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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 structures (20)

Tuesday
Jul062010

civilized ku # 564-66 ~ the 500 yard rule

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Front yard with trellis ~ Indian Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
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New door / old house ~ Blue Mt. Lake Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
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I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream ~ Blue Mt. Lake Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen


Somewhat tongue-in-cheek - at least, I assume so - it has been opined that ...

Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn't photogenic. ~ Brett Weston

It has also been stated by Carl Weese - on civilized ku # 557-59:

Mark, you live in a fascinating area. I've been up there several times in recent years. My initial intention was to work "in the woods" with big cameras to make negatives for platinum printing [as here] but found myself drawn away to do color digital capture in the towns and the active farms north of the park itself ...

It is in fact quite true that I live in a fascinating area. And, like Carl, my initial picturing activity (both before and since moving here) was devoted almost exclusively to making pictures of the natural world, "pure" division. However, what I have come to more fully appreciate, fascinating-wise, about the Adirondack PARK is the unique integration of humankind (and their artifacts) with the forever wild natural landscape.

Consequently and subsequently, over time, my picturing activity has evolved from "pure' landscape pictures to include more "inclusive" pictures that illustrate the presence of humankind in the landscape. Other than the stylized and romanticized pictures of historic and/or rustic edifices and structures, as a picture making genre all of the other signs of the hand of humankind have been mostly overlooked and/or ignored.

Unlike the early so-called local/regional Adirondack Postcard picture makers, who made pictures that (intentionally or not) "explored regional identity, occupations, change, popular culture, transformation of the landscape, and photographic representation of the wilderness", today's pretty-picture crowd eschews such rich and diversified picturing opportunities in favor of the ever-repeating nature/eco-porn ouevre of ain't nature grand.

That said, one of the fascinating and amazing things about where I live is, in fact, how many photogenic subjects there are that are all within 500 yards from my car.

Sunday
Oct112009

civilized ku # 206 ~ academic requirements

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St. Denis Grocery ~ Plattsburgh, NYclick to embiggen
St. Denis Grocery is perfectly situated, academic requirement-wise, in a neighborhood adjacent to the SUNY Plattsburgh campus and a hub of off-campus student housing. This "grocery" meets the nutritional needs of most students - an ATM, beer - by the keg, ice, and, mostly likely, an incredible variety of chips. And, I am reasonably certain that, for the proprietor, it meets all of the requirements needed to have a license to print money.

Wednesday
Jul082009

civilized ku # 197 ~ an optical oddity

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The Bowery Savings Bank (former)click to embiggen
I don't know if you'll see it or not, but this building has a rather bizarre architectural detail - the rather impressive entrance is built at an odd angle relative to the building facade.

The building sits on a corner (stage left) that is not square - the cross street intersects Bowery Street at a slightly acute angle and it is to the cross street that the architect chose to align the entrance walls. Whether this rather weird alignment was by client request or a visual "joke" on the part of the architect is unknown to me, but it is optically quite disorienting.

In making this picture, I "squared" myself to the entrance, not the building facade, in order to achieve the most obvious visual sense of something's-not-right-here that I could.

Tuesday
Jul072009

man & nature # 171 ~ Crown Point ruins

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Crown Point barrack ruinsclick to embiggen
The abandoned French Fort St. Frederic was taken over by the British in 1759 whereupon they began to build "His Majesty's Fort at Crown Point".

Tuesday
Jul072009

man & nature # 170 ~ (early) night life in Au Sable Forks

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Stewartsclick to embiggen
The aforementioned "j" also commented:

...what really interests me is that you can line up yourself and all your readers and we will all view a scene differently. In a very real sense we will all see - “ be conscious of” - different elements of the scene while all mechanically “seeing” the same thing.

I'm interested in what you see and why.

What "j" is asking for is essentially an Artist Statement - that is, a statement from me regarding the driving force that instigates my picture making. As it happens, I am in the process of composing something of the sort although I'm not certain that it will answer his question when it comes to the specifics of any one picture.

