Andrews Street bridge • click to embiggenI am growing very weary, in discussions regarding truth in photographs, of reading / hearing the sweeping and oft-repeated phrase that there can little, if any, truth in photography because "truth is a very relative term and is based on opinion". Sure, I am well aware that the truth and the idea of truth have been used, abused, parsed, sliced, diced, and generally kicked around since forever, but...

... then again, did you ever read the US Declaration of Independence? You know, the one that we base our way of life upon. The one that states, "We hold these truths to be self-evident." The one that states that "all men are created equal". The one that states that "... whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Now, before someone cries "foul" and opines that there is a great difference between the truth of and the truths contained in the Declaration of Independence and the truth and truths possible in the medium of photography, I mention the D of I just to dispense with the grand sweeping nature of all truth being 'relative' and subjective. Simply put, there are lots of self-evident universally accepted truths that are the bedrock of a sane society.

The mere fact that some disagree with or don't accept these truths does not invalid those truths. Hitler obviously didn't 'believe' the principle truths of the US D of I. He did not accept the idea of basic human worth. He did not believe that all men are created equal. He defied, on a massively destructive scale, virtually all that a sane society holds to be truth, but his actions did not invalidated those truths. The actions and beliefs of an insane person or society do not constitute an alternative and subjective truth.

That said, on to the subject of truth in photography / photographs.

Take, as an extreme example, Jeff Wall's photograph, Dead Troops Talk (a vision after an ambush of a Red Army patrol, near Moqor, Afghanistan, winter 1986).
Dead soldiers talking • click to enlargeJust the title alone tells us that the picture must be a 'fabrication' because, as we all know, dead soldiers don't talk and all of Jeff Wall's pictures are staged and carefully orchestrated 'fabrications'.

It's a given that the actual referent in this photograph, the dead soldiers talking, are an 'untruth'. It's a given that the event, as depicted, never happened as anything other than a staged event for the purposes of picturing. In fact, each individual grouping of dead soldiers was pictured separately and assembled digitally, so, again in fact, there wasn't even an actual scene or event as pictured. In short, everything about the referent in this photograph is 'untrue' and not 'real'.

That said, IMO, you'd have to be a fool or mentally dysfunctional not to 'see' a lot of truth and truths in this photograph. And the mere fact that the truth of and many of the truths 'seen' therein will be arrived at subjectively by each individual, does not by any reckoning mean that no universally accepted truth or truths will be self-evident.

The picture speaks of very 'real' horrors and mysteries. It implies a veritable host of others as well. It speaks to many truths - the horrors of war being the most obvious. It does not, and can not, tell us whether those horrors were justifiable in this particular case - that 'truth' is very subjective and based on political opinion.

But, ultimately, please don't tell me, despite the fact that it is an utter 'fabrication', that this photograph is not a true statement about what it means to be human or that a whole host of truths can not be seen/found within its frame.

FYI, the Jeff Wall picture is © Jeff Wall and it is listed by the Marian Goodman Gallery of New York as a Documentary photograph.

Shattered hopes and dreams * click to embiggendecay # 14 drew a reply from James that, distilled to its essence, said "... Vegas disgusts me. It is, in my opinion, the ultimate example of, to quote Mark, 'dumping all over' America and squandering our resources." If you haven't read my entry, you might want to give it a glance in order to understand why James thought his Vegas anecdote was relevant to the discussion at hand. IMO, it was appropriate.

However, The Landscapist's ever vigilant fact-checker (the guy who lets me get away with nothing), Paul Maxim, disagrees. He opined that; "Sorry, I don't get it. Las Vegas is no worse than most American cities and better than many of them. Is that good enough? Probably not. But to paint this city as the Sodom and Gomorrah of 21st century America is as ludicrous as it is uninformed."

Ok. It seems that we all (me, Paul and James) agree re: Las Vegas - "Las Vegas is no worse than most American cities and better than many of them. Is that good enough? Probably not." But, IMO, Paul's defense of Las Vegas is a bit of damning with faint praise. I, personally, have never considered the phrase "not good enough" to be a positive endorsement of anything that I might be doing.

