civilized ku # 1188 ~ shedding a little light

Parking lot fence and light ~ Lake Placid, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenAs I mentioned previously, our local newspaper has a feature called "SpeakOut" which allows anonymous letters / comments to be published. I assume the idea behind this feature is to let people "speak their minds" without fear of any form of reprisal/blow-back, although, retort/response is allowed. As an added bonus, the feature can be highly amusing inasmuch as if you don't laugh, you'll most likely cry.

That said, whatever the reason for it, people are speaking their mind even if it's only the size of a pea. Today's case in point (in its entirety):

The protesters are complaining about everything they see without sound reasoning behind it. Even though many of these people are educated, no coherent thought is employed in their actions. Where did they acquire their points of view? Why are they so off base? I think our education system is to blame here. These people have has their minds crippled by teachers and professors on the far left as part of their control agenda. If you think this is not true, talk to some of them, they spit out Marxist theology more than traditional American values of fairness and justice.

Now, I won't go into the author's totally "off base" idea of Marxist theology or his/her ignorance, re: the made-very-plain POV of the Occupy movement. A POV which clearly states (and the author obviously misses) that their many broad-based concerns are, in fact, centered around the loss of the "fairness and justice". A loss made possible by the moneyed corruption of the American political and financial worlds and spheres of influence. No, I won't go there simply because the author, by dint of his/her words, has the odor of a Fox News true believer, so what would be the point?

That said, where I would like to go is to the doorstep of the notion of "traditional American fairness and justice".

Why is it nearly every time I hear/read that phrase, or one very much like it, it is coming from the mouth/pen of a white upper middle class / wealthy person, most often of European Protestant descent? Although, Fox News and the Republican echo chamber (or it the other way around?) seems to have white lower class people - a class that hasn't experienced a lot of fairness and can't afford a lot of justice - believing in the loss "traditional" American fairness and justice as well. But why is it, be they "educated" or not, they all have no notion of - or perhaps more accurately, choose to ignore it - the actual history of "traditional American values of fairness and justice". Exactly what "tradition" are they citing?

Are they referring to the "tradition" of the fairness and justice accorded to native Americans? The "tradition" of the fairness and justice meted out at the Salem witch trials? Perhaps it's the "tradition" of the fairness and justice dealt out to one successive wave of American immigrants after another - you know, all those non-white / non-Northern European micks, spics, wops, kikes, hunkies, chinks, slant-eyes, slope-heads and their ilk?

Or is it that "tradition" of the fairness and justice experienced by black Americans before the Civil War and continuing thereafter with beatings, lynchings, and denial of basic human dignity and and the rights accorded (theoretically) to all Americans?

On the other hand, it just might be the "tradition" of the fairness and justice experience by children in all of those unregulated free-market sweatshops? Maybe it's the "tradition" of the fairness and justice dealt to union organizers by the early Captains of Industry and their Pinkerton minions? Or, quite possibly, they are referring to the "tradition" of the fairness and justice American women have enjoyed throughout our history?

I mean, there are so many fine examples of the "traditional American values of fairness and justice" it's difficult to know to which ones they are referring.

But, of course, by the mere fact of even mentioning all of these (there are countless more) fine examples of "traditional" American values of fairness and justice, I must just be - it's so obvious - one of those commie, pinko, socialist, elitist, and "mind crippled" far leftists working on the "control agenda".

civilized ku # 1187 / ku # 1120-24 ~ the 6th season / even more things to contemplate as they are ...

Yesterday's twig haul ~ around Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
Backyard ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
Reeds ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
Thicket # 2 ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
Thicket # 3 ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
Thicket # 4 ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
Thicket # 5 ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenIt has been said and, at this point commonly accepted, that the Adirondacks have 5 seasons - the standard 4 seasons plus the Mud season, which is sandwiched between Winter and Spring. It should go without stating, Mud season is not featured, nor for that matter even mentioned, in any tourism marketing materials / endeavors.

IMO, I believe with all my heart and soul there is also an another season, albeit unnamed, unrecognized, and (obviously) unheralded. That season, the 6th season, is the Twig season, another 'tween-er season which is sandwiched between Fall and Winter.

To be certain, twigs can be found, seen, and pictured aplenty all throughout the year here in the Adirondacks. Twigs, all alone or in tangles and thickets, are everywhere. However, it is only during Twig season that they are revealed in all their twiggy and, most often, tangled and twisted glory.

Sure, sure. Twigs are also on prominent display during the Mud season but who in their right mind wants to slog around in all that mud.

civilized ku # 1183-86 / ku # 1113-19 ~ the contemplation of things as they are ...

