(embiggenable) • iPhone
(embiggenable) • iPhone
(embiggenable) • iPhone
IN MULTIPLE ENTRIES OVER THE YEARS, I HAVE MENTIONED my involvement in the landmark book, the new color photography*, by Sally Eauclaire (Abbeville Press,1981). Sally Eauclaire was an art critic and "neighbor" who lived down the hall from me in the warehouse I had converted into artist's living / studio lofts.
In the late 70s Eauclaire turned her writing attention to the then emergent genre of Fine Art color photography. She undertook the project of writing an overview of the movement having had no previous experience in critiquing / writing about things photographic. That was not a problem inasmuch as she intended to write about the art of photography, not about the techniques of making photos. Nevertheless, she wanted to learn about how specific pictures-selected from those featured in the book-were made. So, that's where I stepped in as her how-the-pictures-were-made consultant (I am credited in the book).
For me, the experience-over the course of 2 years-was an epiphany. During that time, as I perused portfolios from photographers-many of whom are now considered to be the star-studded founding fathers (and mothers) of "modern", Fine Art color photogaphy-it was an eye-opening experience. In addition to the fact that color photography was now being taken "seriously", it also gave witness to the idea that anything, any referent, was now fair game for the making of pictures thereof. As Eauclaire wrote, picture makers were now free to make color pictures of things other than "prodigious crags, rippling sands, or flaming sunsets."
All of that written, here is a excerpt form the book wherein she is writing about Stephen Shore's work and in which she also pretty accurately describes my approach to / intended goals, re: making pictures....
Shore's goal, like that of Evans, appears to be a "reticent, understated, impersonal art." Viewer's immune to his subtle, sensuous visual intelligence often descibe his work as "dry" and "detached" because they only see lucidly described facts....Shore does not use cliched pictorial packages to carry readymade meanings. In one sense, his subject matter is what it appears to be-a scrupulous inventory of visual facts. But Shore maneuvers his facts to reveal epiphanic visual interdependencies. Pictorial priorities supersede a devotion to what might constitute the subject's truth. He is engaged not with any place's knowable identity but with its visual mystique, its potential for being turned into a picture.
Is there a better description of the medium and its apparatus' ability to, when paired with a picture maker's "visual intelligence", transcend its descriptive facility by providing the playground and tools to see beyond the obvious?
*288 pages, 47 photographers (to include, William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Jan Groover, Joel Meyerowitz, Eve Sonneman, David Hockney, William Christenberry, Mitch Epstein, Roger Merton, Michael Bishop), and well over 150 photographs.