However, I don't wish quibble over that particular point. I'm more interested in the notion of considering Las Vegas is as "the Sodom and Gomorrah of 21st century America" and I think there is a very good case for thinking of it as such. Why? The manner and message of how the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau (or some such other tourism promotion agency) wants us to think about the place.

All tourism promotion entities are forever trying to come up with the tag line or phrase that most memorably places a mental picture of the place in the perspective tourist's mind. Las Vegas has landed upon the tag line, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas". IMO, you would have to be naive or an idiot to think that what they are suggesting by "what happens in Vegas" is about double parking or jaywalking.

What it suggests to me is activities involving sex, drinking, drugs, gambling, and excessive indulgences that, after you arrive back home, you are not going to brag about (or even discuss) to your wife, your kids, your mother, your priest, or another 'upstanding' citizen of your community. This is not to suggest that some, maybe even most, don't go to Vegas just to have some good clean fun but then, when you think about it, why would they care whether or not what they did in Vegas, stays in Vegas?

IMO, I think that a very good case can be made for considering Las Vegas to be "the Sodom and Gomorrah of 21st century America" if for no other reason than that's how the LVCVB wants us to think about it.

Lamp light • click to embiggenIn yesterday's entry I opined about how perfect life would be if photographers could write / speak about pictures it a manner that "got beyond the rules of thirds or how much they like the color."

Well, only a few ticks of the clock later, I found myself over at TOP looking at this picture. The picture is one of those that is worth at least a thousand words - sorrow, pain, loss, grief, respect, honor, sacrifice, life, death, war, the cost of war, and, strangely enough (at least for me), beauty to name just a few that immediately come to mind. The picture also brings to mind a painting, Christina's World, by Andrew Wyeth and a photograph, Child in Forest, by Wynn Bullock.

But for one moronic soul, the words that came to mind were "crop" and "black & white" - "... if it were mine, I think I would convert it to black and white. What do you think? And how about the man in the upper-right background? I wouldn't, but would anyone think to crop him out .... I think that producing this print in B&W would make a very significant difference. To me this photo explains what the photographer saw and felt, but in B&W, I believe it would have made us better understand what the woman was feeling.?"

my response to these comments is simply: "Kiss my ass."

The only thing that this person got right about this photograph is "... this photo explains what the photographer saw and felt", which, for some reason, isn't good enough for him. Nope, like so many critique-ers on photo forums, this guy, no matter what the circumstances, just has to indulge in the ever ubiquitous "how I would have done it" when, in fact, the only thing that matters is that the "photo explains what the photographer saw and felt".

If photography is not about "what the photographer saw and felt", what the hell is it about?

Taking/making a picture is not a group endeavour - looking for a hobby that is? maybe you should consider line dancing. What the eventual observers of a picture might have done in the same situation has absolutely nothing to do with it, despite the outright deception that is fostered on photo sites that "what I would have done" or, "what I like (or don't like)" about a picture is part of the learning process.

This is not to say that looking at pictures made by others and thinking about what works or doesn't 'work' for you or, yes, even thinking 'what you would have done' differently in the same situation in order to best express your voice is not a valid / valuable exercise. But, essentially telling a photographer who is expressing what he/she saw and felt to do it your way is not only pointless, it's downright insulting to the artist.

But, maybe I'm just belaboring a point that is just an essential difference between artists who are hobbyists and those who are Artists, between those who are seeking the roar of the crowd and those who are doing it for themselves - which is not say that those who are doing it for themselves don't want 'feedback' (both verbal and monetary). Most do.

That said, and IMO, the last thing they want to hear is 'how I would have done it". Me, personally, I would much rather hear that one of my pictures is a steaming pile of s**t, totally without merit, and makes no connection at all than, if only I had done it differently, it would be great. Why? Because the former opinion is about how my picture makes someone 'feel' and that is what Art is all about.

