urban ku # 135 ~ fiction and truth

History, fiction or both? • click to embiggenStephen Connor wrote; "... Jeff Wall's photographs are "true" in the sense that, yep, he accurately (very) photographed something in the real world. He photographed actual events. But, he truthfully photographed a staged event. The models were really there, really doing what Wall shows them doing, but what they were really doing was acting. So, where does the "truth" lie (so to speak) in these photos? Real photos of real actors really pretending to do something that they really weren't. Except that they were. But not really."

Which brings to mind the fact that fiction can more real than truth. It is the truth of a well-told story. It is true not to life but to a shared experience in imagination. 'Truth' that is imaginative without being imaginary.

Photographers are hard on themselves when it comes to 'truth'. We allow authors, film makers, poets, sculptors and other artists to create 'fictions' in which we can find any number of 'truths' - Tolstoy's War and Peace, Dylan's Masters of War, Picasso's Guernica are ripe with imaginative truths. But, show us an accurate photograph of an actual event, place, or person, one that also tells us a 'story' about that event, place, or person and we start to yammer on about how it isn't 'true'. About how, in fact, it can't be true because, as we all know, a photograph of a thing is not the thing itself.

Maybe it's that the Doubting Thomas' amongst us are too aware of the deceits of the medium to suspend their disbelief in order to enter the realm of belief.

Fiction is history that didn't happen and history is fiction that did. ~ George Orwell

urban ku # 134 ~ 'truth'

A truth • click to embiggenFor those of you who have not, as Paul Maxim opined, "avoided Mark's invitation to express their thoughts on "truth", like it was a visit to the dentist", let me offer the following for your consideration.

Amongst the many definitions of the words 'truth' and 'true' are these; 1. being or reflecting the essential or genuine character of something; 2. conformity with fact or reality; 3. a verified or indisputable fact, proposition, principle, or the like.

In light of these notions, let me ask this question (as one example of a zillion I could ask) - have you never seen a photograph that not only accurately depicts the (pick one) visual ravages, tragedy, insanity, brutality, devastation of war and, by so doing, also conveys clearly and without reservation at least one human 'truth' about such things - something that every rational human being knows to be 'true' about war?

The fact that a 'truth' or something that is 'true' about war is not the whole truth about war does not make that 'truth', untrue or false. There undoubtedly would be more 'truths' about war to be discovered and to know but, once again, I do not see how that negates a truth that any given photograph of war might convey.

Update on Thursday, November 15, 2007 at 08:14AM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Sean McCormick wrote, "... I refuse to apologize for any manipulation I use on my images since, as a former chef, my view has always been that I'm doing nothing more than assembling a recipe -- one uniquely my own -- from raw ingredients.

If my work isn't your cup of tea, no problem. I thank you for the time you gave me and I hope the next artist you encounter is more to your liking."

my response: Sean, I'm not exactly certain what caused you to think that your work isn't my cup of tea. The 'truth' that I am writing about in my last few entries is the implied 'truth', the metaphoric 'truth', the content of a picture that is separate from the form of a picture - the 'truth' of the meaning that can be found in a photograph.

Hope you aren't about to abandon ship.

civilized ku # 61 ~ $57,000 worth of 'civilized'

A Burtynsky Quarry triptych • click to embiggenWhile we're on the subject of 'truth', I came across this from Pablo Picasso re: the act of putting pigment on canvas; "Something sacred, that's it. It's a word we should be able to use, but people would take it the wrong way. You ought to be able to say a painting is as it is, with its capacity to move us, because it is as though it were touched by God .... that is what's nearest to the truth."

Interesting words and thought from a Communist and a dedicated atheist.

IMO, it seems that the idea that photographs are not 'true' or contain no 'truth' is a fanciful invention of the academic art world - a dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin academic theory. A theory that actually seems designed to strip photography of one of its unique media-specific characteristics - its ability to create not only an 'accurate' description of the real world but also a snapshot of the 'truth' about it as well.

Before I go into this idea further, I would really like to hear some opinions on the subject for you. Please let me know some of your thoughts on the matter. If you don't have any, think about it and get some.

