# 6834-37 / around the house • common things • landscape ~ THE IN-BETWEEN WORLD

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A WELL KNOWN ART-WORLD PHOTOGRAPHER, WHEN DISCUSSING his formative years, stated:

…. at that time [ed. late 60s] photography was separated from the art world …. there were these 2 worlds …. 1.) the old photography world, a place described as a somewhat geeky realm of camera clubs and group critiques …. 2.) the art photography world, relegated mostly to photography galleries where people with different degrees of aesthetic interests, different intensionalities, and very different styles were all lumped together.

This past-history tidbit is indicative of the idea that the more things change. the more they stay the same, or, on other words, the same as it ever was inasmuch as I would suggest that; a.) the geeky camera club / group critique world still exists albeit floating around in the ethereal digital domain rather than in actual, physical meeting places, and, b.) the art photography world still exists in galleries albeit as an adjunct to its formative residency in academia.

iMo, the bedrock difference that distinguishes one world from the other is how each handles the idea of content; the camera club world considers content to be–in my mind, to a fault–the actual, literally depicted subject to be seen in a photograph whereas, in the art photography world paradigm, content is the concept, aka: meaning, behind a photograph. Or, think of it this way; one manner of picture making wants a viewer to see a literally documented something whereas the other picture making crowd wants you think about a visually intangible something.

DISCLOSURE if it ain’t clear to anyone who follows this blog, let me restate my position; I think the current Academic Lunatic Fringe fine art photography world is a batch of hooey, aka: flapdoodle and green paint. However, I am willing to concede to it the idea of different strokes for different folks (as long as no innocents are harmed in the making) END OF DISCLOSURE

In any event and all of that written, here’s the point of this entry; in my current pursuit of gallery exhibition possibilities I find myself betwixt and between the 2 photography worlds inasmuch as my photographs are about more than what is literally depicted–YIKES, sounds suspiciously like a concept–but, on the other hand, the intensionality behind their making is not about any mental idea / concept. Point in fact, my photographs are about extracting form from the quotidian world so that it can create a visual experience that can actually been seen*.

The difference between the camera club and art photography worlds creates a dilemma for me; the camera club world cannot begin to comprehend why I would take a picture of the “mess” in my kitchen sink. They look at me as if I had lobsters crawling out my ears. On the other hand, the ALF world looks at me and my photographs with a where’s the beef? expression on its face–hey you simple-minded twit, where’s the 5,000 word artist statement cuz we know it’s a picture of your kitchen sink but what does it mean?

OK, OK, that’s my problem but here’s a more universal consideration, re: how the ALF is fucking up your photography life; until about 15-50 years ago, one could go to NYC, Chelsea district, and within a 4 block area visit 30-40 photo galleries–mostly small to medium sized with a couple large ones–located in the 4-5 story buildings that lined the streets. Most of those galleries displayed straight / straight-ish photography. Long story short, that is all gone now.

Part of the reason they are gone is due to real estate reality–gentrification–in The Big City, . But, that granted, as support for gallery display of straight photography waned under the onslaught of the ALF wave, most “old photography” world galleries just flat-out disappeared–not just in NYC but throughout the country. In my experience, I can not remember when was the last time I viewed an exhibition of straight photography that was not a collection of either camera club cliches or a retrospective exhibition of the work of various greats from the last century.

More’s the pity.

PS don’t despair cuz next entry I’ll provide a source for locating–cutting through all the digital world clutter–some damn good straight photography.

*ya know, “seen”, cuz photography is a visual art.

#6830-32/ around the house • common things ~ it ain't what ya eat, it's the way how ya chew it

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"It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." ~ Abraham Maslow c.1966

OVER THE YEARS I HAVE MENTIONED (ON THIS BLOG) that I have a rather significant collection of books about photography, both monologues and what might be labeled as books that offer critical analysis–lots of words, very few pictures–on the medium itself. In the context of this entry, it is worth a mention that most monologues include essays–in some cases, multiple essays by different authors–about the presented work.

I have been acquiring photo related books for over 50 years and I continue to do so to this day; case in point, my recent purchase of the Sally Mann book–lots of words, a few pictures–and the MOMA Stephen Shore publication–lots of pictures and lots of words. That written, I continue to acquire such material as part of my ongoing Adult Education Program–a program of which I am the sole Director / Course Advisor.

