rain # 24 / kitchen life # 31 / ku # 1161 ~ another 24 hours

Stop sign in headlights/ rain ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen
Corn holders / dirty dishes ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen
Evening / roadside flora ~ Wilmington, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen

I think about photographs as being full, or empty. You picture something in a frame and it's got lots of accounting going on in it--stones and buildings and trees and air--but that's not what fills up a frame. You fill up the frame with feelings, energy, discovery, and risk, and leave room enough for someone else to get in there. ~ Joel Meyerowitz

rain # 23 ~ avoiding the tidal wave

Au Sable Motors ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenOn yesterday's entry, a question, John Linn

You wrote..." picture makers have, literally and figuratively, "opened their eyes" and are engaged with the act of seeing, many on a daily basis."

I have not seen that. I see crappy photos of people holding beer glasses or mugging the camera. And even shots that have promise are technically so bad, even those made by people who should know better and have the skills to do better.

So you are saying the Facebook photographers are "seeing"?

my response: In the category of "more and more avid amateur picture makers ... have, literally and figuratively, "opened their eyes" and are engaged with the act of seeing", I most definitely was not including those in social media crowd - Facebook, Instagram, Flickr (some good work can be found there if one is willing to wade through a sea of crap), ad nauseum. In that respect, I agree with John and his "crappy photos" assessment.

However, there is ample online evidence that there is a rather large number of avid amateur pictures who do indeed have their eyes open and are actively engaged in the act of seeing. To view this evidence, one needs to breakout of the social media loop and get into the online photography magazine arena which also spreads its tentacles to a host of related sites (mainly to those of picture makers).

As an example, check out the photographer listings on URBANAUTICA. You could spend a year full of a month of Sundays trying to get through that list and all of the related links. And, URBANAUTICA is just one of a sea of such sites.

In any event, now that "everyone's a photographer", the amount of crappy pictures being made has reached tsunami proportions. My advice? You need to get to higher ground ASAP.

civilized ku # 2307-08 ~ a question

Junipers with weather and "the light" ~ Stone Harbor, NJ • click to embiggenIn 1974, long before the 'digital revolution' landed on the shores of the picture making world, Robert Adams asked a very interesting question:

Many have asked, pointing incredulously toward a sweep of tract homes and billboards, why picture that? The question sounds simple, but it implies a difficult issue — why open our eyes anywhere but in undamaged places like national parks?

The question is part of Adams' Artist Statement from his book, The New West. A book (one of the prized books in my collection) of pictures of, for me, nearly inexplicable beauty - nearly inexplicable for me because:

1) the pictures are BW which, color being my medium, is not my preferred picturing genre of choice
2) the sense of "the light"* (from along the Colorado Front Range) is, well .... indescribably palpable and beautiful - a rather strange statement from someone like me who is an avowed non chaser of "the light"
3) the depicted referents - described by John Szarkowski, in the book's Foreword, as "dumb and artless agglomerations of boring buildings" - is not a subject matter which one would normally associate with the concept of beauty.

Nevertheless, the Adams' pictures are, indeed, beautiful in a manner both harmonious and discordant.

That said written, and back to the question at hand, one could reasonably assume that Adams' query was directed toward the "average" American and the "average" amateur picturing enthusiast who tended to point their cameras (in 1974, cameras, and only cameras, were what one used to make pictures) at iconic landscape vistas. Those picture makers, knowingly or not, were essentially trying to make pictures which were carbon copies of clichéd calender pictures - romanticized depictions of a pure unadulterated American landscape which was fast disappearing.

In 1974, Adams was one of a very few picture makers making pictures of what came to be known as the New Topographics. In a very real sense, his question was a cry to Americans to open their eyes and "see the facts without blinking". While most Americans, perhaps more than ever before (as a percentage of the population), still have not addressed, or even heard, his question, the same can not be said for picture makers.

Many avid amateur and some dedicated "fine art" professional picture makers still cling to the clichéd and predictable pretty picture syndrome but, with the unimaginable surge in the number of picture makers (attributable to the shear number of digital picturing devices in the hands of "everyone's a photographer now") more and more avid amateur picture makers are, in fact, making pictures of things new topographical.

Those picture makers have, literally and figuratively, "opened their eyes" and are engaged with the act of seeing, many on a daily basis. And their engagement is focused, not on the romanticized grand and spectacular, but on the world in which they find themselves on a daily basis. One could state that they are more fully engaged, picturing and living wise, with the real world rather than the idealized one which exists mainly in the imagination of the unimaginative.

