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This blog is intended to showcase my pictures or those of other photographers who have moved beyond the pretty picture and for whom photography is more than entertainment - photography that aims at being true, not at being beautiful because what is true is most often beautiful..

>>>> Comments, commentary and lively discussions, re: my writings or any topic germane to the medium and its apparatus, are vigorously encouraged.

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BODIES OF WORK ~ PICTURE GALLERIES

  • my new GALLERIES WEBSITE
    ADK PLACES TO SIT / LIFE WITHOUT THE APA / RAIN / THE FORKS / EARLY WORK / TANGLES

BODIES OF WORK ~ BOOK LINKS

In Situ ~ la, la, how the life goes onLife without the APADoorsKitchen SinkRain2014 • Year in ReviewPlace To SitART ~ conveys / transports / reflectsDecay & DisgustSingle WomenPicture WindowsTangles ~ fields of visual energy (10 picture preview) • The Light + BW mini-galleryKitchen Life (gallery) • The Forks ~ there's no place like home (gallery)


Entries from August 1, 2007 - August 31, 2007

Friday
Aug312007

ku # 480 ~ incredible

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Monolith in the woodsclick to embiggen
Yesterday afternoon, while attempting to gain a vantage point for a picture I wanted to make (but didn't), I came upon a steep jumbled boulder field in the woods. The boulders are at the foot of a 400-500 ft stone cliff.

The size of the field was impressive as were the boulders themselves - the one featured here is about 12 ft tall. What was equally amazing was the fact that the boulders and forest floor are covered with a 3-4 inch thick mossy carpet. The smell, the feel, the sensations were incredible. It is an altogether amazing little place in the woods. I will be back.

Thursday
Aug302007

ku # 479 ~ getting out of town

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A large shattered erratic on the Bog Riverclick to embiggen
It's hard to believe but an entire summer has kind of sneaked by under the radar. It seems as though I was not able to get into any kind of summer flow - way too many 'matters' to tend to (house renovations, college preparations, a few unexpected work projects and spending most of August well under the weather).

One casualty of all this is that the wife and I have not been out in the canoes together even once this summer. Now that the nest is empty, our first priority is a 3 day / 2 night canoe trip this weekend, although, the tent will house our part-time nester, Hugo.

Hugo's mom and dad (the Cinemascapist) are out of town for a wedding in Pittsburgh and then a swing over to NYC to finalize a few details for his upcoming exhibition. Aaron and his pictures are being featured in e-zine articles all over the world. It seems that nary a day goes by that doesn't include a request for an interview.

If you aren't keeping up with his work, you should be - Aaron Hobson ~ Cinemascapes. He has also posted a new picture here in the Guest Photographer Forum.

PS - The Landscapist's Stand Apart From The Crowd Award of Recognition goes to Tim, who distinguished himself over the past 2 days by being the lone first-time visitor (out of over 1,800) to leave a comment. Thank you, Tim (and, yes, our college princess has an especially spacious dorm room since her roomate was a no-show. A replacement is not likely and in 2 weeks she can call maintenance and have the extra bed and wardrobe removed which we will replace with a couch, coffe table and floor lamp.)

Wednesday
Aug292007

urban ku # 101 ~ slow down and take a minute

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5 mph speed limitclick to embiggen
Every once in a while, when I check my web stats, I discover that visitors are flocking to The Landscapist in incredibile numbers. Yesterday was one of those days - over 1,000 first-time visitors and over 2,000 page loads.

As is always the case whenever this happens, the stampede is attributable to a mention (usually about something I have written) with a link to The Landscapist posted by one of the blog-o-sphere's 'biggies'. Yesterday's 'biggie' was Scott Kelby, the #1 Bestselling computer/ technology author (26 books on Photoshop, digital imaging, and technology) in the world for the past three years straight. Scott also is the editor/publisher of Photoshop User Magazine, Darkroom magazine (all about Adobe Lightroom), training director and instructor for the Adobe Photoshop Seminar Tour and President National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP).

Scott's site is devoted to, you guessed it, all things Adobe Photoshop / Lightroom so it's was bit of a surprise to find the following sandwiched in all the PS/LR news, scoops and tips - I ran across this blog this past week, and I just really found the photography interesting. It’s called “The Landscapist” but it’s not your typical landscape photography site ... [T]here’s just something about their stuff I really like. Give it a look-see ...

