urban ku # 70 ~ transformation - more about truth

A life cycle of wood with dog tail • No Embiggen - it's a Polaroid

Mark Kingwell also wrote;

...The truth of the image is the truth of time: not its metaphysical essence, whatever that might be, but its presence; its inescapability ... The background lies (Ed. - untruths) here - the belief that the image delivers me to a captured slice of the world 'as it really is' - actually works to open up a different foreground truth; that time and light (Ed. - shutter and aperture) are how we make our worlds .... Responsible work is in the service of the world a photograph gives. Documentary photographers (Ed. - to include 'documentary' as Art), at their best, unfold both the truth of a time and place and the truth that there is no general truth, and hence, no single world out there ... a double-revelation: of circumstance, and our troubled relationship to circumstance. Otherwise known as mortality.

I realized/accepted quite awhile ago that my picturing/pictures are, in no small part, about my mortality. Maybe that helps explain my visual attraction to and fascination with decay. But I also realize that my picturing/pictures are about our (collective) mortality.

IMO, postmodernism in photography, stripped of all its academic pretensions, is, at its root, an acceptance of our mortality on a very human level. It rejects the fantasy-fueled escapism of romantic/sentimental notions of the world around us and I think that's why the pretty-picture gang so thoroughly rejects it - it rattles the bars of their gilded cages of disassociation, which serve as a remove from 'circumstance and our troubled relationship to circumstance'. Fiddling while Rome burns, so to speak.

Update on Thursday, June 7, 2007 at 09:51AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comments: Bret Kosmider asked: "Could it be possible to produce photographs in the romantic style but delivering a postmodernist message that is critical of society?"

my response: as opined by Mark Kingwell in urban ku # 68, pictures which '... surrender to an existing logic of aesthetic appreciation ...', tend to '... slide too easily the background of visual culture, lose their impact, [and] become mere ghosts of themselves ...'

I tend to agree, in principle, with this idea. There are exceptions, of course - Simon Norfolk's Afghanistan Chronotopia, read an article, see some pictures, is one that I like and own.

Norfolk has pictured the ravages and destruction of war in a manner that mimics/references early post-Renaissance art of destroyed structures, especially churches and palaces, bathed in gloriously golden twilight. Norfolk's pictures are sumptuous and classically beautiful in their style and presentation. They are seductive and alluring.

For me, part of the attraction of Norfolk's pictures is due to the fact that I must constantly remind myself that 'beauty' is not all it is often presented to be. Much evil hides behind the veil of a beautiful veneer - a notion that seems to be lost on much of society.

On the other hand, Gen. George Patton was claimed to have remarked, when talking about war, "God help me, I love it so."

PS - the book can be had at the lowest price on the internet through my Photo Books Link to Overstock.com - help support The Landscapist by buying from Overstock.com through this link.

FYI ~ Canoe trip dates

For those interested in the great offer they can't refuse canoe trip, the dates are Friday, August 17 - Monday, August 20.

The plan is for a 4-day, 3-night outing. Participants are invited to take the complete trip, but shorter stays are possible. We will be staying at a wilderness basecamp so late arrivals and early departues are easy enough.

So, now is the time to confirm in order to get this thing organized. Let me know, via email (link on sidebar), ASAP.

FYI ~ Toby Lloyd-Jones

Quite a long while back I posted a topic about the pictures of Toby Lloyd-Jones. Very good stuff. Toby has been kind enough to send me a link to his Polaroid series Streetlights. Again very good stuff. Check it out.

Thanks, Toby. Great to hear from you and nice to know you're still stopping by the place.

civilized ku # 32 ~ creating a world with invoice and dead fly

Dead fly with invoice • No Embiggen - it's a Polaroid

There has been much discourse and discussion on The Landscapist regarding truth in photography and words with pictures. Recently, I mentioned an intro essay by Mark Kingwell from the book Burtynsky - China titled, The Truth in Photographs, in which Kingwell deals rather nicely with truth.

Here's a passage which struck a chord with me - Photographs are not multiple depictions of some single reality, waiting out there to be cornered and cropped, and somehow relugating, even in cornering and cropping, how/what the image means. Rather, photographs offer multiple meanings. The presented image is not a reflection, or even an interpretation of a singular reality. It is, instead, the creation of a world.

Yikes ... holy cow ... scratch my back with a hacksaw - I don't know if I have ever read/heard so simple and direct a statement which seems to encapsulate the core/root idea of Art.

In the case of picturing, one is not capturing the world, one is, in fact, creating a world (my world and welcome to it). The phrase 'creating a world' explains, on so many lelvels, good Art - again, in the case of picturing, so many are creating one-dimensional worlds which are filled with the already-known. Worlds which are shallow, not deep. Worlds which are impoverished, not rich. In short, worlds which display no imagination, which we all know, because Mr. Einstein said so, is more important than knowledge.

Imagination - the source of all creativity and originality - is the single most important tool in a photographers kit - both for creating and 'reading' worlds.

