# 5899-5900 / kitchen life • kitchen sink • around the house ~ imagination deficit disorder?

some pictures on the walls ~ (embiggenable)

(embiggenable)

(embiggenable)

OVER MY YEARS OF INVOLVEMENT WITH THE MEDIUM of photography and its apparatus (more than half a century), I have been confounded by many of the activities that fall under the heading of the word, photography. As a matter of fact, I have always been hesitant to use the word photographer to describe myself, re: my picture making activities. I have always been a picture maker although albeit in my professional life I labeled myself as a commercial photographer, emphasis on the qualifier commercial.

In any event, one of the many continually confounding-it could also be called a depressing disappointment-items that rattles around in my head is the fact of the never-ending adherence to picture making conventions by the picture making throngs. That is, the unimaginative conformation to the “rules” of a given picture making genre.

An example…I once went on a spree of making pictures of flowers with the use of my flatbed scanner. I started posting them on the FLORA forum of a nature photography site. The moderators of that forum went bat-sh*t crazy cuz, you know, what I was doing was (they actually stated this) insulting to “real” flora picture makers. Picture makers who had specialized equipment-lenses, reflectors, scrims, diffusers, lighting (flash), tripods, et al-that they hauled around in their pursuit of a “proper” flora picture. The matter got very heated and the outcome was not in their favor, so they picked up their marbles and left that site to form their own site. You know, what better way is there to protect and define the rules of proper flora picture making than by walling off verboten thought?

That written, it was Brooks Jensen who wrote…

“Real photography begins when we let go of what we have been told is a good photograph and start photographing what we see.”

…and it was Robert Adams who wrote that we don’t need more of:

“the cliché, the ten thousandth camera-club imitation of a picture by Ansel Adams.”

So, all of the above written, my question is, why are so many picture makers unable to break out of the box of proscribed / convention-bound picture making?

And, BTW, why is it that so many picture makers don’t make prints / put pictures on their walls? If, indeed, that is true or is that a myth?

# 5884-86 / around the house • kitchen life • people ~ feeling it

I’ve been taking my temperature more often lately ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

the light switches are in the off position ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

carpet protects the porch floor from heel marks ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

ON MY LAST ENTRY, A COMMENT WAS LEFT BY STEPHEN McATEER:

Some people I used to read on the internet seemed to think that a photograph had to have 'Meaning' to be any good….My own view is that it is a good photograph if it pleases the eye. Meaning does not interest me in the least.

To clarify my thoughts on meaning to be seen / found in a photograph, I believe every photograph ever made has some meaning or another, even if only to the individual who made it. However, that written, once the photograph is offered for viewing to those other than the maker, what the photograph means (if anything) is anyone’s guess.

Truth be written, I spent a lot of time, used a lot of internet space, and typed a zillion words over the years (on this blog and my previous blog) speculating / festering, one might even say “obsessing” about meaning in photographs. ASIDE: Stephen might even have been taking a shot at me, re: “used to read on the internet” wise. END OF ASIDE That endeavor was due primarily to my concern, re: did my pictures have any meaning? That concern was based up my very loose acceptance of the idea that “a photograph had to have 'Meaning' to be any good”.

After intense and protracted looking for meaning in my pictures, I discovered that, shockingly, there was none to be seen / found. However, what I did find was that all of my “good” pictures shared a common characteristic - that is, they all incited feelings and sensations instigated by their visual-senses activation. There was nothing to" “interpret”, nothing to “understand”. Their “goodness” was predicated upon how a picture looked and how that “look” pricked my eye and sensibilities.

If how a picture looks is the basis for a viewer to look for meaning in a picture-literary, cultural, art theory, historic connections, et al-so be it. I am not suggesting that there is nothing of the sort to be seen /found in my pictures. However, in the making of my pictures I am not trying to instill / insert any meaning. My intent is to make visible the experiences I see / feel as I traverse the planet-with my eyes wide open-in a manner that pricks my eye and sensibilities and of those who view my pictures.

That written, and despite the fact that the visual referent(s) depicted in most of my pictures is not what the pictures are about, some of those pictures can, and do, hold special meaning for me.

So, when all is written / said and done, I do not see meaning v. pleasing to the eye as mutually exclusive ideas. My only problem with meaning in photography is with those who elevate meaning, aka: content, over form. Or, when doing so, eviscerate a picture by dissecting / breaking it down into pieces.

FYI, you may noticed the non sequitur-like captions with the pictures in this entry. I am playing with the idea of mis-direction, re: providing a caption to a picture which causes a viewer to try to figure out what a picture is really about cuz it can not possibly be about what the caption seems to imply that it is about.

