As I was checking my Recent Came From stats, I noticed a link form a site that I wasn't familiar with so I clicked to check it out. Surprise, surprise - it's a site that Aaron posts on.

And there, in all it's radiant glory was one of my photographs (the 'death' photo above) - one that Aaron stated is "the main image that was/is the inspiration for all of my work. I loved how the panoramic in close quarters captured all of the action and emotion of the scene ..."

Well, scratch my back with a hacksaw. I didn't know that. It's surprising what you find out on the world wide web - as opposed to, say, from the horse's mouth.

FYI, these pictures (a few of over 50 that were used) were made with 2 Widelux cameras - one 35mm format, one 120 format - for a coffee table book, Allegheny General ~ Portrait of an Urban Hospital. I still have the 35mm version although, like most of my roll film cameras, it sits mostly unused. When I was using it for editorial and commercial clients, I used it almost exclusively for interior work because, as Aaron likes with his Cinemascapes, a lot of information and activity can be packed into a single visual tableau.

Captions -

1. Aftermath/Death in the ER (look closely - that' a wide-open chest cavity)
2. Before the death in the ER - trying desparately to save him
3. Lead ER surgeon in the cafeteria after the death in the ER
4. Birth/Life
5. Open-heart surgery (I won't show you the close-ups)

Autumn moonrise with Olympic venues • click to embiggenYesterday was one of those glorious late Autumn days - shirt-sleeve (albeit, long sleeve) weather. Most of the leaves are on the ground which sometimes makes even a middle-of-the-fairway 270 yard drive hard to find. But that didn't effect the view from the 18th green at the end of the round.

These views are presented as they were pictured - in geographic and picturing order from left to right. The moonrise was what got me to bolt to the car and grab the camera. In the center picture, the top section of the new(ish) combined bobsled, luge, skeleton track is visible - the scene of my 2 silver medals in regional luge competition. The track is one mile long, has 20 curves, and drops 420 feet of elevation - in other words, that's equivalent to a 35-40 story building.

Luge speeds are well into the mid-80 mph zone. Non-Olympic class lugers (me) are only allowed to start just above the 1/2 way point (the 'juniors' start) from which 50-60 mph speeds are the norm. Nevertheless, 50+ mph while sliding on your backside inches above the ice is real rush.

On the right is Mt. Marcy - NY's highest at 5,344 ft and growing (the Adirondack Dome is rising every year) - with the 90 and 120 meter Olympic ski jumps in the foreground - and, no, I don't have any ski-jumping medals. An elevator ride back down to the bottom after enjoying the view is good enough for me.

All of the Olympic venues are in constant use for training and World Cup competitions. It's fun when Olympic/world-class athletes and the press come to town. It gives the area are real international flavor.

Muted autumn sunset • click to embiggenRobert Adams also mentions 'grace' as a quality found in good/great pictures. By grace he means that a picture that can be "measured by the apparent ease of its execution".

He goes on to say that, "An Artwork should not appear to have been hard work." Adams mentions an emphasis on 'appear' because certainly no artwork is easy to make." He notes that much photography suggests an "embarrassing strain: odd angles, extreme lenses, eccentric darkroom technique (ed. - and today's Photoshoping) [which] reveal a struggle to substitute shock and technique for sight."

He suggests that the pictures of great photographers (and merely 'good' ones also) are marked by an economy of means, an apparently everyday relationship with their subject matter." Even though this apparent 'ease of execution' and 'everyday relationship' are deceptions (of a sort), he goes on to state that "only pictures that look as if they have been easily made can convincingly suggest that Beauty is commonplace."

Once again, I agree.

Autumn scene • click to embiggenOnce again from Robert Adams; "If the goal of art is Beauty and if we assume the the goal is sometimes reached, even if always imperfectly, how do we judge art?"

IMO, Adams is talking about Art, not art - that is, Fine Art (which engages the mind), not decorative art (which dis-engages the mind). He goes on to state -

"Basically, I think (we judge art) by whether it reveals to us important Form that we ourselves have experienced but to which we have not paid adequate attention. Successful art rediscovers Beauty for us."

