man & nature # 46 ~ outside lies magic

Leaves and suff • click to embiggenOver this past weekend Aaron, The Cinemascapist, was in Woodstock (yes, that Woodstock) to attend a workshop at The Center For Photography At Woodstock. The workshop was conducted by David Hilliard, a photographer who has been helpful to / generous with Aaron with his time and advice over the past year or so.

Aaron also got to spend considerable time with the CPW director, thanks to an introduction from Cornelia Hediger, recently highlighted here on The Landscapist, with whom Aaron has been having a conversation.

Aaron came away from the weekend with a Xerox copy "teaser" of the first 19 pages of a book (handed out by Hilliard), Outside Lies Magic ~ Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places by a professor from Harvard, John R. Stilgoe - "... a book about the acute observation of ordinary things, about becoming aware in everyday places, about seeing in utterly new ways, about enriching your life unexpectedly."

The book is not about photography. It is about the "art of exploration" - the subject that he teaches at Harvard. From the little I have read, if I were in his neighborhood, I might be inclined to see if I could monitor his class. I like what he has to say:

Abandon, even momentarily, the sleek modern technology that consumes so much time and money now, and seek out the resting place of a technology almost forgotten. Go out side and walk, a bit, long enough to forget programming, long enough to take in and record new surroundings.

Flex the mind, a little at first, then a lot. Savor something special, Enjoy the best kept secret around - the ordinary, everyday landscape that rewards any explorer with magic.

The whole concatenation of wild and artificial things, the natural ecosystem as modified by people over the centuries, the built environment layered over layers, the eerie mix of sound and smells and glimpses of neither natural or crafted - all of it is free for the taking, for the taking in. Take it, and take it in, take in more every weekend, every day, and quickly it becomes the theater that intrigues, relaxes, fascinates, seduces, and above all expands any mind focused on it. Outside lies utterly ordinary space open to any casual explorer willing to find the extraordinary. Outside lies unproggramed awareness that at times becomes directed serendipity. Outside lies magic.

Sound familiar?

Stilgoe goes on to say:

And I hope this book makes each reader aware that education and entertainment media teach nothing about being original, about being innovative, about being creative or inventive. How does one learn to be creative? How does one develop the ability to produce lots of new ideas, to respond to problems easily and energetically? I think the answers lie outside.

Exploration encourages creativity, serendipity, invention.

I find it interesting, as I have stated before, that a book about "exploring", not about photography, not even about art, might be one of the best books a photographer might read to grow and develop as a picture maker. Consider this spot on advice for a photographer:

Explorers quickly learn that exploring means sharpening all the senses, especially sight. See intently means scrutinizing, staring, narrowing the eyes ...

A statement not unlike that of Walker Evans when he opined:

Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.

And, as a somewhat timely addendum to my recent entry about time and photography, man & nature # 40 ~ time in a bottle, there is this from a review of the book:

Stilgoe provides a fascinating pocket history of the American landscape, as striking in its originality as it is revealing. Stilgoe dissects our visual surroundings; his observations will transform the way you see everything. Through his eyes, an abandoned railroad line is redolent of history and future promise; front lawns recall our agrarian past; vacant lots hold cathedrals of potential.

Let me say that from reading these few excerpts of his book, I'd swear that Stilgoe has been following me around for the past decade or so, somehow reading my inner thoughts and ideas as I have pictured my way through the magic outside.

Any comments (on a non-politic thought)?

Update on Wednesday, October 1, 2008 at 10:57AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Straun Gray wrote: "...Have you ever photographed the Adirondack fir waves? An uninformed response will only see a bunch of dead trees. A purely ecological approach sees an averaging determinism at the expense of individual variety. Somewhere in between lies and informed exploration, and the potential for poetry.

Fir waves from Whiteface • click to embiggenmy response - Yes, I have pictured Adirondack fir waves although I have not made a "study" or body of work of them.

And you are entirely correct when you state that "[A]n uninformed response will only see a bunch of dead trees". Very few here have any idea what a fir wave is. Which is unfortunate, because, as I have often stated - when it comes to making or viewing pictures, the more you know, the more you can know.

On that note, I suspect that not many at all know this about fir waves.

man & nature # 45 ~ the big delusion / count # 2 - see entry below for count # 1

One of the many reasons I live here • click to embiggenThe current conventional political wisdom in good 'ole US of A is that we need "change". One candidate won the primary based on that "platform". The other co-opted it later (because he's a genuine I vote with my friends 95% of the time "maverick").

