urban ku # 39 ~ meaning

"...we have assumed that photographs produce meanings independently of language; this is an abiding assumption ... but it is seldom, if ever, the case." - Steve Edwards, Photography: A Very Short Introduction, Chapter 5 - Apparatus and the image, pg. 109 in the section on Narrative.

John Szarkowski curated an exhibit at MOMA - From the Picture Press - in 1973 which consisted of press photographs presented without captions/text. It was said that the photographs seemed strangely ambiguous, which supported Szarkowski's claim that photography was not a narrative form and that photographs lacked an immediate legibility. According to Szarkowski, photography was 'an art of details and fragments and not an art of storytelling' - that meaning is simply not in the image.

This notion stands in stark contrast to the conventional wisdom that 'a picture is worth a thousand words', the idea that complex stories can be told with just a single still image, or that an image may be more influential than a substantial amount of text. To the contrary, I have always felt that a picture needs a thousand words.

Consider the famous "napalm girl' documentary photograph from the Vietnam War. Without captions and/or text it is obviously a picture of some scared kids in a war-like setting. Other than the general time-tested idea that 'war is hell', little else can be known. In order to grasp the full horror which image represents, words are a must.

So where does that leave 'art' photography? What does, as an example, urban ku # 39 mean?

click on photo to embiggen itAgain, Steve Edwards; "Photographic art ... typically abjures words, or employs elliptical text in order to leave the image open to associations and intrepretations. For art, vagueness or ambiguity are often the preferred modes."

OK. I know that sometimes a picture is just a picture. You can just look at it, revel in its visual and formal beauty and let it be exactly what it appears to be - a picture of whatever it is a picture of. Good enough, but I am beginning to feel that, without some immediately apparent semantic reference or other pertinent contextual knowledge on the part of the viewer, a picture is indeed just a picture.

Featured Comment Ian P wrote; "I have been recently mentally toying with the idea that, as a work of art, a single photograph ('picture') on its own is problematic.

If the meaning is, as you put it, simply not in the image, then the appropriate 'unit' of art should perhaps consist of more than just the image itself.

In a certain simplistic sense this would mean, for example, that if a title of a picture is a required element for conveying or exploring whatever idea it is that the artist has, then the unit of art would be 'image and title'. If a caption is required then the unit would be 'image and caption'. Following this idea out further, if a series of images are integral to the interpretation of any one image in the series, then the appropriate unit of art is the whole series of images..."

publisher's comment: As Monty Burns says - "excellent"

urban ku # 38 - Q&A

Eric Fredine, in answer to my question - Is it possible in the Art world for a photographer to be 'invisible' and let the photograph 'speak' for itself? - wrote; "Yes. There seem to be many of them in fact ... I don't see it as an either/or proposition."

Eric also mentioned an example of a photographer - Alec Soth who lets his photographs of the 'contingient features of the actual world' speak for themselves. Eric gets no argument from me on either point - there are many photographers who let their photographs speak for themselves and Alec Soth is certainly one of the many.

I also don't see it as an either/or proposition, but I do think that Jeff Wall has raised the bar or, at the very least, validated a big change in the photography game. Here's how -

Eric Fredine, Alec Soth, myself, and 'many' others are adept at 'seeing' and at translating that 'seeing' into a vision which produces pictures which both illustrate and illuminate, BUT...that vision is almost entirely dependent upon the 'contingient features of the actual world'. In a sense, they also rely heavily on that age-old photography bug-a-boo - making (by means of the machine) 'copies' of 'contingient features of the actual world'.

Now, don't misunderstand. They deliberately and intuitively use all the 'apparatus' of the medium - mechanical, cultural, intellectual, et al - to great effect and affect. Wall, on the other hand, uses the same 'apparatus' but he is not constrained by the 'contingient features of the actual world'.

Instead of skillfully and artistically 'capturing' (or copying) found 'pro-filmic moments', Wall adds (and most probably, subtracts)/creates 'contingient features of the actual world' to his cinematically constructed photographs as he see fit in order to strengthen and convey meaning. His MO is much more like that of a - I'm going to hate myself in the morning for saying this - painter. Wall uses Bits and Pieces of the 'contingient features of the actual world' and assembles them on his photographic 'canvas'.

