is make pictures.

Pictures that are meant to be viewed and appreciated for their visual appeal (tastes may vary).

Again, let me be perfectly clear - IMO, if all a picture has to offer is pleasing visual appeal, it is not very likely to have lasting appeal.

As I have stated many many times before, for me, it's all about a picture's ability to illustrate and illuminate. And, of the the pictures that exhibit those criteria, the ones that I like the best are most often those that strike a balance between the two extremes of all visual and all intellectual. Not a perfect 50/50 balance but one that compels me to travel back and forth between the two experiences.

decay # 24 ~ the concept

Rotten apples and green thing on a tarnished silver platter • click to embiggen One of the things most valued in the previously discussed Art World, Photography Division, is the notion of concept. It is the one quality in a picture that is an absolute must-have. Without a doubt, concept has become the dominate consideration of a picture's value as Art.

This not exactly a new development in the Art world in general. As far back as 1648, the Academie Royale de Peinture et Sculpture in Paris along with the Royal Academy in London in 1768 established rules and precedents designed to assert the intellectual content of their work. One of the primary purposes of these various "standards" was to separate Art from (mere) craft.

Their basic premise was that Art was not contingent on the features of the actual world - in fact, the more it distanced itself from the features of the actual world the better because it required and demonstrated active intelligence to make that leap, or, in other words, the hand of the artist was made manifest.

It was against this "standard" that the upstart medium of photography had to struggle in order to attain the status of Art - after all, how could a mechanized form of copying the details of the features of actual world demonstrate the hand of the artist? Anyone could push a button, right? Picture making in the medium of photography was considered little more than "copying" the the features of the actual world.

Eventually, the Art world came to recognize that picture makers used their brains in many ways when making pictures and the medium began its slow rise to acceptance in that world, BUT, after a time due in part to the flood of good photography wherein the hand of the artist was made evident - primarily through their use of the medium's characteristic of selection, the Art world seemed to be overwhelmed with Art from the Photography Division.

It seemed that what was needed a much more stringent "standard" for a medium so prone to artistic promiscuity and it was deemed that it was no longer sufficient for a picture maker to excel at selection in order to be admitted to the hallowed halls of the Art world. No, that would not do. That was way too easy a thing to do. The days of wine and roses were over.

Thus emerged a much more stringent "standard" of concept or "intellegent design" for the medium of photography - a picture must be about much more than what it illustrates. It must, above all, illuminate. It must reference ideas well beyond that of its visual referent. If a picture could reference a veritable host of ideas, so much the better. In some cases of wretched conceptual excess, the more obtuse the concept the better - even to the point of concepts that were impossible to intuit or understand without a MFA Degree in art history/theory together with an advanced degree in the field of psychotherapy.

All of that said, I am an ardent devotee of pictures that illustrate and illuminate. However, I do come down on the side of visual referents that, at the very least, are a reasonably understandable metaphor for the concept that I hope to suggest to the viewer.

Such is the case with my decay series so I was delighted beyond measure when, contrary to all my prejudices and misconceptions, a sales clerk (sales facilitator?, sales consultant?) at a small, chain-store camera shop at a mall in Plattsburgh - where I had gone to have a test large print made - immediately upon viewing that print, launched into quite an informed discourse about Flemish still-life painters and the concept of vanitas.

You could have knocked me over with a feather because ...

he "got it" exactly right. On the illustrative side of things, he knew that I was/am mimicking the Flemish still life masters with my use of "ideal" north light, the color palette, and a general sense of composition, And, on the illuminative side, he also understood that, like them, I am also picturing items that are suggestive of and metaphors for the "transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death". He knew that these concepts were/are hallmarks of paintings created in the vanitas manner - a type of symbolic still life painting commonly executed by Northern European painters in Flanders and the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

And, not only did he "get it", he actually really liked the pictures.

I'll say it again, you could have knocked me over with a feather.

I began this series over a year ago. It was intended not only as an expression of my life-long visual fascination with decay but also as a cautionary tale about the excesses of our consumer driven lives/economy and its deleterious effects upon the real quality of life and living. Not only does that lifestyle produce mountains of waste (but not always decay) but, IMO, it is also "rotting" our society in a remarkable demonstration of self-inflicted destruction.

Again, IMO, I firmly believe that the momentous events of the past few months certainly bear witness to the concept to be found in my decay series.

So, I'm curious. Do any of you work with the idea of concept with your picture making? Are the visual referents in your pictures metaphors which can be used to open the door to greater meaning in your pictures?