urban ku # 158 and 159 ~ swirling clouds

Cloud chasing • click to embiggenWriting in his essay, Qualifying Photography as Art, or, Is Photography All It Can Be?, Christopher Bedford stresses the importance of 'authorial concept' and 'authorial intention' (intentionality) in determining the value of a work of Art (photography division).

He lays bare, to those who didn't already know it, that AC and Intentionality are, in fact, the criteria which are the determining factors (for the academic 'lunatic fringe') when he wrote; "The ultimate referent is, therefore, not the form or content of his images, but the authorial concept." Translation = It's the idea behind the picture, not the picture itself, that matters.

Taken to the extreme, which many on the academic lunatic fringe have done, this means that any picture, despite its visual merits or lack thereof, is Art as long as it is accompanied by an intellectually interesting artist statement that speaks to the photographer's concept / intentionally, especially if that statement is theory-laden and contains enough references to art history to enable critics and the academic crowd to parse it from now until the cows come home.

To be fair to Bedford, his essay addresses this very proclivity amongst he and his brethren and he sounds a call to address this imbalance. It is time, he states, for critics, curators, and academia to learn about the - heretofore considered 'mundane and prosaic' - process of making a photograph because there is intentionality a-plenty in the process and that very intentionality "shape(s) the image, direct(s) the viewer’s attention, and contribute(s) to the production of meaning."

Duh.

Good for him and them. Better late than never. But ....

There is a whole other crowd, photographers themselves, that needs to come to grips with the notion that by itself the process of making a picture, with all of its intentionally, does not Art make. Authorial concept matters and some concepts are much better than others.

Consider this from Sir Joshua Reynolds writing for the Royal Academy in London in 1768:

The value and rank of every art is in proportion to the mental labour employed in it, or the mental pleasure produced by it. As this principle is observed or neglected, our profession becomes either a liberal art, or a mechanical trade. In the hands of one man it makes the highest pretensions, as it is addressed to the noblest faculties: in those of another it is reduced to a mere matter of ornament; and the painter has but the humble province of furnishing our apartments with elegance.

Anyone need to re-address the idea of Fine Art vs. decorative art?

urban ku # 157 ~ snow removal

The pile at the end of the driveway • click to embiggenI thought that this picture gives a new meaning to the wife's 'request' that I go out and shovel the pile at the end of the driveway.

On urban ku # 155, Don commented that "We didn't get as much as you, about 14 inches, but people ... shopped for food like the world was coming to an end..."

According to our newspaper, people 'round here shopped exactly the same way - as if the world were coming to an end - which makes me wonder why it is that you need to stock up on food if the world is coming to an end.

urban ku # 156 ~ big storm fun

All to ourselves • click to embiggenYesterday, smack-dab in the middle of our monster winter storm, the wife and I drove to the Olympic Winter Sports Complex at Mt. Van Hovenberg. On the way we noticed that; 1) we seemed to be the only ones on the road, 2) the snowfall had turned to freezing rain/sleet, and 3) trees were nearly bent over to the ground due to very strong gusting winds. We also realized that we had not phoned to see if the cross country ski complex - 90 km of trails - was actually open.

Undeterred, we motored on. Upon our arrival at the xc ski complex, the parking lot had only 2 cars in it. Not a good sign. Nevertheless, we walked to the lodge where we were informed that the complex was officially closed but, as long as we signed a waiver, we could ski. We were also informed that the trails were in superb condition. So, with the wind roaring in the background like a run-away freight train and a very frigid temperature - 12 degrees, feels like -5 degrees - we decided to give it a go.

It was delightful. The trails were near perfect and very well protected from the wind. Because of that, and once you built up a head of steam, the temperature felt more like a balmy 13 degrees. And, the solitude of having it all to ourselves was wonderful. There was a heavy and continuous sleet/freezing rain falling which added a slight crunchy-ness to the snow and a tinkling sound to the forest.

Altogether, it was a true winter wonderland experience. Now if I can only get the wife to let me hang my Decay pictures in the kitchen, everything would be perfect.

urban ku # 155 ~ a big storm

Big snow storm • click to embiggenIt's should be no secret to anyone on my side of the oceans that a huge winter storm has swept across the US from the central plains to New England. It hit us during Saturday night and all day and well into the night on Sunday. Throughout that time it just kept snowing and snowing.