In any event, you might be wondering what the hammer / analogy has to do with this topic. Well, it’s not complicated …. re: my photo book collection, the books I value most are the monologues and if I were required–most likely by the wife who dislikes “clutter”–to pare the collection down to essentials, all the critical analysis stuff would be headed for the trash bin. Why? Cuz virtually all of them are written using a “hammer”, i.e. academic falderol and artspeak, in order to beat / suck the life out of the “nail”, i.e. photographs. It is as if the authors see a photograph as an opportunity to let us know how fucking smart they are.

Credit were credit is due: To be fair, if one possesses the fortitude and persistence to wade through the often dry and tedious, arcane, academic morass of words, words, words–fyi, I do– there are nuggets of interest and, dare I write, insights to be had.

All of the above written, I am drawn to the question of whether a writer with an academic mindset can ever be a sensualist (a topic for future consideration), i.e. someone who embraces the data gathered by the senses over reason and intellect, especially so when viewing photographs. Most likely what I am considering here is the difference between visual thinking and verbal thinking. Which, it should be noted, can be intermingled to one degree or another in a person–rare is the person who think exclusively in one mode or the other. Case in point ….

…. I am, predominately but not exclusively, a visual thinker. I have a very good friend who is predominately, but not exclusively, a verbal thinker. He does appreciate my photography but, that written, typically, when viewing one of my photos on a device with a touch screen, he immediately uses the thumb / forefinger enlargement feature to view details in the photo. A practice which indicates, to me, that he tends to overlook the form / structure of the photo and concentrate his interest, primarily but not exclusively, on the literally depicted referent(s) to be seen in the photo.

ASIDE he and I were both Honor Class students in our all-boys Jesuit Prep school but, tellingly, relative to this entry, he chose Science Honors whereas I chose Greek Honors END ASIDE

One more case in point–based in part on an actual experience (mine) and in part on conjecture …. the photo in this entry of a vintage ironing board. When the wife brought this thrift store find into the house and set it up, I was immediately struck with a overwhelming, visceral, and intense reaction which could be summed up as “This is the most beautiful, man-made object I have ever seen”. The fact that it is an everyday, functional object makes it even more stunning. The words, elegant, delicate, subtle, and all-of-piece come to mind.

On the other hand–here’s the conjecture part–I am very certain that, while my good friend thought it to be interesting, his verbal thinking cap was all a-twitter wishing that he had brought his protractor and drawing compass along cuz there was so much geometry to be measured and cataloged. Then, of course, there is the structural integrity to be considered (fyi, it was quite sound).

In any event, all I now want to do is add a small, one room addition to our house–no windows, white walls and with gallery lighting–in which to place, centered of course, the ironing board so that from time-to-time I can contemplate it in order to keep connected to the true meaning of life.

Cuz, remember, as the sensualist in my visual thinking brain constantly reminds me, all knowledge is ultimately derived from sensory experience and sensations and perceptions are the most fundamental forms of true cognition.

And, oh yeah, acquire some photo books.

# 6827-29 / around the house ~ a world of shapes

“A round straw hat, the funnel leaning left, the stairway leaning right, the white drawbridge with its railings made by circular chains, white suspenders on the back of a man in the steerage below, round shapes of iron machinery, a mast cutting into the sky, making a triangular shape … I saw shapes related to one another. I was inspired by a picture of shapes and underlying that a feeling I had about life.” ~ Alfred Stieglitz

When confronted by a scene of abject human misery and defeat, Alfred Stieglitz saw the scene as a composition, a “picture of shapes” that bore no relationship to the facts–albethey factually described–of the scene itself. The picture–The Steerage–is hailed by some critics as one of the greatest photographs of all time because it captures in a single image both a formative document of its time and one of the first works of artistic modernism.

Re: Modernism: Stieglitz, together with O’Keeffe, was considered to be amongst those who helped start the American Modernism movement; O’Keeffe with her paintings and Stieglitz with his photography and his gallery. Photography wise, Stieglitz, who began his photography career as a Pictorialist, eventually rejected Pictorialism–extensively manipulated photographs intended to be “artistic”–and adopted and advocated the practice of straight photography–a “pure” picture making technique that utilized the medium’s intrinsic, authentic characteristics.

