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They're not exactly Certain Places or Microwave Eruptus but ... • click to embiggenOMG. Most out there are familiar with the adage regarding the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Well, yesterday PM, as I was processing pictures from this past weekend, my plan was to post a couple of them this AM for your viewing pleasure. But, first thing this AM, my brain was unexpectedly fried once again. It was another of those mind-blowing experiences - much like the effect of having your head struck by a dumdum bullet - that really messes you up.

The incident deals with 2 primary concepts:

1. Everybody has a twin somewhere on the planet.

2. Everything that can be pictured has been pictured.

Regarding concept # 1, there have been several instances in my life where I have mistaken for someone else based upon my physical appearance. There have also been times when someone who "thinks just like me" has touched my life. But ...

Regarding concept # 2. ... seldom, if ever, have I experienced any close encounters of the the photography kind - someone who thinks and acts just like me, photography-wise. That is to say, someone who pictures the things that I picture in a manner very similar to how (and why) I picture them.

That is, until this AM when I discovered - thanks to Miguel Garcia-Guzman on his blog, [EV +/-] Exposure Compensation ~ of photography and photographers - the work of Catharine Stebbins.

I posted the 2 pictures on this entry as examples of my 2 bodies of work - ku, landscapes of the natural world and decay - that are remarkably similar to Stebbins' 2 bodies of work - CERTAIN PLACES and MICROWAVE ERUPTUS.

Other than the similarity of our subject matter - much of my ku work is of the messy chaos / complexity of the natural world, and, all of my decay is of food gone awry - and the similarity of our picturing approach - somewhat less than idealized and conventionally seen views of the natural world, and, plated food pictured from above using natural light (mine from a window, her's from a door) on the same background (mine a countertop, her's a floor) - what strikes me as incredibly odd / interesting / downright eerie is that both of our Artist Statements are remarkably similar.

Regarding her CERTAIN PLACES work, Stebbins writes:

The right place drives the tedium from my mind and sends me racing into a world of imagination and possibility ... [T]hese are portraits of the evocative feelings and emotions that overcome me; an invitation to go where the past coexists with the present, uncertainty mingles with anticipation, and the familiar delivers the unexpected.

Intuition and memory profoundly shaped my experience of place. The genesis of this series began on childhood vacations, as my family crisscrossed the west in our station wagon on long summer vacations. The view through the backseat window became my portal into a world of imagination and possibility ....

Her compete statement is HERE

Regarding my Adirondack Dream Memories I have stated:

For me, memories are like dreams. They tickle, tease, and sometimes taunt my conscious self with slippery remembrances that can't be fully owned. Tangled hints of experience and feelings past swirl and ferment in a cauldron of haunting visions that, however vague, are indelibly etched on a virtual fabric tinted with the bittersweet wash of ambiguity and the quest to understand.

As I grope furtively and photographically through the fields of genius in the details, I feel like a stranger in a strange land where my photographs seem more like jamais vu glimpses of lost connections to something intuitively known rather than documents of fully conscious waking experieinces.

My compete statement is HERE

One of Stebbins' reasons for her MICRoWAVE ERUPTUS work - "Something about a splatter of tomato sauce, and burnt edged bubbles in a pool of melted cheese called out "photograph me!" - is also remarkably similar to my reason about decay - it has always called out to me.

Now, it should be stated that I am not stating that our work or our statements are identical but the similarities are, indeed, very remarkable - especially so considering that there are not just 1, but 2 bodies of work that are so similar.

This just whole thing just tends to freak me out. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

ku # 591/92 ~ Spring has sprung

Adirondack pine barrens • click to embiggenDid you know that a 30"×30" piece of museum glass for framing costs $200.00 US?

(mostly) ku # 588/89/90 ~ Spring has sprung

Adirondack pine barrens • click to embiggenNow for something completely different - an Adirondack pine barren.