Whatever the merits - personal and/or political - of these self-adopted agent-of-change labels may be, they both primarily revolve of around the same mass delusional notion that "change" needs to made in Washington, DC. That the "problem" resides there and with them. That the "problem" is a top-down one. That it resided outside of the collective self, AKA, the American people, themselves.

I completely disagree.

It's been said many times and in many ways before, but let me quote one of my favorites by Timbuk 3:

Assholes get elected because assholes get to vote.

Or, this from George Carlin:

Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders.

And don't forget the time-worn classic:

The American public gets exactly the government that they deserve.

It's really as simple as that. Our government and its attendant politicians are nothing more or less than a reflection of who we are as a people. Or, at least, who we are as a people as determined by those who vote.

And, on the whole, we are a selfish lot. Especially so since the Reagan Revolution wherein a majority of us were sold the bill of goods that "government is not the solution, government is the problem". That it is the government that stands in the way of us getting whatever we want, when we want it, and in employing whatever manner we choose to get it.

There are 2 key delusional flaws in that idea:

1). You just can't have whatever you want without consequences of some kind.

2). And, more importantly, it is our government that binds us all together. It is the glue that holds it all together. Without it, we have anarchy.

In a culture and society as large and diverse as ours, it is the government's responsibility to regulate, and, yes, dare I say it, control competing private interests which, left unchecked, would have the power to tear our country apart. And, it is the responsibility of citizens to engage in non-rancorous conversation and debate about what to and how to regulate and control.

That said, who the American public has been electing over the past 3-4 decades are representatives - left, right, Democrat and Republican - who believe (or are afraid to stand up to those who believe) that we should just deregulate everything and let the "invisible hand" of the market make all our decisions for us.

Why do that? Why not? We have been told, again and again, that the market is the best place to get whatever we want, whenever we want it, and at a price we can afford. And the key word employed in that notion is the one that labels us as "consumers".

That label has become the operative imperative in our society and culture - terrorists attack our country? A big part of the suggested solution is to go out and spend. The consumer economy is on a tailspin? A big part of the suggested solution is to go out and spend. Don't have enough money to go and spend? No worry, the taxpayers will just give you some. Just get out there and be patriotic consumers. Forget about "traditional values" like actually saving money. No. Not that. Just accept that fact that consumer debt is the natural order of things.

Why is it that no one in the electorate ever seems to notice that our elected leaders, corporate heads, and the economic academia, never talk about us as workers? Could I be that that conversation might lead us to the realization that we, the people, are more than just consumers. That in order to get what we want, when we want it, at a price we can afford, directly and dramatically effects our lives as workers.

It would be really difficult to figure out how people haven't made that connection except for the fact that we have been conditioned to be ravenous consumers whose desires know no bounds and that the frenzied state of satiating these unbridled desires keeps our minds off of the fact that there are real and serious consequences to our lives and our society from this selfish, self-centered avarice.

Wake up people and shed the big delusion - the problem isn't "them", it is "us".

My despair with the current offerings from the political class is that none of them are willing (and most likely not even able) to give us the bad news - that the "change" we so desperately need must come from the bottom, up - although that idea doesn't negate the influence that a "real" (truthful) leader can provide in shaping that approach. That we, John & Sally Q. Public, need to look in the mirror and recognize the grotesque caricature of a human being as a "consumer" that so many of us have become.

The point is rather simple really - if we are selfish and self-centered then there will be a never-ending stream of self-serving and greedy politicians and captains of industry standing ready to assume the mantle of "leadership". All the while assuring us that they stand ready to give us what we want when, in fact, it's really all about what they want (hint: power and money).

man & nature # 44 ~ 2 questions in need of answers

The top of the heap • click to embiggenOnce again, we have set new benchmarks for comments here on The Landscapist and, once again, it is in response to things political. The fact that this happened over the weekend, a time when page views, visits, and comments are normally quite low, is also worth noting.

That said, I guess it's not surprising that, here in the US of A, interest in our own peculiar Quadrennial Bacchanal of the Cult of Personality is running high. And, that said, I am especially appreciative of the fact that so many of you picked up the anti-demagoguery and paranoia banner and ran with it. It appears that at least one person who was inclined to engage in that kind of behavior has been goaded or convinced to engage in dialogue about issues rather than rant about personal vilification. How about that?

