counter customizable free hit
About This Website

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.

Search this site
Recent Topics
Journal Categories
Archives by Month
Subscribe
listed

Photography Directory by PhotoLinks

Powered by Squarespace
Login

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 the life in my kitchen (4)

Thursday
Apr262012

civilized ku # 2186 ~ sink circles

Bubbles ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen

...people say they need to express their emotions I'm sick of that. Photography doesn`t teach you to express your emotions it teaches you to see. ~ Berenice Abbott

Friday
Apr132012

the life in my kitchen* ~ imagination

Kitchen window ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen1044757-17655145-thumbnail.jpg
# 2• click to embiggen
1044757-17655228-thumbnail.jpg
# 3• click to embiggen
1044757-17655279-thumbnail.jpg
# 4• click to embiggen
1044757-17655314-thumbnail.jpg
# 5• click to embiggen
1044757-17655340-thumbnail.jpg
# 6• click to embiggen
1044757-17655356-thumbnail.jpg
# 7• click to embiggen
1044757-17655392-thumbnail.jpg
# 8• click to embiggen
1044757-17655406-thumbnail.jpg
# 9• click to embiggen
1044757-17655470-thumbnail.jpg
# 10• click to embiggen
1044757-17655490-thumbnail.jpg
# 11• click to embiggen
1044757-17655520-thumbnail.jpg
# 12• click to embiggen
1044757-17655533-thumbnail.jpg
# 13• click to embiggen
1044757-17655562-thumbnail.jpg
# 14• click to embiggen
1044757-17655586-thumbnail.jpg
# 15• click to embiggen
1044757-17655610-thumbnail.jpg
# 16• click to embiggen
1044757-17655640-thumbnail.jpg
# 17• click to embiggen
1044757-17655658-thumbnail.jpg
# 18• click to embiggen
1044757-17655677-thumbnail.jpg
# 19• click to embiggen
1044757-17655712-thumbnail.jpg
# 20• click to embiggen
1044757-17655733-thumbnail.jpg
# 21• click to embiggen
1044757-17655118-thumbnail.jpg
# 22• click to embiggen
Recently, I've been reading, in print and on various blogs/sites, a lot about the notion of imagination, re: picture making. IMO, some that writing is pure tripe, while some of it is good enough. However, again IMO, all of it misses a very pertinent point about the use of imagination in the employ of making good pictures.

Let's start first with a definition of the word itself:

im·ag·i·na·tion

1. the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses.
2. the action or process of forming such images or concepts.
3. the faculty of producing ideal creations consistent with reality, as in literature, as distinct from the power of creating illustrative or decorative imagery.
4. the product of imagining; a conception or mental creation, often a baseless or fanciful one.

A lot of picture making advice, re: using your imagination, tends to focus upon the idea of coming up with (imaging) a new way of seeing something, or, to reiterate the word of the day, an imaginative way of seeing something. In doing so, or so the conventional wisdom goes, one can find their voice, vision and style - the supposed Holy Grail of picture makers the world over.

While there is something in that idea, and some have to followed it to interesting and productive ends, what is more likely to result, "serious" amateur wise, are pictures which are little more than visually strained implementations of one overwrought photo effect or another. The pictures so produced have effect everywhere apparent, affect, not so much (see #4 above). A picture viewing reaction of "wow" is the most sought after intent amongst this picture making crowd, who, upon garnering such a reaction, chalk it up to their skill in using "artistic license" (if you listen carefully, you might actually hear me making a contemptuous sound [farting sound] made by vibrating my extended tongue and my lips while exhaling, aka: blowing a raspberry).

an aside: FYI, harking back to the aforementioned definition of imagination, in my picture making I most often engage in: # 1) the faculty of forming mental images of what is not actually present to the senses. That is to say, I form a mental image (an approximation) in my minds eye of what a 2D representation of the 3D referent before my camera's gaze will look like on a print - a print not actually present to my senses at the moment of picture making, and, # 3) the attempt to produce an ideal creation consistent with reality, as in literature (see yesterday's question), distinct from producing decorative imagery.

That said, IMO, the rarely mentioned aspect of using one's imagination, picture making wise, is using that faculty in deciding what to picture.

Most "serious" amateurs are locked into the "normal" repertoire / the standard list of referents which have deemed acceptable / suitable for picture making. Whether that situation is the result of fear of risk taking, a much diminished state of curiosity, or the utter lack of imagination is open to question but I suspect that all of those conditions are causal (in some relationship to one another) in most individuals so afflicted.

If only more picture makers were more attuned to the curiosity of Garry Winogrand - "I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed" and the openness of Robert Frank - "You can photograph anything now", because, when you get right down to brass tacks, those 2 attitudes, curiosity and openness, are all one needs to greatly expand one's picture making possibilities. And, IMO, one's imagination will get a kick in the ass as well.

*These are the the life in kitchen selects. Although, my desire is to have 20 pictures as opposed to the 21 presented above. So I guess 1 has to go.

Monday
Apr022012

civilized ku # 2146 ~ whimsical juxtaposition of commonplace objects

Chopsticks and carrots ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenIt is not an uncommon occurrence, upon the death of a prominent or near prominent picture maker, that notice is given on one photo blog or another. However, that was not the case upon the death of Jan Groover, a picture maker whose work has rather fallen out of fashion, and nearly out of view, in an era of near fetishistic preoccupation with Conceptual Art, photography division.