Just a few miles north of Au Sable Forks is the Clintonville Pine Barrens - a sand delta deposited 12,000 years ago by glacial melt water. In fact, the area pictured here is not actually in the designated pine barrens but they are situated just outside the boundary of it. That's why there is evidence of humankind - quad-runner tracks - in the center picture.

The Clintonville Pine Barrens, a 900 acre preserve, is administered by the Adirondack Chapter of The Nature Conservancy and the Adirondack Land Trust. It is open to the public for hiking, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and nature study.

ku # 587 ~ Spring has sprung # 21

Tamarack bog # 5 • click to embiggenReturning to the notion of hand of the photographer, invisible-wise, Wright Morris also had this to say:

In photography we can speak of anonymous as a genre. It is the camera that takes the picture; the photographer is the collaborator. What we sense to be wondrous, to occasion awesome, as if in the presence of the supernatural, is the impression we have of seeing what we have turned out backs on. As much as we crave the personal, and insist upon it, it is the impersonal that moves us. It is the camera that glimpses life as the Creator might have seen it ... [I] would personally prefer that the photograph was stamped Photographer Unknown. This would assure me, rightly or wrongly, that I was seeing a fragment of life, a moment of time, as it was. The photographer who has no hand to hide will conceal it with the least difficulty. Rather than than admiration, for work well done, I will feel the awe of revelation. The lost found, the irretrievable retrieved.

Reading and reading and reading again, this passage brings to mind an experience of a certain artist-photographer of my acquaintance. He was given the opportunity to show his work to one of the prime mover and shakers of the Photography as Art world. Long story short, the aspiring artist-photographer was both stunned and chagrined that his audition lasted all of about 2 minutes - that's about how long it took for the gate-keeper to look at and dismiss his portfolio (not as worthless, just as worthless to him).

Upon hearing about this encounter, my first thought was something about the notion of the self-important-pompous-ass kind of thing - and there was little doubt that there was an element of that just by the manner in which he comported himself - but, on the other hand, the man was most likely just evidencing his personal likes and dislikes. Likes and dislikes that were no doubt derived and tempered from years of experience of either feeling the awe of revelation or not.

Now, I must admit that feeling the awe of revelation, the sense of (re)discovering the lost found, the irretrievable retrieved, or even to glimpse life as the Creator might have seen it - all of these sensations are what I crave and most enjoy when viewing pictures. And, above all, what I most seek and enjoy when making pictures is the feeling of seeing (and picturing) what we have turned out backs on.

And, in should go almost without saying, that I like those sensations and qualities in a picture best when I feel, rightly or wrongly, that I was seeing a fragment of life, a moment of time, as it was. A feeling that puts me squarely in the camp of reality-related picturing, picturing in which the hand of the photographer, if not invisible, is at least an excellent example of visual léger de main, aka - slight of hand. The only thing I want to know about the hand of the photographer is his/her idea of what is important - that is to say, picturing making is, first and foremost, about the process of selection.

IMO, pictures are best when the picture maker simply shows me (and shows me in a simple manner - the notion of an "impersonal" view of things) what it is that you want me to see. I am not all that interested in his/her experience of the thing pictured because, as a human being, I "crave the personal" but I like it best when I am left to my own devices when it comes to decyphering why it is the "impersonal that moves me(us)".

There is a great irony in all of this "impersonal" view of things because, IMO, the best pictures are most often created by a picture maker who, on one hand, is very personally connected to his/her subject but, nevertheless, on the other hand, manages to make pictures that appear to be (léger de main) coolly impersonal glimpses of something that they see that the rest of us are missing. The picture maker thereby offers the viewer, not propaganda, but rather a kind of inkblot test from which we can draw our own conclusions.

ku # 586 ~ Spring has sprung # 20 ~ floating through the Adirondack version of a coral reef

Tamarack bog # 4 • click to embiggenI am not alone. It appears that James, who lives nearby but I have not met, seems to like bogs as well:

I couldn't agree more regarding your comments on the rare beauty of a tamarack bog...and considering your eye for decay Mark, I'm not at all surprised by your interpretation.

