# 5800-02 / civilized ku•landscape•idiocracy ~ taking the high road

June 3, 2021

OUR DRIVE FROM SAN DIEGO TO SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO via Arizona-with a few detours on to Historic Route 66 (cuz as the song suggests, "get your kicks on route 66")-took us along some interesting landscape. And, we came across a prime example of American Idiocracy.

#5771-77 / landscape (ku)•kitchen sink/life•gas stations (civilized ku)•people ~ on discursive promiscuity (36 hours)

May 17, 2021

IN THIS ENTRY ARE MOST, BUT not all, of my picture making activity over the last 36 hours. Discursive Promiscuity wise, I did not set out to picture any particular thing / referent during that time frame. In fact, I did not "set out" at all. The activity was instigated soley-as I moved about my world-by whenever and whatever pricked my eye and sensibilities. And, as mentioned in my last entry, during post picture making processing-some on the iPhone, some on the desktop-I was able to sort the pictures into appropriate body of work folders to include, kitchen sink / kitchen life / landscape (ku) / people / gas stations (civilized ku) and a relatively new body of work, narrow DOF.

FYI, promiscuity wise, in addition to my separate body of work folders, I also save all of my pictures, regardless of theme, into 1 of 2 other folders: a) every µ4/3 picture of have ever made, or b) every iPhone picture I have ever made. In total there are approximately 12,200 processed pictures in those 2 folders.

FYI # 2: for the iPhone users or iPhone as a respectalbe picture making device curious followers out there, on the last entry a link to an article, Gueorgui Pinkhassov | Sophistication Simplification, on the Magnum website was left by Geoff Morgan. It's an interesting read. From the article's intro:

Gueorgui Pinkhassov’s new book, Sophistication Simplification, takes the photographer’s Instagram work as a point of departure, in “an attempt to return images from the virtual world into the usual, material one.” On the occasion of its release, the Magnum photographer reflects on his practice, the role of the iPhone and the changing of cultural mores prompted by the digital revolution, changes in the media and the role of photography. The collection of “small sketches made on the run—the fruits of a fleeting moment” is available to purchase through his publisher.

#5768-70 / (ku) landscape•kitchen life ~ on discursive promiscuity

May 15, 2021

I TRULY BELIEVE THAT VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIFE, picture making wise:

"Photography is a contest between a photographer and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing. The contest can be held anywhere...One might compare the art of photography to the act of pointing. It must be true that some of us point to more interesting facts, events, circumstances, and configurations than others." ~ John Szarkowski

Which is why I am a practitioner of what I call discursive promiscuity. Consequently, my picture making contest, as Szarkowski suggests, can be held anywhere. And, it can be the focus of any given referent. That is cuz my eye and sensibilities can be pricked by, seemingly, the most unconventionable referents. That is, referents outside of the box of what is considered to be referents appropriate for the making of a picture. However, no matter the referent, my pictures are most always about form. In a way, kinda like Robert Adams:

"By Interstate 70: a dog skeleton, a vacuum cleaner, TV dinners, a doll, a pie, rolls of carpet....Later, next to the South Platte River: algae, broken concrete, jet contrails, the smell of crude oil.... What I hope to document, though not at the expense of surface detail, is the form that underlies this apparent chaos."~ Robert Adams

All of the above written, coming back to Scarkowski's idea of "more interesting facts, events, circumstances, and configurations", it took a comment from a gallery director who said, upon the viewing of my porfolio-which at the time was not divided into separate bodies of work-that no matter the diverse subject matter seen in my work, he would have no trouble identifying any of the pictures (when viewed as a stand-alone picture) as a product of my vision, which caused me to understand that the manner in which I pictured the world-that is, the identifiable configuration seen in all of my pictures-was the link which held all of the diverse referents together as a unified body of work. (My thanks to Hemingway for introducing the idea of run-on sentences as a writing divice)

That realization caused me to understand that promiscuous picture making was the way to go. After all, it would always be possible, long after the picture making fact, to harvest like-minded referent pictures from my total body of work and organize them, by specific referents, into separate bodies of work.

