medicalscape # 3 ~ permission granted, sort of

Doctor's office ~ Au Sable Forks, NY • click to embiggenRe: medicalscape(s) Sven W asked: When people are involved (e.g medical staff) are you intending to shoot candids or do you need permission to photograph within the perimeter of a medical centre?

Permission? I don't need no stinking permission - I'll just keep on making pictures until someone tells me to stop. That approach has worked so far.

That said, other than the occasional picture of me, I don't intend to picture to many other people. My intent is to feature the rather cold and impersonal aspect of the medical environment.

civilized ku # 662 ~ easy come, easy go

View out the window / Eastman House garden ~ George Eastman House / International Museum of Photography and Film• click to embiggenOne of the smaller exhibits at the GEH / IMP&F was a series of pictures made with the through the viewfinder technique, AKA - TTV (view a bunch of TTV pictures HERE).

IMO, in the right hands, TTV pictures can be quite interesting. That is, if they don't depend entirely upon the technique as their primary source of interest - as always, IMO, the act and art of seeing must still be the thing.

And, relative to that imperative - the act and art of seeing must still be the thing, I was rather disappointed with the most recent issue of Color magazine (no link because the current issue is not online).

My issue with that issue (#10 / Nov 2010) - all 237 pages are devoted to their Portfolio Contest winners - is that very little in the way of the act and art of seeing is in evidence in the various winner's portfolios. Rather, it seems that effects were highly prized by the contest judge - the magazine's special issues art director, Henry Rasmussen.

Effects were everywhere apparent. Gaussian Blur, motion blur, soft focus, stylized / exaggerated color, HDR-to-the-max, were some of the more obvious, but hardly the only, visual effects that were slathered across the pages like bacon grease. The issue was a real page turner - as in, get me through this crap as fast as possible.

Now I'm not about to lay the blame for this effect / technique driven drivel at the door of PhotoShop or the digital domain although computer generated graphics / effects have made the whole lot much easier to implement than they were in the analogue days. No, IMO, it's just flat out laziness - the act and art of seeing is a much more demanding skill to develop and master than is the craft of special effects.

All of that said, there was one winner, albeit a Merit Award, that did catch my eye - Tom M. Johnson and his Lakewood series. His pictures don't scream and shout or depend upon gimmicks or effects. He just shows us something worth pointing a camera at and seeing. Check it out. It's good stuff.

civilized ku # 660-61 ~ feets, do yo stuff

View out the window / Eastman House garden ~ George Eastman House / International Museum of Photography and Film• click to embiggen
"Big game" ashtray and wastebasket ~ George Eastman House / International Museum of Photography and Film• click to embiggenThe guy who brought picture making to the masses, George Eastman, was also an avid big game hunter. His house is still decorated with many of his big game trophies. That said, the elephant's foot wastebasket is a bit much for me to handle.

It reminds me of the story about the Vanderbilt's Adirondack Great Camp, Sagamore, where the Vanderbilts, when advised that the camp needed more waste receptacles on the grounds of the great camp, instructed some of the help to go out and kill a bunch of bear cubs.

What's the connection between dead bear cubs and trash receptacles you might ask? The taxidermy-ed bear cubs were mounted as decorations on hollowed-out tree stumps that were spread around the grounds.

How cute is that? I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time.....

medicalscape # 1-2 ~ a new theme / series

Exam room sink ~ CVPH - Plattsburgh, NY • click to embiggen
Medical records ~ CVPH - Plattsburgh, NY • click to embiggenIt has come to my attention that I have a ever-growing number of medical facility pictures. To date, I have been labeling them as part of my civilized ku series. However, since medical facilities will continue to be part of my future, it's time to start a new series of medicalscape pictures.

While most of the medicalscape pictures have been centered around my heart related experiences, today's medicalscape pictures are centered around my upcoming hernia operation experiences. It certainly seems that I will not be running out of medical experiences any time soon so medicalscape it is.

FYI, I'll have to go back over the past several months of pictures and rename, renumber, and re-tag all of the medical pictures.

civilized ku # 658-59 ~ the BIG lie - really, really BIG ... both the lie and the pictures

The Cinemascapist and a Colorama ~ George Eastman House / International Museum of Photography and Film - Rochester, NY • click to embiggen
Colorama exhibit ~ George Eastman House / International Museum of Photography and Film - Rochester, NY • click to embiggenThe current "featured" exhibit at The George Eastman House / International Museum of Photography and Film is Colorama - a very limited (36 pictures) but, nevertheless, impressive look at Eastman Kodak's massive 40-year / 565 picture Colorama endeavor.