We had some high winds and freezing rain thrown into the mix but, for the most part, there was little if any infrasture damage. So most people stayed warm and safe at home while the road crews worked round the clock.

urban ku # 154 ~ winter light and lights # 4

Early evening snowfall • click to embiggenOne of the first things to note about the subject of yesterday's 'assignment' is to point out that the essay is written by Christopher Bedford, an art historian, art critic and the Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He is not a photographer, although, in his curatorial capacity he certainly has more than a passing acquaintance with the goings on in the world of Fine Art photography.

This is important to know simply because it is relevant to understanding the perspective from which he approaches the subject of photography. Suffice it to say that Bedford comes from a very academic milieu. His primary concern re: photography seems to be to raise the bar relative to photographic criticism, that is, to the art and craft of writing about photography (and photographs) with an eye towards understanding and, therefore, appreciating it more completely. IMO, a very noble and long overdue pursuit.

Now, pertinent to that idea, I have made my opinion known that I think that the medium of photography, Fine Art Division, has been 'hijacked' by what I would label a lunatic fringe of academia. I must qualify that label by stating that, by, no means, do I think that all of art-academia is operating in the 'lunatic fringe'.

By 'hijacked' I mean that the prevailing notion of what is Art in the medium of photography has been laden with a lot of purely arcane and obtuse academic baggage and, further, that that baggage is designed and constructed primarily to serve the academic Art world. A world which is well along into the realm of becoming a modern-day 'guild' and, like the Renaissance guilds of old, their primary purpose seems to be to to protect the interests of its members - in this case, academic interests, aka academic tenure.

That said, I do like to hang around the fringes of the 'guild' because every once in awhile, if you are able to translate their writings into simple English, they actually have something to say that is of interest to non-academians. IMO, the essay by Bedford is one such piece of work.

I like the fact that Bedford (and others that he mentions) are "... keen to establish photography’s currency as a more determined, intention-laden industry than is commonly presumed." He points out that the "credibility of so-called “traditional” or documentary photographers in the context of art criticism" is undermined by the current prevailing attitude in the academic and curatorial world because "the essentialist, “observe and record” model of photography" is believed by most in that world to be "too ineffable, and too intuitive to qualify as an intelligent and intelligible conceptual strategy according to the imperatives of the contemporary art world, where a premium is placed on conceptual sophistication ... such work is assumed to be 'weak in intentionality.'"

The work is considered to be 'weak in intentionality' because (Bedford has made the admission that he and his fellow art historian, art critic, curatorial brethren don't know s--t about the manner in which photographers work) "... the nuances of the photographic process are poorly understood in the art critical community—the present author included—and this shortfall radically limits the discourse."

In other words, Bedford is saying that the methodology we, the essentialist, “observe and record” photographers, employ as common practice - in his words, "the most prosaic aspects of conventional photography (... the ebb and flow of intentionality through the process from choice of film or digital back through to print type and size) - needs to be "re-theorized" in order to understand how "these factors shape the image, direct the viewer’s attention, and contribute to the production of meaning: in effect, to remake the technical and conceptual discourse around traditional photography within art criticism."

Holy Shit!!! I'm stunned. This is a monumental shift from how the 'lunatic fringe' has thought about photography. They actually want to know about the 'mundane and pragmatic' technical choices that photographer makes in making a picture because, surprise surprise (to the academic world), those choices effect how an observer reacts and relates to a picture. He actually admits that this ontology should rank right up there with authorship and concept. Authorship and concept having been raised (in the academic art world) to a level of fetish, nearly to the exclusion of all other considerations surrounding a photograph.

However, the fly-in-the-ointment that is really going to f--k them up in their quest to elevate their understanding of the process is the fact that most photographers (of all stripes), after some time spent learning the craft, tend to (when they are picturing) 'forget' what they have learned and apply it 'intuitively'. Which is not to say that using it intuitively is not an 'intelligent and intelligible conceptual strategy'. It's just to say that something which done 'intuitively' is very difficult for the 'lunatic fringe' to latch onto, obsess about, and then analyze to death - an exercise that is part and parcel of their ontology.

Addendum: If you have been thinking of attending an Adobe Photoshop or Nikon camera seminar / workshop, I suggest that you make your reservation now. There is certain to be a horde of anxious and eager art historians, art critics and art museum curators queuing up to get in.

urban ku # 151-153 ~ winter light and lights

Changing winter light (with lights) • click to embiggenAt the end of our anonymous emailer's comment, she wrote, "... it's the fire (outcome, deliverable, art) that is of the most importance." In other words, it's not how you make it, it's what you make that matters.

