(embiggenable)
IN YESTERDAY’S ENTRY I MENTIONED THAT I HAD BEEN reading a chapter in the new color photography book. Not that I did not look at a bunch of pictures in that chapter but, in fact, there is a whole lot to read in the book.
That written, re: “a whole lot to read"; it ain’t the easiest read in the world cuz there is an extraordinary amount of highfalutin art-speak verbosity to slog through and decipher. Of course, that is to be expected inasmuch as so much of art criticism, especially so in the photograph world, reads in much the same way. It is as if the author / critic is engaged more in flaunting and burnishing his/her art creds than they are in getting at the experience of viewing and appreciating a photograph without having to tick off a litany of art theory, art technique, and art history boxes to justify why a picture is worth looking at.
To wit, it is rarely, if ever, enough for that crowd that a picture is an interesting, visually stimulating artifact that is simply a delight just look at. A treat for the visual senses.
Case in point; I have mentioned that my favorite response from a viewer of my photographs is some variant on the oft heard, “I don’t know why I like it but I do.” My response is most often simply, “Thank you very much. I’m glad you like it.” However….
…. I could lapse into regaling them with a discussion of my frequent propensity to incorporate visually unifying strategies that include color-field wefting or fugue-like repetitions, inversions and transformations of particular motifs. And, because forms unfold gradually but ineluctably, while colors shift into delicately nuanced and often improbable variations, such melifluous features prolong the pleasurable act of seeing, caressing imagination while reviving subconscious yearnings for paradisiacal worlds of milk and honey.
Truth be told, I have never responded with that “explanation” cuz all it would get me from the commenter would be for him/her to slowly back away and look at me like had lobsters crawling out of my ears.