I recognize that this manner of picture making flies in the face of the conventional wisdom about picking a single subject / referent and concentrate on it, and it alone, for a protracted period of time in order to create a unified body of work. However, for me, when attempted, that mode of picturing leads me to a kind of picture making boredom which leads to a premature end of what I might have wanted to accomplish. What I have found from pursuing discursive promiscuity picture making is that I can add pictures, ad infinitum, to any number of separate bodies of work over a very long period of time.

In any event, I guess what I am suggesting in this entry is for giving it a try for a couple of months. Just picture anything and every thing and see what happens.

# 5740-41 / landscape•people ~Rockwell Kent-ish

April 26, 2021

WHILE DRIVING-TOP DOWN IN THE ABARTH-THIS PAST SATURDAY-I drove around a bend over a knoll and was confronted with a Rockwell Kent painting, Adirondack scene wise, apparition.

Rockwell Kent was a prominent 20th century painter, print maker, illustrator who spent most of his adult life on his farm (with studio), Asgaard*, 3 miles up the road from my home in Au Sable Forks (pop.541), NY in the Adirondack Mountains / Forest Preserve. FYI, that's his farm with barn in the above hay bale painting.

*named after a location associated with gods. It is depicted in a multitude of Old Norse sagas and mythological texts.

When I moved to the Adirondacks, 21 years ago, Kent had died 30 years prior. His farm was still in operation (new owners) and is where we still get most of our beef, poultry, pork and aclaimed-around-the-world goat cheese. We are friends with the owners of the farm so on occasion I am able to go up to the farm and hang out in Kent's empty stand-alone studio.

In any event, every once in a while I do come across a Kent-like looking landscape. I never have pictured one. However, the mountain landscape pictured here was so much like that found in many a Kent Adirondack painting that, I swear, the Abarth came to stop on its own and seemed to indicate that it was not going anywhere until I made a picture.

While thinking about making this entry, I recalled that I had made a picture, in the exact same location (and I do mean exact!) where Rockwell Kent had made a painting-in Co Donegal, Ireland near the location of the so-called "Ghost" fishing town, aka: Port. At the time I made the picture, I was not aware of Kent's very well known painting, "Annie McGinley" (presented in this entry). It was not until I returned from Ireland that I discovered the painting while researching Kent's time painting in Ireland.

Upon viewing the painting (online), I will admit to having a freaky spine-tingling moment as I realized, not only had I trod in Kent's near-exact footprints, but I had also made a picture with a similar motif ... a lone woman in a dramatic location. In my case, my wife. In Kent's case, most likely his Irish Lassie inamorata inasmuch as he was a well known seeker of many women's "affection".

PS I was very lucky to come across a very nice signed, first edition copy of Kent's 1940 book, This Is My Own. An interesting illustrated telling of his life and times in Au Sable Forks.

# 5637-42 / ku•landscape•natural world ~ some of these pictures are just like the others

February 12, 2021

IT HAS BEEN SUGGESTED THAT EVERYTHING THAT CAN be pictured has been pictured. While that idea is not exactly true, it is close enough to be considered to be generally true. Case in point ....

In my last entry, wherein I wrote that I was rumaging around in my picture library looking for pictures for my next entry, this entry is the "next" entry to which I was referring. I was looking for pictures like the ones seen in this entry in response to my discovery of an announcement of an exhibit / book / limited edition folio of new pictures, NATURAL ORDER, from Edward Burtynsky

I admit that, when I viewed Burtynsky's NATURAL ORDER pictures, my first thought was that he had hacked into my picture library and "borrowed" some of my pictures for his project. A project which he undertook during the recent pandemic and which I have been pursuing for the last 20 years.

My second thought was that being a well known, "big name" picture maker sure makes it easy to get an exhibition along with all the attendant add-ons. I have yet to have an exhibit of my thickets & tangles work which could be due to the fact that, to date, I have not submited a porfolio of that work to any galleries...a prime example of you never get what you don't ask for.

All of that written, re: everything that can be pictured has been pictured - if a crow were to fly due west from where I live (and make pctures), in about 200 miles the crow would fly directly over the location where Burtynsky made his NATURAL ORDER pictures. So, given the nesrly identical flora-zones, it really is no surprise that our pictures are so similar-not exactly the same, but similar. Similar enough that Burtynsky could slip a few my pictures into his exhibit-and I could do likewise with a few of his pictures into my body of work-and no one would be the wiser.

As similar as our pictres might be, here's where I part ways with Burtynsky...in his Artist Statement, Burtynsky writes that his pictures are "from a place in [his] mind that aspires to wrest order out of chaos and to act as a salve in these uncertain times." He also asserts that "these images are an affirmation of ... the natural order in all things."

Unlike Burtynsky, I am not striving to wrest order out of chaos. Rather, my pictures are an attempt to illustrate and revel in-for its own sake-the visual beauty and energy to be found / seen in the disorderly / chaotic / seemingly serendipitous entanglements of selective parts of the natural world. And, my pictures are not intended to be a "salve" but rather, at least at first glance, a visual irritant.

That written, I do believe it is quite possible to be drawn into a protractive, quiet contemplation of the complex field of visual energy to be seen in both of our pictures. However, where that comtemplation might lead to is up to the viewer.

# 5634-36 / ku•landscape•natural world ~ heretofore unseen

February 9, 2021

WHILE ROOTING AROUND IN MY LIBRARY looking for pictures for my next entry, I came across a number of image files which I had not finished processing. Makes we wonder how many more "hidden" unfinished images files there are floating around in my library.

# 5631-33 / kitchen sink•around the house•landscape ~ oh, my aching back

January 30, 2021

PHOTOGRAPHERS, UNLIKE PAINTERS, ARE, SEEMINGLY (AS EVIDENCED BY THE SHEER VOLUME OF WRITTEN WORDS), obsessed with attempting to come up with answer to the question, what is a photograph? Or, perhaps, more accurately, an answer to the question, what is it that makes a good-better-best photograph?. Pianters, on the other hand, do not seem to concerned with the question, what is a painting?

iMo, while there are many interesting tidbits to be found here and there amongst the writings, re: photography, in the end it is all very subjective idle chatter. I believe that to be true cuz I believe that each and every photograph is, quite literally, a Rorschach test-like image from which a nearly endless number of deductions / conclusions / meanings / feelings can be had. Not to mention the fact that one person's adjudged great photograph may be headed for another person's junk pile.

That written, my experience, taken from the millions of written words-books and selected quotes written by photographers-I have read on the topic, leads me to conclude that are 2 main camps involved in this ongoing idle chatter; on the one side there is the simpledminded crowd, and on the other side, there is heavylifter crowd. FYI, I tend to come down on the side of the simplminded crowd.

Re: the simplemided crowd - is not stupid. iMo, they just try to keep it simple / pure (as "constrained" by the limits and capabililities of the medium and its apparatus). Think Gary Winogrand:

"I don't have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is to see what something looks like as a photograph....For me the true business of photography is to capture a bit of reality (whatever that is) on film...if, later, the reality means something to someone else, so much the better.

In a sense, the simpledmided crowd acts upon the idea that a picture is "just" a picture. A thing to be looked at. A "simple" visual experience which, nevertheless, can lead / incite a viewer to go wherever he/she might want to go, limited only by an individual viewer's knowledge and life experience.

Re: the heavylifter crowd - has, seemingly, never viewed a photograph upon which they can heap too much of a burden which does not break a pictures back. Think Robert Adams:

"If the proper goal of art is, as I now believe, Beauty, the Beauty that concerns me is that of Form...Beauty is, in my view, a synonym for the coherence and structure underlying life...that is, the order in art that mirrors the order in Creation itself...Why is Form beautiful? Because, I think, it helps us meet our worst fear, the suspicion that life may be chaos and therefore our suffering is without meaning."

In his writings, re: "important" pictures Adams states that most "important" pictures "reveal Form"...."show us coherence in its deepest sense" and "contain the full Truth, the full and final truth." ASIDE All of the preceding is from Robert Adams is from his book, BEAUTY IN PHOTOGRPAHY. END OF ASIDE

Try as I might, and I have read and re-read Adams' essay, Beauty in Photography over and over and over again over the past few days, I just cannot get to where Adams wants me to go. The metaphysical burden is just too heavy for me to lift. I suppose it is possible a little weed might help me get somewhere in the Adams neighborhood when contemplating a specific picture. However...

....I have no real interest in turning my picture viewing (or, more emphatically, my picture making) into a quest for pictures which contain the full and final truth, the coherence and structure underlying life in its deepest sense and the Form / Beauty in art that mirrors the order in Creation itself. I just sounds too much like religion to me.

# 5619-30 / ku•landscape•natural world ~ "calendar" work v. art work

January 23, 2021

from my big landscape work ~ (embiggenable) • µ4/3 — *from my* **big landscape** *work* ~ (embiggenable) • µ4/3

from my intimate landscape work ~ (embiggenable) • µ4/3 — *from my* **intimate landscape** *work* ~ (embiggenable) • µ4/3

from my tangles and thickets work ~ (embiggenable) • µ4/3 — *from my* **tangles and thickets** *work* ~ (embiggenable) • µ4/3

from my on the gound work ~ (embiggenable) • µ4/3 — *from my* **on the gound** *work* ~ (embiggenable) • µ4/3

MORIBUND-def. (of a thing) in terminal decline; lacking vitality or vigor. A word which, iMo, could justifiably be used in conjunction with the phrase / nomenclature of Landscape Photography.

To be clear, it should be noted that the genre of Landscape picture making is not an single organized picture making movement which adhers to a single, uniform picture making aesthetic / norms. I would not even try to count and/or describe the number of sub-genres taking refuge under the umbrella of Landscape picture making.

That written, I do believe that here is one undeniable fracture in Landscape picture making spectrum. That is, the picture making divide between the ANSEL Adams crowd and the ROBERT Adams crowd (feel free to choose your own particular examples).

iMo, the diference between the crowds is that the A. Adams crowd-by far the largest of the 2 crowds-focuses their attention and lenses on the grand, the majestic, the dramatic landscape. Most often with the intent of capturing sentimental / romanticized depictions of the natural world with the use of art sauce-to-the-max visual "hyperbole, theatrical gestures, moral postures and expresivo effects" (quote thanks to John Szarowski). And, it is well worth noting, there is, almost (but not quite) exclusively so, never any evidence of human kind in their pictures.

On the other side of that coin, there is the R. Adams crowd. A picture making crowd for whom "the shrill rodomontade of conventional conservation dialectics has lost its persuasive power" (again, a Swarkowski quote). A crowd which pictures the entire landscape to include, most definitely, evidence of humankind as well as the more quiet / ubiquitous (everyday) natural world. A crowd wihich has discovered that beautiful pictures can made by picturing referents which are not made up what are considered to be the trappings of iconical / conventional beauty.

A quote from Robert Adams, taken from his Introduction in his book The New West kinda somes up, for me, the difference between the A. Adams and the R. Adams crowds:

"...we also need to see the whole geography, natural and man-made, to experience a peace; all land, no matter what has happened to it, has over it a grace, an absolutely persistent beauty....Even subdivisions, which we hate for the obcenity of the speculator's greed, are at certain times of day transformed to a dry, cold brilliance."

All of the above written and re: MORIBUND, iMo, it is the A. Adams crowd that is cononically moribund inasmuch as, for better or for worse, there practitioners aplenty which insures that the genre ain't dying. However, in the case of the R. Adams crowd, I have a sense of moribunity inasmuch as there has been little new activity and/or work from that crowd of late. At least, little that I am aware of.

It is possible that the paucity of such activity / work is a condition dictated, temporally, by COVID restrictions. It is also quite possible that my sense of real or imagined paucity is the result of my lack of concentrated effort in searching for such work.

That written, any recommendations of where to find such work will be well apppreciated.