all photos ~ (embiggenable)
TOOK A FERRY RIDE YESTERDAY ACROSS THE 13TH LARGEST lake in the USofA–Lake Champlain-107 miles long, 14 miles at its widest–and purchased a new car. Didn’t mean to buy a new car, it was just kinda a spontaneous happenstance. In any event, all 3 of our cars are now sport-oriented–aka: so-called “drivers” vehicles–turbos.
Today is my birthday so this entry is on the brief side. I’ll be back in the more wordy mode in a few days.
(embiggenable)
Faded glory.
All photos ~ (embiggenable)
“I always thought good photos were like good jokes. If you have to explain it, it just isn’t that good.” ~ Anonymous
IF IT IS NOT OBVIOUS, LET ME NOTE THAT I RARELY caption or title my photographs, neither on this blog, in my photo books, nor in an exhibition. My primary reason for this omission was, coincidentally, explained in an essay by Lincoln Kirstein in the book Walker Evans ~ American Photographs–a reproduction, page by page / spread by spread–of Evans’ original book as published in 1938:
“The scheme of picture titles [left] only the page numbers as minimal distraction to the images …. Without the title’s immediate juxtaposition to the images, the viewer was obliged to fashion his or her own synopsis of the pictures’ content and form. This was another Evans’ impulse to purge all editorial comment from his work. Even his perfunctory titles were bare notations of place and date.”
I have always believed that, cuz the medium of photography is a visual art, words are not necessary. Some even believe that, if words are necessary, a photograph is a failure. That is a bit extreme but I believe a photograph should stand on its own visual merits. In addition, for what it’s worth, I also believe that “cutesy” captions / titles should be eradicated from the face of the earth.
All of the above written, my photo books and exhibition photographs are nevertheless always accompanied by an artist statement. The statements are written as a rather short and sweet synopsis of my picture making intent. Consider the artist statement for my An Adirondack Survey work:
“My photographs are visual analogues for the quality of my life, a private view of subject matter found in the commonplace realities of the Adirondacks. An Adirondack Survey, created as an engagement of personal vision rather than as a topographic documentary, illustrates my intent to animate, elucidate, and reveal a sense of beautiful strangeness. That is, not predictability (the opposite of cliche), but rather a kind of shock non-recognition hidden in plain sight within the quotidian landscape of the Adirondacks.”
In a very real sense, this statement, with a substitution of the title of any of my bodies of work in place of “An Adirondack Survey”, could be used as the artist statement for any of my bodies of work. I believe that to be true inasmuch as none of my bodies of work, with the exception of my Life Without the APA work, were undertaken to infer / connote any particular social / cultural commentary or intellectual concept; they exist as a simple visual statement from which a viewer may experience any reaction that suits their fancy.
That written, far be it from me to suggest with words what a viewer should experience when viewing my photographs.
cover photo -The World At My Feet ~ all photos (embiggenable)
11 YEARS AGO I MADE POD PHOTO book titled The World At My Feet. In hindsight that title was a bit of a misnomer inasmuch as, while my picture making gaze was cast downward, neither my feet nor the ground / floor were integral to the photographs (with 2 exceptions). Retrospect suggests that a more appropriate title should been something like Looking Down, or, Eye Contact Down, or, Downward Gaze.
In any event, during the 11 years since the making of that photo book, I have made hundreds of downward gazing photographs, to include the 5 in this entry which were made over the last 2 days. And then there is the Eyes Downcast gallery on my work which, FYI, has not been updated for a few years. Update coming soon.
To be certain, I have never considered the photographs resulting from my downward gaze M.O. to be a body of work. However, I do believe that now is the time to round up the best of the bunch and make another photo book.
BONUS CONTENT:
all photos (embiggenable)
A TRIP TO NYC IS IN MY VERY NEAR future for the sole purpose of seeing the North American premiere of Constellation, the most comprehensive presentation–454 prints–of work by Diane Arbus. I must admit that I feel that viewing 454 prints replete with Diane Arbus subject content is an intimidating proposition. It might just require a 2-day viewing experience; day 1–a comprehensive walk-through to get a grasp of the scope and tenor of the collection, and, day 2–spend time engaging with some of the more captivating photographs. In any event, it should very interesting.
FYI, over the years I have made a few–very few–Arbus-like photographs. Strangely enough, most are of children. While my photos do not have the Arbus strange weirdness vibe, they are a bit on the quirky side.
all photos (embiggenable)
“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” ~ Dorothea Lange
“Taking pictures is savoring life intensely every hundredth of a second.” ~ Marc Riboud
“We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us.” ~ Ralph Hattersley
“Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees.” ~ Paul Strand
BEGINNING WITH THE VERY FIRST PHOTOGRAPH I ever made, I can truthfully write that I never made a photograph–personal as opposed to commercial–that was driven by the desire to convey a meaning. Over time, as I advanced in my pursuit of so-called Fine Art Photography, I pursued my picture making with the belief that photography is a visual art and therefore my picture making objective objective was/is to make photographs that are “interesting”–in some manner or another–to look at / view. Photographs that exhibit what something looks like when photographed in a manner in which I see it.