One of Groover's - she began as a painter - mottos was "Formalism is everything". For those unfamiliar with Formalism, it is "the concept that a work's artistic value is entirely determined by its form — the way it is made, its purely visual aspects, and its medium. Formalism emphasizes compositional elements such as color, line, shape and texture rather than realism, context, and content. In visual art, formalism is a concept that posits that everything necessary to comprehending a work of art is contained within the work of art. The context for the work, including the reason for its creation, the historical background, and the life of the artist, is considered to be of secondary importance"(from Wikipedia).

The flip side of the Formalism coin is the concept of Conceptualism - art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns ... In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art (from Wikipedia / Sal LeWitt).

IMO, Groover's pictures, especially her most well known still life work, occupy a somewhat middle ground, albeit most certainly tilted toward Formalism, between the two extremes. Without venturing into a long theory laden essay, suffice it to state, there was obviously a driving concept behind Groover's work. In the constructing, lighting, and making (with the all of the control of a large format view camera) of her still life pictures, Groover did not create her Art without malice of forethought, so to speak.

John Szarkowski, who believed that "a work of art lives and has its meaning exclusively within the chalk-lines of its own playing field, not the journals or saloons in which it is discussed", wrote (at the time of Groover's exhibition at MOMA) that he was "interested in her work because she is so fastidious about excluding from her art any overt reference to autobiographical, much less confessional, materials .... her pictures were good to think about because they were first good to look at." I have always appreciated Groover's work, ever since I encountered it in 1980, for exactly the same reason, re: "her pictures were good to think about because they were first good to look at" - a notion which is one of the driving concepts in the making of my own pictures (see here and here).

Some might see some kissing cousin similarities between Groover's still life pictures and my the life in my kitchen pictures. Others, I am fully aware, might not. However, and IMO, despite the obvious differences - such as, Groover's still-lifes are carefully constructed and orchestrated whereas mine are mostly "found" (although, I am not opposed to the minor shifting about of some of the objects in my found still life scenes) - what I believe to be their overarching similarity is this concept ...

...the apparent whimsical juxtaposition of commonplace objects suggests a rethinking of our relationship to the physical world and its portrayal via the image.*

At least, that's how I see it.

*a phrase borrowed from Lesley M. Martin, as penned in describing the work of Sam Fells (aperture 205 / Winter 2011)

Friday
Mar022012

the life in my kitchen ~ IMO, good picture making is about focus

life in my kitchen ~ pictures made in my kitchen / Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenA short while back I mentioned that I intended to begin the long process of editing and organizing (into categories) the nearly 4,000 pictures in my "finals" folder. Well, the process has begun and the first category is life in my kitchen, a category which does not include my decay and disgust pictures which were also made in my kitchen.

I tackled this category first because I figured it to be: 1) easy to define and identify, and 2) not overwhelming, number of pictures wise. As it turned out, my figuring was correct. However, what I did not figure on is how impressed I would be (no serving of humble pie for me, thank you very much) with the pictures once they could be viewed as a cohesive body of work.

IMO, part of that surprise derived from the fact that the pictures were made over a period of 3-4+ years without the conscious intent of creating an organized / cohesive body of work. Truth be told, I just wasn't thinking of it in that manner. So, in a kind of after-the-fact awakening, it was a bit of surprise and a delight to view the pictures in the altogether.

Bodies of work are, IMO, the vehicle which allows a viewer to immerse him/herself in a special/unique world created by a picture maker. In a well executed body of work, a picture maker's vision should be rather obvious to all but the visually and cortically subilluminated, aka: dimwits. Dimwited or not, liking a particular body of work, no matter how well executed, is always a matter of viewer taste.

A well executed body of work should evince a consistent visual style and technique. Bouncing around from one focal length lens to another, mixing high contrast prints with low contrast prints or BW prints with color prints, and even mixing prints formats - say, squares with rectangles - are all are antithetical to the creation of and perception of a cohesive body of work.

A well executed body of work should also be consistent, re: the pictured referents - both actual and implied. That is to say, there should be an overarching umbrella under which body of work is created and presented. That umbrella can be narrowly focused, as in a body of work comprised exclusively of pictures of dead chickens, or, it could be more broadly defined, but nevertheless still focused, body of work comprised of pictures of chickens going about their daily business - eating, sleeping, nesting, pecking, crapping, and so on. Either approach represents a valid umbrella which can be defined as a cohesive body of work.

While the life in my kitchen was not created from the get-go as an intended body of work, rather it emerged organically from my ongoing desire to picture my life, I do have a number of ongoing bodies of work being created from pre-focused intents. As examples, decay & disgust, single women, life in pictures, art conveys / transports / reflects, and life without the APA are all tightly focused bodies of work. Needless to state, I enjoy keeping a number balls in the air.

All of that said, I did not expect the life in my kitchen work to be the first of the folios I would be making to circulate to galleries. However, that is exactly what I intend to do - ain't life full of surprises?

A question: Do any of you give any thought to making focused bodies of work?

FYI & BTW, a very good example of multiple focused bodies of work created by a single picture maker can be viewed HERE. I like them all but I am especially partial to the Windows work.