civilized ku # 101 ~ doppelganger

Lower Manhattan from Brooklyn • click to embiggenIt was a delightful weather-wise weekend in Manahattan.

On Saturday, I (and my friend Robert) pulled ourselves away from watching the USA kick the Euro-trash golfers around the old golf course and went over to Dumbo, a Brooklyn neighborhood located right on the East River under and around the Brooklyn Bridge. Dumbo is emerging, or attempting to, as one of NYC's premier arts districts (with an emphasis a photography galleries in particular).

It seems to have a way to go in that quest but we did stumble upon one very interesting photo exhibition, DOPPELGANGER by Cornelia Hediger at the Klompching Gallery.

From the exhibition statement:

In this richly colorful series, the persona of the artist is the central figure, performing a psychological struggle with her doppelgänger — a fictional ghostly double of a living person, widely understood as sinister and a harbinger of bad luck. These striking images will amuse, challenge, intrigue and captivate the viewer.
04.01.07 • click to embiggen

Each image is constructed from six to nine photographs, employing a device which is increasingly prevalent in contemporary photography — that of the tableau-vivant, in which a pictorial narrative is carefully choreographed into a single image. Through the presentation of different characters, Hediger explores notions of the uncanny, the conscious / unconscious and moral ambiguity — perceptively juxtaposed with a fine-drawn level of dry humor.

Without prevaricating around the bush, let me state un-categorically that I really like this work. Left unchecked by common sense (and the wife), I'd be inclined to own quite a few of these pictures with my first choice being the picture, 04.01.07, displayed with this entry.

Any comments and/or opinions?

man & nature # 42 ~ Amtrak's Adirondack

Along Lake Champlain • click to embiggenAs far as I am concerned, a window seat on the Lake Champlain side of Amtrak's Montreal - NYC Adirondack is worth its weight in gold. The train spends much its travel time along Lake Champlain perched right next to the shoreline and, on a glorious day like last Thursday, the views are a treat.

From my neck of the woods, the trip into Manhattan is a 7.5 hour ride. Virtually all of that time is spent along a waterway - above Albany (the 1/2 way point), along the West shore of Lake Champlain, and, below Albany, along the East shore of the Hudson River.

It really is a bit of a magic-carpet ride
Westport Train Depot • click to embiggenmade all the more so for me because of the transition that I experience from boarding the train at a classic rural depot and disembarking in the center of one of the biggest cities on the planet.

It is, as they say, a real trip.

man & nature # 41 ~ the flow of time

Time flows on • click to embiggenYesterday's entry regarding time drew a few but diverse number of responses, a few of which I'll try to address in today's entry.

The easiest one to answer is Aaron's question; ... portraits too? not candid or narrative portrait photography...but something more along the lines of Mapplethorpe?

It would be easy to say that, above all, time is most evident in portraits - I mean, people age and grow and change in so many ways - but I won't. Simply because I see convoluted time in so many genré of photography. To some, the possibility of time may be more obvious in portraiture, but not so for me - it's there in portraits the same as it is in the picture of a rock.

Anil asked if the same held true for "abstracts". If by "abstracts", Anil means pictures like his Desert Dreams pictures, then the answer is "yes". In "abstracts" of the natural world - or even abstracts of a more man-made variety, time is very evident to my eye and sensibilities.

To be perfectly concise, as Matt mentioned (and Cedric questioned), time itself and the notion of time are two of the medium's most important contexts, or, integral characteristics. Think about it. After all, at its most basic level every photograph ever created uses time in the form of a timed shutter as one of the essential ingredients in its making.

It is beyond me to think how a photograph can be seen or understood so as to negate or be divorced from the many notions of time contained therein.

Cedric has opined that the photographs in yesterday's entry were "timeless (in the sense that they do not evoke a sense of time) to anyone but the photographer and anyone directly connected to them", a point with which I most hardily disagree. Everything about them, again to my eye and sensibilities, screams about time to me.

The light in both pictures is quite obviously of a highly temporary and rapidly changing nature - the little spot of light in the left-hand picture most obviously so. Turn your head and it's gone. Both images have as their primary referent - in addition to the characteristic of transient light that they share - organic matter. Need I say more about the transient / changing nature of organic matter over time?

