all photos (embiggenable)
“This is a book about how to get shit done. Or, more particularly, how I got it done. And I guess that’s a big part of an artist’s life––getting other shit done besides the shit you are suppose to be doing––the art, that is.” ~ Sally Mann
WENT TO VERMONT LAST WEEK ON AN AUTOMOTIVE-based errand. While there I stopped at an actual bookstore––a serviving Barnes & Noble––to see if they had Sally Mann’s new book, Art Work ~ On the Creative Life. It was out of stock (ordered to be shipped and has since arrived) but, while perusing the (meager) photography section, I found a book published by MOMA with the simple title, Stephen Shore. According to the publisher’s blurb the book was….
Published to accompany the first comprehensive survey of Stephen Shore’s work in the US, this catalog reflects the full range of his contribution …. This book offers a fresh, kaleidoscopic vision of the artist’s extensive career, presenting more than 400 reproductions arranged in a thematic framework, each grouping accompanied by a short but wide-ranging essay.
Re: Sally Mann’s book:
“If it’s possible to learn fearlessness––or cussedness or dust-yourself-offedness or stick-to-itiveness––Sally Mann is the one who could teach it to you.” ~ dust jacket blurb
iMo, both books are recommended but for different reasons; re: the Shore book is a timeline overview of his picture making life with an emphasis on his varied, meandering picture making activities. It is also apparent that Shore was afforded the luxury of time––as director of a college photography department––and money––numerous, prestigious grants and financial awards––to pursue his tip-toe through the garden of picture making delights. That written, I would be remiss in not mentioning that book left me in very disturbed emotional and mental state, about which I will address in a future entry cuz I gotta first sort it out, re: the Mann book is, iMo, an entertaining read––in both content and prose––about her photography (no how-tos) and life as an artist. There are quite a few photographs therein (100 or more) but the reproduction thereof is rather iffy, standard uncoated novel paper an all. FYI, Mann’s favorite and oft used expletive is the word “shit” followed by her repeated use of the phrase “don’t give a flying fuck”.
While I am on the subject of books, specifically books about the medium and its apparatus, it is worth noting that I have quite a collection––approaching 100–– of such books. Most of that collection is composed of monographs of various picture maker’s work with a decent handful of “scholarly”––words only–– books thrown into the mix; most notably Robert Adams’ books on photography. That written, all of the monographs have essays, some voluminous, that accompany the photographs.
Without going into specific case details, I can write that both the photographs and, in particular, the writings in these books have contributed greatly to my imaginary / make-believe Doctorate in The Photographic Arts degree. It’s worth noting that I do have my sheepskin yet but I do expect it to be in my mailbox any day now.
Seriously though, all that “study” has helped me arrive at an expanded understanding of my own picture making endeavors. That is to write that by cherry-picking, from wide variety of sources, a collection of words, phrases, and ideas about the medium and its apparatus, I am to cobble together the following to use as an answer to the oft heard question, “What guides your approach to picture making?….
“I do not engage with any thing’s knowable identity, but with its visual mystique, its potential for being turned into a photograph …. I avoid mythic possibilities for purely pictorial meaning …. I do not use cliched pictorial packages to carry readymade meanings …. I avoid obvious picture making solutions …. inexplicable adjustments guide my work …. pictorial priorities supersede a devotion to what might constitute the subject’s truth …. objects, shadows, intervening spaces provide vital components of co-equal visual importance …. I regard the complexity of a given environment as potentially articulate aesthetic material and consider the subject and its visual essence as indivisible. “
If I were so inclined to be obtuse, I could also add to the above mix the idea that …
“…. my referent / subject matter is precisely what it appears to be––a scrupulous inventory of visible facts––but, I maneuver those facts to reveal epiphanic visual interdependencies.”
…. but I won’t add that cuz nobody would know what the fuck (nod to Mann) I was talking about.
ADDENDUM to my recent Everything, Everywhere, All At Once entry wherein I displayed 12 of my bodies of work. I belatedly realized that lurking in my photo library, I had 3 more previously un-culled and un-organized bodies of work;
Polaroid
Signs
Pinhole