In an Art world where a single - not part of a 'defining' body of work - photograph, un-tethered from or anchored by words, is considered to be without intrinsic meaning or narrative, Wall is free to create one-off photographs in which meaning is more direct. Many critics have pointed out that his photographs can be appreciated and 'understood' by a large audience even though they are not versed in (or even aware of) the arcane Art history and theory that underlies them.

IMO, Wall has validated and given momentum to a new photographic genre - an emergence also acccelerated by the digital domain. Label it something like, The Cinemtaic Photograph, or, The Narrative Photograph - a genre in which photographers 'make' as much as they 'take' picture-wise.

I intend to explore this terrain but, unlike Wall, my self-referential nod will be to the history of photography not painting. At least that way I'll be able to live with myself in the morning.

Featured Comment Ana wrote; "Hmm... new? Can we say "Rejlander?"

publisher's response: Ana - yes, as I have mentioned recently, there really is nothing new under the sun. There is probably a list as long as my arm (but not much longer) of photogs who have worked this approach as opposed to 'the many' mentioned by E. Fredine. However, very few have pursued it with the 'artistic rigor and craft' of Jeff Wall and only the most recent have had the tools of the digital domain at their disposal.

urban ku # 37

Yesterday's snowstorm dropped 8 inches of wet, heavy, heart attack inducing snow. Today dawned sunny and warm - temps are in the 50s. My hands have started to sporadically and spontaneously assume a golf grip position so I'm having trouble buttering toast. Times are tough.

urban ku # 36

Betty Beaver's Truck Stop & Diner - the big picture • click on photo to embiggen itJust thought that I'd throw this into the Jeff Wall pot - Joe Reifer wrote (on civilized ku #12: "Can I borrow your Godzilla? As soon as I'm done with my MFA, I'm going to painstakingly recreate a replica of your living room in my studio. The twist is, everything will be a replica of your house except for the Godzilla, which will actually be your Godzilla.

In the meantime, I recommend that the future viewers of this work get an advanced degree in film, with a specialization in Japanese monster movies. That way you can understand the exact placement of the Godzilla in my photograph. It really wasn't until I read Baudrillard that I was able to grasp the complexities of Mothra's role in Destroy All Monsters.

The images will be presented on a Godzilla like scale. The transparencies will be printed at a size of 100 stories tall and mounted to the side of skyscrapers. They will be backlit by having all the lights in the building turned on. Special bulbs will be used in every lighting fixture.

Every person in every office will be replaced with someone from central casting who looks startlingly like the person they're playing. I will hire a photographer that looks like me to take the photograph. When my hired replacement says "Action," the actors will turn on all the lights in the building for exactly 15 seconds."

publisher's response: Joe, just let me know when you're ready, MFA in hand. In the interim, I'll get every Japanese monster movie I can lay my hands on and see if I can enroll in a Film Studies program soon.

I assume I'll receive a nice discount on the $2,000,000 (artflation) price tag for your art-using-photography since I supplied the godzilla.

urban ku # 34/35 - history in the making?

Betty Beaver's Truck Stop & Diner • click on photo to embiggen itIf you have made the effort of late to visit my ku portfolio, you should have noticed that my gaze has turned from so-called "pure" landscape (no sign of humankind) to that which is much more biased towards elements of humankind, albeit EOH within the natural landscape of the Adirondacks.

At first, the decision to do so was twofold - 1st) photography-wise, I consciously wanted to "balance" my landscapes of the Adirondack's natural world with ones which reflected the human presence. After all, 100,000+ people live here in the Adirondack Park, the largest wilderness in the eastern US. 2nd) subconsciously, I was just drawn to EOH. Upon reflection, I think that the reason for this is rather simple - now that I/we have lived here for a good while, the Park has morphed from a place I/we visit into the place we live, aka, home.

It has also occurred to me (filed under, there's-nothing-new-under-the-sun) that I am also toiling in the time-honored tradition of some of the early pillars of Adirondack photography such as Seneca Ray Stoddard, Henry M. Beach and host of other so-called postcard photographers (although Stoddard was much more than a postcard photographer).

From the earliest days of photography until the 1950s, it seems that every Adirondack village of any size had its very own "postcard" photographer. Actually that's a bit of a misnomer, in as much as the photographers did photography of all kinds. The sheer volume of photographs that these guys (I know of no women) created is staggering. Much of it is still around in either institutional or private collections. I would not be surprised if the Adirondack region was the single most postcarded place in the world.

