diptych # 35 ( picture window # 50 / single women # 26) ~ the beat goes on

picture window / single women ~ Chelsea, NYC / Hoboken, NJ • click to embiggenSometimes some projects just seem to slide on by without much attention. I really don't know whether that's because: a) I have too many projects going on, b) I can't bring myself to focus on just one body of work, c) the world at large just offers up to many diverse picturing referents, or, d) fear of commitment.

Whatever the cause - and I suspect that it's an unholy combination of all of the above multiple choice answers - while I was in NYC and environs, I did manage to add to 2 of my longstanding bodies of work, picture windows and single women.

diptych # 33-34 ~ taking or making redux

@ the W Hotel ~ Hoboken, NJ • click to embiggenCorner / E4th and Ave.A ~ New York, NY • click to embiggenOn the entry, diptych # 31 ~ my thoughts on taking or making, John Linn commented:

First of all, the diptych attached works particularly well for me. Perhaps it is the color, or the relationship of the referents (to use your term), or the contrasting plains.

Which brings me to the text. By assembling these two images into one picture did you not make an image after taking it? I believe the making (assembling) has created a stronger picture than either of the pictures separated.

I may be splitting hairs / parsing words but, to my way of thinking and making pictures, the moment I tripped the shutter I made the image by using my eyes and in my mind's eye. At that point, the image was made.

Without a doubt and after processing the image file, I produce a print or representation thereof for viewing. However, once again to my way of thinking, the processing of producing a print (or prints in the case of a diptych) is a rather rote craft (albeit carefully and skillfully executed) of putting the previously made image on paper / the web / whatever.

IMO, the printing process is merely the act of making the already made image visible (or placing the already made image on a substrate) - certainly an important act but one which is made possible entirely by the existence of what has been previously made.

At least, that's how I see it.

civilized ku #2532 ~ art

Recycling / concept art ~ New York, NY • click to embiggenAs mentioned, while in NYC, we - me, the wife and Cindy H. (my pictures+words collaborator) - visited Chelsea to view some art and get some creative juices flowing. Of particular note, photography -wise, was an exhibit by Yang Yi, Uprooted and one by Martin Parr, Life's a Beach.

Yang Yi's work (read about it here) was both visually and conceptually interesting. Referents aside, his pictures were conceptually very much along the same thought line as my Life without the APA work. While my pictures reflect my nightmare vision (a dream state) of what might be, Yang Yi's pictures are instigated by his own dream state about what actually is:

"One morning, I don’t remember when, I woke up in a sweat, my heart pounding in alarm ... [I]n my dream, I appear, clothed; I come and go along these familiar alleys. I revisit my old school, the dazzle of lights emanating from the cinema, the riverside where I used to swim, the rooftops where I once went to get a breath of fresh air, the winding pathways… all is in darkness, unattended, there are no friends or relatives to be found anywhere. Where do all of these bubbles and floating objects come from? It becomes difficult to breathe, I fail to grasp anything, I scream but no sound can be heard…"

Yi's C prints are big - 41 × 59 inches/105 × 150 cm or 28 × 39 inches/70 × 100 cm. The larger size is priced in the $11,000-15,000US range. The smaller size in the $6,500-7,000US range. Nice prices if you can get it.

Martin Parr's beach pictures are anything but a dream. Instead, they illustrate ("steering a perilous course between objectivity and voyeurism") a reality about which he claims, "A day at the beach is the same the world over." As Susie Parr writes:

The beach is the place where public and private worlds intersect, a curious mix of defence and intimacy. Here, unstructured space is staked out and temporarily transformed, through artefact and ritual, into personal territory. In close proximity to others doing the same thing, a bit like being on a long haul flight, people let down their guard, revealing the secrets of their bodies, habits and relationships to anyone who cares or dares to look, as they dream and doze on the sand. read more here

Parr's exhibit was riotously visual and very entertaining. So much so that I purchased his book (signed by Parr) The Last Resort. Highly recommended.

civilized ku # 2527-31 ~ alien landscape

Flowers / W Hotel ~ Hoboken, NJ • click to embiggen
Front desk / W Hotel ~ Hoboken, NJ • click to embiggen
Hipster / W Hotel ~ Hoboken, NJ • click to embiggen
Lights / W Hotel ~ Hoboken, NJ • click to embiggen
Walkers / W Hotel ~ Hoboken, NJ • click to embiggenThe common areas of the hip/trendy upscale hotel (W Hotel) the wife and I stayed in Hoboken kinda looked and felt like an alien landscape. Kinda weird in a good kinda way if ya like that kinda thing.

civilized ku # 2527 ~ hipster in an alien landscape

Hipster at the W Hotel ~ Hoboken, NJ • click to embiggen

civilized ku # 2526 ~ room with a view

Lower Manhatten / Freedom Tower ~ Hoboken, NJ • click to embiggenThe view from our Thursday night hotel room. It's what you get for $500US/night (parking is included) which, fortunately, is expense account covered.

Today (Saturday), it's off to Chelsea and some photography galleries. Let you know if I see anything of note.

diptych # 33 (ku # 1242-43) ~ leaving a shape belonging not to the subject

Seaweed and rock ~ Blue Rocks - Nova Scotia, Canada • click to embiggenJohn Szarkowski wrote, when writing about The Frame as one of the medium's five inherent characteristics:

The edges of the picture were seldom neat. Parts of figures or buildings or features of landscape were truncated, leaving a shape belonging not to the subject but (if the picture was a good one) to the balance, the propriety, of the image.

IMO, not a whole lot more needs to be written / stated about the subject of good "composition".

diptych # 32 (civilized ku # 2524-25) ~ my thoughts on taking or making

A sign of things to come ~ Peggy's Cove - Nova Scotia, Canada • click to embiggenIn a recent blog entry, Termin -al -ology on TOP, Mike Johnston wrote about the concept of the taking v. the making of pictures. For the most part, the entry and subsequent comments revolved around the idea that depressing the shutter button constituted the taking of a picture and that the making of something (for display of some kind) from the raw material is, by definition, the act of making a picture.

I disagree.

Not that, at least in one sense, Mike's assertion is wrong. However, IMO, while the act of taking may be limited to the mere pressing of the button, the making of a picture - as opposed to the making of a print or viewable jpg file - starts and essentially begins and ends in the head of a picture maker. That is not to write that various printing techniques which might be employed in the making of a viewable presentation plays no part in the making of a picture. No, not at all. However, what I am writing is that the choice of referent and the technique employed in realizing that vision at the moment of image capture is where any subsequent making is primarily determined.

To wit, if a person with a camera does not apply considerable attention to Jon Szarkowski's 5 elements (as proffered in his seminal book The Photographer's Eye) of photographic vocabulary - The Thing Itself, The Detail, The Frame, Time, and Vantage Point - the resultant pictures will indeed be merely taken and not made. And regardless of how much time and attention is employed in the making of a picture's presentation, I don't think that it's possible to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, or, in more crude terms, turn shit into shine-ola.

Consider this from the way-back machine:

The value and rank of every art is in proportion to the mental labour employed in it, or the mental pleasure produced by it. As this principle is observed or neglected, our profession becomes either a liberal art or a mechanical trade. In the hands of one man it makes the highest pretensions, as it is addressed to the noblest faculties: in those of another it is reduced to a mere matter of ornament ... ~ Sir Joshua Reynolds Director / Royal Academy, c. 1768

Could not have written it better myself.