# 6423-37 / comon places • common things • still life • people ~ meaninng schmeaning

January 30, 2023

***Quality butcher*** ~ Scotland (embiggenable)

“Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy.” ~ Susan Sontag

IN MY LAST ENTRY I PROCLAIMED THAT, re: the medium of photography and its apparatus, it’s the same as it ever was. I believe that to be true albeit with one notable exception; the Major League Division of the Fine Art Photography World. To wit…

Over the past decade or two, fine art photo galleries and art institutions have been taken over-I would venture to write”hijacked”-by the Academic Lunatic Fringe. That is, at the directorial level graduate degrees-MAs /MFAs-are the norm and, consequently, the work being exhibited or acquired adheres to the ALF dictum of meaning trumps visual content. Or, in other words, what a picture means is much more important than what a picture depicts. Concept is the thing, which quite frankly is to be expected of academia, aka: the home of ideas.

The unfortunate (iMo) results are two-fold; 1) most ALF pictures are, to my eye and sensibilities, visual flops, and, 2) the pictures are always accompanied by a bloviating art speak explanation, re: what the pictures mean. The explanations are, iMo, virtually indispensable inasmuch as the pictures, in and of themselves, are rarely self-explanatory. In fact, after being told by a picture maker exactly what his/her pictures are about, I rarely see in his/her pictures whatever it is the maker is trying to express.

“University presses [ed. +fine art photo book publishers] increasingly hold to the policy that requires books of pictures to incorporate “substantial” texts…. layering together pictures with the photographer’s words, [ed. or more likely an academic’s essay] but also sandwiching the concoction between slabs of social—scientific balloon bread. ~ Robert Adams

To be completely honest, I should make it clear that my dislike, re: this sad state of photographic affairs, is predicated upon a very selfish desire to be visually engaged when viewing photographs on a gallery / art institution (or even online) wall. That is, as opposed to pictures of the self-pyschoanalyzing, navel gazing “investigations” by some so-called lens-based artist’s obsession with the “intersection” of some aspect of a social-scientific balloon bread concept and his/her inner self/life.

# 6362-65 / nature • kitchen sink • kitchen life ~ confined to quarters

December 17, 2022

YESTERDAY AT APPROXIMATELY 3:12PM-9 hours into a 24 hour snowstorm-I was a couple minutes away from hitting the SAVE icon on an entry when, off went the electricity (town wide) and, poof, went the entry.

Happens on a regular basis when we have a heavy, wet snowfall. However, this time electricity was back in a few minutes but only as brown-out. Not enough juice for computer usage but, fortunately (and surprisingly), enough to operate our heating system (air-air heat pump). That situation lasted for a couple hours at which time we were plunged into heat-less darkness.

We lit candles all over the house and started a fire (in the fireplace) for warmth. That lasted for a couple hours and then the electricity returned at full strength. That lasted for 3 hours and then we were again light and heat-less for approximately 9 hours-midnight to10:30AM this morning.

All that written, I did not leave the house for approximately 30 hours so my picture making was confined to our kitchen.

# 5978-80 / still life (kitchen sink • kitchen life • decay & disgust) ~ what's in a name?

March 8, 2022

(embiggenable) - a *straight* photograph of a segment of the real world.

IT HAS BEEN A WHILE-A COUPLE YEARS?-SINCE I HAVE MADE a decay & disgust picture. I attribute that situation to the fact that the wife has been exceedingly diligent in making sure there is a deficit of decaying referents for my picture making fodder. However, since she is over 2,000 miles distant, suffice it to write that when the cat’s away the mice will play. In any event, I have a few thoughts about the picture label still life.

The decay & disgust and kitchen sink pictures were made 2 hours apart. Judging from my experience in the photo world, both pictures would be considered to be still life pictures. That is so even though the making of those 2 pictures could not be more different. To wit, call me a dyed-in-the-wool traditionalist cuz, iMo, the decay & disgust picture is the only of the 2 that is worthy to be called a still life picture and that is due to the fact of the difference in their making.

I’m guessing that 40-50% of my commercial picture making was comprised of still life photography. That is, pictures that were made with total control, much like a painter, over the creation of the image. Starting with a blank canvas-some sort of background-and, piece by piece, add elements to create a pleasing arrangement and then add lighting to taste. There were times when this process happened over a couple of days-involving a couple people-cuz props had be acquired, a set constructed and lighting tests run.

