# 6927-35 / travel • the new snapshot ~ baseballism

all photos ~ (embiggenable)

APPROXIMATELY 200 MILES DOWN-STATE FROM MY domicile is the quaint village–1.9 sq mile / pop. 1,800–of Cooperstown. The wife and I spent 4 days there–Saturday last > this Tuesday–her for a conference, me in pursuit of pure relaxation and entertainment.

FYI, Cooperstown is where, in 1839 the game of baseball was reputedly invented by Abner Doubleday–not true but the myth has endured–and it is also the home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. The village sits at the foot of Otsego Lake and, within its confines, there is nary a chain hotel, fast-food restaurant, or store. The 2-block Main Street shopping area is lined, almost exclusively, with shops offering a wide variety of everything baseball and handful of casual to fine dining establishments.

The village draws 300.000 visitors a year. The obvious draw is the Baseball Hall of Fame but I have not visited it in over 30 years, despite visiting Cooperstown every year for the past 6-7 years (the wife’s conference thing). The draw for me is; a) a premier golf course in town on the lake, b) the tiniest diner in the world–breakfast every morning, and, c) the Fenimore Art Museum.

If you thought this entry was going to be a travel log kinda thing, think again cuz, other than posting more of my travel pictures that I try to make look not like travel pictures, here comes the photography stuff….

The Fenimore Art Museum is an amazing institution. In a nutshell, the museum is dedicated to, in their words, “telling a remarkable range of American stories” with its fine art collection, folk art collection, American Indian art collection, and, the photography collection which illustrates the entire history of photography in the United States, from early daguerreotypes to contemporary photographers.

The museum’s commitment to photography is impressive. They mount very impressive exhibitions in a massive gallery devoted to photography. In past visits to the museum I have viewed a number of exhibitions, most recently an impressive Herb Ritts portraits exhibition. This year’s exhibition, which I missed on this trip cuz it don’t start ‘til this coming Sunday, is The Power of Photograph: 19th-20th Century Original Master Prints.

The exhibition is a selection of 120 iconic images–along with quotes from the photographers–by 120 different photographers curated by pioneering collector and gallerist Peter Fetterman. While at the museum on this trip, I purchased the book of the same name. It is beautifully printed and is a great value at $45.00US. Highly recommended.

I will be visiting Cooperstown in the very near future to see the exhibition and play a littel golf.

the diner

# 6920-22/ landscape • around the house • common places-things ~ a bug-ike immersion in the quotidian world

all photos ~ (embiggenable)

WHILE READING AN ESSAY IN THE BOOK, FRED HERZOG • MODERN COLOR, I came across an interesting concept:

In 1962m Manny Farber (film critic) distinguished between what he called “termite art” and “white elephant art.”. Termite artists get on with their art with little regard for posterity or critical affirmation. They are “ornery, wasteful, stubbornly self-involved, doing go for-broke-art and not caring what becomes of it.” They have a “bug-like immersion in a small area without point or aim, and, overall, concentrating on nailing down one moment without glamorizing it, but forgetting this accomplishment as soon as it has been passed: the feeling that all is expendable, that it can be chopped up and flung down in a different arrangement without ruin.” On the other hand, “white elephant art” is made in the self-conscious pursuit of transcendent greatness and in the channels where greatness is conventionally noticed. The white elephant artist is likely to “pin the viewer to the wall and slug him with wet towels of artiness and significance.” We need not choose between these two. Great work can be made by either, and history suggests that this is perhaps more true of photography than any other medium.

After reading this, I believe that I am a termite artist and, btw, the wife thinks that I am ornery.

# 6898-6904 / travel • (un)common places-things • people ~ rules for the visually incompetent

Santa FE, New Mexico ~ all photos (embiggenable)

Chicago, Illinois

Denver, Colorado

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Jemez, New Mexico

Trinidad, Colorado

Trinidad, Colorado

“Consulting the rules of composition before taking a photograph is like consulting the laws of gravity before going for a walk. / Composition is the strongest way of seeing.” / Following rules of composition can only lead to a tedious repetition of pictorial clichés.”~ Edward Weston

IF I WERE TO BE GIVEN THE AUTHORITY TO eradicate a word from the photography lexicon, that word would “composition”. If I were asked to give a rationale for that act, I would quote Ansel Adams’ idea that:

“There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.”

