# 6159-62 / family photos ~ no other picture makers were involved

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“Take away this pudding! It has no theme.” ~ Winston Churchill

I SINCERELY HOPE I WAS NOT PERCEIVED AS BEING TOO CRITICAL of Mike Johnston in my last entry. My critique was intended to address the article and its content which, according to Johnston…

“…was two months in the making, and the process is highly collaborative…"Secret Art" went through multiple major edits and innumerable small ones, with input from many departments.”

Knowing that detail, it is no surprise to me that my primary criticism of the piece is that “it had no theme”. That is, for me (and maybe I’m being thick-headed), I had difficulty trying figure out what the article was about cuz it touched on a variety of topics-each topic treated in slap-dash / kiss and a promise fashion-A mish-mash of sorts. And, I keep waiting, to no avail, for the “secret” to be revealed.

That written, there is no question, in my estimation, why the article was a flop for me…apparently, it was created by “committee”. Hell, even Johnston noted (re: committee) , that, “I think you can tell it's me…I'm hoping the humor survived…”

So, the question arises, who “wrote” this article? If the answer is even knowable, that’s where my critique is intended to land.

# 6057-59 / triptych•civilized ku ~ black and white and red all over

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“It is curious that I always want to group things, a series of sonnets, a series of photographs; whatever rationalizations appear, they originate in urges that are rarely satisfied with single images.” ~ Minor White

BACK IN MY POLAROID (SX-70 / TIME ZERO FILM) SALAD DAYS I made quite a number of triptychs. There was just something about the connected but disjointed look that tickled my visual fancy.

I found the finished grouping visually interesting and somewhat intriguing as well as making more pronounced the idea that making pictures is an act of selection. Plus, it was a fun thing to make.

# 5603 / civilized ku•kitchen life•faux polaroid ~ the process of perception

The technique of art is to make objects "unfamiliar," to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object: the object is not important. ~ Viktor Shklovsky

5582-84 / faux Polaroids ~ I miss the noise

(embiggenable) ~ iPhone using RTRO camera app

(embiggenable) ~ iPhone using RTRO camera app

(embiggenable) ~ iPhone using RTRO camera app

RIGHT FROM THE GET-GO, IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT back in the day when Polaroid TIME ZERO film was available, I probably-I never counted them-made 3>4,000 pictures using one or the other of my 4 Sx70 Polaroid cameras (still have them).

Most of those pictures could be categorized as "family" snapshots. On the other hand, a fair number of them were made for commercial / editorial assignments and as TiME ZERO/SX70 Polaroid art. A quite in vogue genre which, after the SX70 was no longer availabe-TIME ZERO continued to be available-drove the prices of used SX70s to stupid levels. I was fortunate enough that, with the exception of my first photo store bought SX70, I picked up my other SX70s at flea markets-pre internet / ebay /et al-for no more than $20US each.

In any event, I was truly depressed-well, at least bummed out-when TIME ZERO film slipped into the annals of photographic history. That written, I have managed to save all of my SX70/TIME ZERO pictures in 2 huge (approx. 20x30inch) plastic bins (with cover). They are all just chucked in there willy-nilly which is a perfectly acceptable form of archiving TIME ZERO prints.

All of that written, I have come across an iPhone app-RTRO from Moment-which produces a reasonable representation of TIME ZERO film. That is, except for one big exception - color rendition. I have created a work-around for that exception in the form of a saved custom Photoshop CURVES setting which gets a file in the ball park, TIME ZERO wise.

So, while I can produce an image/print with a pretty good look and feel of TIME ZERO film/prints, The thing I really miss is the whirl and mechanical noise of a print being ejected from from an SX-70 camera and then watching the print develop in your hand.

around the house / simulated Polaroid / # 3688 ~ just mucking arouund

(embiggenable) • iPhone

I LIKE RUNNING AMUCK WITH MY iPHONE or any other picture making device.

"The cumulative effect of one hundred and thirty years of man’s participation in the process of running amuck with cameras was the discovery that there was amazing amount of significance, historical and otherwise, in a great many things that no one had ever seen until snapshots began forcing people to see them." ~ John Kouwenhoven

FYI, I made pictures with and without the lens flair. The one with the flair looks better to my eye and sensibilities. It fits the snapshot aesthetic rathere well.

simulated polaroid / the new snapshot / # 3680-83 ~ lumpishness, humanity, and universality

(embiggenable) • made from iPhone picture

(embiggenable) • made from iPhone pictures

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NOT ALL OF THE QUOTES TO BE FOUND in the curriculum texts-volumes of quotes-in my ideal photography school of higher learning would be from just photographers. I have found quite a few intelligent and informative quotes from a number of other sources, especially so from authors of works of fiction.