While the decay & disgust picture was put together in a hour or so, every item in the picture was chosen and arranged by me. Even the lighting was chosen by me inasmuch as all of my decay & disgust pictures are made in the same setting on cloudy days.

On the other hand, the kitchen sink picture-like all of my kitchen sink pictures-is a found picture. I had no hand in selecting the pictured items nor in their arrangement (really, I never touch a thing in the sink prior to picturing it. Really. Honest Injun.) And the lighting is the light that was falling on the scene at the time that I noticed the arrangement.

Consequently, I do not consider the kitchen sink to be a still life picture. To my way of thinking, it is, more accurately, a straight photograph of a segment of the real world.

# 5925-27 / around the house • still life ~ the wife thinks we have too much stuff

February 3, 2022

BEEN GETTING TOGETHER FEW CANDIDATES FOR SUBMISSION to Mike Johnston’s “Objects” Baker’s Dozen. My selections all fall under the heading of “little things”, of which there must be nearly 100 of them spread out-on display, stored in boxes and cupboards-around my house.

There is no overarching thematic imperative to my procurement activities other I like little things. Some of the objects have been acquired during my wife and I near-and-far travels. Those objects tend to be representative of the place in which they were acquired. So, in some cases, the objects have embedded memories of our travels together.

I any event, I have so many little thing objects that I have started a still life body of work-cheerleader with rooster and nativity set-of random groupings of little things….

….which brings this entry back the to “Object” Baker’s Dozen. Mike Johnston has posted a few pictures of submissions. They represent pictures which could be labeled as documents which depict the visual characteristics of objects but nothing more. They have no value as photographs other than as documentation. That written Johnston posted them for reason’s other than their merit as interesting photographs.

So, when I was looking for a picture or two for submission, I was looking for candidates that went beyond mere documentation. I found a few that I thought met that criteria-USA rooster with Coca Cola things-but it occurred to me that I should make a picture for submission. So I did-Minox Leica with dried rose and mini Tabasco bottle.

I believe that these pictures evoke something beyond mere documentation. That written, it is quite possible that they do so only for me.

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

November 29, 2021

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.

# 5817 / still life ~ boo-tiful picture

October 31, 2021

GORD-GEOUS GEORGE AND OTHER BOO-TIFUL signs of the day.

# 5790-93 / still life • civilized ku • landscape • flora ~ fairy-tale pictures

October 17, 2021

YET ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF REALLY BAD ADVICE / IDEA, re: making pictures:

"One of the biggest mistakes a photographer can make is to look at the real world and cling to the vain hope that next time his film will somehow bear a closer resemblance to it...If we limit our vision to the real world, we will forever be fighting on the minus side of things, working only too make our photographs equal to what we see out there, but no better."

This quote comes from a well known natural world / landscape picture maker (now departed) who made pictures with heaping doses of art suace. That should come as no surprise given the impoverished sentiment expressed in his quote which might be summed up as "reality bites". A sentiment which drove him to make pictures, not in pursuit of illustrating and illuminating the true character of the natural world, but rather, that were caricatures-a comically or grotesquely exaggerated representation of (someone or something)-of that world.

That written, if one were to search in the right places, one could find many examples of good advice / ideas which stand in direct contradiction to the preceeding quote:

"Some people are still unaware that reality contains unparalleled beauties. The fantastic and unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself." - Berenice Abbott

"Photography makes one conscious of beauty everywhere, even in the simplest things, even in what is often considered commonplace or ugly. Yet nothing is really 'ordinary’, for every fragment of the world is crowned with wonder and mystery, and a great and surprising beauty." - Alvin Langdon Coburn

It should be obvious-to those who have followed this blog for any length of time-on which side of this dichotomy I come down on. However, for those who land on the same side as I do, there is another cautionary quote to consider:

"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." ~ H.L. Mencken

I have uttered this quote-changing the word "intelligence" to the word "taste"-many times to explain the salivating admiration of the majority of the public for art-sauced pictures of the natural world. Mencken's quote is well worth heeding if one wishes to engage in the sale of pictures of the natural world cuz it's a fact that cheesey, over-wrought, art sauce laden pictures of the natural world are what sells.

# 5776-78 / landscape (ku)•still life (flora) ~ representative of autumn color

October 5, 2021

CAN A PHOTOGRAPH BE CONSIDERED AS A METAPHOR? - the dictionary defines, in part, a metaphor as a thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else. If so, consider this:

We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche