civilized ku # 798 ~ spent and get our way to economic "recovery"

The most fabulous object in the world • click to embiggenIt has been stated many times that the best picture makers understand the characteristics and limits of the medium and use them to their advantage in their picture making.

In the case of the most fabulous object in the world picture in this entry, I knew that the light on the table was far and away beyond the dynamic range of my camera's sensor - or, for that matter, any sensor. How far beyond, I didn't know but suffice it to say, it was a great deal brighter than the room's rather subdued light.

My first thought was to do the bracketed exposure / blend thing in order to bring it all together. That thought lasted only a second or less and was immediately superceded by: 1) a line from Time Bandits regarding "the most fabulous object in the world", and 2) the glowing briefcase contents from Pulp Fiction.

With those thoughts in mind, and the fact that we're smack dab in the middle of the Xmas binge-ing season, I thought that it would be appropriate to make a picture of the most fabulous object in the world. After all, that's what everyone wants, right? Not to mention the timely fact that the relentless and unbridled pursuit of that object seems to be what has landed us - the people on Main Street and the people on Wall Street (with the help of the people in Washington) squarely in the Great Recession.

It also worth noting that, just like Time Bandit's the most fabulous object in the world and Pulp Fiction's glowing briefcase contents, the glowing most fabulous object in the world pictured in this entry is also guarded/tended by someone who has the look of a person you would not want to meet in a dark alley.

That alone should tell you something important about the most fabulous object in the world.

civilized ku # 797 ~ really weird

Weird reflection • click to embiggenA few nights ago as I was heading upstairs, an unusual sight, outside the window at the bottom of the stairs, caught my eye. It appeared that our neighbor had opened the window blinds in one of their windows that face our house. That's something that has never happened in the 10+ years we've lived in our house.

However, as it turned out, it still hasn't happened. What I thought was a peek into their house was in fact a reflection in our window of part of our dining room that was in nearly perfect registration with their window.

Needless to say, I just had to make a picture.

civilized ku # 796 ~ I like to watch / look

Blue jeep ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenIn the movie Being There, Chance the gardener, aka: Chauncey Gardener, informs Eve Rand that he "likes to watch". Chauncey means that he likes to watch TV but under the circumstances - Rand is trying to seduce him - Eve assumes that Chauncey is a voyeur. That is, according to the dictionary, a person who gets sexual pleasure from watching sexual acts. In many cases, the watching is a surreptitious act.

That said, in the photo Art world, the word "voyeurism" has taken on the meaning of "invasive looking" - an act that is not necessarily erotic or predatory. In that sense, voyeurism / invasive looking has been part of the picture making lexicon since the dawn of the photographic age - an obvious example being that of street photography.

IMO, the descriptive adjective "invasive" seems most appropriately applied when the picture in question (or the making thereof) includes a person or persons as a key referent. To my way of looking, it would seem to be rather difficult to make an "invasive" picture of a something like, say, a house plant.

In any event, while I have always been aware of the idea of voyeurism in my picture making, I have been increasingly aware of that picture making characteristic, especially so in my nascent body of work, Single women. Without a doubt, that series has the notion of voyeurism front and center. However, that said, I am beginning to think that I want to make more visually obvious - and by extension, more suggestively / implied obvious - the idea of voyeurism in my non-people pictures.

As coincidence would have it, as I was googling for the dictionary definition of the words voyeur / voyeurism, I came across a current exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art - Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera Since 1870. The exhibit is touted as "a major survey that examines photography's role in invasive looking ... and gathers more than 200 pictures that together form a timely inquiry into the ways in which artists and everyday people alike have probed the camera's powerful voyeuristic capacity."

I would dearly like to see this exhibit but it won't be coming to a museum near me any time soon, if ever. Fortunately - and I hope Santa is reading this - there is a hardcover exhibit catalog by the same name that "[F]eatures images by photographers both unknown and renowned with insightful essays and commentary by SFMOMA Senior Curator of Photography Sandra Phillips."

I can only hope that the book, its writings and its pictures, is as interesting as it sounds to be.

civilized ku # 795 ~ season(s) greetings from Santastein

Mixed message ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenThis front porch lacks only a turkey carcass and a Menorah for it to be a rather inclusive overview of yearend holidays and/or events.

Unfortunately, the wife will not let me use this picture for our family Xmas card. IMO, it is a very good representation of the current state of affairs, good ole US of A wise.

polaroid ~ long gone

Burwell Theater ~ Parkersburg, West Virginia

From an assignment series - teen life in Parkersburg, West Virginia (circa 1988) - for a national teen magazine. The Burwell Theater is now long gone.

civilized ku # 794 ~ living (in) Art

Bedroom door ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenUnbeknownst to the wife, I have been working on a picture project that I find quite interesting. It's a bit unusual for me inasmuch as it fails under the heading of Installation Art.

For those not familiar with Installation Art, it is an artistic genre of site-specific, (normally) 3-dimensional works that are intended to transform the perception of a space - in most cases, interior space.