Grazing horse ~ Rt. 9 / along Lake Champlain - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
Driveway ~ Rt. 9 / along Lake Champlain • click to embiggen
Fence ~ Rt. 9 / along Lake Champlain • click to embiggen
Tree ~ Rt. 9 / along Lake Champlain • click to embiggen
Tree # 2 ~ Rt. 9 / along Lake Champlain • click to embiggen
Tangle ~ Rt. 9 / along Lake Champlain • click to embiggen
Sumac ~ Rt. 9 / along Lake Champlain • click to embiggen
Sumac # 2 ~ Rt. 9 / along Lake Champlain • click to embiggen
Posted ~ Rt. 9 / along Lake Champlain • click to embiggen
Private property ~ Rt. 9 / along Lake Champlain • click to embiggen
Chain gate ~ Rt. 9 / along Lake Champlain • click to embiggen

The contemplation of things as they are, without error or confusion, without substitution or imposture, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention. ~ Francis Bacon

civilized ku # 1182 ~ the light's chasing me

Back-lit bushes ~ Plattsburgh, NY • click to embiggenAs most already know, I am not a light chaser. However, when the light seems to be chasing me, I'll most definitely make a picture.

civilized ku # 1181 ~ picture makers as designers

Red work barge ~ on Lake Placid (the lake) / Lake Placid, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenIn response to my expressed desire (civilized ku # 1179) for picture books made by other picture makers, Mary Dennis wrote:

I have tried on several occasions to pull together some sort of book Mark but I am woefully inadequate in design skills. They always look amateur and tasteless in my opinion. The one that I did print and order felt and looked more like a childish, fat brochure than a photo book. I like the idea of a folio better ... It seems like a more manageable project than a book, at least for me.

In my experience, Mary is not alone in her perceived failure to design a non-"tasteless / amateur / childish" looking picture book. In many ways, this design failure is a bit of a mystery to me, especially so when the picture maker in question, such as Mary, is very accomplished, re: making well "designed" pictures. That is to say, pictures which evidence a creative and sophisticated organization / utilization of space on the 2-dimensional surface of a print. IMO, that skill is nothing if not a design skill.

That said, it is obvious that many skilled picture makers don't really understand that skill - in many cases, a rather intuitive ability - and, consequently, don't know how to harness it in the design of a page, much less a book.

However, that said, the real problem, as I see it, is simply that most picture makers ignore or forget the KISS principle. In my experience many of them try too hard to fancy-up a book instead of just keeping it plain and simple. They end up adding too many design elements and techniques which, unless one is very skilled as a designer, totally mucks up the look of the thing. In fact, a very skilled designer would most likely, in the case of a picture book wherein the star of the show is the pictures, keep it simple and clean looking, letting the pictures speak for themselves.

Think about it. How many picture books of the work of "famous" picture makers use any design technique other than clean white pages and occasional full bleed pages - in either case, one picture per page - to showcase the pictures? I mean, it doesn't get any simpler than that. The resultant look and feel of a book so designed can only be described as "elegant" or "classy".

The other design consideration which trips up many non-designers is the use of text/typefaces. Again, keep it simple, stick with classic book typefaces - Helvetica (sans serif), Times New Roman (serif) and the like. If that idea still perplexes you, just pick up virtually any professionally designed picture book and look at how the typography and text are presented. Pick a look you like and just flat out copy it.

All of that said, here's the best advice I give you - have your book printed by a provider which offers a blank full bleed page layout option. Forget trying to layout and design a book using provided page/layout templates. Those templates only for complete morons or, perhaps more charitably, those without Photoshop or Photoshop skills.

Photoshop (and perhaps other picture editing software) allows one to create editable type layers and unlimited picture placement and size. I just create a blank master page file sized to my intended book size and work from there. When all the pages are finished, I flattened the file, save it as a jpeg, upload to the photo book service provider and put them into the book in proper order.

It doesn't get any easier than that.

None of the above is rocket science. It doesn't take a design genius to make it work. And, in the digital design world, one can endlessly move stuff around and try different typeface fonts and sizes at will.

One of things I am considering, in an effort to help, is to offer book design help (I won't do it for you) to those who have a book in the works. A sort of critique which is designed to help the fledgling book creator get their feet on the ground, so to speak. No charge, just some friendly advice and perhaps a break on the purchase of the finished book.

Any takers?

civilized ku # 1180 / food ~ an election day tradition

Remains - chicken biscuit and gravy dinner ~ United Methodist Church / Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggenIt's a tradition here in the good ol' US of A, on election day, for one organization or another - schools (PTAs), churches, firefighter associations, et al - to prepare (and sell) dinners for those who visit nearby polling places. They are generally fundraisers for the respective organizations / groups. So, yesterday (election day) I picked up 2 chicken biscuit with gravy, mash potatoes, pees, squash, cranberry sauce, Waldorf salad, and apple or pumpkin pie dinners for our dining pleasure.

Not a bad, in fact, a very tasty deal for 8 bucks.

FYI, this picture was made under the dreaded CFL illumination. A scene like this with whites, neutral grays and blacks is idea for nailing a WB setting for CFLs.

civilized ku # 1179 ~ wherein I see the light, pt II

Bathroom wall • click to embiggenMore sunny day light streaming in a window.

civilized ku # 1178 ~ the reenchantment of art

Samuel Champlain monument base ~ Plattsburgh, NY • click to embiggenIn her essay The Reenchantment of Art - 12/87 in the long defunct New Art Examiner and expanded upon in her 1991 book of the same name - Suzi Gablik wrote:

I have been teaching and lecturing a great deal about the ways that art has become a mirror for the manic materialism of our culture. And as I came to understand how much, as individuals and as a culture, we have suffered our deep creativity and spiritual well-being to become damaged in the bureaucratic drives for power and profit, the need to play by these cultural "ground rules" has lost its meaning for me. Perhaps the possibility exists of liberating oneself from the modern "contingency sickness" and the taken-for-granted assumptions of one's time simply by denying them interest, and turning the attention purposefully toward other areas which are open to influence, like the whole vast universe of the psyche.

