urban flora # 19 / diptych # 195 ~ chaotic messes

urban(ish) flora ~ Keeseville, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
meter mess ~ Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggen

As evidenced by the picture - made in the small village of Keeseville, NY - of the unfettered growth of urban chaotic scrub in this entry, it should be obvious that kind of scrub growth is not limited to big urban areas. In fact, it would be far more accurate to write that urban scrub growth is quite common to areas marked by depressed economic circumstance or as a result thereof. Keeseville most definitely fits that description.

Perhaps my working title, urban flora, for this body of work needs to be amended to include some notion of blight.

On a different but similar topic of blight, Pittsburgh is also a prime example, but not the only example, of what might be labeled electric blight. That is, the rat's nest of wires, meters and other electronic apparatus which is placed willy-nilly on the facade of homes and businesses without even a passing regard to order or unsightliness. And, once again, this phenomenon is most common in areas of the same depressed economic circumstances as urban blight, flora style.

While it is certainly possible to create objects of beauty - pictures, in and of themselves - by organizing lines, shapes, colors and the like within the frame of a picture, to the naked eye they most often are little more than an eye-sore.

civilized ku # 3013 / diptych # 194 / squares² # 12 ~ "terrible crap"

urban flora ~Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggen
urban flora ~Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggen
urban flora ~Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggen

I few entries back I wrote about my reading of a-person-not-a-dective-but-functioning-as-one novel and the protagonist's view on the affected art world (aka: the academic lunatic fringe). As I continue reading through the series of books featuring the same protagonist*, I have encountered a number of other of the protagonist's pronouncements on the subject of art, including this exchange with an artist .... When asked, after making an insightful comment on a woman's painting, if he is a "Member of the club" ....

"Hell, woman, I even know the trick words that mean absolutely nothing. Like dynamic symmetry."

"Tonal integrity?" (she responded)

"Sure. Structural perceptions. Compositionally iconoclastic."

She laughed aloud ... "It's such terrible crap, isn't it? The language of gallery people and critics, and insecure painters ...."

After this exchange the artist asked the protagonist what "his words" on the subject of good art might be. His response ....

"Does a painting always look the same or will it change according to the light and how I happen to feel? And after it has been hung for a month, will it disappear so completely that the only time I might notice it would be if it fell off the wall?"

That exchange comes very close to my feelings and thoughts as applied to art in general and photography in particular.

While the surface of a photographic print doesn't change with the light that falls upon it (although the perception of color may) as can the textured surface of a painting, a good photograph (like any good art) has the ability to re-engage a viewer, over time and with repeated viewing, with different perceptions - the prick of one's eye and sensibilities - of a picture based upon the different feelings and emotions the viewer brings to the viewing thereof over time.

IMO, all art is personal - as made by the maker and as seen by the viewer - and breaking down its individual components via the discussion of "terrible crap", iMo, sucks the life out of a piece of art.

Think of it this way .... I've seen some visually amazing and engaging pieces of Lego constructions. Some on a massive scale and complexity. While I wouldn't label them exactly as Fine Art - although some might - nevertheless, they are the result of some individual's very creative thought and execution.

Be that as it may, their artistic genius is in the sum of their parts - quite literally, thousands of parts. The genius is not to be found in the parts themselves. Looking at the individual parts does little to enhance the viewing experience. In fact, by directing one's attention to the individual parts (dissecting it), one stands a good chance of missing the "Big Picture".

iMo, the "Big Picture" is all about how a picture pricks the eye and sensibilities of a viewer well beyond the initial viewing. The whys (often quite arcane / tedious) and the hows (often quite speculative) of it - things so precious the academic lunatic fringe and their cohorts - are, for the most parts, sidebars which, as afterthoughts, may provide the viewer with some understanding of how the how and why of a picture may affect one's feelings about and perceptions of that picture.

However, I never read or think about the hows and the whys until well after a picture or body of work has pricked my eye and sensibilities. Because, iMo, it's all about the picture, in and of itself.