And, to address Andreas' comment, Re: how do you combine / what are your criteria? (2 pictures to form a diptych/diptychon), part of the connective-ness of these 2 seemingly at first disparate pictures, is the notion of time - the picture of the natural world suggests the passage of time primarily as a slow thing, one could even say glacial in as much as the erratic was dropped there during the last Ice Age. Just image that passage of time and the implied passage of future time that thing sits in the midst of.

On the other hand, the passage of time in the picture of the man-made arrangement is much more "quick". The natural organic stuff - the flowers - will come and go in a very short period of time (ahhh, my beloved decay) as compared to, say the much older tree in today's entry. And the arrangement of all of the stuff in that picture can be gone in less than a minute if I (or the wife) decide for it to be so. The arrangement would then be replaced some future arrangement.

Underlying the elements of time - both "glacial" and "quick" - is the implied narrative that just as humankind can change the man-made arrangement, he can, and is, at the very least, helping change the "arrangement" depicted in the picture of the natural world.

I would also comment that neither of these pictures require that the viewer have specific knowledge / memories of them in order to connect with time - past, present, future - as represented and suggested in them.

"Nuff said by me - I've got a train to catch (to NYC and a photo gallery crawl). I would like to read more from you.

man & nature # 40 ~ time in a bottle

Let the sun shine in • click to embiggenOne thing about pictures that rings very true to me regarding the notion of time goes like this:

Every picture, except at the exact nano-second it is created, immediately becomes a thing of the past. But, in addition to a picture's life as a thing of past in and of itself, every picture also hints at another past which, of course, is the life of the referent before the picture was created.

The picture nevertheless gives evidence / testament to the once present state of the referent and in doing so gives it a permanent state of being in the present. But, even as one views that past present (in whatever present one may be living), the awareness of both the past and the present in the picture implies future possibilities.

I am discovering, more and more, that this somewhat weird time continuum warp - time spinning over and over upon itself in a bottle (the bottle, of course, being the vessel of the picture), is what I love most about the medium. Every good photograph that I encounter nearly overwhelms me its virtually overlapping sense of past, present, and future. I don't see the picture only as a discrete moment in time. A good picture must be able to transport me to a place in the past - life before the picture was created, link me to the present in a commanding way, and take me into a revelry of future possibilities.

And, as I am again realizing, the photographer has taken me on this time warp dance by touching upon a truth that is connected to the real. And nothing, I repeat, nothing in the visual arts makes a connection to the real better than the medium of photography.

Anyone understand?

coming soon to Canada

A chance to win • click to embiggenJust thought that you might be interested in how some of my ku pictures are used in marketing and advertising.

The featured photo is a variation on the man & nature # 38 picture of a few days ago. The center inset photo features the wife paddling a canoe with Whiteface Mt. in the background and the pictures across the top are just part of our nature.

FYI, if you click to embiggen this picture you will notice an offer along the bottom of the ad (which will appear on the back cover of Canada's Horizon Travel Magazine) for a chance to win a 2 night stay in Lake Placid. If you're anywhere in the vicinity, why not give it a try.

Who knows? You just might get lucky and have the chance to meet both The Landscapist and The Cinemascapist. What a deal.

man & nature # 39 ~ Aasgard

Aasgard Farm, Au Sable Forks, NY • click to embiggenHere in the Adirondacks, there are precious few High Peaks grand panoramic vantage points that are accessible to the casual observer who doesn't want to scale a peak, even just a small one. One of the most picturesque "roadside" views is found right here in my village of Au Sable Forks and, even though it is just 1/2 mile or so from the main thoroughfare, it remains a rather "hidden" place.

This is even more remarkable by the fact that this view of the High Peaks is fronted by Aasgard (Garden of the Gods ~ from Norse mythology) Farm, the longtime home and studio of the famed American artist, author, and political activist Rockwell Kent. Kent lived here from 1927 until his death in 1971.

Kent was an interesting person. He was very successful as both the field of Fine Art and that of commercial art. His book illustration credits were numerous, he has public and private murals in Albany, NY and NYC as well as in Washington, DC (FDR was very kind to Kent). His advertising illustrations were created for the tone-ist of clients - the likes of Cadillac, the stores of Park Ave and 5th Ave, the fashion industry, and so on.

Kent was able to use the financial benefits of his commercial art to finance the life of what could be called that of a gentleman farmer - a dairy farmer to be exact. I don't know how much actual farm work he did - he hired farm workers, and his son, after getting a degree from Harvard, returned to Au Sable Forks to manage the farm. It was a job he must have been spectacularly unsuited for since Kent was forced to fire him. Whereupon, his son stole all his cows - Kent didn't notice they were gone for at least a couple days - and gave them to a local real estate agent as down payment / collateral on a farm of his own.