Thanks, Scott (but you didn't say a thing about my brilliant PS work). Even more amazing is that not one of the more than 1,000 first-time visitors had anything - good, bad or indifferent - to say about anything. Not that I'm complaining. Just thought I'd mention it.

Tuesday
Aug282007

urban ku # 100 ~ a new place # 2

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Life is like that sometimesclick to embiggen
Beau Comeaux commented, on civilized ku # 54, that "...The far flung after-effects of the German coolness and detachment (as initially? proffered by the Bechers) has worn me down a bit as of late. The ironic pointing to empty, banal spaces has run its course for me, failing to interest or engage me."

I don't think that Beau is alone in feeling this way. While I don't think the 'coolness and detachment/ironic pointing' thing has run its course or that some very interesting work is not still being created in that genre, I have stated that "... I am emerging from a kind of modernist/postmodernist what-the-hell-is-what haze. After delving into the notions, it seems incredibly complex or equally simple depending on deep you want to go. I went deep enough to feel, at the extremes, like I was drowning in a sea of either simplistic sentimental dreck (modernism) or wretched intellectual/academic obfuscation (postmodernism).

That said, it seems that there is an emerging middle ground out there where the two cultural paradigms collide and out of the smashed particles a new stew is being brewed - perhaps a kind of post-postmodernism.

Photography-wise, a place where neither intellectual concept nor visual referent reign supreme. A place where the skeptical/questioning gaze of the camera does not descend fully into the 'end-of-the-line-everything-is-used-up' paradigm of postmodernism but rather, it creates a glimmer of it's-not-over-yet hope because, unlike radical postmodernism, the photographer actually believes that the referent matters.

A place where, even though the referent matters, the skeptical/questioning gaze of the camera never places it on an altar of idolatry that drips with sappy sentimentality. A place where the referent is addressed with a respect that preserves it's authenticity but still allows the photography-observer to move well beyond the 'actuality of the real world'.

A place where the denoted and the connoted co-exist on equal footing. A place where photography can both illustrate and illuminate."

Monday
Aug272007

urban ku # 99 ~ avoiding the bends

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Decompression chamberclick to embiggen
After about 1,000 miles of weekend travels that included such highlights as 60 miles of stop-and-go traffic on the Jersey Turnpike, creep-and-crawl on a Philadelphia "express"way and 2 deja vu all over again visits - one with college boy, one with college girl - to 2 different but identical Target stores (hundreds of miles apart), I'm soooo happy to be back in the real world.

The trip did feature a good Philly cheesesteak and a very eclectic restaurant meal where we got my 83 year old mother-in-law rather toasted on fine wine. And, of course, the princess daughter is now officially a college girl.

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It's officialclick to embiggen
The only really disturbing experience of the trip came after the dorm move-in when we were walking about campus - a traditional picture-perfect ivy/brick/granite hallowed halls park-like campus set in a very tony urban neighborhood - and noticed that all of the parking lots were filled to the brim with SUVs. Of course, the plates indicated that most were from places that feature very rugged and challenging terrain and inhospitable weather - you know, places like Pennsylvania, Virginia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Maryland and the like, so I guess it's easy to understand why all these vehicles were so needed by their owners.

Actually, it's times like that that make me wish I were driving an 18-wheeler filled with the rotting carcasses of dead Emperor penquins (the ones dying as result of global warming) - enough of them to leave one on the hood of every SUV in the parking lots.

Friday
Aug242007

urban ku # 98 ~ higher education

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Red, white and blueclick to embiggen
We're off to see the wizard - the car is packed and the princess-daughter has said her goodbyes. We're heading out for Philadelphia and the college drop-off. On our return, we're detouring to college-boy's new off-campus apartment to check that out.

And then, it's back home to our empty nest.

Thursday
Aug232007

civilized ku # 54 ~ a brief history

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Salad bar, pizza, wings, pies and internet accessclick to embiggen
Beau Comeaux wrote; ... I find myself less interested in imagery where someone with a camera has found a subject of visual interest and rendered it plainly. This is, in effect, simply "pointing at" the subject. As a photographer, saying, "I liked the way this looked. Here, you look at it." I have coined a phrase for it: "plagiarizing nature." ... This "pointing at" style? of photography seems to be limited arbitrarily by the history of the medium. I get much more excited by new uses or approaches to image-making ... Perhaps this could be the start of an interesting conversation about the medium and its varied permutations ... Your thoughts?