As an adjunct to my Composition Eradication Decree, I would also create a special space in the fiery after/underworld for anyone who would try to reintroduce the composition concept with the visual aid of a photographic print with lines / arrows, aka: diagrams, drawn all over the surface of the print in an attempt to demonstrate how “good” composition “works.”

Or, maybe it would just be easier to give them all Red Rider BB guns and hope they will shoot their eye out. That’d fix ‘em up plenty good.

ASIDE if ya wanna get fixed up plenty good, Trinidad, Colorado is a good place to get a “fix”. Right there on Main Street––easy off, easy on, Interstate 25––is a well stocked liquor store and a cannabis dispensary right next to each other. Both were open early Sunday morning––serving your intoxicant needs on the lord’s day of rest––when we stopped in Trinidad looking for a grocery store during our drive to Jemez, New Mexico. END ASIDE

# 6893-97 / travel • trees • landscape ~ I'm a pointer, you're a pointer, evryone can be a pointer too

all photos ~ (embiggenable)

THIS ENTRY HAS 2 PHOTOGRAPHS MADE IN NEW MEXICO––2 in Santa Fe and 3 photographs made in and around Hemez. The common item–– the cottonwood tree. If one were attempting, by making photographs, to capture / present a sense of place, and that place was in the area of New Mexico I was in, then one would have to include the cottonwood tree in most photographs. And that written, “BINGO” might be declared if a photo also includes an adobe structure.

RE: a sense of place - attempting to convey a sense of pace in a photograph is, iMo, a bit of a questionable endeavor. That’s cuz reducing the representation of a place to; a) a flat-as-a-pancake 2D plane, aka: minus a sense of depth, b) minus a sense of sound, and c) minus a sense of smell is similar to attempting to experience a sense of bourbon by licking the outside of a glass––fine Irish Waterford crystal, of course––of bourbon with a stuffed up nose.

iMo, in point of fact, what you get when you photograph a place is what that place looks like when photographed.

That written, an adroitly produced photograph of a place (or thing / person) can incite in a viewer notions of curiosity / interest and even a desire to experience, in person, that place. A viewer might actually experience a vicarious sensation of some kind––in his/her imagination––from such a photograph. However, I would suggest that the imagined experience is instigated more from the photograph itself rather than from the literally depicted referent* CAVEAT: in the Fine Art world. As John Szarkowski wrote:

“ A photograph produced [ED] … with that quality of formal rigor that identifies a work of art, so that we would be uncertain … how much our pleasure and sense of enlargement had come from the things pointed to and how much from a pattern created by the pointer.”

To wit, the photographs, made by others, that I like and the photographs I strive to make tend to come down on the pleasure and sense of enlargement that comes from a pattern created by the pointer side of Szarkowski’s ledger. Or, in other words, I like to make or view a photograph(s) that is a beautiful object(s), in and of itself; photographs of a referent selected from the quotidian world that is not customarily considered to be beautiful in of itself.

To my eye and sensibilities, that is the magic and the beauty of the medium of photography and its apparatus.

* that written, nevertheless, the form––aka: pattern––and the literally depicted referent are inexorably linked.

# 6886-92 / (un)common palces-things • people ~ being there

all photos (embiggenable) ancient Pueblo cliff cave dwelling

“Of all the world’s photographers, the lowliest and least honored is the simple householder…. His knowledge of photography is about that of your average chipmunk. …. 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 …. He lugs his primitive equipment with him on vacation trips …. 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.” ~ Jean Shepherd

PURSUANT TO MY LAST ENTRY (re: nix on touristy pictures) I CAN ATTEST THAT when making photographs while traveling that include the presence of the wife, I have successfully avoided making pictures that the lowliest and least honored simple householder might make while making a picture of his/her loved one standing in front of something and smiling into the lens.

My intent when making such photographs of the wife during our travels is to simply capture a slice of life––her doing her thing while I am doing mine. The photographs are not about her, per se, but rather about her being there, engaged in the moment.

On the flip side, when the wife takes a picture of me, it is usually at my request. That request is most always accompanied by “instructions” from me that she just picture me doing what I am doing and to include something that gives context to where we are. That written, she usually gets it “right”.

That success just might be due to the fact that, by living with me, she does know more about photography than the average chipmunk.