# 5873-75 / around the house • kitchen life ~ picturing experience

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

JOHN SZARKOWSKI WROTE (c.1976):

…it is true, as I believe it is, that today’s most radical and suggestive color photography derives most of its vigor from commonplace models…[I]n the past decade a number of photographers have begun to work in color in a more confident, more natural, and yet more ambitious spirit, working not as though color were a separate issue, a problem to be solved in isolation (not thinking of color as photographers seventy years ago thought of composition), but rather as though the world itself existed in color, as though the blue and the sky were one thing….[they] accept color as existential and descriptive; the pictures are not photographs of color, any more than they are photographs of shapes, texture, objects, symbols, or events, but rather photographs of experience, as it has been ordered and clarified within the structures imposed by the camera.

And, speaking of experience, here’s what Joel Meyerowitz had to say:

“I don’t want to talk about one aspect of these pictures over the rest. The fact is, I’m trying to photograph the wholeness of my experience. I’m trying to pass that experience back into the world…[T]hat’s what it’s about-the location of the subject, it’s about the passage of the experience itself, the wholeness, though you back into the world, selected by your native instincts. That’s what artists do. They separate their experience from the totality, from raw experience, and it’s the quality of their selections that makes them visible to the world.”

Add to the idea, re: Szarkowski’s and Meyerowitz’s photographing experience, Meyerowitz’s sensation of “feeling”…:

“I see things-this is my life-I look; I make visual images…[I]t’s what I’ve done since I was a kid. I feel things…[I] love sensations. But ,within the limited range of sensations that I am responsive to, certain optical things excite me...[I]f I am in a good place, where there’s lots of visual activity, I become supersensitive. I receive many signals and I pick and choose among them.”

…and I have started to think that I need to reassess the idea of so-called “vision “ as it is most commonly bantered about / understood in the “serious” amateur picture making world.

# 5853-57 / still life (kitchen life) • landscape (civilized / ku) • people ~ this and that

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

THE MORE YOU LOOK, THE MORE YOU SEE. The more you see, the more you make pictures. The more pictures you make, the more you wonder what the hell you are going to do with all of them.

I have yet to come up with an answer / solution to that dilemma.

# 5848-50 / landscape (ku) • kitchen life ~ forever and ever, amen

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

I HEARD AN INTERESTING PHRASE LAST EVENING ON A PBS SHOW-”staring into the distance of the present”-which had nothing to do with photography or art but I thought it kinda said something about my pictures. Especially if it is paired with a quote from George Tice:

It takes the passage of time before an image of a commonplace subject can be assessed. The great difficulty of what I attempt is seeing beyond the moment; the everydayness of life gets in the way of the eternal.

Over the past few years in particular I have willfully avoided, while making pictures, thinking about anything but responding to the moment. I do not think about “the eternal” or any other notion, re: why I am making the picture. My intent at the moment of making a picture is simply to be successful in capturing that which pricked my eye and sensibilities.

My idea of success is measured upon the viewing of the finished print and whether or not it instigates the same prick I experienced upon the viewing of the actual scene / referent. With those pictures that achieve that result, I know that they will repeatedly do so every time I view them, a quality which makes them and the depicted referent somewhat “eternal”.

# 5831-34 / landscape (ku) ~ being forever in the moment,

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

I’VE HEARD IT SAID, READ IT WRITTEN A ZILLION TIMES, “ Be in the moment.” The directive is most often expressed when the person to whom it is uttered has allowed their attention to drift away from what is happening around him/her at any given moment in time. The “what is happening”-sights, sounds, activities, persons, et al-at any specific moment in time has been determined, by the admonitioner, to be worthy / demanding of undivided attention by one and all. And…

…iMo, one of the unique characteristics of the medium of photography and its apparatus is its ability to record, present and preserve select and discrete moments in time. Every picture (aka: photograph) ever made is an invitation for a viewer to see and vicariously experience, in his/her imagination, the “what was happening” in a past, fleeting moment in time. To wit, a picture issues an invitation to “be in the moment”. That is, to be vicariously in the preserved moment as presented in the picture and actively in the moment of viewing the picture.

Consider this from John Swarkowski:

“…immobilizing this thin slice of time has been a source of continuing fascination for the photographer. And while pursuing this experiment he discovered something else: he discovered that there was a pleasure and beauty in this fragmenting of time that had little to do with what was happening. It had to do rather with seeing the momentary patterning of lines and shapes that had been previously concealed within the flux of movement.”