Case in point, this bit from one of my favorite authors, Jean Shepherd....

Of all the world’s photographers, the lowliest and least honored is the simple householder who desires only to “have a camera around the house” and to “get a picture of Dolores in her graduation gown.” He lugs his primitive equipment with him on vacation trips, picnics, and family outings of all sorts. His knowledge of photography is about that of your average chipmunk. He often has trouble loading his camera, even after owning it for twenty years. Emulsion speeds, f-stops, meter readings, shutter speeds have absolutely no meaning to him, except as a language he hears spoken when, by mistake, he wanders into a real camera store to buy film instead of his usual drugstore. His product is almost always people- or possession-oriented. It rarely occurs to such a photographer to take a picture of something, say a Venetian fountain, without a loved one standing directly in front of it and smiling into the lens. What artistic results he obtains are almost inevitably accidental and totally without self-consciousness. Perhaps because of his very artlessness, and his very numbers, the nameless picture maker may in the end be the truest and most valuable recorder of our times. He never edits; he never editorializes; he just snaps away and sends the film off to be developed, all the while innocently freezing forever the plain people of his time in all their lumpishness, their humanity, and their universality. ~ Jean Shepherd

iMo, a lot of "serious" picture makers have forgotten, if they ever knew, how to have fun making pictures.

landscapes / 3631-41 ~ however you see the world outside

Ireland ~ (embiggenable) • µ4/3

Tuscany ~ (embiggenable) • µ4/3

Tuscany ~ (embiggenable) • Pentax K20D

l-r, t-b / Adirondacks•Pittsburgh•Montreal•New Jersey~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

l>r, t>b / Brooklyn•Adirondacks•?•Massachutsetts~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

PREPPING SOME LANDSCAPE PICTURES AS CANIDATES FOR submission to a juried landscape exhibition.

Strangely enough, since the call for entries begins with the phrase "wide open spaces", most of the landscapes I am considering for submission were made outside of the Adirondacks. A few were made with my PENTAX K20D, some with my Olympus cameras and some with my iPhone.

In addition to "wide open spaces", the call for entries also mentioned "urban environments, with people or without, traditional, contemporary, minimalist — however you see the world outside". So I have included some of my the new snapshot and faux-Polaroid pictures under the cover of "contemporary". Which I assume to mean fanciful or manipulated.

When perusing my picture library for theme-based pictures for juries exhibition submission, I often "discover" theretofore enough never recognized pictures to crete a new body of work separate and distinct from any of my existing bodies of work. True to form, that is once again the case here. And, in a very real sense, what a surprise that is cuz....

.... as hard as it is for me to believe, especially so given the fact that I blogged for a decade or more under the name The Landscapist, I have never assembled a body of work titled Landscapes. DUH. What was I thinking? Perhaps Dylan said it best in the song, I've made up my mind to give myself to you, on his new album:

Well, my heart's like a river, a river that sings
Just takes me a while to realize things

In any event, I feel an editing / selecting project comin' on.

civilized ku # 3579 / polaroid (simulated) # 51-52 ~ stop making sense

all pictures ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

AN ASIDE: HAD PROMISED A FEW ENTRIES AGO that my next entry would be about why I make photo books. That didn't happen and this entry continues down along that broken promise path. I'm thinking maybe the next entry is it. END OF ASIDE

ONE OF THE THINGS ABOUT THE MEDIUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND ITS APARATUS that I have been wondering about is, who the hell is to blame for the use of the medium and its aparatus, primarily in the fine art world, as a psuedo-psychoanalytical instrument for narcistic navel gazing and intellectual masturbatory "investigations" of societal / cultural phenomena? Or, when did a photograph cease to be a thing to be "simply" looked at and "enjoyed" for its visual / referent(ial) appeal? When did a photograph become a thing to be "understood"?

And, by extension, is a person who values the medium and it aparatus, both for its picture making capabilities and the viewing of the results thereof, for its visual manifestations rather than its intellectualization constructs guilty of being a simpleton?

Just wondering.