For those not familiar with the Kodak Colorama concept, coloramas were huge 18 feet high x 60 feet long panorama pictures (transparencies), produced at a 1-every-3-week-cycle, and displayed in NYC's Grand Central Terminal/Station at the same 1-every-3-week rate. An estimated 650,000 commuters and tourists viewed this popular attraction every business day.

The avowed purpose of this massive ongoing project was simple - sell cameras and film by introducing the consumer to the joy of making pictures, AKA - memories. That is to say, the joys of creating and viewing memories of a "perfect"/sanitized, white, upper-middle-class, American suburban life.

Case-in-point, blacks did not make a Colorama appearance until 1969, nearly 2 decades after the start of the Colorama project. And women ... they were most often portrayed as the model of a picture-perfect mom/wife - who all somehow appear to be completely devoid of possessing anything resembling carnal knowledge - or as an ever-smiling companion for a happy and nattily attired male. Children ... they are all cute as a button and all well above average.

Of course, and perfectly understandable given the marketing objective of the Colorama project, there is not a hint of divorce, discord, alcoholism, spousal/child abuse, poverty, criminal activity, war, racism, gender discrimination ... that is to say, all of the other things that were, and continue to be, part-and-parcel of American life. Which is to say, part-and-parcel of life on planet earth.

Relative to all of that, it is notable that the exhibit and the companion catalog both feature the following observation by Guy DeBord (from his book, The Society of the Spectacle):

The real world is replaced by a selection of images which are projected above it, yet which at the same time succeed in making themselves regarded as the epitome of reality.

In the exhibit catalog intro essay, Dreaming in Color: America and the Kodak Colorama - Alison Nordstrom, Ph.D., Curator, Dept. of Photographs GEH/IMP&F, Nordstrom opines about the Coloramas that ...

.... these big bright pictures would have been a constant, still, and resonating presence, offering, perhaps, an escapist portal for the "bright young men in gray flannel suits rushing around New York in a frantic parade to nowhere...pursuing neither ideals nor happiness" ... they proffered an almost unchanging vision of idealized and perfect landscapes, villages and families, American power and patriotism, and the decorative sentimentality of babies, puppies, and kittens ... [B]eneath the Colorama's memorializing gaze, the gray flannel dads whose daily toil enabled this ceremony of suburban (life) were validated by this fantasy nod to the ideal calenders of their families' lives.

What I find very interesting and intriguing about all of this is that, while the Soviet oligarchy was making idealized images of the working class - what we in the West called Soviet "propaganda" - in order to help keep the busy bees working, the Capitalist oligarchies in America were busy making "advertising" in order to keep the gray flannel dads rushing around in a frantic parade to nowhere - all the while pursuing a "idealized fantasy nod" to the epitome of reality.

How sad and, ultimately, as we are all discovering today, how false, hollow, and destructive.

civilized ku # 654-57 ~ Labor Day parade

Picture making back at me ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
Labor Day parade ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

civilized ku # 653 ~ the good life

Murky water • click to embiggenIt's good to be back home amidst familiar surroundings.

civilized ku # 649-52 ~ shock(ed) and awe

Wired for my reboot • click to embiggen
My parent's gravesite ~ Rochester, NY • click to embiggenI'm back.

Upon my late-day return from Rochester on Thursday, I immediately slipped into prepping for my 2nd Cardioversion on Friday. Friday was taken up with the procedure and Saturday was a day of rest, relaxation, and recuperation - from, not only the procedure, but also my time in Rochester where a death, a wake, a funeral, a bit of support for the ex-wife, 3 rounds of golf, and a number of visits with friends and relatives really tuckered me out.

That said, I did manage to get in a bit of rest - and practice just in case my Cardiovert procedure went awry - on/at my parent's gravesite while I was in Rochester. Fortunately, the Cardiovert when well and my heart is once again back in rhythm but I'm certain that my practice time will be put to good use at some future point in time.

BTW & FYI, the wired picture was made by the wife.