That said, I offer this first (caveat: the first sentence is a bit obtuse. Ignore it if you wish):

What is particular and peculiar, about photographs is the conjuncture of resemblance and trace - the iconic and indexical components of the sign coincide to a remarkable degree. The resemblance of a photograph to its subject - the image - is a direct and physical result of that subject and could not exist without it. Photographs point to the objects that called them into being and show us those things. As such, photographs bear witness to the events and things they depict. ~ Steve Edwards, from, Photography: A Very Short Introduction

Contained within that paragraph is the essence of what I see and why I picture it.

As I have mentioned previously in a number of entries, I do not, with the exception of commercial assignments, venture forth to picture with any specific event or thing in mind. My preferred M.O. is to empty my mind (my state of ku), have cameras at the ready, and let referents come to me - in effect, listening and looking for the objects that call(ed) them (my pictures) into being.

As should be quite evident from my pictures, the objects that most often call themselves to my picturing attention are those that surround my everyday life - the so-called, "mundane", "commonplace", and "ordinary". In essence, I believe that I am drawn to these things because my picturing is, in fact, an exploration of "life" and living - especially the stuff of everyday life.

At its "deepest" level, I sense that that exploration is nothing less than an attempt to be "connected" to what might be called the godhood or the oneness of being (it should be noted that this is not a religious quest by any stretch of the imagination). I am fairly certain that is an attempt to construct a bridge between thought and feeling. Hence the subtitle to this blog - Photography that pricks the Unthought Known.

That said, if "j" is wondering why, as an example, I pictured Stewarts (the above picture), An honest answer would be something along the lines of "I don't know". The scene just stopped me in my tracks. The light - both natural and manmade, the "arrangement" of elements, and a sense of a serene commonplace event / thing (amongst other feelings and thoughts) just "caught my eye".

Now, all the previous ramblings basically address the idea of the objects that called them (my pictures) into being. In addition to that concept, the other notion in the above quote with which I identify is the idea of photographs bear witness to the events and things they depict.

Without going all New Age, hippy-dippy, mystic on you, I must confess to a certain feeling of connectedness to the artist Rockwell Kent who lived (and died) in my little Adirondack village of Au Sable Forks.

Before I moved to Au Sable Forks I was aware of Kent and his art but did not know that he lived here. It was only after a year or so that I discovered that fact. It took a year because there is not a single solitary bit of evidence that he ever set foot here in Au Sable Forks - the reason being that he was an avowed socialist.

As a socialist, Kent was called before Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation. As a result, his paintings were removed from the walls of many American museums (although he was given a solo exhibition at The Hermitage in St. Petersburg in 1957 where half a million Russians attended the exhibit). Kent’s appearance at the McCarthy hearings was both personally and financially detrimental. Nevertheless, his place of residence, Asgaard Farm still bears the name he gave it.

I mention this because Kent wrote (and illustrated) 2 books about his life in Au Sable Forks - This Is My Own (1940) (I have a signed first edition) and It's Me, O Lord (1955) - and it is the titles of the books that applies here ...

... As I picture my way through the Unthought Known, I have come to understand that my pictures are, if nothing else, autobiographical. Without a doubt, I am bearing witness to the events and things of my life.

It is my shout of, "it's me, o lord", and, "this is my own".

And, interestingly enough, it has been said of Kent's works:

Kent stands out in American art in his use of symbolism. Humanity was the hero in most of his prints, which are symbolic representations of certain intuitions about life's destiny and the meaning of existence. Many of the prints seem to depict humanity in a struggle to capture ultimate reality, to penetrate into the mystery of the dark night of the universe, and to discover the reasons for existence.

And that is how I view, quite literally and quite figuratively, my pictures - symbolic representations of certain intuitions about life's destiny and the meaning of existence.

Monday
Jul062009

civilized ku # 195 ~ a helicopter is not a milk cow and that's a fact.

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Crown Point ruinsclick to embiggen
It seems that "j" (no name, no links) needs to insist that:

Your artistic vision is no more or less an interpretation of reality than the over amped color of the flikr-stazi. But interpretation of reality it is.