# 6981-85 / landscape • (un)common things • places ~ along for the ride

all photos (embiggenable)

FLIGHT TO DENVER, RENT A CAR, DRIVE 6.5 Hours TO Hemez, New Mexico. Knowing that there would be some spectacular scenery along the way, I let the wife drive so I could make pictures from the passenger seat. A good decision as it turned out cuz I made enough from-the-car photographs to make a small book. Not that I did not get out of the car to make a photograph or two (or more)––the mural in the middle of nowhere as an example.

That written, I am always somewhat conflicted when making photographs during our travels. That’s cuz, when traveling it is inevitable that one sees something new / never seen before. The temptation, picture making wise, is to focus on those things but, as previously written, I really don’t like to feature things in my photographs. In other words, I do not want to return from a trip with a bunch of typical touristy pictures.

That written, the tool I employ to avoid making touristy pictures is quite simple––I remain true to my vision, aka: the way I see the world. That is, I see something and I photograph it the way I encounter / see it. Works almost every time.

More photographs to come.

# 6969-73 / common places-things • landscape • in situ ~ nominal subject matter

“John Szarkowski has used the expression “nominal subject matter”. I think that’s perfect for my behavior here. I am not interest in gas stations or anything about gas stations. This happens to be an excuse for seeing.… I don’t care if it was about a gas station or if this is a rubber raft or if this is a crappy little house. That’s not my subject! The gas station isn’t my subject. It’s an excuse for a place to make a photograph”….

…. “I take a picture of the subject and its context––the subject as it stands with everything else…. I’m trying to make an atonal photograph where everything is as important as everything else…. I think it’s possible to make a photograph in which the photographer lays back enough so the viewer comes into the photograph and has a chance to perceive the thing on his own terms, instead of only seeing what the photographer has hooked him to see. I think one of the reasons I’m using the 8x10 camera is that I felt I could work with the large camera and make photographs in which the subject was everything in the frame.” ~ Joel Meyerowitz

I RECENTLY WROTE THAT I DO NOT TITLE MY photographs onaccounta I do not wish to call attention to the literally depicted referent in my pictures cuz my pictures are rarely “about” the literally pictured referent. As an adjunct to that practice, at an exhibit of my photographs I have always wished for red velvet ropes strung 3-4 feet in front the gallery walls to prevent viewers from sticking their noses where they don’t belong––that is, so close to a picture that they can not see the print in its entirety. That’s cuz seeing the print in the all together is the only way in which a viewer can actually see what my pictures are about.

My “excuse” for making a photograph is the potential I see in isolated––by means of framing––sections of the quotidian world to create visually interesting form; form that results from the fact that everything within my frame is as important as everything else within the frame. In other words, creating visually interesting form is my subject, aka: what my photographs are about. It is not about the literally depicted things in my photographs.

FYI, if I were to title any of the above photographs, the titles might be something like; my son wearing a new hat, or, my grandson eating lunch at the Statue of Liberty, or, my daughter and her cousins reading on the beach. However, for the life on me, I just can not imagine how those titles would improve, in any manner, a viewer’s reaction to / appreciation of / understanding of the pictures. In fact, iMo, the titles might very well lead a viewer to think that that information had something to do with why I made the pictures which, in fact, had absolutely nothing––nada, zero, zip––to do with why I made the pictures.

# 6984-89 / landscape • roadside • (un)common thing ~ Spring sweetness

On the boil in the sugar house ~ It takes 40 gallons of maple sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup. all photos (embiggenable)

“I've worked out of a series of no's. No to exquisite light, no to apparent compositions, no to the seduction of poses or narrative.” ~ Richard Avedon

THE THING ABOUT SPRING HERE IN THE ADIRONDACKS is mist, fog, and raging water.

Of added Spring time interest is the very short weather window for maple syrup making. There are quite a number of so-called sugar houses doting the landscape. FYI, a sugar house is a small shack-like structure where maple sap is boiled down to produce the correct density for maple syrup. Standing in a sugar house during the boil feels / smells like you have coated the inside of your nose with, well… maple syrup. And, tasting the syrup straight out of the boil is a taste sensation that is simply amazing.

ASIDE Don’t know what will happen with the price of maple syrup this year cuz, thanks t-RUMP, most of the maple syrup in the US of A that originates in Canada will be hit with tariffs. The current price for pure maple syrup here in our neck of the maple tree woods is $34.95 / quart (32oz.) END SIDE