To be certain, an interesting photograph that incites an emotional reaction / feeling might also, concomitantly, incite word-thoughts which can be expressed verbally. That written, it is a commonly held belief that any emotional and/or word-thought reactions to a photograph are primarily influenced by what the viewer brings to the table– as Sontag wrote … “inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy”.
If a viewer of my work were to spectulate that my photographs left them with the meaning that beautiful / interesting form can be found in the most mundane of things, I would respond by stating that I am happy you feel that way.
All the above written, I can write that, re: my eye and sensibilities, I am comfortable with the fact that I know the answer to the question, What is a photograph? However, the question to which I do not have the definitive answer is, Why do I make photographs?
That is not to write that I have never thought about the why of it. In fact, I think about it every time I have to write an artist statement to accompany an exhibit or a photo book. Inevitably, such statements will refer to my attraction to the form I see in the quotidian world; a statement which is true as far as it goes and is almost always appropriate. Nevertheless ….
…. at this point in my life, let’s refer to it as late in life, with multiple thousands of photographs in my photo library, I am wrestling with the idea of; a) what do I do with all the photographs, posterity wise? and b) why have I made so many photographs?
Inasmuch as I have made photos nearly everyday over the last 25 years, it is no surprise that I make a lot of photographs. While some might think this activity is some sort of obsessive behavior, I attribute it to the fact that my eye and sensibilities are very sensitive to / aware of the seemingly everywhere form I see that can be photographically extracted from the everyday world. Inasmuch as I live my life with eyes wide open–literally + figuratively–it is almost like a sensory overload. The potential for picture making is nearly inexhaustible so I make a lot of photographs.
WARNING: Psychological mumbo-jumbo to follow.
Let me try to string together the quotes at the top of this entry…
Inasmuch as Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still, it stands to reason that Taking pictures is savoring life intensely every hundredth of a second. Ya know, kinda like Evans’ delights of seeing; the defining of observation full and felt.
That written, I must confess that, when making a photograph, I can not write that I am savoring life at the picture-making moment inasmuch as I have never been able to stare at a blade of grass and see the secrets of the universe. That’s cuz, in part, time marches on. Fortunately, one of photography’s magic tricks is that it can “stop” time and with the production of a print that depicts that stoppage, the maker of the photograph–and possibly other viewers–can, indeed, savor the moment over and over.
Does anyone make photographs to understand what our lives mean to us? In all probability, some do–or try to–but, I do not. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that, buried deep in my subconscious, I am making photographs to understand / reassure myself that I am still alive. Not that I am clinging to life by a thread by any measure but, it’s a thought, albeit an unconscious one.
As for Strand’s notion that Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees, I suppose that, at least in my case, that’s true if he meant the word “living” to be a question of what gives a life a sense purpose, significance, and value; in pursuing knowledge, creating art, or experiencing profound moments of awe and connection.
Which is not to write that making photographs is my raison d'être but it is difficult to imagine what my life would be without it.
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.
all photos (embiggenable)
“Anything and all things are photographable. A photograph can only look like how the camera saw what was photographed. Or, how the camera saw the piece of time and space is responsible for how the photograph looks. Therefore, a photograph can look any way. Or, there's no way a photograph has to look (beyond being an illusion of a literal description). Or, there are no external or abstract or preconceived rules of design that can apply to still photographs. I like to think of photographing as a two-way act of respect. Respect for the medium, by letting it do what it does best, describe. And respect for the subject, by describing as it is. A photograph must be responsible to both.” ~ Garry Winogrand
I AM CURRENTLY PUTTING A PHOTO-BOOK together with the title, describing it as it is ~ there’s no way a photograph has to look. The book will contain 40 photographs of a wide range of referent material, more commonly known as my discursive promiscuity work.
If the book comes together as I believe it will, I will also make a handful of zines––of the same work––that I will offer for sale here on the blog. The zines will be much less expensive to produce than a hardbound book and can therefore be sold at a very reasonable price.
BTW, this project is also causing me to think that it is well past time for a total rebuild of the work displayed on my homepage and how it is presented.
all photos ~ (embgiggenable)
“If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up.” - Richard Avedon
SINCE MY RETURN FROM NEW MEXICO / DENVER, 20 days ago, it was until 3 days ago that I made my first photograph here at home. Oddly enough, it wasn’t until I made the photograph in this entry that I realized that so much time had passed since my last picture making. That realization made it plain that I had, in fact, been feeling “it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence.” That written, it should be noted that all of those 17 photograph-making-less days were spent doing something related to photography––i.e. processing my travel photographs.
Over past 2 days I have made a couple more photographs and begun to realize what it was that caused the back-to-home photo making lull; apparently, or so it seems, while in New Mexico, my picture making sensitivity intuitively(?) transitioned to the landscape mode. A mode in which shapes, texture, color, line, and tone found in the natural world are very different from the same values in a more urban / domesticated / man-made environment.
I can not write that I was consciously aware of that change but I was most certainly aware of the fact that reverting to the “rules of composition” was not going to be productive in the cause of avoiding making touristy / calendar pictures. It was that thought that got me off on the right foot when, from the get-go, I decided to make photographs from the passenger seat of our rental car.