When Kent eventually discovered the theft, he confronted the real estate agent (whose family descendants still carry on to this day in the real estate biz) and demanded his cows back. The agent refused. Kent waited a few days for a moment when the agent was out working in his own fields, loaded up some friends into the back of his pickup and confronted the agent again. The agent refused again and Kent engaged him in some fisticuffs, the result of which was that he got his cows back.

Kent was also a political activist and he put his art to work for that cause. He became very popular in the Soviet Union, and in 1957, half a million Russians attended an exhibition of his work. Subsequently, he donated eighty paintings and eight hundred prints and drawings to the Russian people. In 1967, he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize - Kent donated the prize money to the women and children of Vietnam, both North and South.

Because of his many pieces of art that supported social causes and ideas, he was considered by most to be a Communist sympathizer, even to the point where the State Department revoked his passport during that wonderful American era of the "Great Red Menace" scare. Kent, not to be cowed and undoubtedly fueled by his commercial financial gains, sued for its reinstatement and emerged victorious in a landmark Supreme Court case.

All of this might have made Kent little more than a "character" in the eyes of the "true" locals, but Kent really pushed the envelope when he started to distribute his bottled milk with the red socialist star on the bottom side of cardboard lid. As far as the locals were concerned, he wasn't a Communist sympathizer, he was a full-fledged effete, un-American, commie-pinko bastard, period, end of discussion.

The net result of this was that, to this day in Au Sable Forks, it's, "Who? Rockwell, who?" There is not a single mention or indication that one of the most renowned American artists of the last century ever existed, much less lived here and created most of his art here. None. Nada. Zip.

man & nature # 38 ~ picturing from the graveyard

A sign of things to come • click to embiggenFYI, you all have Mel Fuentes for putting us over the top, comment-wise and thus ensuring that The Landscapist will remain as a photography blog.

Now, I am not promising that politics / economics will not rear its ugly head from time to time, especially over the weeks leading up to Nov. 2 ...

That said, today's entry is short and sweet because, while mom and dad are off to LA for Aaron's latest gallery show opening, Hugo is here for an extended visit. So here's a quote for you to chew on for a bit:

Remember, that the original state of the minds of uneducated men is vulgar, you now know why vulgar and commonplace works please the majority. Therefore, educate your mind, and fight the hydra-headed monster-- vulgarity... Vulgarity astonishes, produces a sensation; refinement atracts by delicacy and charm and must be sought out. Vulgarity obtrudes itself, refinement is unobtrusive and requires the introduction of education. ~ Emerson

BTW, the answer to yesterday's game was Split Rock Rd. - and only Don knows whether his guess was a good guess or the fruits of prior knowledge.

man & nature # 37 ~ whistling past the graveyard

Erractic split in half • click
to embiggenFor the past couple days, Don has been opining for a return to the good 'ole days:

We now return you to our regularly scheduled photography blog ... and, A silence fell upon the masses......now can we get back to photography, I am 3 credits short of passing this class.

Well, Don - your wish is my command but I feel compelled to correct your statement re: "A silence fell upon the masses".

Point in fact - there have been over 1,300 pages views, over 750 unique visits, and 29 comments in the past 3 days. Now I certainly don't want these statistics to be used out of context or to obscure the fact that these numbers represent real people, but that is a bit of a bump over a more average 3 day span, especially the number of comments. It seems that people are more interested in making comments about the free market than they are about photography.

In any event, here's an attempt to lighten the load - The halved erratic pictured in today's entry is found sitting in a field along a very short road. Anyone care to venture a guess as to the name of that road?

BTW, If I don't get more than 9.666666 comments (the daily average for the past 3 days), I am converting this sucker to a political blog.

Update on Thursday, September 11, 2008 at 02:26PM by gravitas et nugalis

Some of you might be looking at the number of comments on this entry, seeing a 11 and breathing a sigh of relief. But, by my official count, the number is really 7 because cheerleader entries from the wife, admissions of prior knowledge, and second comments from the same commenter DO NOT count.

That said, there some good guesses - Salute to Right Wing Free-market Apologists Ave. and Schism Street are amongst my favorites. Split Rock Road also has a nice ring to it.