One of the "problems", albeit not regarded as such, with IA is that it is site-specific and therefore not portable to other sites. And, much of IA is temporary in nature - it's installed in a specific place for a limited amount of time. When it's time is up, that's all she wrote. Other than pictures of the installation and/or memories of it, it passes out of existence - here today, gone tomorrow.

My IA project is indeed intended to change the perception of a space. In fact, it is intended to change the perception of multiple spaces - that is to say, every room in our house. However, unlike traditional IA practices, my project employs 2-dimensional works, intended to be permanent, in order to change or, at the very least, enhance the perception of those spaces.

In any event, what I have been doing, over the past year or so (and continuing, ever and anon), has been making pictures of glimpses of parts of every room in our house. From those pictures, I will select one picture from each room that will be printed (24×24 inches) and displayed in that room - one picture for every room in the house.

My intention is rather simple - to render the visible to make it very visible. To picture the real to make it very real.

IMO, it will be a very interesting exercise. From the picture making point of view, it has already been quite interesting and has generated some very captivating pictures. That said, I am very much looking forward to getting the pictures on the walls and looking at / listening to people's reaction to them.

Add to that, the idea that there is always the possibility that it could be a nearly near-ending project. Over time, things change, not to mention the fact that everyday and every season brings changes in light and mood. The picture making opportunities are, quite literally, endless.

All of that should be quite interesting but what I find particularly intriguing is the fact that the pictures and the display thereof, relative to their intent, will be very site-specific. A viewer will have to be in my home in order to experience it. The installation will never be moved to a gallery, a museum, or any other site. It's my/our house or nothing.

The pictures - although they might make for a decent gallery exhibit in and of themselves - will, nevertheless, by the nature of their intent, be forever irrevocably wedded to the house in which they were created. And, by the nature of the project's intent, my house will become a piece of Installation Art.

I can live with that. Sure hope the wife can as well.

Update on Monday, December 13, 2010 at 12:15PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Ken Bello wrote: "I like this idea. Can I steal it?

my response: of course you can steal it but be sure to contact my Copyright, Patent, Licensing & Franchising Department before you do. I'm certain that we can work something out. Just mail your enquiries (and donations) to me ...

The Landscapist
Under the Bridge
On the way to Ward Lumber, NY

civilized ku # 793 ~ say what?

Flowers in decline / advancing snow ~ on our porch / Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenI've been in the habit of starting my computer day with visits to a number of regularly visited photo blogs / sites. One in particular, TOP has begun to feel a bit like a bad habit.

Despite the fact that the blog's owner / author / editor, Mike Johnston, might be the most sincere and hardest working man in the photo blog-o-sphere, TOP, on average, is much too gear oriented for my photo tastes. Not that there are not occasional entries that focus on pictures, because, in fact, there are. But, once again, for my for photo tastes, they are far too occasional.

In any event, it was via TOP that I was directed to a PBS video clip about a photo exhibition of the work of Alec Soth at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. In the clip, which is narrated by Soth, there is a short segment from Siri Engberg, the Center's Curator - curator of what, I don't know, but I sincerely hope that she is not the curator of photography (for reasons that will become apparent). In that segment she states that ...

Alex Soth is an artist who uses photography to really tell stories, but he's doing this in a way that is not the traditional way of storytelling with photography - his idea of finding the beauty in the unexpected, looking in out of the way places for subjects in scenes that somehow invoked America or a place that people would not really anticipate.

Holy shit-on-a-shingle! Are you kidding me? That statement is so far off the mark, recent past and present state of the medium photograph wise, that it is almost unforgivable coming from a art curator of any stripe ....

Re: "artist who uses photography" - as far as I know, Alec Soth is considered to be a photographer's photographer, not an artist who uses photography. The differences between the two distinctions are manifold but, in this case, suffice it to say that Soth does not set out to make Art by using photography. Rather, he is a photographer whose pictures are considered to be worthy of being called "Art" in the Fine Art world.

Re: "not the traditional way of storytelling with photography" - if, by "the traditional way of storytelling with photography", she means storytelling with pictures in the manner and photojournalism / documenntary style of W. Eugene Smith's Country Doctor (Life Magazine - September 28, 1948), in as far as that goes, she's right.

But, that said, the photojournalism / documentary manner of storytelling with photography has hardly been the only traditional way of using photography "to really tell stories". Photographers aplenty have been using photography to tell stories (in non-photojournalism / documentary ways) since the days of Eugene Atget, Josef Sudek, Paul Strand, Walker Evans, and others too numerous to mention here. And, IMO, the picture making of Alec Soth owes much more to this "traditonal way" than it does to that of W. Eugene Smith, et al.

Re: "his idea of finding the beauty in the unexpected, looking in out of the way places" - IMO, this is the most egregiously ill-informed part of Engberg's statement, re: the medium's history - even its most recent and obvious visibly visual history. Once again, almost since the introduction of the photographic process, so many prominent and well respected photographers have sought and found beauty in people, places, and things - in both the unexpected and out of the way places, that I don't even know where to start in listing them. GFG Charlie Brown, hasn't Engberg ever heard of Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, or William Eggleston?

