from Life Without the APA body of work ~ (embiggenable) 8x10 view camera + µ4/3
LET ME BEGIN THIS ENTRY WITH A VERSE FROM LYLE LOVETT’S Here I Am song (it will make sense later):
Given that true intellectual and emotional compatibility
Are at the very least difficult
If not impossible to come by
We could always opt for the more temporal gratification
Of sheer physical attraction
That wouldn't make you a shallow person
Would it?
Add to that a link to a Stephen Shore picture, Holden Street, North Adams, Massachusetts. FYI, the street image in my picture in this entry was created long before I was aware of Shore’s picture. Nor was the composite image made with a single thought of imitating Shore’s picture.
OK then, now I can move onto the point of this entry…
I was skimming through a book of Stephen Shore pictures, interviews and commentary when I came across a commentary, re: the aforementioned linked picture, by Joel Sternfeld. The commentary, which ran to 7 pages in length, started as follows:
Stephen Shore’s photograph of a summer morning setting on Holden Street in North Adams, Massachusetts, appears to be a picture replete with dualities, the most obvious being that of town and countryside. The brick commercial buildings bookend a panel of green hills and blue sky as if the entirety were a early Christian altarpiece. The most sacred panel, the center one, contains an image of a deity , which in the secular case turns out to be a wooden building of pure white. The building stands in front of a mountain, a standard symbol of spiritual elevation.
After this “Christian altarpiece, sacred panel, deity, standard symbol of spiritual elevation” Art Major-ish search for meaning, aka: interpretation, Sternfeld-whose pictures I admire-goes on 7 page literary, cultural, architectural, historic, photo theory laden exposition / academic treatise that, iMo and for me, adds little, if anything, to the pure visual senses enjoyment of just looking at the picture. Which is not to write that, for Sternfeld, it does not matter inasmuch as all his interpretation stuff goes to the cause of justifying his appreciation of the picture cuz, without it, it’s just a picture.
Nor am I suggesting that my Life without the APA picture(s)-and pictures like it made by others-do not contain dualities, symbols, cultural / literary references, et al if it is a viewer’s propensity to “see” such things. However, my intent in the making of those pictures was simply to illustrate how the Adirondack forest preserve might look like-and consequently, feel like-without the protection / oversight of the APA. And, in doing so, create pictures which tell that story without requiring that the viewer have a Phd in Art History or Art Theory to “get it”.
In any event, back to Lyle Lovett and the relevance of his lyrics to this entry.
It seems to me that Joel Sternfeld (and others like him who are given to the nearly compulsive desire to discern meaning and interpretation in pictures) needs to find a feeling of “true intellectual and emotional compatibility” with a photograph-a feeling which is “at the very least difficult If not impossible to come by” (for mere mortals)-in order that he not succumb to the temptation of “the more temporal gratification of sheer physical attraction” to a picture and thus descend into the realm of becoming “a shallow person”.