In any event, Adams answered, in the same The New West Artist Statement, his own why-open-your-eyes question:

One reason is, of course, that we do not live in parks, that we need to improve things at home, and that to do it we have to see the facts without blinking. We need to watch, for example, as an old woman, alone, is forced to carry her groceries in August heat over a fifty acre parking lot; then we know, safe from the comforting lies of profiteers, that we must begin again.

Paradoxically, however, we also need to see the whole geography, natural and man-made, to experience a peace; all land, no matter what has happened to it, has over it a grace, an absolutely persistent beauty.

All of that said written, it is the work of eyes-open / facts-without-blinking picture makers I hope to feature in my magazine publishing venture.

*while it plays a vital role in the creation of Form which Adams' pictures convey, "the light" is not, by any means, the featured referent in his pictures. Rather, the pictures are most distinctly about place and (hu)man's place in it. When viewed in that light, "the light" is "merely" a helpful referential contingency (but nevertheless, integral) which beautifies the visual sensation of place.

civilized ku # 2306 ~ miscellania

Cats on the dog's bed and a lot of other stuff ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen

single women # 25 ~ feet up / eyes down

Reading ~ Stone Harbor, NJ • click to embiggen

civilized ku # 2299-2305 / ku # 1160 / rain # 20-22 ~ let me see it

The pool ~ Stone Harbor, NJ • click to embiggen
Barn / Chateaugay Windpark ~ Franklin County, NY • click to embiggen
Grasses ~ Lyon Mt., NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen
Rain ~ Au Sable Forks, NY • click to embiggen
Corn / Chateaugay Windpark ~ Franklin County, NY • click to embiggen
Front porch ~ Stone Harbor, NJ • click to embiggen
Rain / Palmer and N. Main ~ Au Sable Forks, NY • click to embiggen
Lake Flower ~ Saranac Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
Rental Center ~ Saranac Lake, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenIn last Friday's it's time for next IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT (a PDF, best viewed/read at 100-125%) entry, I mentioned that I am seeking submissions for consideration, re: for publication as feature articles for my picture magazine endeavor. So, in this entry I will clarify, in a very general manner, what kind of pictures I am interested in reviewing and, perchance, publishing.

First and foremost, I am interested in pictures which are part of a coherent body of work - any body of work, no matter the theme or referents. People, places (natural or man-made), things or any combination thereof are all open to consideration.

While special consideration will be given to work which starts with seeing (as opposed to concept), pictures in a body of work may be of the found (observations of the real) or made (still life, tableau vivant, etc.) variety. However, technique and/or technical considerations which place a picture at a remove from the medium's intrinsic relationship with the real will be given short shrift.

That said written, and to borrow from David Hurn - in an interview / conversation with Bill Jay from the book On Being a Photographer - what interests me most, picture/work for publication wise, are pictures which display beauty while "revealing a sensation of strangeness, not predictability, a kind of shock non-recognition inside the familiar. The opposite of cliches; pictures which have a quality beyond the visually obvious. But even if it is difficult to define, beauty still lurks behind the scenes".

I am also very interested in pictures made by Profligatographers, a word coined by the guy at More Original Refrigerator Art to describe himself. A word which, IMO, is a perfect descriptor for the profligate and discursive picture makers who, primarily as a result of the digital picture making 'revolution', are making more pictures than they know what to do with. For them, after purchasing a digital picture making device, it's like having free film and processing for life which enables them to make what was formerly considered to be the work of a lifetime in as little as the course of a year, more or less.

Profligatographers, unlike many who make theme / referent related work, make unified bodies of work which are made coherent by their concentrated efforts on the simple act of seeing. Despite their seemingly promiscuous choice of picturing referents, a Profligatographer very often has a distinctive personal vision / manner of seeing which pulls everything together, body of work wise.

IMO, Profligatography - hey, if there are Profligatographers, there must also be Profligatography, right? - is a little understood and appreciated result of the so-called digital 'revolution'. Without going all flapdoodle-and-green-paint on the subject (like stating that I wish to formulate and disseminate didactic conjectural theory espousing a neophutos-like toxonomy of the new symbolic order), it is the pictorial and scio-cultural results and implications of Profligatography which I wish to explore and exhibit in my picture magazine publication.

As mentioned, the submission line is open. Act now. Don't delay. Be the first in your neighborhood to be considered for publication in On Seeing. And please, spread the word - tell all your friends and neighbors that they too can get in on the fun.