*Travis McGee, the fictional character featured in 21 crime fiction books written - 1964-1980 - by John D. MacDonald. Travis McGee, the character and the novels, have the prototype for many fictional crime fighting characters. On that subject it is worth noting that, with the rerelease of his novels, all of the books have an introduction by Lee Child (nom de plume of Jim Grant), the creator of the character Jack Reacher, a-person-not-a-dective-but-functioning-as-one, and that series of books (20 and counting).

civilized ku # 3012 / diptych # 193 ~ under bridges

Pirates mural ~ Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggen
under bridges ~ Pittsburgh, PA • click to embiggen

If I were to be in Pittsburgh and had exhausted all of the urban flora picturing possibilities - don't know how that would be possible other than just saying, "Ok. Enough is enough." - the other ubiquitous referent for picturing making would undoubtedly be bridges or, in my case, under bridges.

Pittsburgh reputedly has more bridges than Venice, Italy. It is known by the moniker "The City Of Bridges". And that is very appropriate inasmuch as, according to a 2006 study, there are 446 bridges in Pittsburgh.

Whatever the number of bridges, there can be no doubt that the opportunity to make pictures under bridges is just around every corner.

kitchen sink # 31 / diptych # 190 / diptych # 191 (trees) ~ thinking about light

pots and pans / reflections ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
red and blue ~ Marquis theater / Middlebury College • Middlebury, VT. • click to embiggen
trees ~ Manhattan, NYC / near Union Falls, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

While I continue with the monumental task of choosing 5-7 tree pictures - from over 80 such pictures - for submission to and consideration for the juried In Celbratiopn of Trees exhibition, I still continue to make pictures of those things, wherever I may encounter them, which prick my eye and sensibilities. Quite obviously, the life in my kitchen and kitchen sink continue to present (to my eye and sensibilities) referents which hit me where I live, picture making wise.

One of the interesting things about the kitchen in general and the kitchen sink in particular is how, over the course of the year, the light entering through the kitchen window changes from season to season. The change is most notable in the direction of the light as the sun sinks lower or rises higher in the southern sky as the seasons progress throughout the year. The color quality of the light changes as well but the changes are rather subtle in character.

It has occurred to me, if the desire ever became manifest, that I could create a still life - which could be duplicated over and over in the exact same sink location or on a kitchen counter - and picture it (over and over, from the exact same POV) throughout the year (once a month?). To be really descriptive, re: the changes in the light, the pictures most likely should be made at the exact same time of day and in all kinds of weather. To make the project really comprehensive and diverse, it would make sense to chose 4-5 different window locations about the house and replicate (with different still life arrangements and referents) the exercise in each location.

A significant part of what would make this project interesting, at least to me, is that I have become very aware how the changes, over the seasons, in the light entering the house through different windows effects and affects my perceptions about the seasons of the year. I find it very interesting that I don't need to go outside or even look outside a window to sense and feel the change of seasons.

Maybe it's time to start a picture making experiment with a single window and a single still life (which can remain intact for a few months to half a year) in order to see what happens, picture wise.

diptych # 187-89 (trees) / kitchen sink # 31 ~ some thoughts on B&W

kitchen sink / dirty water ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
birch ~ somewhere in Connecticut / near Swastika, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
birch ~ Battery Park - Manhattan, NYC / Au Sable River near Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
trees ~ Lake Champlain shoreline/ Peru, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

As I have been making tree diptychs, which, BTW, are NOT my intended end product, it occurred to me after snooping around on the interweb that, when a tree is the primary visual referent in a picture, a B&W conversion is an interesting option.

I come to that conclusion because the overwhelming majority of trees, trunk wise, have no real color and what color they do have is primarily monochromatic. In addition, tree trunks usually exhibit a high degree of texture. Consequently, the combination of the monochromatic and textural characteristics of tree trunks is a fine referent for a B&W approach to picturing them. But, here's the caveat ....

.... not any old conversion from color to B&W will do.

Inasmuch as I have had a fair amount of experience, back in the good ol' days of B&W film, with using Wratten filters - green red, yellow, blue - to accentuate / de-accentuate the B&W tonal values of colors found in a scene, I am having a fair amount of success using the Image > Adjustments > Black and White color specific sliders tool in Photoshop. And Holy Digital Darkroom, Batman, the color based sliders are essentially infinitely adjustable Wratten filters.