Of all the places I've explored here, I just can't get enough of Bloomingdale Bog. The naturally occurring "rusty hues" and glowing lichens feel so supernatural to me, during late fall and early spring especially.

There is this duality here as well...so much decomposing matter being absorbed back into the earth...at the same time, I've never been in a landscape that felt more alive...like floating through the Adirondack version of a coral reef.

I enjoy just completely losing myself in the alders and grasses and tamaracks, etc. I love that you chose to ignore the sky, choosing instead to immerse the viewer completely in the skeletal, soggy details of the place. I hope you also plan on picturing during that initial burst of lime/neon green that seems to pass so quickly...unbelievable addition to your ku Mark.

As an aside, if you've never experienced paddling Twobridge Brook through Bloomingdale Bog this time of year, and don't mind battling the alders and beaver damns in spots, I highly recommend it. My brother and I paddled from 86, crossed "under" the bog corridor near the opposite end, passed under Bloomingdale Rd, and continued on until we reached some tiny road in Bloomingdale whose name I never caught...can't even begin to describe the wildlife (otter, beaver, countless birds, etc), not to mention the grasses and islands (or whatever you call clumps of spongey earth in a bog) filled with wildflowers...last May we encountered the largest patch of swamp marigolds I have ever seen...also found painted trilliums, etc. But in the context of these bog islands/forests, it's just incredible.

James, thanks very much for the comments and your reminder re: Bloomingdale Bog. I did an episode for my PBS show in Bloomingdale Bog. It was my first experience there and I have been wanting to get back to it ever since. I am not a birder but the reason I was in the bog was at the behest of photographer Jeff Nadler - he was my birding guide for a piece about birding and avian photography.

I think it's time to get out the the boat and take it for a spin. But Jim, here's the zillion dollar question - what's the water level in the bog? It's been a bit dry this Spring.

ku # 585 ~ Spring has sprung # 19

Tamarack bog # 3 • click to embiggenAs mentioned previously my tamarack visit produced quite a few "keepers" - in the neighborhood of 15 -18 pictures of note and worth. That can be attributed to the fact that a tamarack bog is a very target-rich environment of seemingly endless variety.

That reality makes it very easy to eat up a gig or more of memory card space in very short order - a situation that brings to mind another notion from the essay, In Our Image, by Martin Morris. A notion that I dwell (but not fester) on from time to time - the idea of image proliferation that has come upon the medium since the advent of digital capture together with the disseminative powers of the web:

Images proliferate. Am I wrong in being reminded of the printing of money in a period of wild inflation? Do we know what we are doing? Are we able to evaluate what we have done?

As an antidote to the medium's apparent promiscuity, Morris even waxes a bit poetic about the good ole days of the daguerreotype - the idea that a picture-maker had one shot at it, or, even he/she made several exposures, the resultant picture(s) would be limited to an Edition of One -

After the predictable advances in all areas of photographic reproduction, it is possible that daguerreotype uniqueness might return to photographic practice and evaluation. This counter-production aesthetic has its rise in the dilemma of over-production. Millions of photographers, their number increasing hourly take billions of pictures. This fact alone enhances rarity. Is it beyond the realm of speculation that single prints will soon be made from a negative that has been destroyed?

Leaving aside the author's verbal faux pas that a print could be made from a negative that has been destroyed - one could make a single print from negative that is subsequently destroyed - Morris is essentially suggesting that picture-makers repudiate one of the medium's essential characteristics - the fact that an endless number of virtually identical "originals" can be made from a single negative.

Unlike other art mediums, a picture's rarity / singularity / exclusivity can only be created / enhanced by "artificially" making it so. Endless hours are spent by artist-photographers and their gallery representatives trying to determine how limited a particular print edition should be. This "artificial" limitation is mandated by the Art World's financial fixation on "rarity", not the by any limitation inherent in the medium itself.

