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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

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Entries in panoramic (4)

Tuesday
Nov032015

panoramic / diptych # 177 ~ rainbow and atmospherics

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rainbow and atmospherics ~ Wilmington, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
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rainbow and atmospherics #2 ~ Wilmington, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
Sunday morning on The Flats in Wilmington.

Wednesday
Oct142015

ku # 1331 / panoramic ~ a concretized universal

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roadside autumn color ~ Clintonville, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
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Au Sable riverside autumn color ~ near Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

A student at Reed Collage said to Robert Adams, "I like art with intellectual complexity." Adams answered:

So do I, in some respects. But it's easy to confuse philosophy with art. They are not the same. It's an easy distinction to forget in school ... where you're encouraged to live an active life of the mind.

In today's academic lunatic fringe driven picture making world, it could be written, with a high degree of accuracy, that picture making MFAs end up confusing psycho-therapeutic self indulgence with art and that they are indoctrinated with the idea that complex meaning in a picture is paramount, virtually to the exclusion of a picture's visual merit - a clear cut real-world example of Sontag's idea that interpretation (aka: finding meaning) is the revenge of the intellectual upon art.

That written, Adams went on to state that:

A great picture is a concretized universal. The strength of that is that it can and has to be cross-referenced out to life in the street. Philosophy carries within itself no such test.

In addition to really liking the concept of a picture as a "concretized universal", I also embrace, picture making wise, the idea that a great picture must be able to be "cross-referenced out to life in the street".

Or, in other words, that great pictures must evidence "truth" or at least a truth inasmuch as doing so reenforces that unique characteristic of the medium of photography which separates it from the other visual arts. That is, its intrinsic and inevitable relationship to and as a cohort of the real.

FYI, the riverside picture is a 2 frame blend.
Friday
Aug072015

triptych # 21 / pano / ku # 1307 / civilized ku # 2950 ~ the end is nigh

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RGB swimming ~ Stone Harbor, NJ • click to embiggen
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Kelleher family migration to beach for clan picture ~ Stone Harbor, NJ • click to embiggen
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dune top ~ Stone Harbor, NJ • click to embiggen
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poolside moment ~ Stone Harbor, NJ • click to embiggen

It was Woody Allen who said (in the movie, Sleeper):

"I'm what you would call a teleological, existential atheist. I believe that there's an intelligence to the universe, with the exception of certain parts of New Jersey."

I have no doubt that I'm in one of those "certain parts of New Jersey" of which Allen was speaking. That's why I am so grateful that, in 12 hours, I'm outa here and on my way back to civilization where I'm fairly certain there will be at least a minimal amount of intelligence.
Monday
May182015

civilized ku # 2892-98 ~ ceramics, cairnines, and the chicken anomaly

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ceramic tile mural ~ North Creek, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
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mural detail ~ North Creek, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
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cairnines ~ Minerva / Olmstedville, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
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which came first - the chicken or the rock? ~ Olmstedville, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

On Saturday past, the wife and I went on a drive to the east-central Adirondacks to retrieve one of our canoes which had undergone a small repair. Or so we had been led to believe. As it turned out, the repair had not yet been done so in about a weeks time a return trip is called for.

However, inasmuch was we had timed the trip in order to have dinner at a truly excellent restaurant in nearby (to the canoe place) North Creek (pop. 616), the trip was not a waste of time - as if driving through the Adirondacks on a beautiful day is ever a waste of time. In any event, there was a "bonus" aspect to the trip - the "discovery" of two unique projects. One, community-based, the other, the work of an individual.

The community-based project, The North Creek Mosaic Mural Project, is a large (figuratively and literally) endeavor which is being undertaken by 100s of volunteers who take part in the assembly of the ceramic tiles under the supervision of local artist, Kate Hartley. Assembly started in 2012 and continues with the start of the third panel. There is a fourth panel along the wall, which I assume will be muralized over time.

This project is a "discovery" only in the sense that the wife and I had not paid much attention to it (as it incrementally evolved to its present state) over the years during our frequent-ish visits to North Creek. I think that was due to the facts that; 1.) we had always viewed it from across the street which led us (or at least, me) to, 2.) think of it as a painted mural. If it had "only" been a painted mural, it would have been interesting enough but, as a mosaic mural - made of thousands of pieces of ceramic - of fairly gigantic proportions, it's genuinely awe inspiring.

FYI, the mural depicts many of the recreational opportunities to be found in and around North Creek. The village is located on the Hudson River and is noted for its whitewater rafting. It is also the home of Gore Mountain Ski Resort (one of America's first). In addition, the village is the terminus of the Saratoga and North Creek Railroad which is a modern reincarnation of the original Ski Train which ran (1934-1940) from Grand Central Station in NYC to North Creek. The station is also notable for the fact that Teddy Roosevelt, after a legendary night run - on wagons and stagecoach - from the base of Mt. Marcy, learned of the death of President McKinley and of his own succession to the presidency of the United States.

The individual-based "project" is not really a project per se. As least it was not conceived as such. It began with a local artist, Jake Hitchcock, whose medium (to my knowledge) is rocks. Apparently, he likes to indulge in making mounds of stones, aka: cairn (from the Scottish/Gaelic word carn), commonly erected as a memorial or marker. Or, in this case, as what might be labeled installation art.

It seems that over time, Hitchcock's work of making traditional mounds of rocks, albeit "artistic" mounds of rock, evolved into making dogs constructed of rocks. Eventually, locals caught on to his cairnine (the wife's word) making proclivity and the requests for his talent grew. Consequently, there are quite a number of highly visible examples of his work dotting the landscape in and around his tiny home hamlet of Minerva, NY (immediately adjacent to North Creek).

The cairnines can seen in yards (like the one in the squared square picture which seems to "making water" in the garden), at the road-end of driveways, and even randomly scattered along the roadside (like the one on the rotting tree stump). The carnine on the dam once had a tail. Now that it's gone missing, it resembles, to my eye and sensibilities, a duck or species of waterfowl.

Which leads me directly to the hen/rooster anomaly. Was this non-carnine assemblage created by Jake Hitchcock or is the work of a rouge cairnist?

The other question I have, re: Jake Hitchcock's installation art, is whether, when I contact him, I want a cairnine or a flock of chickens for our front yard.