I am talking about here about the question of remythologizing of consciousness and the question of mythic thinking - whether it is possible at all today, and if so, in what way, given the inevitable stream of cybernetic simulacra that is now presented and accepted as social reality. I am talking, obviously, about thinking which is less paradigm-bound, and in which a visionary attitude to culture is predominant.

Whew. If you're of a mind to, there's lots to ponder in just those few words and I must admit that when I read the entire essay back in 1987 (I wrote as a photography critic for the NAE), I was very intrigued by Gablik's premise. To wit, as she stated:

My present concerns have to do with how to give our culture back its sense of aliveness, possibility, and magic. It is an an issue that I believe will find resonance in many minds, among all those who are similarly convinced that, in losing the ability to perceive the grand harmonies of the cosmos, our Western civilization has been thrown seriously out of equilibrium.

Keep in mind that Gablik was lecturing, teaching, and writing about a seriously out of whack civilization back in 1987. Her contention that...

In the modern world view, reality has been distorted by a thoroughly negative set of assumptions about the world ... a way of life based on manic production and consumption, maximum energy flow, mindless waste and greed, is now threatening the entire ecosystem in which we live.

All that well before climate weirding / global warming, the recent financial meltdown, numerous consumption bubbles, and, when it comes to cybernetic simulacra, well before the internet all of its glorious connectivity and ever-spawning connectivity devices, not to mention cable television with its 1000s of channels of mind numbing / deadening "content". If the reenchantment of art was suppose to stem that tide, well, IMO, that battle is over but the war goes on.

However, I still believe, now more than ever, in Gablik's idea that what the world needed then, and needs even more so now, is, in fact, a reenchantment of art ...

We have made much of the idea of art as a mirror (reflecting the times); we have had art as a hammer (social protest); we have had art as furniture (something to hang on the wall); and art as a search for the self. Perhaps we need another kind of art ... I am talking about art which speaks to the power of connectedness and establishes bonds, art that calls us into relationship, and thus addresses our failure to grasp what it means to be actively related to the cosmos.

All of that said, I have been involved, in my picture making, in what might be labeled The Reenchantment of Art Movement since the late 70s. At that time, during what was the seminal moment in the development of my picture making / appreciation sensibilities - my participation in the making of the book the new color photography, I began throwing off the constricting chains of the "taken-for-granted" "paradigm-bound" "ground rules" of picture making. What the experience of working on the new color book introduced to me was the beauty to be found in making pictures of what you see rather than of what you have been told is a good picture.

In directing my picturing to that which I see all around me, the everyday / the commonplace / the so-called "banal" and "mundane", I began to discover a beauty and a real, albeit "soft" and subtle , reenchantment of my art which was made manifest as a result of increased connectedness to the world which is all around me. I, was and still am, building relationships, not just with the "grand" tour of iconic grandeur, but with the subtle and transient moments experienced in the many fleeting daily encounters seen during the getting on with everyday life.

And that is why I find it very easy to create bodies of work rather than to focus (ttJN) on creating a succession of single - not necessarily related - "greatest hits" pictures. Since my picturing is an ongoing venture, in a very real sense, I have evolved into a picture diarist (some might prefer photo diarist). Like a word diarist, my "diary" makes the most sense when viewed and read (as in, reading a picture) as a whole. Not that some "greatest hit' type pictures do not emerge from the work, they do, but that is just not the point of my picture making.

That (w)holistic approach is why I like picture books, both my own and those made by other picture makers. It is the driving idea behind my recent book project (my own personal SoFoBoMo, albeit a picture book every month). It is why I have numerous picture books comprised of my pictures already hanging around my house. It is why my picture collecting is aimed at collecting books rather than prints.

And it is why I wish more picture makers like (but not by any means limited to) the The More Original Refrigerator Art guy (Tyler?), who has altogether eschewed even the making of prints much less picture books, or Juha Haataja, who in a grievously erroneous bout of self critiquing thinks that I might think he is a pretty picture maker (I most emphatically do not), or Mary Dennis - I do have a collection of 10 beautiful prints from her Fragments body of work - would make a few pictures books. Or, better yet, a PictureBook-A-Month - ones to which I would subscribed in an reenchanted NY moment.

IMO, each of these pictures makers have contributed much to the advancement of the reenchantment of art. And, it is well worth noting, they have all done so without resorting to any picture making cheap tricks. Each picture maker has and continues to enchant me with straight, honest, connected-to-the-real visions of the world around them and their relationship with/to it.

And, most importantly, by creating pictures of the world as they see it, not as they have been told to picture it.