Storm front over Rochester • click to embiggenI have previously mentioned the photography critic A.D. Cleman. His book, light readings, is a collection of his writing - mainly photography / photographer criticism from his Village Voice column, Latent Image - spanning the years 1968-78. For me, the book has 2 primary points of interest:

1. He writes about a number of photographers with whom I am not familiar, so it's a great resource (together with Google) for 'discovering' new (unknown to me) photography and photographers. That alone is worth the price of admission but another bonus is that, even when he writes about a photographer with whom I am familiar, I most often come away with a new insight about that photographer and his/her work.

2. IMO, the #1 reason to read the book is Coleman's writing. Much of his criticism (to 'critique', not to 'criticize') reads like poetry. His descriptions of pictures incite in me many new ways of looking at and 'reading' photographic images. Such as:

Clarence John Laughlin is an obsessed romantic, a Southerner to the marrow, he makes photographs which exude that peculiarly southern aura: nostalgia amplified to the level of metaphor, guilt as a fetish object, decay as perfume. There may be such a thing as a New South, but that is not Laughlin's concern. His focus is strictly on the Old South, that "country of the mind" of Faulkner ... a spiritual territory where rank, decrepit mythologies still live on in hope of resurrection ...

... From the collapsing plantation homes, which are tombs of the past, Laughlin moves to untended cemeteries, and the tombs of the dreamers ...

If only there were more writing about pictures that read like the above. And, if more photographers actually took the time to read such writing, maybe they could talk about or write a forum critique about pictures that got beyond the rules of thirds or how much they like the color.

BTW, before reading Coleman, I was not familiar with Clarence John Laughlin. After reading Coleman, I sure as hell wanted to become familiar with Laughlin and his pictures. I Googled him and I'm glad I did.

In any event, don't you wish someone would write something like the above about your pictures, or better yet, that you could write something like that about someone else's pictures?

Spring is in the air • clcik to embiggenOf late, it seems that every time I turn on the tv, there's a documentary about photography and/or a photographer. Last night it was an Ansel Adams retrospective / love fest on PBS. The film has been around for a while but I had never managed to catch it.

Adams has often been referred to as Saint Ansel and this film adds another level of canonization to that Adams, the photographer, moniker. On the other hand, it puts a very human face on Adams, the person, by dealing pretty openly and honestly with his affair with a lovely young assistant, his near manic working style, and his party-boy drinking. I knew the man like to tip a few but I had never heard put the way it was in this film - he worked everyday of his life ... he never took a day off ... except when he was recovering from a hangover ... which was frequent enough.

I didn't learn very much new about Adams from this film but what I did learn was rather interesting. It didn't have anything to do with his pictures, per se, but rather his epiphany about life and Art as expressed by him in a letter to his closest friend, Cedric Wright:

Dear Cedric,

A strange thing happened to me today. I saw a big thundercloud move down over Half Dome, and it was so big and clear and brilliant that it made me see many things that were drifting around inside of me ....

For the first time I know what love is; what friends are; and what art should be.

Love is a seeking for a way of life; the way that cannot be followed alone; the resonance of all spiritual and physical things....

Friendship is another form of love -- more passive perhaps, but full of the transmitting and acceptances of things like thunderclouds and grass and the clean granite of reality.

Art is both love and friendship and understanding: the desire to give. It is not charity, which is the giving of things. It is more than kindness, which is the giving of self. It is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light of the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit. It is a recreation on another plane of the realities of the world; the tragic and wonderful realities of earth and men, and of all the interrelations of these.

Ansel

Much of what Adams expressed, re: 'what art (photography division) should be' - a recreation on another plane of the realities of the world, ... realities of earth and men, and of all the interrelations of these in order to turn out to the light of the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit, in essence, gibes with my a lot of my feelings on the subject.

That said, why do I think that Adams' pictures - and the pictures of those who continue to toil in the garden of Adams anachronisms - are, in today's world, very out of place?