And like so many advantages found in the digital darkroom, I can create a number of different conversion picture files using different color sliders and then blend the results into one final conversion file. That allows me to adjust the tonal values of multiple colors, something that was not possible in the analog film / wet darkroom days.

The net result of this type of B&W conversion can far exceed anything that was possible in the the good ol' days. I suspect Sir Ansel might have thought he had died and gone to heaven - he's most certainly dead but I have no idea were he might be other than in a box in the cold, cold ground - with the amount of control (Zone System on steroids) that he could have had in the B&W digital darkroom.

diptych # 186 ~ congratulations to my inner photographic child

juror's selection / "Alternative Cameras" exhibition • click to embiggen

The wait is over and the results are in (from last evening's mail):

Congratulations!

Thank you for submitting your work for PhotoPlace Gallery’s juried "Alternative Cameras" exhibition. Juror Susan Burnstine has chosen 35 photographs for the gallery exhibition, and an additional 40 photographs for display in the Online Gallery on the PhotoPlace Gallery website. It’s a wonderful collection of fine work.

We are very pleased to tell you that your work was selected for display in the Online Gallery.

Juror’s Statement:

Often perfection is a direct result of embracing imperfection. The term “happy accident” has become synonymous with wildly flawed alternative approaches including toy, pinhole and homemade photography, as they frequently rely on elements of chance and luck. But there have been some who have tamed these unpredictable, faulty beasts to yield purely poetic results by letting go of technical control and connecting with their inner photographic child. .

It was great joy to spend time with these wonderfully imperfect images and I applaud everyone who submitted. Having to narrow down a selection for the physical and online exhibits was an immense but gratifying task. In the end, the selected images seamlessly merged consistent aptitude with an element of unpredictable chance, thus creating lyrical results. I congratulate all the selected artists and sincerely thank everyone who submitted such fantastically flawed work. ~ Susan Burnstine

The juror's selections can be viewed HERE

an aside: I must admit that, after viewing the juried selections for the Alternative Cameras: Plastic to Pinhole exhibition, I feel a bit like a stranger in a strange land. Sort of like, what the hell am I doing here in this company of picture making strangers? Because, other than my long-past picture making affair with "flawed alternative approaches" and "letting go of technical control and connecting with [my] inner photographic child" - my decades long use of my SX-70 cameras and film - I have had only a passing interest in making "fantastically flawed work".

As mentioned previously, I have played around with a smattering of pinhole picture making but only as a matter of having a little picture making "fun" with no long term commitment to the process. Nevertheless. I have had, and still do, a continuing interest in viewing "crappy camera" pictures as they fall into my field of vision - meaning that I don't seek them out but instead encounter them on the basis of chance.

All of that written, I have yet to come to grips with my attraction to such pictures other than to note that I like the way "crappy" pictures look. As the exhibition juror wrote, the pictures are visually "poetic", "lyrical" and "dream-like", visual qualities which, in fact (contrary to my chosen genre of picture making - "straight" picture making), do prick my eye and sensibilities.

Perhaps, in an effort to come to grips with the genre, I have to think of alternative camera pictures not as photographs but, rather, as images made with the photographic process. Images which indeed create a "idiosyncratic and deeply personal visual landscape" but which stands in direct contrast to the medium's intrinsic and inseparable relationship to and as a cohort of the real.

I don't think it's a stretch to write that I need that bit of a dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin rationalization - i.e. images, not photographs - to comes to terms with my like of the "crappy" pictures made with "crappy" cameras. That way I won't feel like I have betrayed and abandoned my long held picture making beliefs and M.O.

diptych # 185 / civilized ku # 3007 ~ trees and rain

pool cover / rain ~ Lake Placid, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
trees ~ Manhattan, NYC / Upper Jay, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

civilized ku # 3006 / diptych # 184 ~ more trees

bathroom cabinet ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
trees ~ Manhattan, NY / Mt. Jo - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

I am working out my trees editing by creating diptychs which place a picture of urban tree with a picture of a natural environment tree. Comments are always appreciated.