From its inception, the medium of photography has had its status as an Art form challenged by the accusation that the medium was little more than a lowly artisanal (or mechanical) trade that produced 'documents' - detailed 'copies' of the contingent features of the actual world (plagiarizing nature). 'True' Art (idealized forms that were not copies of imperfect nature), it was said, was always characterized by its distance from the contingent features of the actual world and the amount of obvious mental/intellectual effort the Artist infused into the work. None other than the Royal Academy in London and the Academie Royal de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris declared this to be so.

The result of all of this, photography-wise, was the movement known as Pictorialism. Pictorialist Art was intentionally and self-consciously 'arty' and the pictures most often displayed a soft-focus technique that suppressed the contingent features of the actual world. Pictorialists also favored 'difficult' printing techniques and they used brushes, sponges, pencils, etching needles, etc., on the negative and print to add layers of 'handcrafting' to their work. Pictorialists were driven to even greater heights of retched excesses in an effort to separate themselves from the hordes of snappers that George Eastman unleashed upon the photographic world with his easy-to-use Kodaks.

As always happens, all good things must come to an end and Pictorialism eventually gave way to the the influences of Modernism most notably at the hands of Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz (who championed Strand). Strand's approach to picturing was based on what he considered to be the inherent qualities of the medium - direct, optically sharp images filled with details of the contingent features of the actual world. He also believed in the modernist idea/ideal of 'truth to materials', aka, 'medium specificity'.

Medium specificity suggests that significant Art is created by concentrating on those characteristics inherent in a medium. It also tends to feature the means of depiction over what is depicted and, most often, highlights those characteristics of a medium that separate it from other art forms.

The eventual result of medium specificity in the medium of photography in the Postmodernist world is what has been come to be known as the 'snapshot' aesthetic (pointing-at style) - an approach to picturing that suggests a photographic gaze of 'detachment' and 'coolness' and one that seems to let the camera 'do its thing' so to speak. One, that retro-like, returns photography to its origins of 'copying' the contingent features of the actual world. One which gives the appearance of an invisible hand of the photographer.

Now, I would be the first to admit that, in the age of digital picture making, the term 'medium specificity' is a moving/evolving target. One could opine that, with the ease of digital manipulation (Photoshop is just brimming with 'pictorialist' tools), Pictorialism - third-wave edition - is rearing its head (some might say, 'ugly' head) once again.

Beau, your pictures are a fine example of the New Pictorialism and maybe, just maybe, the Art world is ready for a swing away from the decades of the 'cool' Postmodern photographic gaze.

Wednesday
Aug222007

civilized ku # 53 ~ What? # 5

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Bananas, peqaches, raisins and picklesclick to embiggen
It would appear from the 2 comments on yesterday's entry that urban ku # 97 is a picture that, for some, transcends subject matter.

IMO, transcending subject matter is a very far cry from setting aside subject matter. But that idea might be too much of a parse for some, so let's not go there now.

Instead, how about this re: the real/truth in photography;

For spectators (the viewers of the photographs), Barthes explains that there are two elements involved when viewing a photograph. One element is the studium. The studium is a "kind of education (civility, politeness) that allows discovery of the operator." It is the order of liking, not loving. News photographs are often simple banal, unary photos which exemplify studium because "I glance through them, I don't recall them; no detail ever interrupts my reading: I am interested in them (as I am interested in the world), I do not love them."

The second and far more interesting element for the spectator is punctum ... "that accident which pricks, bruises me." It is the unintentional detail that could not not be taken, and that "fills the whole picture." Barthes says there is no rule that can be applied to the existence of studium and punctum within a photo except that "it is a matter of co-presence." These are the photos which take our breath away for some reason that was completely unintended by the photographer (or by the subject, for that matter). It is at the moment when the punctum strikes that the photograph will "annihilate itself as medium to be no longer a sign but the thing itself." And the object will become subject again ... While most photographs offer only the identity of an object, those that project a punctum potentially offer the truth of the subject. They offer "the impossible science of the unique being." ~ all quotes are by Robert Barthes from Camera Lucida

Comments please.