Adams' view of the world during that time in which he was most productive in achieving his desire to "put his experience of a place" into his pictures (instead of making geographic records of it) was typical of the prevailing paradigm of the "American Century". America had conquered its wilderness frontiers. The industrial revolution was spreading its wings and its 'wealth'. We had won a world war and, despite the lingering effects of the Great Depression, America was on the move to what appeared to be a future of limitless possibilities - the future's so bright, I gotta wear shades.

And Adams' pictures reflected that paradigm with their representation of America - or to be most accurate, his preferred piece of it - as a place of awe inspiring majesty and grandeur, truly and verily, America the Beautiful. A place of virgin and seemingly endless frontiers. And, ironically enough, he accomplished this visual slight of hand by ignoring his feelings about 'the recreation on another plane ... the tragic realities of earth and man' and concentrating on only the 'wonder-filled' realities of earth and man.

I think John Szarkowski, an avowed Adams fan, said it best when he opined that Adams' pictures were the ultimate statement in a genre that had reached the end of the line. The American paradigm that Adams and his photography subscribed to no longer exists. The pristine (so called at the time, even though we were, even then, dumping all over it) and limitless American frontier - geographic and cultural - no longer exists.

There are many new 'realities in the world', especially in the natural world that Adams frequented in his photographic quest. In light of those 'new realities', photography and photographers have moved on to newer 'recreations on another plane of the realities of the world'.

Would I, if I could, have an Adams original hanging on my wall? In a heart beat - his prints are not only historically significant - both culturally and to the medium itself, but they are also, in and of themselves, things of exquisite beauty. However, my appreciation of them would be a melancholy affair dominated by feelings and realizations about what America the Beautiful has lost.

Mice 'n beans • Click to embiggenHere's a quick follow up to last Friday's post, Decay # 12. The wife requested that I dispose of this specimen on an expedited basis.

Apparently, dried beans with mice turds has crossed over a line.

On the other hand, I find it interesting that the beans had been sitting around for quite awhile without any mouse interference but, right after one of their brethren died in opened bag of potato chips, they must have decided to seek out less salty fare.

In any event, the bowl will be scraped and loaded into the dishwasher this evening. All good things must come to an end.

Taghkanic Diner and featured person • click to embiggenA couple years ago I made a tv commercial as part of a complete campaign - magazine / newspaper ads, a lavish brochure, etc. - for the NY State Scenic Byways program. It featured the person shown here leaning on the old mustang.

The featured person commanded a high 6-figure fee for the assignment - a 30 second commercial (1 day of shooting) and 1/2 day of still photography. His fee consumed the lion's share of the $1,000,000 budget for the project. The client figured he was worth the $$$$ because of his instantly recognizable voice - he just might have the most familiar voice in North America.

The featured person is the voice of a single national corporation. At first, that company saturated the radio airwaves with his voice. When they started producing tv commercials, they decided to use only his voice, not his face. They did this because research determined that his voice alone launched a million different mental-image ships. Upon hearing his voice, people tended to create a mental picture of him that most resembled themselves, or, if not themselves, an image of a person they would most like to share time with. It was the voice of a friendly chameleon. What more could an advertiser want?

In any event, I had my own mental picture of the guy and when I went to pick him up at the airport, that mental-picture guy was nowhere to be seen. Fortunately, it was a small airport, very late at night and I was only person awaiting the arrival of another person so he picked up on me. He came over, asked my name with that voice and we were off.

What I find interesting, is the fact that, when I show pictures of him to people who know his voice, his actual appearance is rarely ever close to the picture of him that people have in their head.

I mention all this because somehow I think that there's a lesson in there for photographers when it comes to the notion of meaning and/or the connoted in pictures - that, irregardless of the intent of the photographer to put their meaning(s) into a picture, the observer will always layer their own meaning(s) into it. In some cases, perhaps many cases, their own meaning(s) will be the only meaning(s) they garner from a picture and that meaning(s) will be no where near the neighborhood of the photographer's intended meaning(s).

IMO, this is a good thing and one of the hallmarks of good Art - Art that is rich with emotional texture, ambiguity and intrigue.

And, BTW, "I'm __________ (featured guy), and we'll leave the light on for you".