civilized ku # 2162 ~ “making everything ordinary too beautiful to bear”

Intersection ~ Malone, NY • click to embiggenWhile watching the most recent episode of MAD MEN, there was a scene in which an account exec (Kenneth Cosgrove), whose real passion is writing, is pictured, late night in bed, writing away. In his voice, the voice over tells us his authorial thoughts:

...There were phrases of Beethoven’s 9th symphony that still made Coe cry. He always thought it had to do with the circumstances of the composition itself. He imagined Beethoven, deaf and soul-sick, his heart broken, scribbling furiously while Death stood in the doorway, clipping his nails. Still, Coe thought, it might have been living in the country that was making him cry; it was killing him with its silence and loneliness, making everything ordinary too beautiful to bear... ~ from: The Man with the Miniature Orchestra, by Kenneth Cosgrove, aka: Dave Algonquin (his nom de plume)

The phrase, "making everything ordinary too beautiful to bear" reminded me of, for my eye and sensibilities, a bit of picture making insight:

Some people are still unaware that reality contains unparalleled beauties. The fantastic and unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself. ~ Berenice Abbott

Connecting those 2 dots from Cosgrove and Abbott has brought me to the realization - in a much more lucid manner than ever before - that virtually all of my picture making endeavors are directed toward making everything ordinary, if not too beautiful to bear, at least, too beautiful to ignore.

In that endeavor, I am, as John Szarkowski stated, exploring “ideas from life ... that do not yet have a form”. All the while I am operating under the assumption that, as Garry Winogrand stated, "any and all things are photographable" and that "there's no way a photograph has to look (beyond being an illusion of a literal description)". And, let there be no mistake about it, I'm having fun.

And, I am having fun simply because I have been liberated from the tyranny of picture making conventions. The entire world is my picture making oyster. There are no limits, picture making wise. It is, as Bob Dylan croons, all good.

civilized ku # 2161 ~ mysterious

Canada War Museum ~ Ottawa, CA • click to embiggen

There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described. ~ Garry Winogrand

civilized ku # 2160 ~ READ BEFORE OPENING

Canada War Museum ~ Ottawa, CA • click to embiggenFeatured Comment: Sven W (no link provided) asked/wrote:

"Do you think it was curiosity that drove Winogrand? From reading about the guy, he strikes me as pessimist and an obsessive-compulsive. A lot of his photographic negatives where neither developed nor printed [by him], so how much did he care about the images?"

my response: In consideration of the following quotes from Garry Winogrand, I think it would reasonable to state that he did care about his pictures:

The photo is a thing in itself. And that's what still photography is all about....I photograph what interests me all the time. I live with the pictures to see what that thing looks like photographed...The photograph should be more interesting or more beautiful than what was photographed.

Why would anyone who doesn't care about his pictures live with them? Not to mention the fact that, as he stated, "a photo is a thing in itself" - a thing, aka: a print, which illustrates how a "thing looks photographed". Which is, as he believed, "what still photography is all about". At the very least, I believe it can be reasonably assumed that Winogrand was indeed curious about how thing looked photographed. And consequently, without it being too much of a stretch, he "cared" about his pictures as well.

IMO, Winogrand, like any other great artist, was also most undoubtedly "obsessive-compulsive" about his art and the making thereof. Once again from the preceding quote, "I photograph what interests me all the time".

In that statement, I believe the expressed sentiment would be true of almost any truly great artist, photography division most definitely included. I believe that to be true because most great artists, if not all great artists, are driven, sometimes to extremes, to their task of the making of their art. Hell, Leonardo da Vinci went to the extreme of dissecting corpses in the pursuit of his art - an activity that was rather frowned upon at the time.

In any event, Winogrand, back in 1974, made one of the best and most concise statements about the medium of photography and its apparatus:

What I write here is a description of what I have come to understand about photography, from photographing and from looking at photographs. A work of art is that thing whose form and content are organic to the tools and materials that made it. Still photography is a chemical, mechanical process. Literal description or the illusion of literal description, is what the tools and materials of still photography do better than any other graphic medium. A still photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how a camera saw a piece of time and space. Understanding this, one can postulate the following theorem: Anything and all things are photographable. A photograph can only look like how the camera saw what was photographed. Or, how the camera saw the piece of time and space is responsible for how the photograph looks. Therefore, a photograph can look any way. Or, there's no way a photograph has to look (beyond being an illusion of a literal description). Or, there are no external or abstract or preconceived rules of design that can apply to still photographs. I like to think of photographing as a two-way act of respect. Respect for the medium, by letting it do what it does best, describe. And respect for the subject, by describing as it is. A photograph must be responsible to both.

