(embiggenable) • iPhone
(embiggenable) • iPhone
(embiggenable) • iPhone
I CAME ACROSS A COUPLE OF, iMo, INTERESTING QUOTES FROM CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. And, I especially like the part where he, in a roundabout manner, mentions and, reading between the lines, praises me.
First, there is this idea ...
I believe that Art is, and cannot be other than, the exact reproduction of Nature (a timid and dissident sect would wish to exclude the more repellent objects of nature, such as skeletons or chamber-pots). Thus an industry that could give us a result identical to Nature would be the absolute of Art.
Then, there is this idea which seems to contradict the first idea ...
It is useless and tedious to represent what exists because nothing that exists satisfies me…. I prefer the monsters of my fantasy to what is positively trivial.
The contradiction I read is, simply, that Nature exists (and its "exact reproduction" is Art) but apparently Baudelaire does not like Art since nothing that "exists" satifies him. Now, I know I could dive deep into the writings and parse this and that word, phrase or sentence to come up with something other a than contradiction. But that's not my mission here today.
These quotes are excerpts from Baudelaire's 1859 commentary on photography in which he expressed a distinct dislike for the medium and its apparatus. Based on this, one could make the assumption that he must have loved it when photography and its practioners fled from the exact reproduction of nature into the Pictorialism era wherein picture makers made plenty of his preferred "monsters of my fantasy". And, of course, that preference is alive and well in today's digital Neo-Pictorialism picture making world.
AN ASIDE this is not a complaint, it is just an observation. END OF ASIDE For the better part of the last decade or so, I was given to submitting pictures to juried gallery exhibitions. My acceptance rate was quite high - approximately 25 (did not keep a count) of my pictures made the cut. However, what I begain to notice in most recent years was that, even in exhibitions where a picture of mine was accepted, it was an outlier inasmuch as most of the other accepted pictures were one kind or another of digitally altered / constructed pictures. And, over time my acceptance rate took a nosedive.
Consequently, I do not submit much anymore. In fact, if I look at the work of a juried exhibition judge(s) and see that his/her work is well into the Neo-Pictorialism thing, I don't even bother submitting any pictures. It's a guaranteed waste of time and money. And, it's not because I can't make a Neo-Pictorialism picture. I can and have. Athough, mostly so in my professional career at the request of an editor / art director.
However, that written, to do so with my personal picture making would make me feel as though I were violating my oath to maintain the alliance of the medium of photography and its apparatus' inherent / intrinsic relationship to and with the real.
FYI, in case you are wondering about my claim that Baudelaire "mentions and praises me", I am honored that I am not included in the timid and dissident sect [that] would wish to exclude the more repellent objects of nature, such as skeletons or chamber-pots, or, kitchen sinks and trash cans.