urban ku # 11 and a link to a commentary for your consideration

I am rarely without a camera. Too much interesting everyday life comes at me to ignore.

In an article - In Defense of the Non-Luminous Landscape - Colin Jago expresses his views on the subject very well. Check it out.

Stephen Durbin

The image here is part of an ongoing night photography project. I seem to be especially drawn to interesting lighting around windows, and I also like the geometric shapes formed by building facades like those here. In this case I was originally shooting the window on the right as main subject, but when I stepped back and saw the far church appear, a new composition was born. Mainly because of the church, I like this one in color, though I usually work in monochrome. I have to say that, for me, this verges on being a "pretty picture," as has been much discussed on this site. What do you think?

See Stephen's superb BW photography

Happy Days

Just back from Pittsburgh, PA where I wrapped up another 36 page Adirondack/Lake Placid Winter Travel Guide - this is a 2 pg. spread from the guide. I provide concept, design, copy development and supervision, photography, pre-press and press proofing. It's an absolute labor of love.

urban ku # 10 and Tibits

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see. ~ Henry David Thoreau

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. ~ Einstein

Ed Richards ~ The Landscape of Hurricane Katrina

Every vision of Katrina is different. Coming to Katrina with local knowledge and personal connections, as well as a technical knowledge of hurricanes and their impact on the land, my images have their own perspective. While little appreciated by the national media, all of the areas inundated by Katrina have been flooded before by hurricanes, and some, such as the Mississippi Gulf Coast, have been utterly destroyed in the past. Knowing this has happened before, and will inevitably happen again, I see these images as part of the long term saga of the Gulf Coast, rather than images of a unique tragedy as this has been seen by most other photographers. I continue to photograph the region as it rebuilds. While I hope I will not photograph it destroyed again, I am documenting fragile areas spared by Katrina, including GPS locations, in case, as with Katrina, there is nothing left after the next storm.

I live in Baton Rouge, 70 miles up river from New Orleans, and I know the southern Gulf Coast from many perspectives. In my day job, as a law professor at LSU , I study the governmental policies and natural forces that underlay disasters such as Katrina. While I am concerned with the welfare of the people displaced by the storm, my interest as a photographer is the impact of major storms on the land and the built environment.

I shoot 4x5 black and white film, which I scan and print digitally. I shoot in the classic landscape tradition, seeking out graphically powerful images, usually defined by their position against the sky. The high resolution of the large final prints gives a strong sense of place through allowing the viewer to see details in the debris, and other cues which transform the strong graphic images into real life scenes. This detail is lost on the WWW, requiring the underlying graphic structure to
convey the power of image.

Aaron Hobson

My wife says that if I were cheating on her, this would be the perfect excuse. Out every night once the baby goes down, for a few hours exploring more nightscapes. My alibi is always on the memory card. On this particular night, a tall, sexy, naked, tree and I had a little get together and to make my conscience even more guilty it happened in a dark alleyway.

publishers note - I'm in Pittsburgh on biz. Things will be back to norml tomorrow

urban ku # 9 and a commentary for your consideration

Another Rt. 9 roadside attraction.

Last night I was re-reading bits and pieces of The Photograph As Contemporary Art. The book is as readable a piece as I have found that deals with the topic of "...the ideas that underpin contemporary art photography before going on to consider their visual outcome."

Illustrated with 217 photographs - I find most to be "beautiful" although there is no classic "beauty" to be found here, the book does a very credible job of meeting its stated goal of being "...a survey (of motivations and expressions that currently exist in the field), the kind of overview you might experience if you visited exhibitions in a range of venues...independent art spaces, public art institutions, museums, commercial galleries...in major art centers such as New York, Berlin, Tokyo, or London." The photography is divided into 7 chapters/categories, not by style or subject matter, but by "...grouping photographers who share a common ground in terms of their motivations and working practices.

The reproduction of the photographs in the relatively small (6"x8.5") soft-cover book is excellent and there seems to be just right number of words to get the job done without becoming tiresome, obtuse or opaque. The book is also very afforable at only $19.95US (list price - it can be had for substantially less from online vendors).

That said, and in no way diminishing my recommendation that this is a must-have must-read book, I was reminded as I read last night of my recent Tidbit - Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art (Susan Sontag).

The "Intellectual" in this case is Charlotte Cotton, the author/photo editor of The Photograph As Contemporary Art. As near as I can tell from a Google search, Cotton is Head of Cultural Programmes at Art + Commerce in New York. Previously, she was Head of Programming at The Photographers' Gallery in London and a Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1993to 2004.

As mentioned, I think CC has done an admirable job with this book and she has managed to pull together a group of photographs that appeals very much to my eye and sensibilities - amazingly, for a collection this diverse, nearly every single photograph in the book gives me cause to stop and consider. Most are a visual treat to my eye and they all are capable of engaging my intellect and emotions all well.

OK, so where's the rub/revenge?

I have been oft accused of being a pointy-headed pin head. In some quarters I am known as "Blovius" (from to bloviate - orate verbosely and windily), and, I've have made it well-known that a photograph must engage my intellect as well as my visual sense, so this might sound a little odd to some, but, when CC writes about specific photographs, her words - though they be right in number and not tiresome, obtuse or opaque, - seem to suck the life out of the photographs she is writing about.

It seems to me that CC, in perfect concert with most of her "high-art" brothers and sisters, needs to sublimate emotion to intellect. It is as if she (they) needs to don a mantle of cool intellectual detachment from the photography (art) lest she be tarred and feathered with an emotional (unprofessional?) attachment to her subject. The writing is all so academic, clinical and cold.

While much of the writing is instructive, eventually, I start to long for a simple and direct, "I love this photograph. It reaches me where I live." kind of thing. I need a little emotional foreplay with my mental constructs, otherwise I might foresake the arts and sit around reading the dictionary. Know what I mean?

Perhaps, the problem I have with this book - which I find representative of much writing about photography as art - is found in the first paragraph of this commentary (from the second paragraph in the book), wherein CC (in concert with most of her peers) puts ideas before going on to consider their visual outcome.

That's butt-assbackwards in my book.

Michelle Parent ~ Red pig

This is the backyard of an artist. I was drawn to the scene because of the red pig. There was a playfulness here that I liked. It seemed odd, but at the same time, just right. I didn't just focus on the pig, because I wanted to be sure the viewer could see the Vermont farm scenery that it sits in.

I have done some computer work for this woman and her art work is always bright and cheery and fun with a lot of crazy color schemes run rampant. I have been taking care of the office while they are on vacation and have been seeing this scene from the window. Today it just felt right to go out and capture it. Besides, I hadn't clicked the shutter in a while and felt that itch and the afternoon light was so nice tonight before the clouds came in and the sun set.