Many a "serious" amateur would do well to add that quote, on a laminated index card, to his/her camera bag. Better yet, taped to the outside top of the bag with the admonition to "READ BEFORE OPENING" writ large thereon.

the life in my kitchen* ~ imagination

Kitchen window ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen
# 2• click to embiggen
# 3• click to embiggen
# 4• click to embiggen
# 5• click to embiggen
# 6• click to embiggen
# 7• click to embiggen
# 8• click to embiggen
# 9• click to embiggen
# 10• click to embiggen
# 11• click to embiggen
# 12• click to embiggen
# 13• click to embiggen
# 14• click to embiggen
# 15• click to embiggen
# 16• click to embiggen
# 17• click to embiggen
# 18• click to embiggen
# 19• click to embiggen
# 20• click to embiggen
# 21• click to embiggen
# 22• click to embiggenRecently, I've been reading, in print and on various blogs/sites, a lot about the notion of imagination, re: picture making. IMO, some that writing is pure tripe, while some of it is good enough. However, again IMO, all of it misses a very pertinent point about the use of imagination in the employ of making good pictures.

Let's start first with a definition of the word itself:

im·ag·i·na·tion

1. the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses.
2. the action or process of forming such images or concepts.
3. the faculty of producing ideal creations consistent with reality, as in literature, as distinct from the power of creating illustrative or decorative imagery.
4. the product of imagining; a conception or mental creation, often a baseless or fanciful one.

A lot of picture making advice, re: using your imagination, tends to focus upon the idea of coming up with (imaging) a new way of seeing something, or, to reiterate the word of the day, an imaginative way of seeing something. In doing so, or so the conventional wisdom goes, one can find their voice, vision and style - the supposed Holy Grail of picture makers the world over.

While there is something in that idea, and some have to followed it to interesting and productive ends, what is more likely to result, "serious" amateur wise, are pictures which are little more than visually strained implementations of one overwrought photo effect or another. The pictures so produced have effect everywhere apparent, affect, not so much (see #4 above). A picture viewing reaction of "wow" is the most sought after intent amongst this picture making crowd, who, upon garnering such a reaction, chalk it up to their skill in using "artistic license" (if you listen carefully, you might actually hear me making a contemptuous sound [farting sound] made by vibrating my extended tongue and my lips while exhaling, aka: blowing a raspberry).

an aside: FYI, harking back to the aforementioned definition of imagination, in my picture making I most often engage in: # 1) the faculty of forming mental images of what is not actually present to the senses. That is to say, I form a mental image (an approximation) in my minds eye of what a 2D representation of the 3D referent before my camera's gaze will look like on a print - a print not actually present to my senses at the moment of picture making, and, # 3) the attempt to produce an ideal creation consistent with reality, as in literature (see yesterday's question), distinct from producing decorative imagery.

That said, IMO, the rarely mentioned aspect of using one's imagination, picture making wise, is using that faculty in deciding what to picture.

Most "serious" amateurs are locked into the "normal" repertoire / the standard list of referents which have deemed acceptable / suitable for picture making. Whether that situation is the result of fear of risk taking, a much diminished state of curiosity, or the utter lack of imagination is open to question but I suspect that all of those conditions are causal (in some relationship to one another) in most individuals so afflicted.

If only more picture makers were more attuned to the curiosity of Garry Winogrand - "I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed" and the openness of Robert Frank - "You can photograph anything now", because, when you get right down to brass tacks, those 2 attitudes, curiosity and openness, are all one needs to greatly expand one's picture making possibilities. And, IMO, one's imagination will get a kick in the ass as well.

