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This blog is intended to showcase my pictures or those of other photographers who have moved beyond the pretty picture and for whom photography is more than entertainment - photography that aims at being true, not at being beautiful because what is true is most often beautiful..

>>>> Comments, commentary and lively discussions, re: my writings or any topic germane to the medium and its apparatus, are vigorously encouraged.

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BODIES OF WORK ~ PICTURE GALLERIES

  • my new GALLERIES WEBSITE
    ADK PLACES TO SIT / LIFE WITHOUT THE APA / RAIN / THE FORKS / EARLY WORK / TANGLES

BODIES OF WORK ~ BOOK LINKS

In Situ ~ la, la, how the life goes onLife without the APADoorsKitchen SinkRain2014 • Year in ReviewPlace To SitART ~ conveys / transports / reflectsDecay & DisgustSingle WomenPicture WindowsTangles ~ fields of visual energy (10 picture preview) • The Light + BW mini-galleryKitchen Life (gallery) • The Forks ~ there's no place like home (gallery)


Entries in flora (4)

Friday
Feb192016

diptych # 203 / civilized ku # 3054-55 ~ late winter inside color

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flowers and stuff ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
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flowers ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

I am working on my next entry, re: punctum baby ~ personal meaning which "escapes" language part II. Hope to complete it tomorrow afternoon while in a hotel killing time between hockey games.

As an aid to help clarify my approach to finding the words which come close to defining / explaining my reaction, personal meaning wise, to the punctum baby picture, I am re-reading the book ,READING PHOTOGRAPHS ~ UNDERSTANDING THE AESTHETICS OF PHOTOGRAPHY which was published in 1978 and which I read for the first time a long time ago.

FYI, the book is a collection of 9 essays (on average, only 2 pages each) covering 9 topics - such as, Time, Organization of space, Symbol and Light - all illustrated with a number of pictures relative to the topic. The book is an easy and somewhat informative read.

However, as I read it I am starting to think that I what I really need to do is to re-read a few chapters in Susan Sontag's book, On Photography. So, I guess I'll throw that book into my suitcase.
Monday
Dec072015

urban flora # 19 / diptych # 195 ~ chaotic messes

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urban(ish) flora ~ Keeseville, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
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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.
Monday
Nov302015

civilized ku # 3011 / squares² # 11 ~ urban flora continued

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

As mentioned in my final Pittsburgh entry, I was heading out with my eye and sensibilities attuned to urban flora. So I did and within a 1 hour walk around the Lawrenceville neighborhood - law school girl lives there - I had pictured enough urban flora to start a pretty nice body of work. During my walk I made 18 pictures which, together with the 6 I made the previous day, gives me a solid start on an urban flora body of work.

While my intention was to start a Pittsburgh based urban flora project, I won't be back in Pittsburgh until next June (law school girl's graduation). Consequently, I am encouraged to continue my urban flora picture making quest whenever I find myself in an urban area or any place where I might find unfettered growth of chaotic scrub.

I am also quite certain that, if I take the time to peruse my picture library, there will be a fair number of preexisting urban flora pictures to add to the collection. Some of those will most likely have been made during past trips to Pittsburgh because, apparently, when in Pittsburgh, I can't avoid seeing and picturing urban flora.
Thursday
Jul302009

ku # 619 ~ my name is Friday, I carry a badge

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Flowers on a portage ~ Bog Riverclick to embiggen
There was a bit of a brouhaha recently over at the NY Times, specifically The NY Times Sunday Magazine.

They published what was essentially a photo essay about real estate ventures gone bad in the current economic dilemma we find ourselves in. I liked the pictures quite a bit and nearly wrote about and posted a link to the essay but, by the time I got around to it, the NYT had pulled the piece from its website.

The reason given for the withdrawal was that the photographer had mislead the NYT because they were under the impression / understanding that he made his pictures with "long exposures, but no digital manipulation" and the NYT stated that as part the intro to the essay. As it turns out, there were, in fact, several pictures that had been altered in the essay - not "little" alterations but big ones.

The photographer had created some pictures wherein he cropped the original image in half and then duplicated and flipped that half in order to make a perfectly symmetrical picture - one side was a perfect mirror of the other side. The NYT said that they were deceived by the photographer. The photographer said, "no, you just don't understand my work as presented".

Having done quite a number of magazine editorial assignments in my time, it's difficult for me to understand how this misunderstanding / deception occurred. In the normal course of events, there are pre-shoot discussions between the parties in which basic shoot parameters are laid out and agreed upon. Apparently some things got overlooked.

That said, you can see the pictures on the photographer's website - click on the letter "p" and then click on "RUINS OF THE GILDED AGE". The pictures that were altered are pretty obvious and I am left wondering how an experience photo editor would miss it (the alterations).

That said, the photographer, Edgar Martins, has apparently felt the need to explain / defend himself / his work. And so - warning: academic lunatic fringe alert, read at your own risk - he has written a piece wherein he elaborates on his recent realization that ...

... history was no longer linear. In the pulsating world of binary number systems that we live in, history is made, negated and reinvented, all in the space of one minute ... [A]s fraught and as contradictory as much of the information being portrayed often is, it reveals a polymorphic and multiform reality, a world of flux and flow that is in a perpetual state of uncertain transformation ... [I] accept the probabilistic nature of the universe as a fact ...

... and so on. Obfuscating bloviation aside, I understand what he's getting at - in order to make a point, he likes to alter his images, he likes to severe the link between photography (as a cohort of/with) and the real. Fine. No problem. Have at it.

However, unlike when I visit an art gallery where I often enjoy a certain break with the real in order to make a point, when I pick up a newspaper (even the Sunday supplement when it deals with news), I really do expect to be presented with something more closely aligned with the real.

When one is given an assignment by a news organization /publication to picture / describe / represent, in this case, the actual realities of an economy gone bad, one might think that a picture maker might realize that what a news organization wants (in fact, requires) is, in the words of Officer Joe Friday, "Just the facts, ma'am" and nothing but the facts.

Unless so specified by the publication, a picture maker should leaves his/her academic theories and ruminations in the bag and just show us the pictures.