Stieglitz was convinced that, if photography were to rise to the status of fine art, the medium had to free itself from its mimicry of painting and embrace its ability to describe, with clarity and fidelity, the facts of real life. Concurrent with the embrace of straight photography was an idiom bending shift away from symbolist referents to those evincing a sense of realism, in particular, the facts of everyday life, aka: the commonplace.

All of the above written, it would suggest that straight photography became a thing 'round about the creation of The Steerage photo which was made in 1907. OK, granted that was a momentous moment in the history of the medium but, the question remains, what makes the photo one of the greatest photographs of all time?

In addition to being one of the first, if not the actual first, straight photograph to be considered as fine art, it might also be the first photograph made in a Formalist tradition; i.e. a photograph that was made prioritizing the form or structure of the work over its content–the creator, aka: Stieglitz, was focused on elements like line, tone, space, shapes (elements of art) over historical context or societal impact. It would appear that Stieglitz was intent on creating an ideal image, a nearly Platonic belief in an ideal visual form.

The photograph points up to the extent to which so much (but not all) fine art photography relates to the commonplace, but doing so as part of an attempt, by the intervention of the photographer’s eye, to transform the most obvious of things into their unique potential as objects (aka, prints). It is as if everything waits to be photographed cuz it can only evince its apotheosis, as it were, in the image that reveals that ideal potential in visual terms.

All of the above written, it can be considered 2 ways; a.) as a very accurate description of my picturing making M.O. inasmuch as I strive to create photographs that exhibit “ideal visual form” as I see it in the quotidian world. My intent is not to imply / suggest that beauty can be found everywhere. Rather, my intent is to create a thing / an object, i.e. a photographic print, that is, in and of itself, beautiful (or, at least, visually interesting), or, b.) to suggest that I believe, iMo, that the overwhelming number of all-time “great” photographers, especially those who practice straight photography, think, see, and photograph in a manner not unlike that of Steiglitz.

#6804-07 / landscape • around the house • sink ~ document as form

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“There are no heroics in [his] images, but rather a poetics of the ordinary and the everyday and a refusal to create an effect for its own sake, echoing Walker Evans’s desire to reveal the “deep beauty of things as they are.” His approach can be tied to a long American tradition of elevating the simple and the commonplace, in form as well as content, to a certain poetry and a way of life, from Ralph Waldo Emerson writing that “I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of familiar, the low,” to Walt Whitman championing “a transparent, plate-glassy style, artless”, characterized by “clearness, simplicity, no twisted or foggy sentences.” Despite its historic context, this enthusiasm for the vernacular, when expressed through photography, has been unsettling for some observers, and continues to this day.” ~ from Stephen Shore: Solving Pictures by Quintin Bajac

AS I BEGIN TO EMBARK UPON A PATH OF intense self-promotion, with the objective of creating recognition / awareness of my photography in the gallery / exhibition world, I am directed toward the necessity of writing an Artist Statement, one that could be universally applied to any work that I have created; i.e., to each and every one of my 20 individual bodies of work. It might be said that that task is fraught with complications given the diverse variety of referent matter depicted in my various bodies of work. However, I think not cuz, regardless of the depicted referent, all of my photographs are unified under the aegis of my singular vision, the identifiable manner–if one can see / grasp it–in which I see and photograph life and the real world––hence, the discursive promiscuity nomenclature that I ascribe to my cumulative body of work.

That written, an Artist Statement most often addresses two objectives, aka: the how and the why. The how is the easy part––at least for me cuz it will essentially be a derivation / variation on the quote included above; simply written, I make photographs of the quotidian world without effects or “twisted or foggy sentences.” The why part is, however, a different kettle of fish ….

…. that’s cuz, in large part, I am not attracted to a particular referent material of any particular kind, as in, being drawn to––per the medium’s directive to photograph the singular “thing” that interests you––the landscape (natural world or man-made), people, still life, nudes, events / human activities, et al. For example, I will never write the sentence, “I am attracted to the dirty dishes in my sink,” cuz, the fact of the matter (pun) is that I am not attracted to the stuff in my sink other than for it potential to be made into a photograph. So, that all-purpose answer to the why question has exited stage right, aka: out the window.

