# 6443-50 / bodies of work ~ stumbling down a dead end street #2

the kitchen sink ~ (embiggenable)

legs and heels ~ (embiggenable)

still life ~ (embiggenable)

facades ~ (embiggenable)

Life without the APA ~ (embiggenable)

picture windows ~ (embiggenable)

tangles ~ (embiggenable)

single women ~ (embiggenable)

Adirondack Snapshot Project ~ (embiggenable)

ACCORDING TO THE IDIOT QUOTED IN MY LAST entry, I have apparently been “repeating the same basic work, for decades and decades, unaware that I have been stumbling down a dead end street”. That would be because I have been making pictures driven by my very own picture making vision. A vision that does not allow me to go careening around the technique / visual effects / gear-obsessed picture making landscape like a drunken sailor. To wit, I see what I see and that’s how that I see (all credit to Popeye who said, “ I am what I am and that’s all that I am.)

That written, re: careening around like a drunken sailor, I will readily admit to careening around the referent landscape like a drunken picture maker. A picture making condition condition (affliction?) that I call discursive promiscuity. To my eye and sensibilities, any thing and every thing is fair game for a picture making possibility. The result of that discursive promiscuity is that I have accumulated, over the past 25 years, at least 15,000 pictures.

One might think that that glut of pictures would make for a very unruly mess. However, that is not the case cuz, thanks to the guidance of my vision, the overwhelming majority of my pictures exhibit a consistent,-but not formulaic-very particular attention to form, aka: the “arrangement” of the visual elements-line, shape, tone, color and space-within the imposed frame of my pictures.

This “consistency” leads to a very interesting result; while I rarely work with the thought of creating a body of work in mind, nevertheless, I have, over an extended period of time, realized that my eye and sensibilities have been, and still are, drawn to specific referents again and again. The result is that eventually-many times over the course of years-I “discover” that I have, in fact-albeit inadvertently, created many bodies of work.

ASIDE the body of works illustrated above, with a few images each, are some of the bodies of work I have created, most of which were “discovered” in my library (as opposed to deliberately created). The are at least 6 more bodies of work I could display. END OF ASIDE

And, what I find interesting and very surprising is that, once a number of referent related pictures are organized into a body of work, the coherent consistency of vision is, quite frankly, amazing.

Makes me quite happy that I have not tried to “re-invent” my vision. And BTW, I really like the “street” I am on. It is not a “dead end” and, in fact, there is no end in sight as far as I can see.

# 5975-77 / picture windows • landscape (civilized ku) ~ setting a few things straight

on the campus of SUNY Plattsburgh ~ (embiggenable)

I had the green light to make a picture ~ (embiggenable)

why don’t we do it in the road? ~ (embiggenable)

THIS ENTRY FALLS UNDER THE HEADING OF dispelling misconceptions.

item 1 - In light of quite a number of recent entries which featured pictures under the heading of around the house (to include kitchen life / sink), some might assume, incorrectly, that I don’t get out and around much. While I do get out and around quite frequently for a wide variety of reasons, there is something about the cold (and dreariness) of winter that works against my out-of-the-house picture making.

Be that as it may, yesterday I ventured north to see a photography exhibit, North by Nuuk: Greenland after Rockwell Kent, at the Burke Gallery on the campus of SUNY Plattsbugh State College. It was also a meet-the-artist event. The work was sorta decorative art documentary / photo journalistic in style, which is not to write that it was not very high quality. FYI, more on the artist later.

In any event, after a few errands I headed home and along the way my eye and sensibilities were pricked by a couple scenes, so I made a couple pictures. One was made from the driver’s seat of my car, for the other picture I got my lazy ass out of the car. Proof positive that I do, in fact, get out and about.

item 2 - I have been writing, some might think nattering, quite a bit about the notion of fine art. As a result, some might also think that I am thinking very highly of myself and my pictures, or, that I am setting myself up as an oracle or arbitrator on things fine art, photography wise. To be perfectly clear, if anyone is holding those notions, let me write here and now that you are wrong.

Simply put, I am merely offering my opinions on the subject, the intent of which is to stir up some thoughts and opinions on the subject from readers of this blog.

That written, I have some experience, re: my thoughts on the subject of fine art photography. For a period of time I was a contributing writer / critic, re: fine art photography, for the national fine art magazine, The New Art Examiner (long gone). Specifically, they assigned me to review various photography exhibitions (solo exhibitions) around the North East. I enjoyed doing so until it became excruciatingly obvious (to me) that people were taking my opinions way too seriously. As in, what I wrote could seriously effect, pro or con, a photographer’s career.

When I came to that realization, that was the end of that endeavor. I had absolutely no intention or desire to assume the mantle of the maker or the breaker of anyone’s career. After all, it was just my opinion. I was not speaking / writing ex cathedra.

And, FYI, whether of not my pictures are fine art pictures is not for me to judge. I’ll leave that decision up to gallery directors and the like.

# 5824-27 / windows • doors (civilized ku) ~ looking at looking out

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

SQUARESPACE HAS COMPLETELY MESSED UP MY BLOG by disabling the code in the text entries. Unless they can fix this, I will be changing to another platform soon. In the meantime I will try to continue without my normal formatting code. In any event….

I was unable to post entries during my recent getaway due to wi-fi issues where we were staying. That written, I returned from our getaway with a surprising number-25 finished pictures-of pictures. Surprising inasmuch as nearly all of those pictures were made within 300 feet of our lake front cottage. With the exception of the pictures posted in this entry, all of the other pictures I made were landscape pictures.

(embiggenable) • iPhone

# 5832-36 / civilized ku•picture windows ~ from the inside, out

(embiggenable) • iPhone

(embiggenable) • iPhone

NO MATTER WHERE YOU GO THERE IS ALWAYS A view of a window with a view of something. I call the pictures I make thereof, picture windows.

While my "standard" picture making M.O.-creating an interesting arrangement of visual elements across the 2D printed field of view-is always at the the fore when making such pictures, there is also a metophoric device in play as well. That is, an impression of the world outside is being made from an inside place which is akin to forming an impression, using the human visual apparatus, of the world outside of one's inside place, aka: one's inner self.

If I were so inclined (which I am most definitely not) to spew Academic Lunatic Fringe art speak folderol, I could delve down into the rabbit hole of self-psycho-analytical flapdoodle in an attempt to aggrandize / embellish my creative genius. However, I'll be content to let my pictures speak for themselves, so to speak.

civilized ku # 3561-63 ~ therefore I am

sink / window in Brooklyn ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

a tree grows in Brooklyn ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

phone cluster in Brooklyn ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

IN A RECENT ENTRY I WROTE A RESPONSE TO a blogger's statement that, when using an iPhone to make pictures, he/she did not "feel like either a photographer or an artist". In my response I did not approach that statement from the POV of an iPhone picture maker. Rather, I kept it generic inasmuch as I pointed out that, by dictionary definition, if one makes a picture with a picture making device, any kind of device, one is a photographer. Or, iMo, at least acting like a photographer.

Re: the other idea of feeling like an artist, I pretty much begged off dealing with it by writing that I did not know what an artist is or is supposed to feel like. For that matter, I really did not know what a photographer is suppose to feel like. And, to get down to the nub of the feel-like idea, I have never spent much time, if any, trying to figure out what it feels like to be a human.

Since this is a blog about the medium of photography and its apparatus, venturing down the metaphyics (abstract theory with no basis in reality) rabbit hole is not on my play card. So....

.... simply written, I make pictures, therefore I am. I make art, therefore I am. I am a human, therefore I am. I do not think about being those things cuz I just do it (those things), and, I just try to do it in best manner I know.