at someone’s house-NOT MINE-on St. Patrick Day ~ (embiggenable)
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a few samples from my An Adirondack Survey work ~ (embiggenable)
I HAVE NOT BEEN THINKING ABOUT BLOG WISE THINGS over the past week or so. Rather, my time has been occupied with editing out from my photo library approximately 120 pictures for my emergent body of work, An Adirondack Survey ~ as seen in pictures.
The body of work is comprised of pictures-in and of the Adirondacks-that were made over the past 22 years-the length of my Adirondack residency-of my picture making life. Many of these pictures were exhibited as converted-into-snapshot pictures in my solo gallery exhibition, Adirondack Snapshot Project (there are a few samples on my WORK page). In the case of this iteration, the pictures are presented as simple, straight photographic color prints.
In any event, the kick-in-the-butt instigation for assembling this body of work was the re-reading of a 1976 press release from MOMA-announcing the opening of the Color Photographs by William Eggleston exhibition-in which John Szarkowski was quoted as expressing the idea that:
…these photographs are perfect: irreducible surrogates for the experience they pretend to record, visual analogues for the quality of one life, collectively a paradigm of a private view….Eggleston, who lives in Memphis, Tennessee, finds his private, even insular subject matter in the commonplace realities of that city and its environs….While his photographs comprise a remarkable and surprising commentary on contemporary American life, his work is more the engagement of a personal vision than a social document.
My reading of the press release, taken in its entirety, caused me to look at my Adirondack pictures in a new light inasmuch as:
my photographs are visual analogues for the quality of my life, a private view of subject matter found in the commonplace realities of the Adironacks where I live. My photographs-an engagement of personal vision rather than a social documentary-comprise a somewhat surprising-as in rarely seen before-commentary on contemporary Adirondack life.
In order to circulate this work, I am in the process of making a 20 print portfolio and a 50 picture hardbound book for submission to a number of galleries / art institutions. And, I must admit to a degree of fear and trepidation inasmuch as I am laying it all on the line-my personal vision wise-with the submission-to important regional galleries / arts organizations- of this significant collection of my picture making life’s work.