around the house # 6-8 ~ pictures everywhere

It should surprise no one who follows this blog or knows me that I, with my belief in print making as the only manner in which to fully appreciate a photograph, have pictures hanging on the walls of my house. However, it did surprise me to realize that there are 56 of my pictures (all framed) on the walls. If pressed before I made the count (just today), I would have speculated that there are 20-25 hanging photographs.

Moving on ... on today's entry on LENSCRATH, there is work that shares my fascination with dirty / patina-ed kitchen utensils and food given over to decay, albeit pictured in a different manner than my similar referent pictures. The work by Joan Fitzsimmons is accompanied by an artspeak-ish (not the worst I have ever read) statement, which is to be expected from a B.F.A + M.F.A. picture maker ...

In my work, I’ve asked questions about human relationships, the nature of home, my relationship to nature, and the significance of the quotidian. The ordinary act of living is endlessly complex and uncertain .... ~ Joan Fitzsimmons

Fitzsimmons goes on to tell about her manner of working and her "relationship" (my word) to her referents and concludes with informing us that she "now note[s] that my materials and imagery and manner of collecting them, suggest/are traditional female work, so I am, once again, ready to place it within a feminist context."

Fitzsimmons' pictures are OK. Some work in creating a moderate visual interest. Others not so much. In either case, as far as making pictures of cutlery is concerned, Fitzsimmons' work pales in comparison to that of Jan Groover.

Groover's work has been described as "predominantly empirical, visual, and sensual - images rife with mystery, movement, and intrigue. There's a good read, No More Lazy Still-Life Photography, Please about Groover HERE I especially like the part about when Groover stopped making what she had been doing during her early career. She complained that ...

... she didn't know what to do, and her husband literally said, "Go photograph the kitchen sink." He managed to shut her up, but she took him quite literally, and started photographing just the shit that was in the sink.

Unlike Fitzsimmons and other contemporary picture makers for whom Concept is everything (hence all the artspeak which, ironically, is rarely about art and more about personal self-psychoanalytic crapola), According to Groover, the meaning of the objects is of no importance; only the shape, texture, and form that falls into a particular space is important. And was Groover's Formalist attention to shuch thing which instigated John Szarkwski to say...

.... her pictures were good to think about because they were first good to look at.
iMo, that's something that could not be said about Fitzsimmons' pictures.

around the house # 1-5 ~ fertile ground

Pursuant to yesterday's entry I culled out 130 pictures - from my archives - which were made within the confines of my house. Hence, the start of my around the house body of work.

During the selection process it became very apparent that my kitchen has been the most fertile picture making location, followed by the area around the toilet in one of the upstair bathrooms. Both rooms have abundant and ever changing natural light. However, the kitchen leads the picture making pack by virtue of the ever changing tableau vivant(s) of kitchen things (especially in the sink) and food stuff (raw and remainders).

The overwhelming number of around the house pictures could accurately be labeled as still life pictures.

H2O # 1-5

Yet another body of work, water, has emerged from my picture library as the result of a gallery call for submissions for an exhibition of the same name. I'll soon have a water gallery on my WORK front page.

civilized ku # 5160 / diptych # 226 ~ been there but can't go back again

Adirondack Garage ~ Old Forge, NY - in the Adirondack Park (embiggenable) • iPhone

my homemade Irish soda bread ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

Back from yet another road trip. Made some pictures and will post same.

I also met (in my hotel bar) and spent the better part of 3 hours with a supporting-herself working photographer (local to the area I was visiting). It was a very enjoyable encounter but it did instigate a bit of sadness which resulted from the fact that she had never seen a camera like my Oly EP-5 (with optical viewfinder).

That fact was not sadness inducing in and of itself. Rather, it was the fact that she had probably never had the experieince - being 30 years old - of visiting a stand alone sole proprietor camera store. That is, a place where a customer can see, handle and converse about (with an informed sales person with whom one might build a long term professional relationship) a wide range of camera makes and models. And, if in fact she has never had that experience, chances are slim and none that she ever will.

And, no, a visit to B&H is not the same experience as visiting a small stand alone camera store. Taking away nothing from B&H's fantastic inventory and commitment to superior friendly customer service, one could hardly describe the experieince as intimate. It's more like walking about in Times Square - lots of hustle and bustle, congestion and noise.

And here's the interesting and joy inspiring moment (certainly for me and I think likewise) that resulted from this bit of my encounter with my new picture making acquaintance ... she was so enamored(?) with the Oly that she asked to hold it and then fiddle with it and then - after a very brief explanation of how to operate it - commence to making pictures (of me and my good friend) with it.

Exactly the kind of experience she might have had in a traditional "old timey" camera store.

ku # 1414 / the new snapshot # 209 ~ a beautiful picture

roadside tangle ~ in the Adirondack PARK (embiggenable) • µ4/3

wedding reception ~ (embiggenable) • µ4/3

In a recent email from a self-proclaimed "fellow photo-geezer", whose site I visit almost daily, the geezer wrote:

.... the majority of my ‘audience’ never spends more time on the images than to identify the subject matter. Sad, but true.

That observation is, arguably, "sad, but true". However, in a real sense, it is a phenomenon predicated upon the medium of photography's primary characteristic - its ability to render realistic representations of the real world - hence elevating the depicted referent, in the eyes of most viewers, as the raison d'etre for the making of a picture.

iMo, in the case of snapshots, the depicted referent is, in fact, both the reason for the making of a picture and for holding a viewer's interest in that picture. That notion, together with the fact that snapshots are the most commonly made type of pictures, accounts for the subject matter centered attitude of most viewers of pictures.

However, my "fellow photo-geezer" is not engaged in making snapshots. His picture making intentions are more concerned (or so it seems to me) with the making of pictures which exhibit an artistic sensibility. That is, iMo, pictures which are not dependent upon subject matter / the depicted referent for exhibiting artistic merit, but rather upon sensory properties - shape, line, value, color space, etc. - which are organized to create unity, balance, imbalance, movement, stasis, serenity, agitation, etc. All of which is implemented to evoke an emotional / sensory response in the eye and sensibilities of a viewer.

A response which can be, and most often is, totally independent of the depicted referent in a picture. A visual phenomenon which is capable of creating a beautiful picture even though a depicted referent is not a thing of conventional beauty.