*These are the the life in kitchen selects. Although, my desire is to have 20 pictures as opposed to the 21 presented above. So I guess 1 has to go.

civilized ku # 2159 ~ more Spring light

Spring light ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenTomorrow I'll be addressing the idea of imagination, re: picture making wise. In the interim, think about this:

Can there be a way of doing (and not just thinking about) photography that is less about photography per se than about aspiring to the conditions of other modes of representation, imagination and experience well beyond its conventional limits?

civilized ku # 2157 ~ Easter # 2

Lilies ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen

civilized ku # 2156 ~ art sauce poured on top of content

Robert's co-op apartment ~ NYC, NY • click to embiggenOf all of the "how to" questions I have been asked, the most frequently asked one always addresses the notion of "composition". Those questions are almost always directed at finding a manner of composing, relative to my way of seeing, which can be reduced to an easily understood "rule" of composition.

Unfortunately, I'm here to tell tell you that there ain't no such thing. IMO, virtually all such rules are nothing more than, as Stephen Shore stated, "art sauce poured on content", or, "aesthetic nicety applied to content".

Like Shore, I have always been uncomfortable with the word "composition" as it is applied to picture making, photo division wise. That discomfort comes from the definition of the word itself - the act of combining parts or elements to form a whole. "Combining parts" is a synthetic process and picture makers (photography division) do not "combine" or put together anything. Rather, they "select" what to picture from the already existent world around them.

In selecting what to picture and how to picture it - deciding upon a POV, where to place the edges of the frame, when to depress the shutter mechanism, and so on - the picture maker imposes a 2-dimensional visual structure (aka: form), as will be made manifest on a print, on the real world referents which fall within the gaze of his/her camera. And, most germane to this entry, most "serious" amateur camera wielding picture makers are at loss to impose a visual structure other than those which fall within the "rules of composition".

Hence, all the same-o same-o pictures made by "serious" amateurs.

Stephen Shore, in his essay, Form and Pressure, stated, re: his picture Beverly Boulevard and La Brea Avenue:

... I was aware that I was imposing an organization that came from me and from what I had learned: it was not really an outgrowth of the scene in front of me ... I asked myself if I could organize the information I wanted to include without relying on an overriding structural principle ... Could I structure the picture in such a way that communicated my experience of standing there, taking in the scene in front of me? ...

IMO, in that short-but-sweet bit of picture making rumination, Shore has hit upon the reason why most "serious" amateur picture makers fail to break out of the some-o same-o picture making rut - their focus is more upon making pictures that look like what they have been told a good picture looks like, as opposed to simply and directly picturing what they see.

In other words, letting the scene dictate the visual structure / form rather than playing it by the rules.

Why bother doing so? Again, from Stephen Shore:

Sometimes I have the sense that form contains an almost philosophical communication - that as form becomes more invisible, transparent, it begins to express an artist's understanding of the structure of existence.

To my eye and sensibilities, the most interesting pictures are those wherein the structure / form is invisible / transparent because, when form is not particularly noticeable, I perceive that I see what the picture maker sees - what he/she wants me to see - rather than a picture wherein the structure / form is everywhere apparent and, therefore, leads me to see the "art sauce poured on content" more so than the content itself.

IMO, content (both illustrated and implied), more so than art sauce, is what makes a picture interesting and is the reason for spending any time with it. Whereas most art sauce pictures - most commonly created under the narcistic-ly sophist banner of "personal expression" and "artistic license", wherein the aesthetic niceties are everywhere apparent, are little more than attention getting but vacuous exercises in technical virtuosity and ultra-craft. For me, they have no staying power whatsoever - they are pure expressions of a slam, bam, thank you ma'am picture making ethos.

FYI & BTW, it is often been stated that photo blogs are little more than picture galleries, personal picture diaries, or tool chests. That little is written about the medium and its apparatus as opposed to how-tos and gear fetishism.

I agree with that sentiment and that is why, from day one, I have written mostly about the medium and its apparatus (much like today's entry). However, my experience in doing so tells me that most are not as interested, if at all, in the possibilities of the medium and it's apparatus as they are in personal picture diaries and gear.

While The Landscapist has a decent and loyal following, it is rather discouraging to have so little feedback / comments when I write entries such as today's. At times, that fact makes me wonder why I am bothering to do so.

I'm not complaining, just saying.

single women # 21 ~ gallery receptionist # 2

Robert Mann Gallery ~ NYC, NY • click to embiggen