rain # 24 / kitchen life # 31 / ku # 1161 ~ another 24 hours

Stop sign in headlights/ rain ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen
Corn holders / dirty dishes ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen
Evening / roadside flora ~ Wilmington, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen

I think about photographs as being full, or empty. You picture something in a frame and it's got lots of accounting going on in it--stones and buildings and trees and air--but that's not what fills up a frame. You fill up the frame with feelings, energy, discovery, and risk, and leave room enough for someone else to get in there. ~ Joel Meyerowitz

kitchen life ~ the raspberry pie was delicious

Raspberry pie stains ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen

civilized ku # 2224 ~ kitchen garbage / out with the old, in with the new

Trash and foot ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenOn a recent entry, Photography After Photography? (A Provocation) by Joerg Colberg (on his site, Conscientious), Colberg posits that:

Photography has finally arrived at its own existential crisis ... photography has long been running in a circle. Over the past ten years, it has increasingly become dominated by nostalgia and conservatism. Even the idea that we now need editors or curators to create meaning out of the flood of photographs ultimately is conservative, looking backwards when we could, no we should be looking forward ... Who - or what - can move photography forward, looking forward?

When Colberg suggests that the medium has "become increasing dominated by nostalgia and conservation", he bases that notion (in part and as I read it) on the fact that "every picture has already been taken". "How", he asks, "do we get to use all these new tools to create photography that is not just some new looking variant of the old but, instead, something different, something genuinely new?"

Colberg places much of the responsibility for the medium's current "existential crisis" squarely upon the shoulders of digital photography and the fact of "the idea that we now need editors or curators (who are, in my words, the lunatic academic fringe who have insisted that a picture must be more about art theory and meaning than about what is depicted in order for a picture to be taken "seriously") to create meaning out of the flood of photographs".

There is more to Colberg's essay than I have presented here (you should read it in its entirety) but I want to address a couple of his points which I have mentioned here ....

First, I disagree with his notion that digital photography has created a medium based "existential crisis". As "proof" he cites the work of 2 analog/film-based photographers, Matthew Brandt and Marco Breuer, whom he believes "are attempting to move if not forward then at least sidewards ... trying to escape the narrow photographic confines we’ve built around ourselves".

Leaving aside the merits of their work, IMO, there is little, if anything at all, they are doing in the making of their work which could not be accomplished in the digital domain. However, the fact that they have decided to use film (a nostalgic and somewhat conservative act in and of itself) does not justify in any way Colberg's assertion that "it’s actually in the analog area where artists are producing the most interesting work right now". IMO, as is always the case, it's not how you make pictures, it's about the end result, the pictures themselves.

But that minor quibble aside, I read Colberg's essay at about the same time as I was experiencing my own every-picture-has-already-been-taken crisis. Except, to be honest, calling it a "crisis" is way overstating the case. It was more of an internet-based looking-at-too-many-pictures-which-have-already-been-taken fatigue while in search of new and interesting pictures-which-have-already-been-taken.

I search for such new and interesting already-taken pictures because I know they're out there and like Robert Adams stated in his essay Making Art New:

Although as a practical matter we might wish that art made clear headway ... this tempts the artist to try to slip one over on us, to give us the look-alike for progress - novelty

In the same essay, Adams also stated:

... the only thing new in art is the example; the message is broadly speaking, the same - coherence, form, meaning. The example changes ... we respond best to affirmations that are achieved within the details of life today, specifics that we can, to our surprise and delight and satisfaction, recognize as our own.

I am no fan of novelty for newness sake, but it is with Adam's second statement that I find my basis for disagreement with Colberg's notion that; a) the medium is suffering an existential crisis, and, b) the digital domain is the cause of that crisis. To wit:

a) there are plenty of examples of pictures-that-have-already-been-taken which, using examples of the details of life today, express coherence, form, and meaning. And, it is precisely because of the fact that those details are ripped from life today and that I recognize them as my/our own, that I find those pictures to be both "new" and interesting.

IMO, quite a few regular followers of The Landscapist are making such pictures - Mary Dennis, Juha Haataja, Anil Rao, John Linn, Colin Griffiths, and the More Original Refrigerator Art guy (although I don't know if he follows this blog), to name just a few. FYI, don't be offended if your name isn't the short list because, as stated, I named just a few.

b) it is my opinion that digital photography is not the cause of Colberg's so-called existential crisis. In fact, I believe digital photography is moving the medium away from such an event inasmuch as the digital domain has made making pictures, lots of pictures, very inexpensive. Add to that fact, the fact that so many people have a digital picture making device of one kind or another which makes everybody a photographer.

