Mary Dennis ~ Barriers and Solutions

I think I have figured out that there's a pretty strong connection between what I am feeling and what I choose to photograph. On the morning I shot this image I was feeling a bit worn down, numb and frustrated from dealing with a series of family matters. I have passed this grassy hill, this concrete barrier, this chain link fence probably a hundred times on my regular walks, but on this morning it spoke to me as I passed by. I'm pretty sure I wasn't thinking about it at the moment I photographed it, but when I got home and viewed it on the computer I realized it was very much an equivalent to what was going on in my head. As in : there are ways around these barriers and they really aren't all that difficult to figure out. Now I can't say that my photographs are always a reflection of a mood, a feeling or an emotion. Sometimes a scene just lights up my eyes and mind and I trip the shutter. However, on this morning, concrete and chain link with green grass and a blue sky on the horizon pretty much summed it up.

ku # 403 and a commentary for your consideration

Some guy, John C Dvorak to be exact, has published an article in which he unequivocally states, "Photography, by nature, is an inaccurate purveyor of the truth....There is seldom truth in a photo....most of them are fakes in the sense that they don't capture reality..."

Well, scratch my back with a hacksaw. What the hell was I thinking?

While these notions certainly have been fashionable in photo-academia for some time, it's somewhat distressing to find a media pundit - with no apparent connection to photography (other than as grist for a column on technology) or photo-academia - speaking ex cathedra to the masses about ideas photographic. It is especially distressing when the idea in play involves the characteristic of the medium that marks photography as truly distinct from and unique amongst other visuals arts.

Simply stated, Photography, by the nature of its mechanistic method of recording of what lies within the field of view of a camera (lens attached), is capable of precisely describing (with great clarity) the object of its attention - what some label as the referent or the denoted. It can, and often does present, a denoted visual truth. The fact that the photographer (in some instances, an artist) has isolated the referent from its total environment and further still isolated it as a disconnected segment from the stream of time certainly posits the photograph as a fraction of a truth, but a truth nonetheless.

Additionally, and in no small measure, photography is also fully capable of capturing/expressing a connoted truth. In the famous photograph of the running young Vietnamese napalm-wounded girl (the denoted "truth"), there are many possible connoted "truths" - war sucks, napalm hurts, the plight of innocent victims of war (collateral damage) is unconscionable, etc.

IMO, the problem with the notion of photographic truth is not whether it "exists" but, rather, why so many photographers use this defining visual characteristic of the medium to create untruths.

ku # 399

Forever Wild Development Corporation - the name is a carried-over relic from the '50s. The person(s) who created it either had a wicked sense of humor or no sense of irony. For all I know, it made some kind of sense back in the old days. "Forever wild" is the common title applied to Article XIV of the New York State Constitution (adopted in 1894) which states that “The lands of the state, now owned or hereafter acquired, constituting the forest preserve...shall be forever kept as wild forest lands."

Jim Jirka ~ Autumn Awakening

I have been in the creative doldrums lately. Today I decided to go out and take a walk, to clear my head, maybe. There is actually not much content up there to really clear. Just went with the camera, no encumbrances of a tripod, one lens and an open mind.

I found today to be a transition, not so much as autumn arriving, but that autumn is just a season, a time of the year. Not so much delineated by the so-called colors and people’s perception that autumn sucks, if the colorful, pretty leaves are not there. I for one find solace in the understanding of autumn, of the actual ritual of the leaves dying out and withering away and the change in the air as the days grow shorter. I enjoy the sounds as the leaves fall to the ground, the wind gently blowing through the trees and the crunching of the grasses as they dry out.

I was very creative today, making images that strengthened my interpretation of autumn, and awakened me from my doldrums.

Tom Gallione ~ A Gathering of Leaves

Late afternoon light in the late autumn of last year. The voyage ends here on the surface of Park Creek for a small congregation of dead leaves. When the leaf-peeping parties are over, this is what remains. I always come late. - More than mere visual representations of reality, I strive to make interpretations that invite further thought and musing. I prefer the subtle and contemplative over the bold and dramatic, and suggestions over descriptions.

ku # 398 and a commentary for your consideration

Lately I've been reading The Photography Reader - a comprehensive collection of 20th-century writings on photography (as the intro states). The book includes essays by a number of photographers (such as Edward Weston and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy) and key thinkers (such as Susan Sontag, John Szarkowski and Andy Grundberg) that trace the development of ideas about photography.

On the whole it is very interesting reading notwithstanding some writings of incredibly dense prose and/or obtuse academic theory. Example - I like the idea of, "The awkwardness which accompanies the over-long contemplation of a photograph arises from a consciousness of the monocular perspective system of representation as a systematic deception....To remain long with a single image is to risk the loss of our imaginary command of the look...The image then no longer receives our look...it rather, as it were, avoids our gaze...As alienation intrudes into our captivation by the image we can, by averting our gaze or turning a page, reinvest our looking with authority. "

All of which seems to mean that staring at a picture too long can f--- you up, so move on and come back to it later for a fresh perspective. Makes sense to me.

But, in addition to the understanding gleaned from the deciphered encryptions, I relish my time spent reading verbose and obtuse writings because of the discovery of concise and compact little word/phrase ideas that are spread throughout the works like - if you will - tidy little rabbit pearls in a field of academic detritus.

In the aforementioned excerpt I am captivated by the notion of a "monocular perspective system of representation as a systematic deception", and, by the idea of having an "imaginary command of the look", or, how about the though of a photograph "avoiding our gaze"? And who amongst us can resist the seductive idea of "looking with authority"? Altogether interesting stuff.

ku # 397

Sometimes I feel hard and cold as steel in an island-isolated universe. But along the road there is always comfort that wraps me in a gentle embrass, and many times from a most unexpected source. Transient as the moments might be they leave an indelible mark.

ku # 396

I often wonder if anyone gets the message...maybe the concept is to fuzzy for most to grasp. Or maybe, because nature speaks mainly in cries and whispers, no one wants to develop the sensitivity to really hear.