Like father, like son, like grandson

Hugo and a krappy kamera • click on photo to embiggen it It runs in the family. Hugo even has his own flickr space where he displays (with dad's help) his photography.

Although I didn't realize it until after his death, my paternal grandfather was an avid amateur photographer. I don't think he had any "art" pretentions, he just liked to photograph family. However, he did proccess and print all his own photographs, including color (slides and prints) - which was no small feat in the forties and fifties. I have the bug. Both of my sons are in the early stages of serious captivation. And now there's Hugo.

He started showing a serious interest in pictures at about 18 months of age. The interest was aided and abetted by the digital domain - take a picture of Hugo, or anything, and he immediately wants to see the LCD. Interestingly, when he first started messing around with cameras at about the same age, he thought the LCD screen or viewfinder was like a tv/computer monitor screen. He would look through a viewfinder and keep his head stationary, waiting for his subject to I wander into view. If he wanted to photograph me, I had to walk into his field of view.

He's beyond that now (at 29 months). There's no doubt in my mind, that Hugo's displaying a peternatural disposition for things visual (I saw the same thing in his dad), so I gave him his own 6mp camera for Xmas (the wife simply said, "you're nuts"). But his young life is saturated with imagery - my photographs, his dad's (aaron posts here) photographs, television, the computer/internet world (he loves to sit at the computer and watch movie trailers)...

I wonder what effect that phenomena will have on Hugo and future generations of photographers.

Featured Comment: Mary Dennis wrote (in part): "...I too wonder about how today's fast-paced, blurred-reality-lines, image bombarded, you- toobed, whirld we live will effect future generations of photographers. Will it all be video pleasure with the PRINT (paper) becoming a quaint thing of the past?...And will these future generations, with their re-wired, morphed brain circuitries, have the patience and ability to concentrate enough to sit down and look at photographs in a book?"

I know what I like, and, art is in the eye of the beholder, right?

similar, but very different • click on photo to embiggen it Yesterday evening, while I was sitting on the throne (in the room pictured here), I had an epiphany of sorts.

The epiphanalyptic experience was triggered by the leis-like thing (seen in the right-hand photograph) that was then hanging on the powder room door knob. What struck me was how visually disturbing I found it to be in the total visual context of the monochromatic scheme of the room. Not at all like the visually soothing sensations I get from my more permanent "installation art" broom arrangement(left-hand photograph).

I am completely serious about this - in the context of the room, I find the leis visually, hence emotionally, disturbing and the broom visually, hence emotionally, soothing. Not run-out-and-jump-off-a-cliff disturbing, nor, all-is-well-with-the-world soothing, but strong visual/emotional triggers, on a "gut" level, nevertheless.

Now, there's nothing particulary revelatory about that - as an example, we all know that we like or dislike particular colors. Not, like-or-dislike, as the result of careful thought or deliberation, but seemingly because they do or don't strike our fancy. However, both science and art have discovered that individual colors have distinctly different visual/emotional characteristics. Some colors emerge, some receed. Some incite passion, some coolness. And so on.

But my experience in the can was not just about color, rather, it was about the total visual experience of the room - a feng shui kind of thing. I knew that I "disliked" the leis hanging there, but I almost immediately wondered, why?. I don't "dislike" the leis any more as an object than I "like" the broom as an object. Why is it that every time I have encountered that leis in the powder room (it's been there for about month), do I feel like something ain't right?

Well, the epiphany part of the experience struck me in a flash - DNA, genetics, the preternatural ... call it what you will ... it's just a part of me, deep inside my bones. If I wanted to spend lots and lots of my health-care dollars, I could see a shrink and maybe figure it out. But a shrink might not really be interested in this regarding its implications for my photography and my appreciation/ understanding of Art in general, i.e., what I like, what i don't like.

That's what I really want to know/understand.

As I have mentioned before, I don't "compose" my photography with any conscious sense of the rules of composition. When confronted with a scene/subject, certain "arrangements" just seem to "jump" out and capture my eye. Most often, these "arrangements" are relatively complex in nature - I seem preternaturally drawn to the complex. Instinctively. Intuitively, and, Inexplicably.

Yet, for myself and others, my sense of composition works. However, if I were told that I could make millions by putting my compositional techinque in a can (not in the can), I'd be a poor man for the rest of my life.

One thing I do know for sure, though, is the fact that my predalitiction for the complex came fully formed along with my delivery. From a very early age, I was drawn to Shel Silverstein's illustrations - lots and lots of detail. I started my life as an artist (5 or 6 years old) trying to draw like him. Instinctively. Intuitively, and, Inexplicably.

But, nevertheless, I am also certain that that's why I create lots of photographs like this. Maybe it's not important to know "why". Maybe it's important just to "do it".