ku # 582 ~ Spring has sprung # 16

The Flume • click to embiggenIn his essay, In Our Image, Wright Morris opines that:

Photographs of time past, of lost time recovered, speak most poignantly if the photographer is missing. The blurred figures characteristic of long time exposures is appropriate .... [T]hese photographs clarify, beyond argument or apology, what is uniquely and intrinsically photographic. The visible captured. Time arrested. Through a slit in time's veil we see what has vanished. An unearthly, mind-boggling sensation: commonplace yet fabulous. The photograph is paramount. The photographer subordinate.

The photograph is paramount. The photographer subordinate.

In support of his idea, Morris goes on to mention John Szarkowski's notion that the photographer's vision is convincing to the degree that the photographer hides his hand. After which he (Morris) continues with:

There will be no end of making pictures, some with hands concealed, some with hands revealed, and some without hands, but we should make the distinction, while it is still clear, between photographs that mirror the subject, and images that reveal the photographer. One is intrinsically photographic, the other is not.

One is intrinsically photographic, the other is not.

On one hand, I tend to sorta-kinda agree with Morris & Szarkowski regarding the notion of The photograph is paramount. The photographer subordinate. Or to put it another way, it's about the pictures, stupid.

On the the other hand, I tend to rather strongly disagree with Morris regarding the notion of One is intrinsically photographic, the other is not. I mean, hell, if one is using a camera and if the resultant picture looks like a photograph / quacks like a photograph / walks like a photograph, then, in my book, it is a photograph.

That said, the question I have regarding the above premise is simply this - if a making a picture is all about expressing one's self, doesn't every pictures so motivated in its making tell us something about the hand of the maker?

Is it even possible to make a good picture without revealing anything about the hand of the maker?

ku # 581 ~ Spring has sprung # 15

Morning light (this AM) above the West Branch of the Au Sable River • click to embiggen

man & nature # 128 ~ Spring has sprung # 14

The Rogers Paper Mill dam on the West Branch of The Au Sable River • click to embiggenWe have not had the normal Spring raging-river conditions this year. The snow melt was oddly gradual and it was not accompanied by Spring rain (of which we have had little so far).

Every time I visit this spot I am tempted to consider its potential as a water slide. With its 30ft drop it would deliver a great albeit brief thrill ride.

My only concern is the foamy water at the bottom of the dam. Depending upon the water depth it could be a real threat - foamy water has no buoyancy. A person will sink right to the bottom and, no matter what you do, stay there. Flotation vests/devices don't help at all.

Maybe one day when the flow is minimal, I'll check the depth and ...

man & nature # 127 ~ Spring has sprung # 13

Frost heaves and aeration holes on the 17th fairway • click to embiggenIt's a sure sign of Spring in the Adirondacks when the golf courses start to open and yesterday it was opening day at the course at which I am a member - the Lake Placid Club.

Only one of the two 18 holes courses opened - my favorite, The Links/Lower Course. It is a true Scottish-style links course - mounds and swales, fescue, fairway and green-side bunkering, undulating greens, and a handful of blind tee shots (can't see the fairway or the part of the fairway where your ball should land). Strangely enough for this neck of the woods, there are no tree-lined fairways. All of the trees are on the perimeter of the course.

In any event, the weather gods gave us a somewhat balmy 60˚ day albeit cloudy and very windy. The wind was constant with gusts in the 30-40 mph range which, as one golf magazine opined about the course, made it "just like playing golf in Scotland without the airfare".

Much of the course's grass was crispy brown and the greens looked like hell but they were cut and rolled and putted very smooth, true, and moderately fast. However, the course evidenced something that I had never seen before - some large areas of severe frost heaves on a few fairways. It will be interesting to see if this stuff settles down or not.

All of that said, I managed a very satisfying opening day round of 79.

urban ku # 201 ~ Spring has spring #12

Contrasting notions of what a bench should be, Philadelphia, PA• click to embiggenHmmmm...

Artist photographers also borrowed the idea that they could use nature as a metaphor for self. In photographing a "nature" that they are part of, they purport to reveal a world hitherto hidden that only creative insight can show. The end result, the image, then is left to speak for itself, telling us how the artist's "soul" and " psyche" has somehow processed nature. ~ Angela Kelly, from her essay, Self Image

Hmmm ...

man & nature # 126 ~ Spring has sprung # 11

Parking lot landscaping • click to embiggenFrom the same source as mentioned in the preceding entry, comes an interesting - in my mind - notion about the classic "dualism that haunts photography" (objective truth v. subjective experience):

This vexed and often tedious argument about something called the photographic medium is now being cast as a debate between photography and the digital image. In this new opposition, what were formerly two broad and often contradictory ways of understanding photographs themselves have been parted. One view, the realist, stays attached (in a less subtle but newly zealous form) to photography; the other, what could be called the constructivist position, has been transferred to the digital.

The author, Martin Lister, goes on to develop this "opposition" with some interesting observations and ideas. More goofy inconsistent assertions on this later.

man & nature # 125 ~ Spring has sprung # 10

Spring sunlight • click to embiggenThis passage, by Allan Sekula (from Introduction to the Photographic Image in Digital Culture by Martin Lister) seems to have certain relevance for the regular goings on found here on The Landscapist:

... the hidden imperatives of photographic culture drag us in two dictory directions: towards "science" and a myth of "objective truth" on the one hand, and towards "art" and a cult of "subjective experience" on the other. This dualism haunts photography, lending a certain goofy inconsistency to most commonplace assertions about the medium.

I don't know about you but I can't seem to get through a day without making a goofy inconsistent assertion about the medium of photography.

ku # 580 ~ Spring has sprung # 9

Sunlight here and there • click to embiggenConsider this:

Photographs are evidence, after all. Not that they are to be taken at face value, necessarily, nor that they mirror the real, nor even that a photograph offers any self-evident relationship between itself and what it shows. Simply that a photograph can be material for interpretation - evidence, in that sense: to be solved, like a riddle; read and decoded, like clues left behind at the scene of a crime. Evidence of this sort, though, can conceal even as it purports to reveal, what it is evidence of. A photograph can certainly throw you off the scent ... In order to show what it is evidence of, a photograph must always point away from itself. Annette Kuhn - from the essay, Remebrance - The child I never was