That's a premise with which I basically agree. Photography-wise, whether you're working with the medium's 'reality effect' or its 'tethered to realism' characteristic, it's the end result that matters. And, if you are producing images of objects on photosensitive surfaces, you are practicing photography.

That said, what about this photography by Binh Danh?

Binh Danh's series is titled One Week's Dead. Danh collects photographs and other remnants of the Vietnam War and re-processes them in a way that brings new light to a history marked by painful memories. A main source of the images is the 1969 Life magazine article, Faces of the American Dead: One Week's Dead. Portraits of two hundred forty-two young American men, casualties in one week of the war, were presented in a yearbook-style layout ... Danh uses photosynthesis to incorporate these portraits in the cells of leaves and grasses, symbolic of the jungle itself bearing witness to scars of war that remain in the landscape ... Danh is able to capture the images onto leaves, not by printing onto them, but by capturing the images within the leaves ... The final product, leaves imbedded in resin, transform the source images into precious, yet permanent artifacts. ~ from the exhibition catalog.

As far as I know, Binh Danh has created a new print medium - the Chlorophyll print.

Is it photography?

urban ku # 150 ~ you can email, but, you can't hide

An ugly 'truth' • click to embiggenI occasionally get email comments about topics / entries on The Landscapist. There is no problem with that but don't let that make you thing that I won't use my 'Sunshine' prerogative in order to shed a broader light of day upon the thing.

That said, here's an interesting take on the a pile of steaming stinking meadow muffins entry -

I have to say that this entry has gotten Ray and I talking quite a bit and all we do is come up with alternate questions.

The first is: "When did photography become art?"

Let me go back and say that Ray believes that the gist of the matter is that: using Photoshop and other means to modify an image that was taken alters said image - and thus, the image is not a true "photograph"... a true "photograph" would be created when one set up their camera at 4 am - to capture the correct light, choose the right lens for the shot ... click - develop - print and voile you have a photograph.

His belief is that photographers of old would adjust their images in the darkroom - and that to a certain degree was "cheating."

So the thrust is that technical advancement has undermined photography.

OK - so another question of mine - or a corollary to the original is: wouldn't the use of a lens or filter then also be a technical advancement that undermines true photography? Wouldn't all photography have to be taken from a box with a couple of holes in it? - and anything else would be "art photography"?

In your blog - you are discussing an article that: The author, the painter and gadfly art critic Peter Plagens, wasn't really asking if the entire medium of photography was dead. No, whether he meant to or not, he was really inquiring if that segment of the medium known as 'straight' photography - 'the last art form to be tethered to realism' was dead.

He's a painter, you say. This is a statement regarding oil painting from a person on the web who is a oil painting purist: Stop looking at modern art and stop loving it. Modern bright colors and hue contrasts destroy the subtle vision of the painter who risks to study classical painting in our time.

Original oil painters ground mineral and then mixed them with a drying oil. The Flemish technique (1400's) is the first true "technique" developed - it includes a 7 layer process that is considered by purists of the art - "the only true way to create a painting." - complete with: Before each new layer the canvas (ideally dried during 7 weeks) is carefully wiped with a half of an onion (in order to prepare the dried surface to absorb better) and then with linseed oil.

All the new advancements of pre-mixed paint are aberrations to some - but certainly, this isn't the thought of the majority.

Another thought that Ray and I discussed was, "If you're camping in the woods and need to make a fire. A purist would demand that you hunt for two rocks - which when struck together would spark and thus, ignite your kindling. Others may choose to pull out their Bic and light the thing. You have created a fire, it's still warming you, you can still cook by it, it's still creating the same ambiance as the alternate fire would. The importance of the act is determined primarily by the person lighting it...."

In my opinion, lighting a fire with rocks is a neat trick - but, it's the fire (outcome, deliverable, art) that is of the most importance. (end of email)

Any comments, of the non-email variety?

Oh my God...

Oh my God! The bastards shot Santa ClausThe bastards shot Santa Claus.

This is the start of my Xmas card. I say 'the start' because, if I can get the cooperation I need from the local rescue / ambulance / EMTs and a few others, my idea is to create a full-blown cinemascape - type picture replete with shocked and mourning kids, angry cops, yellow crime-scene tape, etc. And, of course, me as the forensic photographer.

I'll keep you posted, progress-wise. If anyone would like an original genuine card, send me your address.

Update on Sunday, December 9, 2007 at 05:44PM by gravitas et nugalis

addendum - the more I think about it, me as a Weegee-type press photog sounds even better.