In any event, it has started to dawn on me that I might be creating a body of Adirondack photography which may, in time, be on par with those early photographers. It's an exciting thought. One that I will now keep in mind as I continue to "balance" my collection of Adirondack photography, although at this point in the process, a fair question to ask is, where are the people?

PS - Speaking of home and people, I couldn't be more happy and pleased than I am sharing the Adirondacks with people like Betty Beaver (yes, those are 3 dimensional assets). She runs a respectable place. If you're in the neighborhood, you should stop in for a visit - just off exit 32, on I87. FYI, Betty Beaver's partner, Vincent Gramuglia, has stated that "[t]here is nothing provocative about Betty Beaver. It’s not as bad as Hooters, and remember that the registered (New York) state animal is the beaver and if they all looked like Betty, the woods would be full of hunters." Aahhh, America, the beautiful.

urban ku # 33

Sunset with horses and Jay Mt. • click on photo to embiggen itThe wife and I were out wandering around yesterday looking for property. In our travels, just down the road a piece from our house, we came across this little number, pro-filmic moment-wise - quite serene and pastoral.

Post pro-filmic moment and after picturing, we moved farther on down the road a piece to have dinner in the oldest inn in the Adirondacks (proudly serving the traveler since 1808). In its heyday the inn had a very large hotel which played host to 2 US presidents and to John Brown's wife while his body laid in state across the street in the county seat (which, obviously, was before his body lay a-mouldering in the grave at his homestead in Lake Placid).

FYI

I have added a NEW Photo Gallery - some urban ku (Adirondack style)

urban ku # 32 - what might Mr. Jones think?

Window ice • click on photo to embiggen itIn his book, Photography: A Very Short Introduction, Steve Edwards gives an ever so brief afterword-nod to digital photography. It's a very brief, new-day's-a-comin' kind of thing in which he raises a few questions and suggests a few implications about the future of photography in the digital age.

But, the one "issue" he barely addresses is the one that interests me the most - the means of making digital photographs has been placed in the hands of every Tom, Dick and Harriet on the planet (or seemingly so). I don't think that it's a stretch to say that more photographs (1.5 zillion more?) are being made now than in any time in photographic history.

Hell, in my own house, there are now 4 digitally equipped "shooters". The wife, who was the recipient of my largesse (in the form of her first ever digitial camera) at Xmas, has probably taken more photographs since the first of the year than she has over the past 10 years. Then there's the college boy, the senior-itis girl and even little Hugo has his own digital camera (real, not a toy) and flickr site.

Pictures, pictures, everywhere.

My interest in this phenomena is simple - why? What's the deal? What is the fascination with taking pictures? Is there something in the human psyche that cries out for real-time verification of one's self and one's surroundings?

Or is it that living in a media/image saturated culture develops in one the need to be seen (literally and figuratively) as part of the media?

With all of the hoopla surrounding the truth/not truth issue regarding photography, it almost seems that for many, if not most, nothing is real unless it's photographed - see, I really was there, I really did that, that's really me. And all of this is not reserved for after-the-fact memories, it's real-time - take a picture and everyone rushes to see it on the LCD. Take a picture of Mt. Rushmore and everyone wants to immediately see the picture of it even though they're standing right in front of it.

I find it a bit weird when someone takes a photo of little Hugo and then, when viewing the LCD image mere moments later, states, "Isn't he so cute." Again, it is almost that his precence isn't enough to establish his cute-quotient, it needs to be documented.

And there's that word again - documented. Most of the shooters I am talking about are making documents not pictures.

Nevertheless, it all causes me to think that -

...Something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Featured Comment: Sean wrote; "surely the main issue is to what degree the digital can still be regarded as photography (writing with light)... how much alteration can occur before the image is mere illustration (synthetic) rather than photograph?"

publisher's response: We're still "writing with light", but the light-sensitive substrate/material, which is still enclosed in a light-tight box behind a lens, is different. As for illustration v photograph, certainly the techniques with which one can manipulate an image are much more accessible and easier/faster to use, but...as a film-based example, are Jerry Uelsmann's photographs still photographs?

Featured Comment: Ana wrote; "I think it goes right back to the every photo is a death thing --a lot of the desire to photograph is the desire to fix history. In the normal course of events the photograph can be expected to outlast the moment and even ourselves and I think a lot of the impetus behind rushing to view the photo that was just taken is this awareness that 'this is what will be remembered'."