All of that said, let me reiterate my desire for The Landscapist to carry on as a photography blog, not a political one, but, today's entry, on 2 counts, will still be slanted towards the political although not entirely so.

count # 1 - Healthcare. Ron raised the issue of government managed universal healthcare "bankrupting" the country. IMO, opinion, and that of many others, the current system of privately provided healthcare is / has already accomplishing that objective quite well.

The cost of healthcare is, if not bankrupting, at the very least stretching, to near the breaking point, the budgets of most municipalities (large and small) and school districts. American corporations are staggering and falling into a status of uncompetitiveness under the costs of employee healthcare. Retirees and workers are asked to shoulder more and more of the cost of healthcare as their pension benefits are being reduced.

And, guess who's paying for it all? You and me. If not directly, then every time you buy an American-made product or service. Every time you pay local school or property taxes. Every time you pay federal taxes. The enormous cost of healthcare in this country is "hidden" in virtually every monetary transaction you make.

And, have no doubt about it, our costs are the highest on the planet - current best-estimates put our cost at $7,000 per person. Compare that to England and France, where the costs are $1,700 and $2,200, respectively. Canada spends $3,300 per person. And, the US of A stands alone in this group - it is the only country without universal healthcare.

Obviously, something is out of whack. Now, I am not a healthcare policy wonk but let me mention one obvious factor. In France, England, and Canada, corporate profits are not a very big part of the picture. Not so in the US of A. So, for me, the questions we need to ask and address are simply these:

1.) Is healthcare just another market sector, like selling cars as an example, that should be nothing more than an unregulated money-making machine? (FYI, I am not talking about doctors or any other individual healthcare providers making a living).

2.) Should access to healthcare be a universal "right" or should it be limited to a class and/or income based privilege?

Find a consensus on those notions and we are capable of working out the details needed to make it work.

man & nature # 43 ~ moving through time

Views from a moving train • click to embiggenHere in the Adirondacks we are experiencing some grand autumn weather. Foliage is at 50-60% in some locations. In some ways it's hard to believe that we are approaching the end of September.

That said, I have to get out and enjoy it, so here are a couple things to think about:

In photography, the two words I like most are "simplicity" and "authenticity". I try to see things with authenticity, in natural manner : no cheating in order to show things as they are. This is the way in which I would like to see things. My ideal point of view. ~ Yann Arthus Bertrand

and:

...I felt that photography ought to start with and remain faithful to the appearance of the world, and in so doing record contradictions. The greatest pictures would then... find wholeness in the torn world. ~ Robert Adams

man & nature # 42 ~ Amtrak's Adirondack

Along Lake Champlain • click to embiggenAs far as I am concerned, a window seat on the Lake Champlain side of Amtrak's Montreal - NYC Adirondack is worth its weight in gold. The train spends much its travel time along Lake Champlain perched right next to the shoreline and, on a glorious day like last Thursday, the views are a treat.

From my neck of the woods, the trip into Manhattan is a 7.5 hour ride. Virtually all of that time is spent along a waterway - above Albany (the 1/2 way point), along the West shore of Lake Champlain, and, below Albany, along the East shore of the Hudson River.

It really is a bit of a magic-carpet ride
Westport Train Depot • click to embiggenmade all the more so for me because of the transition that I experience from boarding the train at a classic rural depot and disembarking in the center of one of the biggest cities on the planet.

It is, as they say, a real trip.

man & nature # 40 ~ time in a bottle

Let the sun shine in • click to embiggenOne thing about pictures that rings very true to me regarding the notion of time goes like this:

Every picture, except at the exact nano-second it is created, immediately becomes a thing of the past. But, in addition to a picture's life as a thing of past in and of itself, every picture also hints at another past which, of course, is the life of the referent before the picture was created.

The picture nevertheless gives evidence / testament to the once present state of the referent and in doing so gives it a permanent state of being in the present. But, even as one views that past present (in whatever present one may be living), the awareness of both the past and the present in the picture implies future possibilities.

I am discovering, more and more, that this somewhat weird time continuum warp - time spinning over and over upon itself in a bottle (the bottle, of course, being the vessel of the picture), is what I love most about the medium. Every good photograph that I encounter nearly overwhelms me its virtually overlapping sense of past, present, and future. I don't see the picture only as a discrete moment in time. A good picture must be able to transport me to a place in the past - life before the picture was created, link me to the present in a commanding way, and take me into a revelry of future possibilities.