It is also fair to write that I do not photograph to espouse any “deep” meaning, re: my referents or my personal “beliefs” or involvement is a cause or ideology; my intent is to make photographs that instigate feeling / emotions, not thoughts, to wit, visual interest, not intellectual interest. So, an appeal to the Academic Lunatic Fringe is most certainly not in my future inasmuch as they probably consider me to be a picture-making simpleton.

What I can state could be a variation on the idea that I am attracted to “the common” and that I do “explore and sit at the feet of familiar, the low,” but that still begs the question of why I do so ….

It is my belief that to address that question I need to. A) embrace the Shakespeare-ian concept that “what’s past is prologue” inasmuch as I am coming to the the conclusion that my “baked in” picture making proclivities are a direct result of my past young-life experiences of sitting next to the window on the passenger-side, back seat of my parent’s car, staring out that window at the everyday, real world landscape as it scrolled past my eyes like an old-timey newsreel––especially so during those long-which I thought of as boring-1950's drives on the 2-lane roads through small towns and the rural country side on the way to the Adirondacks*––made an indelible imprint on my visual perception of how I see the real world ….

…. and, B) I can also state that I take great pleasure / satisfaction in making photographs that express the idea that a beautiful or, at the very least, a visually interesting object––aka: a photographic print––can be created from the from the most likely considered un-beautiful, un-visually interesting referents.

All of the above written, be forewarned that I will be continuing to write quite a bit more about the creating recognition / awareness of my photography endeavor I am pursuing.

*not to mention the fact that I now am a longtime resident of the Adirondacks

# 6705-08 / flora • around the house ~ it's a modern life

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THERE ARE DAYS WHEN I STRUGGLE TO COME up with photography related topics to write about. In large part. that’s cuz during the course of my blogging–decades–I have covered a lot of ground and I try not to repeat topics too frequently and I strive to stay on topic, i.e. the medium of photography and its apparatus.

That written, I do have an interesting life and I could easily write about my sleep habits or all of the fascinating details of the recent decisions I made when purchasing a new car or all about the 3 turbo-powered performance cars I have or there is my golf game and how I have recently re-shafted my forged irons with senior shafts or explaining why I have 4 canoes–2 solo and 2 tandem–and the subtleties of the J-stroke or how about my whiskey collection of rare and very expensive bottled spirits and addressing the question of whether or not my bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 20 Year Old is worth the price or my other hobby of building very complex LEGO sets or … et al …. but, I won’t do it. So instead, it’s on with the show….

Re: “creamy” bokeh: bokeh is the quality and feel of the background/foreground blur and reflected points of light in the out-of-focus, aka: blurry, parts of an image. Bokeh is judged to be “good” when the background blur is soft and “creamy”–smooth, round circles of light and no hard edges–making the blur pleasing to the eye. Bokeh is judged to be “bad” when the circles of light have sharp, aka: well-defined, edges and, dependent upon lens diaphragm blades–rounded blades, good / straight blades, bad–a hexagonal shape.

So, back in the olden days when photographers used those antiquated things called cameras, if one were to be desiring smooth, round out-of-focus circles of light / “creamy” blur, both the number and the shape of a lenses’ diaphragm blades was an all important element in creating that desired result. Making pictures with a fast prime lens, with rounded / blade apertures, set to the lowest value, aka: wide ”open” was the way to go for creating “good” bokeh.

On the other hand, today, in the modern world, one need not be concerned with all that “real” camera crap. Enlightened shooters can just fire up their cell phone’s picture making module / capabilities, set it to the PORTRAIT mode and choose the amount of blur you desire and fire away. And, get this, if you don’t like the result you can increase or decrease the blur–from none at all to max out-of-focus–after the fact during the image processing stage. And, in my experience, there is nary a hard-edge circle to be found and the blur is “creamy” enough to please my eye and sensibilities..

Of course, when employing this technique, you risk incurring the ire of the “real” camera purists who will tell you in no uncertain terms that your blur is “fake”–nothing more than an amateurish, cheap trick / effect cuz, ya know, “real” men use use “real” cameras.

My advice, just smile and move on knowing that “real” people, who enjoy looking at pictures, rarely give a crap about how a picture is made. They just know a good picture when they see it.

# 6998-6700 / people • around the house ~ they say it's your bithday... well it's my birthday too, yeah

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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.

# 6988-91 / kitchen life • flora ~ pictures, not words

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“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.