Please send a few samples, 72dpi x 800pixels (longest dimension), to: Picture Submission

FYI, I consider myself to be a Profligatographer of the first order. The pictures in this entry are just a few of the 50+ pictures (finished "keepers") I have made in just the past 2 weeks. And, in case you're wondering, I believe the pictures to be part of a body of work which is unified by a common vision and, therefore, typical of a body of work which might be submitted for consideration.

civilized ku # 2298 ~ it's time for next

Clothesline ~ Stone Harbor, NJ • click to embiggenWhen asked if he pays much attention to what is happening in contemporary art, Robert Adams replied:

No. I suppose because of my commitment to subject matter, because of my lack of interest in process, and because of my conviction that useful pictures don't start from ideas. They start from seeing.

After years of struggling with the idea of making idea/concept-based pictures - pictures the likes of which dominate the contemporary photography art scene, especially the institutional art scene - I have arrived at a point where Adam's statement comes remarkably close to my conclusion / feelings on the matter of idea/concept-based pictures. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed The Landscapist over the years, inasmuch as I have frequently stated that I picture what I see.

While Adams did not parse his use of the word "ideas" - and this is where my caveat, re: his statement, originates - many of my pictures are made based upon an idea/concept. However, that said written, I do believe that had Adam parsed the word, his use of the word would, in fact, be similar (if not identical) to mine.

I believe that to be so because Adams has stated many times the general principles which drive the making of his pictures. Those principles have to do with ((but not limited to) beauty, form, light, and seeing "the facts without blinking". To my way of thinking those driving principles are nothing if not ideas/concepts. Point in fact, Adams has written extensively (Beauty in Photography and Why People Photograph, to name just 2 of his books) about the medium, his ideas about it, and, ultimately, what is the driving force(s) / idea(s) in his picture making.

In any event, IMO, what Adams meant by his use of the word "ideas", and most certainly what I would mean, is to describe the picturing practice so prevalent in the academic world and with academic-trained practitioners - that of concept over referent. The referent being "merely" the means by which an academic art-world concept is addressed.

FYI, if the concept of idea-based art eludes you, think of Marcel Duchamp's Readymades, common manufactured objects which Duchamp selected on the basis of "visual indifference" and about which he stated "...it was always the idea that came first, not the visual example".

Why, you might ask, am I stating the obvious, re: my pictures? Well, the answer has to do with the future endeavors of The Landscapist, the person, not the blog....

I find myself with increasingly little to write about the medium of photography and its apparatus (aka: conventions, traditions, temporal socio-political affected meaning and understanding, etc.). After 6 years of almost daily posting, I have touched upon a very wide variety of topics. The archives are full of the stuff. However, in the short attention span, what's-happening-now world of the internet, all of that is just so much lost to history never to be (re)visited again. And, to be honest, it's that lost to history notion that has me thinking and planning for a new direction for my communication endeavors.

NO. I am not shutting down The Landscapist blog. However, how I use it will undergo a change, mostly likely in the more pictures / less writing direction. Much like one of my favorite sites, More Original Refrigerator Art, which I visit daily just to look at the pictures (if ever there were a picture maker whose pictures start from seeing, this guy is one of the poster boys - pun intended). Although ....

... as I have mentioned, I'm tired of web-based picture viewing wherein every picture is mashed up into a screen-o-tized version of the real thing. The real thing being a printed version of a picture. I most definitely prefer my pictures as objects - objects with surface and character unique to the substrate on which they are printed. Consequently ....

... please read this IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT (a PDF, best viewed/read at 100-125%)

More information to follow in the next entry.

Update on Sunday, August 12, 2012 at 12:46PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Svein-Frode wrote: "Certainly gonna miss the blog, but looking forward to the new mag..."

my response: To all concerned: the blog is not going away. While, eventually, it will undergo some changes, for the near term future - at least 2-3 months - nothing much will be different.

The magazine endeavor is in its early formative stage. Much remains to be resolved (its mission statement) and refined (the how to of production and reproduction - establishing a relationship and workflow system with a high-quality POD provider). In addition to those tasks, I want to have enough feature portfolios / work from others on hand to cover the first 4-6 issues.

So, rest assured that The Landscapist, as you know and love it, will continue in its present form for the foreseeable near term.

civilized ku # 2296-97 ~ going nowhere / in circles

Kids on boat ~ Stone Harbor, NJ • click to embiggen