And, as I am again realizing, the photographer has taken me on this time warp dance by touching upon a truth that is connected to the real. And nothing, I repeat, nothing in the visual arts makes a connection to the real better than the medium of photography.

Anyone understand?

man & nature # 39 ~ Aasgard

Aasgard Farm, Au Sable Forks, NY • click to embiggenHere in the Adirondacks, there are precious few High Peaks grand panoramic vantage points that are accessible to the casual observer who doesn't want to scale a peak, even just a small one. One of the most picturesque "roadside" views is found right here in my village of Au Sable Forks and, even though it is just 1/2 mile or so from the main thoroughfare, it remains a rather "hidden" place.

This is even more remarkable by the fact that this view of the High Peaks is fronted by Aasgard (Garden of the Gods ~ from Norse mythology) Farm, the longtime home and studio of the famed American artist, author, and political activist Rockwell Kent. Kent lived here from 1927 until his death in 1971.

Kent was an interesting person. He was very successful as both the field of Fine Art and that of commercial art. His book illustration credits were numerous, he has public and private murals in Albany, NY and NYC as well as in Washington, DC (FDR was very kind to Kent). His advertising illustrations were created for the tone-ist of clients - the likes of Cadillac, the stores of Park Ave and 5th Ave, the fashion industry, and so on.

Kent was able to use the financial benefits of his commercial art to finance the life of what could be called that of a gentleman farmer - a dairy farmer to be exact. I don't know how much actual farm work he did - he hired farm workers, and his son, after getting a degree from Harvard, returned to Au Sable Forks to manage the farm. It was a job he must have been spectacularly unsuited for since Kent was forced to fire him. Whereupon, his son stole all his cows - Kent didn't notice they were gone for at least a couple days - and gave them to a local real estate agent as down payment / collateral on a farm of his own.

When Kent eventually discovered the theft, he confronted the real estate agent (whose family descendants still carry on to this day in the real estate biz) and demanded his cows back. The agent refused. Kent waited a few days for a moment when the agent was out working in his own fields, loaded up some friends into the back of his pickup and confronted the agent again. The agent refused again and Kent engaged him in some fisticuffs, the result of which was that he got his cows back.

Kent was also a political activist and he put his art to work for that cause. He became very popular in the Soviet Union, and in 1957, half a million Russians attended an exhibition of his work. Subsequently, he donated eighty paintings and eight hundred prints and drawings to the Russian people. In 1967, he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize - Kent donated the prize money to the women and children of Vietnam, both North and South.

Because of his many pieces of art that supported social causes and ideas, he was considered by most to be a Communist sympathizer, even to the point where the State Department revoked his passport during that wonderful American era of the "Great Red Menace" scare. Kent, not to be cowed and undoubtedly fueled by his commercial financial gains, sued for its reinstatement and emerged victorious in a landmark Supreme Court case.

All of this might have made Kent little more than a "character" in the eyes of the "true" locals, but Kent really pushed the envelope when he started to distribute his bottled milk with the red socialist star on the bottom side of cardboard lid. As far as the locals were concerned, he wasn't a Communist sympathizer, he was a full-fledged effete, un-American, commie-pinko bastard, period, end of discussion.

The net result of this was that, to this day in Au Sable Forks, it's, "Who? Rockwell, who?" There is not a single mention or indication that one of the most renowned American artists of the last century ever existed, much less lived here and created most of his art here. None. Nada. Zip.

man & nature # 38 ~ picturing from the graveyard

A sign of things to come • click to embiggenFYI, you all have Mel Fuentes for putting us over the top, comment-wise and thus ensuring that The Landscapist will remain as a photography blog.

Now, I am not promising that politics / economics will not rear its ugly head from time to time, especially over the weeks leading up to Nov. 2 ...

That said, today's entry is short and sweet because, while mom and dad are off to LA for Aaron's latest gallery show opening, Hugo is here for an extended visit. So here's a quote for you to chew on for a bit:

Remember, that the original state of the minds of uneducated men is vulgar, you now know why vulgar and commonplace works please the majority. Therefore, educate your mind, and fight the hydra-headed monster-- vulgarity... Vulgarity astonishes, produces a sensation; refinement atracts by delicacy and charm and must be sought out. Vulgarity obtrudes itself, refinement is unobtrusive and requires the introduction of education. ~ Emerson

BTW, the answer to yesterday's game was Split Rock Rd. - and only Don knows whether his guess was a good guess or the fruits of prior knowledge.