FYI - the price of this Burtynsky triptych is $57,000. 3 days after the shows opening, 2 had been sold (along with about 15 other individual prints - of about the same size as one of those pictured here - at $23,000 per). Ain't no starvin' artist here.

urban ku # 134 ~ abiding care

Leaving the American Museum of Natural History • click to embiggenWhile I was reading a review about a photographer's pictures, I came across a sentence that I liked very much wherein the writer stated that to view his pictures in a certain way "... would be to shrug off their (and our) abiding care for what we see in them, and the beauty that seems to emerge from such benign attentiveness as well ..."

Does 'abiding care' and 'benign attentiveness' fit into your picturing?

urban ku # 133 ~ 'truth'

Wildness close to someone else's home • click to embiggenRichard Avedon wrote, "All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth."

On my long journey home from Pittsburgh, I was actually thinking along these lines about the picture presented here. I made it from the window of friend's loft (where I was staying) while I was in Pittsburgh. It certainly qualifies for Wildness gallery - it's just not wildness close to my home.

In any event, I was thinking about this picture because, in a way, it defiantly stands in direct contrast to the preferred visual image of Pittsburgh as decreed by the Pgh Chamber of Commerce. Those pictures almost always present a dramatic view of the city skyline as seen from the top of Mt. Washington (not actually a mountain, MW is a very steep and high hillside right across the river from downtown Pgh. The pictured view is always dressed in a soft, alpenglow-like light which gives a jewel-like presence to the cities many glass enclosed towers.

It could be said that these pictures, in their own visitors-bureau-porn way, could be said to be 'accurate' - the view does exist and it is, at times, bathed in a soft glowing light. But ...

Once a visitor or resident descend from the lofty geographic and pictorial heights of Mt. Washington, the (by far) most commonly encountered view throughout the city is much more akin to that pictured above. In fact (and in 'truth'), the cityscape is mostly that of a worn-out, run-down, rust-belt urban environment. Somewhat depressing, in fact.

So, both representations are, in fact, 'accurate' but it would be my contention that only one of them is 'truth'.

Update on Tuesday, November 13, 2007 at 06:27PM by gravitas et nugalis

Featured Comment: Paul Maxim wrote, ",,,first you quote Avedon's famous line where the first word of the second sentence is "NONE" and then you conclude your little editorial by saying that your image (or images like yours) "is truth". So logically you are saying that your photograph should not be included in Avedon's generalization. Somehow, unlike most of us other mortals, you are privvy to actual Truth.

Only in your mind, Mike.

My response: "the truth" may, in fact, be only in my mind. Something that I think is true for most of us - we all have our own 'truths', many of which turn out to be shared' truths. But that's not really my main point.

If Avedon was implying that in and of themselves 'none of them is the truth', I am inclined to agree ,at least up to a point, but only if the pictures are presented in a void/vacuum. IMO, 'in a void/vacuum' means without the benefit of words. With words, many of them are the truth.

FYI - my little prison cell

My little prison cell • click to embiggenThis is where I have been spending my time the past day and half.

It's a really boring experience in as mush as you sit and wait for a press sheet to check and then spent maybe 10 minutes checking, finding issues, talking to the press guy. Then he goes away and you wait until he comes back with the next sheet.Then you repeat the above. You do this until the sheet is 'right', then you sit and wait for hours until the press run is done.

Then you do it again with the next sheet....

CN Tower ~ Toronto, Canada

Looking down from near the top of the CN Tower, Toronto CA

Hey all, I'm off to Pittsburgh, PA for a press check. I'll be checking in and maybe posting. In any event, the Wildness Close to Home Gallery is off to fine start. Keep it up.

fun on the beach

Screwing around on the beach • click to embiggenOne of the 'things' inherent in the Polaroid medium is the propensity to just have fun. The instant feedback one gets from viewing a print, as opposed to chimping, is very intoxicating, addictive and, if you give in to the urge, expensive.

I can state, without reservation, that Polaroiding is by far the most fun I've ever had with a camera. The Polaroid experience really promotes spontaneity and, at times, rather frivolous behavior, photography-wise. For me, it is also the one photo format that I use more than any other to photograph people.

I don't know exactly why this is, but I do know that people tend to relate to a Polaroid camera in way that is different than the way they react when you point a slr-type camera at them and I tend to act and think in a different manner as well.

Photographers talk about how their picture taking MO is different when they use a view camera as opposed to a small format camera. That's never been the case for me. I switch between those formats and my vision and style come through unchanged. It's only with the Polaroid(s) that I become a changed man.

Anyone else out there with a similar experience?