Consequently, both of these digital domain attributes have led to an explosion of pictures which are ripped from the fabric of life today. Granted, there is a lot chaff to wade through to find the wheat, but, IMO, there are more new and interesting already-taken pictures than there ever were in the analog/film days.

And, IMO, that's a good thing. And a new thing. And a moving forward thing.

Unfortunately, digital photography's discursive promiscuity - as I have labeled it - has yet to surface, in any meaningful way that I can detected, in the curatorial / editorial / art world, Photography Division. If any thing, the digital medium's discursive promiscuity is perceived as negative.
Perhaps that's because, in the curatorial / editorial world, there's just too much chaff to wade through to find the wheat, which makes being a curator / editor more tedious than fun.

Not to mention the fact that digital photography's discursive promiscuity challenges and, IMO, fractures many of their cherished canonical presumptions and beliefs.

are Europeans better than Americans at "getting" art?

Cheese ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen
Welcome ~ Bainbridge, NY • click to embiggen
Brew Pub Window ~ Binghamton, NY • click to embiggenDuring my recent wanderings around NY's southern tier, I had the opportunity to show my kitchen life book* to a number of complete strangers. One of those strangers was a person, Hans, from Switzerland (now a US citizen) with whom the wife and I shared breakfast at the B&B at which we were staying. The others were pure-bred Americans.

Hans, about halfway through looking at the kitchen life book, commented that the "arrangement" of colors, shapes, and light and shadow created an entirely different viewing experience of looking at the pictures that was independent of the depicted referents in those pictures, whereas a pure-bred American, our hostess at the B&B, was a woman whose expressed reaction to the pictures was that she could "identify", so she said with a smile on her face, with the depicted scenes / referents in those pictures. Suffice it to state, each viewer had different experience of viewing and reading the pictures.

It should come as no surprise to those who have read some of my recent entries or followed The Landscapist for any length of time, that I believe that Hans had a richer viewing experience than that of our B&B hostess.

CAVEAT: lest anyone get their knickers in a twist, re: me and my high horse, I wrote that Hans had a richer viewing experience - I did not write (or imply) that he had a better viewing experience. Without a doubt, there is a difference between the two viewing experiences but each experience and what was taken away from them was absolutely correct and proper for each individual.

That said, from my picture making POV, Hans "got" much more of what I was/am trying to capture and express in my kitchen life pictures - or, for that matter, any of my pictures - than did the pure-bred American. So, for me and my picture making intentions, Hans' expressed reaction, as far as it went, was much better or more complete than the pure-bred American's expressed reaction, as far as it went.

Now, getting back to the question at hand, I am not about to draw a hard and fast conclusion from a sample of 2 but ....

... my son, The Cinemascapist, also has some experience in this regard - while I don't have any exact figures, I would estimate / guess that the majority, by a wide margin, of his print sales have been to Europeans. In addition to that fact, his work has been written about (and lauded) in a host of European and international publications as opposed to in the US. And, his work has been accepted into a host of European photo competitions / festivals, many more than here in the US.

Does any of this mean that Europeans are better at getting Art/art? Maybe I should amend the question to read, are average Europeans better that average Americans at getting Art/art? While I am certain there are Art/art "experts" in any culture but there is some evidence that, taken on the whole, some cultures seemed to be more attuned to nuance and depth in Art/art than are others.

Any thoughts on the subject? And, BTW, I have posted 3 wide-ranging pictures, genre wise, for your viewing and reading consideration. Comments would be greatly appreciated.

*Recently, without knowing what I was getting into and in response to an email discount offering, I made a photo book using AdoramaPix's photo book making service.

After following my normal photo book making procedure of creating all my pages in Photoshop (to include text/typography) and then placing them on blank pages on a photo book making service site, it was not until I had reached the "Place Your Order" section of the site that I realized that I was making a "true" photo book. That is to say, a photo book comprised of actual photo prints as opposed to one made on a printing press. At that point I was hesitant to hit the "Place Your Order" button for a number of reasons but, throwing caution to the winds, I did so nevertheless.

Upon receipt of the 10×10 inch book, I was very pleased with the result. In fact, I was absolutely delighted with the result - the pictures were printed on a very nice heavy-weight luster photo paper. The color, saturation, and tonal values were spot on the money (be certain to disable their "Photo Correction" feature), almost indistinguishable from the prints I make at home on my hopped-up Epson Ultrachrome ink wide-format printer. And, all the pages were of the "lay flat" variety.

Quite impressive and highly recommended, to say the least. I will be making more "true" photo books at AdoramaPix.