diptych # 11 (ku # 1214-15) ~ it's coming sooner or later

Whiteface • Au Sable River / Whiteface ~ near Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenToday was one of those days when it tried like hell to snow, succeeding at high elevations - witness the snow on the Whiteface Mountain ski trails - but only occasional light flurries at lower elevations.

diptych # 10 ~ out standing in their field (as well as outstanding)

Solitary / Isolated ~ LEFT / near Keene, NY - in the Adirondack Park • RIGHT / near Windham, NY - in the Catskill Park • click to embiggen

civilized ku # 2367 ~ rustication

Adirondack Rustic bedrooms ~ Keene Valley, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenI wasn't able to post any entries over the 3-day Columbus Day weekend because the wife and I were busy redecorating our bedroom and backyard outdoor guestroom in the Adirondack Rustic style.

diptych # 9 ~ seeing what's not there

Cats / dishrack ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenI am certain there are those who might think this diptych is about cats, bicycle seats, garden tools, a straw hat, paper towels, a water bottle, or clean cookware amongst other things. However, IMO, if that's all one sees, one has not yet learned how see.

civilized ku # 2319 / diptych ~ illegal to feed bear/deer

Road sign / wall of snapshots ~ between Inlet & Eagle Bay / Keyes Pancake House in Old Forge, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenIt's been a dry(ish) summer which has had the effect of severely diminishing the natural food sources of many wild animals. The most noticeable animals affected by this problem are bear and deer.

Bear and deer are most noticeable because their solution to the problem is to forage for food in close proximity to human populations. And, they're big. While deer are a nuisance - eating shrubs and munching their way through gardens and the like, bear are a pain in the ass. They have no inhibitions about coming into your kitchen through a screen door ... and I do mean through the door.

In any event, because of the dry weather / low natural food supply, 12 bears have been put down this summer as the result of being "nuisance" bears. All things considered, this number of downed bears, while unfortunate, hardly puts a dent of any consequence on the bear population inasmuch as 70% of New York State's estimated 7,000 bear population reside in the Adirondacks.

FYI, there has never been a fatal bear attack in the Adirondacks. Virtually all encounters with bears in NYS / Adirondacks are entirely benign. A bear's first instinct upon encountering a human is to turn butt and run. While there are occasional displays (when they feel threatened) of what is mistakenly thought of as aggression by a bear - swatting the ground with their paws, charging but stopping short of contact, slow and deliberate approaches, clacking teeth, huffing, growling, snorting and other sounds, those displays are, in fact, acts of defensive behavior. However, if given an opportunity to withdraw, the bear willingly and eagerly does so.

In only 1 of my several encounters with bears have I witnessed a display of all of the defensive responses listed above. The bear was defending a very large purloined tin bin of crackers and not about to give it up. His (I know the bear to be a male because he was big, much bigger than a female ever gets) display was both impressive and intimidating, so, true be told, I was the one to willingly and eagerly withdraw, albeit it very slowly.

civilized ku # 2307-08 ~ a question

Junipers with weather and "the light" ~ Stone Harbor, NJ • click to embiggenIn 1974, long before the 'digital revolution' landed on the shores of the picture making world, Robert Adams asked a very interesting question:

Many have asked, pointing incredulously toward a sweep of tract homes and billboards, why picture that? The question sounds simple, but it implies a difficult issue — why open our eyes anywhere but in undamaged places like national parks?

The question is part of Adams' Artist Statement from his book, The New West. A book (one of the prized books in my collection) of pictures of, for me, nearly inexplicable beauty - nearly inexplicable for me because:

1) the pictures are BW which, color being my medium, is not my preferred picturing genre of choice
2) the sense of "the light"* (from along the Colorado Front Range) is, well .... indescribably palpable and beautiful - a rather strange statement from someone like me who is an avowed non chaser of "the light"
3) the depicted referents - described by John Szarkowski, in the book's Foreword, as "dumb and artless agglomerations of boring buildings" - is not a subject matter which one would normally associate with the concept of beauty.

Nevertheless, the Adams' pictures are, indeed, beautiful in a manner both harmonious and discordant.

That said written, and back to the question at hand, one could reasonably assume that Adams' query was directed toward the "average" American and the "average" amateur picturing enthusiast who tended to point their cameras (in 1974, cameras, and only cameras, were what one used to make pictures) at iconic landscape vistas. Those picture makers, knowingly or not, were essentially trying to make pictures which were carbon copies of clichéd calender pictures - romanticized depictions of a pure unadulterated American landscape which was fast disappearing.

In 1974, Adams was one of a very few picture makers making pictures of what came to be known as the New Topographics. In a very real sense, his question was a cry to Americans to open their eyes and "see the facts without blinking". While most Americans, perhaps more than ever before (as a percentage of the population), still have not addressed, or even heard, his question, the same can not be said for picture makers.

Many avid amateur and some dedicated "fine art" professional picture makers still cling to the clichéd and predictable pretty picture syndrome but, with the unimaginable surge in the number of picture makers (attributable to the shear number of digital picturing devices in the hands of "everyone's a photographer now") more and more avid amateur picture makers are, in fact, making pictures of things new topographical.

Those picture makers have, literally and figuratively, "opened their eyes" and are engaged with the act of seeing, many on a daily basis. And their engagement is focused, not on the romanticized grand and spectacular, but on the world in which they find themselves on a daily basis. One could state that they are more fully engaged, picturing and living wise, with the real world rather than the idealized one which exists mainly in the imagination of the unimaginative.

In any event, Adams answered, in the same The New West Artist Statement, his own why-open-your-eyes question:

One reason is, of course, that we do not live in parks, that we need to improve things at home, and that to do it we have to see the facts without blinking. We need to watch, for example, as an old woman, alone, is forced to carry her groceries in August heat over a fifty acre parking lot; then we know, safe from the comforting lies of profiteers, that we must begin again.

Paradoxically, however, we also need to see the whole geography, natural and man-made, to experience a peace; all land, no matter what has happened to it, has over it a grace, an absolutely persistent beauty.

All of that said written, it is the work of eyes-open / facts-without-blinking picture makers I hope to feature in my magazine publishing venture.

*while it plays a vital role in the creation of Form which Adams' pictures convey, "the light" is not, by any means, the featured referent in his pictures. Rather, the pictures are most distinctly about place and (hu)man's place in it. When viewed in that light, "the light" is "merely" a helpful referential contingency (but nevertheless, integral) which beautifies the visual sensation of place.

diptych # 6 ~ they fixed everything

Campus Corner diner ~ Plattsburgh, NY • click to embiggenFYI, it's nowhere near a campus.

diptych # 5 + civilized ku # 2213 ~ disco dance fever

Converted Airstream ~ Plattsburgh, NY • click to embiggenElvis and Donna ~ Plattsburgh, NY • click to embiggenThis past Saturday evening, the wife and I attended the Disco Fever Dinner and Show, the North Country fundraising event of the year. Attendance at the event, a fundraiser for the local hospital's Foundation, was mandatory because the Foundation and the hospital are one of the wife's clients.

The event was held at a Airstream trailer renovation / conversion warehouse / factory. While there were plenty of polyester, bell bottoms, and bad wigs in evidence at the event, the wife and I limited our disco apparel to sequined/glitter caps.