1980 Miracle On Ice Olympic Arena cafe / high peaks view ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone
(embiggenable) • iPhone
(embiggenable) • iPhone - normal lens/Portrait setting
the wife ~ night mode (embigenable) • iPhone
A FEW ENTRIES BACK I WROTE about editing, from my "finished" photo library of 25k pictures, a new body of work category titled DISCURSIVE PROMISCUITY. That is, a body of work not defined by a specific theme or referent. Pictures of any thing and every thing, as is my "normal" picture making wont.
In that entry I posited a question that might have come to your mind ... how would a body of work hang together without a common theme or referent? The answer to that question is to be found in one of my portfolio showing experiences ....
20 years ago, I was driving by an art center with my "fine art" picture portfolio on the passenger seat. Inasmuch as I have always fully embraced the adage you never get what you don't ask for, I took a chance that the gallery director was therein and that he/she might take the time to look at my work. Which, as it happened, is exactly how it worked out.
After the gallery director had viewed my work, which at that time was most definitely not organized by theme or referent, the director asked, "Are you a graphic designer?". FYI, my answer was a simple "Yes." (in fact, a multi award-winning graphic designer). At which point the gallery director went on to explain that the reason for the question was that, even though there was no theme / referent organization to the work, my work was very identifiable to him as a coherent body of work by the sense of design, independent of the depicted referent, he saw in my work ....
.... to be precise, by "design" he meant the manner in which I organize* the visual elements-line, shape, color, tone, et al-on the 2D surface of the print within my chosen frame(ing).
This was not an aha moment for me inasmuch as I was very conscious of bringing a sense of design to my picture making. For the most part, that's what my pictures are "about". However, if there was an ellemnt of aha moment-ness lurking in there, it was the fact that someone "got it". Or, saw it, if you will.
So, the idea of an organizational theme / referent free body of work is not a fraught with doubt concept for me. The real challenge is editing 25K pictures down to a manageable 25-30 picture body of work.
*I could have written, how I "compose" my pictures but I didn't. Deliberately. I really dislike the word "composition", especially when it is used as a descriptor in the medium of photography and its apparatus, because it is most often used in the phrase "the rules of compostion". I believe that there are no "rules" of composition. Or, as Ansel Adams was reputed to have said:
"There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.