Re: “the momentary patterning of lines and shapes” - as I have previously written, I tend to see segments of the world as lines and shapes-as suggested by physical objects, light / shadow, color, et al-which are perceived from only a very specific POV. While the perceived lines and shapes are not concealed within the flow of their movement, how I perceive them is most definitely dependent upon my (and my picture making device) lack of movement - that is movement away from my very specific POV.

Consequently, I am unable, unless I remain nearly absolutely motionless, to “be in the moment”, re: the perceived relationship of lines and shapes-which for me, in most cases is “what is happening”-for any length of time. The pleasure of seeing is very short lived.

However, in some ways, a significant part of why I make pictures is cuz I can preserve and extend indefinitely that short lived pleasure of seeing, aka: being in the moment. And, in the best of cases, my pictures can present to viewers thereof a tangible and palatable perception of the “being in the moment” (and what it entailed) of a picture’s making.

# 5810-12 / kitchen life • landscape (civilized ku) - the pleasureable act of seeing

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone / PORTRAIT setting

(embiggenable) • iPhone / PORTRAIT setting

IN THE LAST ENTRY REFERENCE WAS MADE TO SUSAN SONTAG'S declaration, re: art criticism. That critics should "show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means."

Consider one such effort-from Sally Eauclaire in her book, the new color photography-to follow that directive:

"Jenshel's works demonstrate photography's potential in the romantic, picturesque mode. The formal play is relaxed. The forms unfold gradually but ineluctably, while colors shift into delicately nuanced and often improbable variations. Such melifluous features prolong the pleasureable act of seeing, caressing imagination while reviving subconscious yearnings for paradisiacal worlds of milk and honey." Len Jenshel

CAVEAT It should be noted that Sally consulted with me-on matters re: photo techniques / mechanics-during the writing of her book. She had little, bordering on none, knowledge about how photographs were made, camera technique / printing materials and technique, et al. Needless to write, that upon receiving an advance copy of the book, I was delighted to find my name in the Acknowledgements on the very first page in the book. END OF CAVEAT

The above excerpt-which I really like-from the book is representative of most of Eauclaire's critiques in her book, all of which are mercifully free of photo-world jargonisms. On the other hand, it could be suggested that her writing is chock full of artspeak jargonisms and 2-dollar words. However, whatever anyone might feel about the actual words, the fact of the matter is that she consistently writes about photographs from the perspective of "the pleasureable act of seeing" and a picture's capability of "caressing [the] imagination" - an erotics of art, indeed.

Even when Eauclaire addresses things photographic such as camera formats, she does so with a literary touch:

"Len Jenshel and Mitch Epstein seem to function like 'Aoelian harps' responding when strummed by the exceptional confluences of the worlld's appearance. Using hand-held, 6x9cm cameras, they are able to cruise fluidly in search of their subjects, reacting with greater rapidity than a large format camera would allow...Jenshel and Epstein shoot intuitively and omnivorously, navigating through reams of subject matter with the mobility of fighter planes in search of an appropriate target."

All of the above written, I find it refreshing to read about the medium of photography and its apparatus / photographs written by non-photographers. That is, writers / critics who come from the greater Art World rather than from a specific segment-Photography Division-thereof. It is also why, for the most part, I like showing / exhibiting my pictures to non-photographers cuz in both cases non-photographers are much more apt to see a picture for what it is rather than searching for meaning and/or viewing it through the fog of photo gear / technique.

# 5807-09 / civilized ku • kitchen life ~ I am what I am and that's all that I am - Popeye the Sailor Man

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

IT IS WHAT IT IS AND THAT IS ALL THAT IT IS.

In her essay, Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag wrote:

"The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art.... more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means."

Sontag suggests that, in the field of art criticism, content, aka: meaning, has taken precedence over form. Roughly translated, my understanding of that assertion is that finding the meaning(s) in a work of art is more important than what the work looks like. And, according to Sontag, that quest for finding meaning, re: the interpretation of work of art, "...is to impoverish, to deplete the world - in order to set up a shadow world of 'meanings'." Hence her statement (with which I emphatically agree):

"...interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.....[I]n place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art....to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more."

All of the above written, you might wonder what my point is....well, it's really quite simple. After years of struggling with the "meaning" to be found in my pictures-even to the point of, is there any meaning in my pictures?-I have arrived at a point where I quite emphatically believe that the visual arts, especially the medium of Photography and its apparatus, are meant to be viewed / experienced for their visual quality / characteristics / merits and the feelings-not the thoughts-that they incite. That is to write, the sensory / sensuous pleasure they bring to the act of seeing, by means of the elevation of form over content, aka: meaning.

To that point, consider this...I do not know the context in which Oscar Wilde offered up the following, an opinion which I find particularly pertinent, not only to Sontag's point, but to the manner in which I practice my picture making:

"It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."