Once again, I'm with Adams on this. I am drawn to photography that is in some sense 'a new way of seeing'. I don't mean a new 'technique' (although that's OK). What I mean is a new way of looking at something I have already seen but 'to which I have not paid adequate attention'. Pictures that cause me to 'think again', so to speak.

Adams says something similar - "One standard then, for the evaluation of art is the degree to which it gives us a fresh intimation of Form ... it must in some significant respect be unlike what has preceded it ... if the dead end of romantic vision is incoherence, the failure of classicism, which is the outlook I am defending, is the cliche, the ten thousandth camera-club imitation of a picture by Ansel Adams." (FYI - classicism; Aesthetic attitudes and principles manifested in art ... characterized by emphasis on form, simplicity, proportion, and restraint.)

As most here already know, I'm totally with Adams on this one - the last thing the world needs is another 'camera-club imitation of a picture by Ansel Adams'.

A field in the (autumn) gloaming • click to embiggenIn his essay Beauty in Photography (in the book of the same name), the photographer and writer (about photography), Robert Adams, states that "... the proper goal of art is, as I now believe, Beauty and the Beauty that concerns me is that of Form. Beauty is, in my view, a synonym for the coherence and structure underlying life .... "

I definitely agree on both counts - I mention that just in case you haven't noticed my reference to beauty at the top of your browser window.

Adams goes on to ask/state; "Why is Form beautiful? Because I think it helps us meet our worst fear, the suspicion that life may be chaos and that therefore our suffering is without meaning." Now that's some pretty 'heavy' and 'heady' stuff, but, as the adage states, 'Beauty is more than skin deep.'

It is said that poets write for a single reason - to give witness to splendor. As Adams points out, splendor is a useful word for photographers 'because it implies light - light of overwhelming intensity.'

OK. I'm with him so far. So, if art's point is Beauty in the guise of Form, and Form is a peek at 'light of overwhelming intensity' in the guise of splendor, Adams concludes that, "The Form towards which art points is of an incontrovertible brilliance, but is also far too intense to examine directly. We are compelled to understand Form by its fragmentary reflection in the daily objects around us ..."

So, in keeping with yesterday's notion of 'one long quiet howl', I guess I'm just going to keep howling at the light.

now that's a 'house' boat.

A fire in the backyard fireplace • click to embiggen"American civilization grows more hieroglyphic every day. The cartoons of Darling, the advertisement in the back of magazines and on the billboards and in the street-cars, the acres of photographs in the Sunday newspapers, make us into a hieroglyphic civilization far closer to Eygpt than to England. So said (in 1922) Vachel Lindsay, the poet, writer, and film critic who argued that modern American culture needed a new form of visual literacy - one can only imagine what he might say now.

Lindsay believed that, 'like the great ancient civilizations of Eygpt, modern American culture was to be understood and articulated not through written language but by ferreting out meaning from the seemingly chaotic system of visual signs generated daily on a massive scale. In a brave new/old world, where language was ceding power to image, photography served as an important vehicle through which Americans defined and interrogated their relationship to their rapidly changing world'. ~ from The Art of the American Snapshot

This particular passage carries great meaning and insight for me. Recently, I have mentioned the word 'obsession' as it applies to making Art because I think that word has some meaning for me (but I am not alone) and my Art. I have articulated some other reasons and motivations (see my Artist Statement) behind my drive to make, but I continue on a quest to learn more about my Art and myself and reading about the medium of photography is part of my self psychoanalytical regime.

Well, there is no doubt in my mind that I am using photography 'as an important vehicle' through which I 'define and interrogate my relationship to the rapidly changing world'. And, indeed, I am trying to 'ferret out meaning from the seemingly chaotic system of visual signs generated daily on a massive scale' - a scale that Lindsay could never have imagined.

Those 'visual signs' constitute a new manipulated and manipulating visual language that has been co-opted by the merchants of wealth and power in the service of only their own wanton wants and desires. I believe that, ultimately, it is the siren-song of death ...

... which is another reason why I am trying to construct a visual language that is honest, realistic, human and articulate - an alternative to the prevailing language of preference, that of truthiness - the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true.