Now it seems quite obvious to me that Siri Engberg is either ill-informed or ignorant (quite possibly, a mixture of both) on the history of the medium, the apparatus and its image, and/or, PBS did her an extreme disservice in the editing of her remarks. But, in any case, my understanding of (or lack thereof) and comments regarding her remarks should not be misunderstood as an unfavorable critique, re: Alec Soth's pictures.

Soth's pictures are built upon, aka: stand on the shoulders of - and to certain extent expand upon - the foundations laid by many of the medium's giants both past and present. But, in fact, and most notably by the standard of current quasi-postmodern picture making practices, Soth is looking in all the places that we would expect him to be looking for "subjects that somehow invoke[d] America" - that is to say, as the picture making world has come to know it, he is most definitely looking at the expected and in not-so-out-of-the-way places. The only people who might think that Soth is looking at the unexpected and in out of the way places, picture wise, must be those who are living in a world of, picture wise, Sierra Club calendars and cuddly kitten greeting cards.

But again, let me be perfectly clear - none of the above should be considered a criticism of Soth's pictures. In fact, for the most part, I like them very much. But to suggest that he has broken with tradition, picture making wise, in any way is both ill-informed and grossly misleading. IMO, Soth is good at choosing & seeing but his work, as good as it is, is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

On the other hand, Sis Engberg needs to bone up on the medium and its history if she wishes to be taken seriously in some quarters. Either that or, if she was the victim of a poor bit of editing, perhaps by someone who him/herself doesn't know crap about the medium, she needs to get on someone's case at PBS.

civilized ku # 792 ~ wherein I almost wax poetic about Sir Ansel / on seeing

Carrot peelings • click to embiggenOver the weekend while we were having a birthday dinner with The Cinemascapist and family, we noted that the hotel bar & grill / pub (very much ground level, sidewalk front, glass walled, open to the public, part local hangout) in which we were eating only had wi-fi for registered hotel guests. I thought it a bit odd but the The Cinemascapist did not because, in his words, "wi-fi is outdated ... you don't need wi-fi because everybody has an iPhone so nobody needs no stinkin' wi-fi."

Say what? Even assuming that he meant that everybody has a so-called "smart" phone, the simple fact of the matter is that not everybody has one. Not by a long shot.

But, that matter aside, what I later got to thinkin' was that, re: electronic media generation wise, so many picture makers' picture viewing - both of their own and those made by others - is done, almost exclusively (and, most often, alone), on a screen of some kind or another. However, I don't care how big, how hi-def, or how impressive the screen might be, the simple fact of the matter is, for most picture viewing purposes, looking at pictures on a screen is a vastly inferior substitute for looking at printed pictures.

A host of other printed picture viewing considerations aside, one of the primary reasons that is so is because viewing pictures on a screen denies the tactile reality of printed pictures as objects / things in and of themselves.

Two examples thereof:

1. A few entries ago, I posted 2 of my Polaroid pictures. I deliberately did not create a pop-up link to bigger versions in order to preserve at least a modicum of the "real" Polaroid viewing experience - what I would call the "preciousness" of their diminutive size.

However, what can't be conveyed on screen is the tactile sensation, in the case of manipulated Polarods, of the "brush strokes" - actually surface indentations caused by whatever instrument one uses to push the emulsion around - that are part-and-parcel of the viewing experience. In addition to that sensation, there is the simple pleasure of holding a small Polaroid print in your hand and, in social circumstances, passing it around for others to hold and experience. And, perhaps, to engage in some lively real "live" chat regarding what you see and feel.

2. I sure that most of you have seen plenty of Sir Ansel's pictures online / on a screen. But, if you have had the experience of looking at an actual print of Sir Ansel's work, you understand that his prints are, in and of themselves, objects/things of incredible beauty (no matter what their actual referent might be). My first such in-the-flesh experience with an Adams' print almost caused me to pee my pants, not to mention the fact that I wanted to physically caress the print and/or shed my clothes and rub it all over my naked body and ............

That said, and other than my oft-stated advocacy for making prints and/or photo books of the results of one's picture making endeavors, I bring this all up as an addendum to the recent entry on photographer's block.

IMO, it is much easier to slip into a state of photographer's block if your own pictures are stashed / hidden away on a hard drive and if your looking at them is limited to on-screen viewing. There simply is no substitute, improving your vision/seeing wise, for printing them and putting them, at least those you consider to be the best thereof, on a wall for viewing.

And let me be perfectly clear about printing them and putting them on a wall. Relatively "quick and dirty" proof prints, printed out on a relatively cheap and simple photo printer, hung on a wall with tape or tacks, will fill the bill quite nicely. The point is to get them on a wall for you (and anyone else who might be interested) to look at and reflect upon on a relatively constant basis.

Think about it. If you don't respect the results of your own picture making endeavors - however developmental / experimental / works-in-progress they might be - enough to bring them out of the (digital) closet and into the real world / tactile light of day, how can you expect anyone else to ever take them seriously.

A question - have you outed any of your pictures? That is to say, out of the digital domain and into the real picture viewing world. If not, why not?