But, that particular brand of rarity is not really what Morris (and many others) is concerned about. At its core, the issue for him is the effect(s) upon humanity's perceptions of the world / reality that comes from a populous swimming - one might even say, "drowning" - in sea of pictures.

It is not beyond the realm of possibilities that most of that populous simply does not have even a glimmer of understanding regarding how pictures have changed and influenced the way they see things and, by "things", I mean life.

One example that I will offer in support of that phenomenon can be found in our current economic mess - the elephant in the room that no one is talking about relative to curbing our enthusiasm for wretched-excess consumerism and an economy based upon consumption. A disease that has been fostered and spread by pictures that make up the overwhelming bulk of that ubiquitous sea of pictures (and as it use to state on my business card), photography for commerce. Or, if you prefer, pictures that tell us what to want, how to live, what we "need" for the "good life".

Try this little experiment - tomorrow, when you arise, have a pencil and notepad upon which you kept track of every advertising impression you see throughout the day. If you are observant, by the end of the day, your list of those impressions will number in the thousands. And, the question that arises for many is simply this - how often, if ever, do you actually think about the real message underlying all of those impressions?

I guess that's one of the reasons that I like bogs so much - there's not a single advertising impression / message to be seen.

Update on Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 11:14AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Andy Stockton wrote: For your readers who are interested, there are contemporary artists still making daguerreotypes every day - often inspired by the very idea you mentioned - the "edition of one". You might check out this site if you would like to learn more:For your readers who are interested, there are contemporary artists still making daguerreotypes every day - often inspired by the very idea you mentioned - the "edition of one". You might check out this site if you would like to learn more.

my response: thanks for the link although I feel compelled to state that I tend to shy away from picturing endeavors that seem to require statements such as yours - "I did this (had blood tests) to establish a baseline blood level before I start working with mercury."

ku # 584 ~ Spring has sprung # 18

Tamarack bog # 2 • click to embiggenA few days ago I mentioned that if I had a pension and a sea-side shanty next to a Scottish links golf course I would be happy for the rest of my life. Of course, that fantasy would also include the wife. However, I'm resigned to the fact that that is just not gonna happen.

A more likely fantasy, albeit a low-probability one, is that the sea-side shanty is replaced with an Adirondack camp built in the heart of a tamarack bog. A nearby golf course would be a bonus. And once again, the wife is invited.

To my eye and sensibilities, a tamarack bog is the most beautiful place on the planet. I can't fully articulate why I feel that way but everything about a tamarack bog - the colors, the smells, the sounds, the textures, the wildlife that a bog attracts - just suits my eye and disposition.

Yesterday was overcast / rainy and this particular bog was on my mind. I knew that the rain would saturate the flora and thereby intensify the rusty colors (my "natural" Hue/Saturation slider) that are found in a bog in the Spring. I was hoping to be able to picture during a driving rain but the most I got was a steady rain from time to time.

Update on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 12:38PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Aaron wrote: "... if it was permanently spring, fall, and winter a tamarack bog would be wonderful. But why don't you go back and try to photograph there and hang out a while when there are 68 trillion mosquitoes, noseeums, and black flies all singing their hit song of "buzz buzz bite" and see if you don't change your mind. Just looking at that photo makes me involuntarily swat at the air.

my response: that's why the fantasy includes a screened (to no-see-um standards) wrap-around promenade porch. Oh yeh, and some bug zappers .... and some bug repellent ... and some hat nets ... and long sleeve shirts ... and summer gloves ....

ku # 583 ~ Spring has sprung # 17

Tamarack bog # 1 • click to embiggenI would be over-stating the case if I said I had spent the entire afternoon in a tamarack bog ... but ... if I were to post one picture a day from my "keepers" from this outing, I'd have just about a month's worth of pictures.