OK, fine - you see what you wanna see and you hear what you wanna hear. It is always my picturing intention that the viewers of my pictures be free to do just that. To that end, I try to represent the referent in my pictures in as "real", as natural, as true to what I see as the medium will allow.

By way of further clarification (and without wanting to be unduly pedantic), let me point out Mr. Webster's thoughts on the ideas of representation - a likeness ... a description, and interpretation - the act or result of giving an explanation of something.

I am much more interested in describing what I see as opposed to explaining it.

And, in as much as I believe that representing and interpreting are 2 distinctly different concepts / acts, I also believe that picturing within the constraints of 1 of those ideas or the other are 2 distinctly different concepts / acts. The mindsets for each are distinctly different, the intents for each are distinctly different, and, not surprisingly, the resultant pictures for each are distinctly different.

As I once read, a helicopter is not a milk cow and that's a fact.

Friday
Jul032009

civilized ku # 192-194 ~ temperance has its own rewards

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CALLAHEAD ~ behind the new Cooper Union building, NYCclick to embiggen
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The Cooper Square Hotel and lounge ~ Cooper Square, NYCclick to embiggen
I don't spend all of my time getting around NYC in a taxi. This past Sunday afternoon and early evening my good friend and I walked parts of SoHo and NoHo and a long stretch of the Bowery.

We began out Bowery walk at the northern terminus of the Bowery at Cooper Square where we stopped in to The Cooper Square Hotel - seen in the above picture soaring above the CALLAHEAD port-a-potties. Out intent was to get to the deck near the top but it was closed for a private party.

A Bowery walk nearly ended before it started when we consoled ourselves with a drink in the street-level bar/lounge - as seen in the other pictures above. It was there that I was introduced to (ri)1 and the temptation was great to just wile away a few hours getting to know it much much better. However, it was quite clear that, if we pursued that temptation, just trying to walk might prove to be a herculean feat.

So, temperance got the better of us and we had our Bowery walk. And, we were therefore able to meet the wife (who had been in So. Jersey for the weekend) and enjoy an relaxing evening of fine dining.

Wednesday
Jul012009

civilized ku # 188 ~ the periphery

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The new Cooper Union ~ NYCclick to embiggen
It has been suggested by "j" that I do not practice what I preach real-wise.

"j" bases this assertation upon the notion of the vignetting that is evidenced in my picture corners - that this an interpretation that does not meet a reality test. "j" asks ...

Does normal human vision have dark/black edges?

... to which I would answer, "yes" because ...

Our eyes do not make very good images. They only have reasonable resolution in the center of the visual field; and this part must be projected onto the only area of the retina that has good resolving power, namely the fovea centralis.  Our vision relies on a coordinated system of extraocular muscles to orient our eyes and to direct our focus on points of interest.

Now, if "j" want to split hairs, I will readily admit that I really can't say how dark and out of focus the edges of our visual field are. The only thing I can state with certainty - from my own vision and that of vision science - is that human vision is "vignetted" at the "edges".

And, the other thing that I can state is that my vignetting does, in fact, mimic / represent how the human eye / vision works - that what I am presenting is reality based - human visions focuses (literally and figuratively) on what is centered in our field of view. That characteristic of human vision applies to the viewing of pictures as well. Even when viewing a 4×6 inch print the eye must scan the surface of the print to take it all in in focus.

Some humans have managed by "training" to be able to distinguish things in the periphery of their vision much more acutely than the rest of us. But this ability is the exception, not the rule.

A great read that includes this idea is the book, A Sense of Where You Are, by John McPhee. The book is about the great basketball player, Bill Bradley. Bradley had an extraordinary sense of where he was and what was going on around him on a basketball court. He attributed this ability to his childhood habit of walking down the street and seeing / reading things in store windows by means of his peripheral vision - a technique he used to "train" his eye.

In any event, I am interpreting nothing with my vignetting. I am merely representing how the human eye sees.