Think about it. More on imagination to come.

urban ku # 69 ~ a band of brain-dead brothers

Everyday drama and beauty • click to embiggenIt never ceases to amaze me how many people never take the time to 'see' what is all around them. A case in point is the parking lot at our local supermarket - a place which I am picturing on a surprisingly regular basis. By scenic landscape 'standards', it would be ranked somewhere between ugly and more ugly - there's not much in it glamour-wise ... except for the sky, which on any given day can put on quite a show, albeit subtle rather than grand.

When I was picturing the above scene, together with another variation thereof, people were staring at me in confusion - they were even peering out of the front window of the supermarket. The camera was not obviously pointed at the sky so there was consternation regarding what in the blazes I was picturing. Apparently, they don't look up in this locale.

That said, I'd like to mention a somewhat similar phenomena - this by Janet Duprey, seconded by Teresa Sayward (both are Republican state assemblywomen representing different districts of northern New York), and a group of local citizens.

It was reported in the local newspaper that, at a town-hall meeting of sorts, Duprey/Sayward made points to M. Patricia Smith, the new New York state labor commissioner regarding the fact that "... the North Country has a set of problems, as well as a set of treasures, that are all its own ...", which, as a statement that plays fast and very loose with the words 'treasures' and 'problems', is true enough.

Singled out as a particular circumstance is the presence of the Adirondack Park Agency, which enforces rules designed to control development. Sayward noted the palpable drop in activity (Ed. - development-wise) when crossing the Blue Line (Ed. - the park boundary line as drawn on a map long ago with a blue pencil) into the park near Lake George and the resumption of activity when crossing the line again, out of the park, near Plattsburgh.

Duprey remarked on the difficulty people inside the park have trying to infuse life into a business or industry when the area is so regulated. The subject struck a resonant cord with the gathering, as Sayward was roundly applauded for making the point.

Not that Seyward or Duprey read this blog, but I would like to respond directly to 2 points.

1. re: ...the North Country has a set of ... treasures... - yes it does. Those 'treasures' are incredibly obvious to anyone with half a brain - the area's natural resouces and their undeveloped wilderness character together with the small-town character of its villages and hamlets. Those treasures are why, every year, millions of money-spending tourists visit the park. Those treasures are why, every year, a significant number of money-spending people retire to, move to, or buy second homes here.

Is there something about this that you (Duprey/Seward) don't underdstand?

The area is simply not suited for large-scale industrial development. The typography and the infrastructure (dictated by typography) will not support it. And, in case you haven't noticed, there is no ready labor force to support large-scale industry.

Get it? The only way with which to change the infrastructure/ready labor force situation is one that is sure to devastate the 'treasures' which are now the drivng force behind the region's only 'large-scale industry', i.e., tourism.

2. re: the Adirondack Park Agency, which enforces rules designed to control development ... - it's a very short and very simple set of connect-the-dots between the APA and the area's treasures. Eliminate the APA and, in very short order, the so-called free market will eliminate the treasures. Without a doubt, history, past and recent, tells us this.

IMO, Seyward and Duprey are glad-handing politicians who parrot a vote-getting 'populist' view - we'd all be rich and living like the famous, if only government would just leave us alone. In this case, the bogeyman, in the form of the APA, is alive and well.

What I want to know from them is simple:

Define 'treasure'.
Define 'industry', specifically, what kind of industry, do you believe is suitable for the area?
Define a detailed plan for attracting such industry.
Define an actual plan for working with the APA to protect the region's character. One that goes beyond your thinly veiled and oft-stated attempts to dismantle/neuter it.

If you can't do this, you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

Update on Monday, June 4, 2007 at 09:27PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comments: Tim Atherton wrote: "I think that's maybe topography not "typography"... ? - Okay, I'm trying to imagine some giant phrase in Times Roman being cut into the landscape :-) Rather like the Cerne Abbas Giant."

my response: Good one, Tim. I've been working like a madman for last 2 weeks on - guess what? - typography. Guess it was an typographic slip.

Brett Kosmider wrote (in part): "I dream of something like the APA to come into the area up in 'dese here parts known as Door County, undoubtedly Wisconsin's premiere vacation/retirement destination. I say "vacation slash retirement" because recent unchecked development of retirement homes, condos and high density housing is destroying the very character that makes Door so unique..."

FYI ~ fly like a bug

Fly like a bug • click to embiggenHugo makes his first major Adirondack marketing debut. This is a spread from the new 2007 Activity Guide - a project which I am bringing to completion today (right, Carol?).

The picture is from last weekend when I took Hugo to play mini-golf and to jump around in those inflatible things. All the while he was keeping a sharp eye on the bungy jumping thing. He eventually said that he wanted to do it - "Me not scared".

He loved it because, as he said, "Me fly like a bug". Living as we do in the Adirondacks, 'bug" is the proper and fitting analogy. He's a smart little bugger.

Update on Friday, June 1, 2007 at 01:13PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Aaron wrote(about my ex); I can tell you that Sharon (my mother/Nana) is not too happy with you regarding this photo! I think her words were "is he nuts? I wanna see Hugo live to be 3!"