# 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.

# 5616-18 / around the house•kitchen sink•nartural world ~ a return to the scene of the crime, as it were

January 19, 2021

faux Polaroid ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone — ***faux Polaroid*** ~ (embiggenable) • iPhone

THE FOLLOWING QUOTE FROM RICHARD KALVAR makes me a little crazy / perplexed...

"A photograph is what it appears to be. Already far from 'reality' because of its silence, lack of movement, two-dimensionality and isolation from everything outside the rectangle, it can create another reality, an emotion that did not exist in the 'true' situation. It's the tension between these two realities that lends it strength."

...and I could go down a long list of the crazy / perplexed whyfors however, instead, let me deal with what attracted me to the quote....

I have spent a fair amount of time ruminating about a picture's "silence, lack of movement, two-dimensionality and isolation from everything outside the rectangle." The result of that mental effort is that I believe those aforementioned characteristics of a picture are one of the medium of photography and its apparatus' most unique characteristics in all of the visual arts.

That is to write, nearly every photograph stops time inasmuch as it "freezes"-snatched from the stream of time as we perceive it-a very short-duration segment of time. The result, when viewed as a print, is what some, to incude me, might consider to be a static schematic of that particular and isolated moment / segment in time. And, assuming the picture was made by a picture maker with the intent to capture what he/she sees-to include the literal and figurative vision thing-the fact that the pictured moment in time is freed from the "distractions" of "reality"-sound, movement, surroundings, et al-the viewer of the picture can devote as much time as he/she wants to in order to "discover" what the picture is about.

That written, I am not so certain that the static schematic "create[s] another reality". Sure, the photographic print is a "real" thing and it, most definitely, is not the "real" thing depicted on the 2D substrate but I think one has to engage in a bit word parsing, re: reality, to get to the idea of another "reality".

Although, if one looks at the idea of differing realities from the picture maker's perspective (and this quote comes from a picture maker), it is possible that, inasmuch as he/she experienced both realities, there can be an emotion that results from the viewing of the static schematic which differs from the emotion experienced at the moment of the picture's making.

I can attest to the 2 separate experiences / realities idea cuz it has happened to me over and over again. While I picture "things" to which my eye and sensibiites are intuitively attracted, the fact remains that I rarely spent any time at the moment of picture making to appreciate / contemplate that which I have pictured.

That is due to the fact that, for the most part, I have little, if any, interest in the thing(s) I picture. My interest is to be found in what those things look like when pictured. That is, the static schematic. The thing I could and do contemplate for hours and do so again and again over time.

# 5614-15 / around the house•civilized ku ~ illustration/illumination

January 13, 2021

"The more you look around at things, the more you see. The more you photograph, the more you realize what can be photographed and what can't be photographed. You just have to keep doing it." ~ Eliot Porter

GOOD ADVICE. SOUNDS SIMPLE ENOUGH BUT.....the implied idea that some things "can't be photographed" is, iMo, a two-sided coin inasmuch as there are-at the very least-2 aspects of a picture to consider. That is, the tangible (aka: the depicted content/referent) and the intanglible (aka: the intended concept imparted by the picture's maker).

Consequently, I believe that just about any thing or every thing a camera can be pointed toward can photographed-specialized referents may require specialized gear-however, try as a picture maker might, it is not always possible to "capture" an intended concept. Or, in other words, it is almost always possible to illustrate a referent but not so easy to illuminate a concept (an expression of a picture maker's vision) associated with the photographing of it.

In any event, the suggestion to keep on trying is damn good advice.

# 5613 / civilized ku•around the house•kitchen life ~nothing exceeds like excess

January 9, 2021

"If a medium is representational by nature of the realistic image formed by a lens, I see no reason why we should stand on our heads to distort that function. On the contrary, we should take hold of that very quality, make use of it, and explore it to the fullest." ~ Berenice Abbott

ABBOTT'S COUNSEL FOR STRAIGHT PICTURE MAKNG IS right up my picture making alley. However, that written, I believe that making good straight pictures is the most difficult objective to obtain. That's cuz....

"Some people are still unaware that reality contains unparalleled beauties. The fantastic and unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself. " ~ Berenice Abbott

I would differ with Abbott's opinion, re: some people are still unaware, inasmuch as I would substitute for the phrase "some people" with the phrase "most people". That's cuz, it seems that, even in those instances when a picture maker's eye and/or sensibilities might be captured by an "ordinary", everyday referent, most often he/she reverts, Pavlovian response wise, to applying one form or another of art sauce to the picture. What is is never quite good enough.

I would guess that proclivity is due to the human attraction (addiction?) to spectacular / dramatic / romanticized representations of the real world. Or the idea on the part of the piture maker that nothing exceeds like excess.

# 5610-12 / kitchen life•around the house•civilized ku ~ keep on chewing

January 7, 2021

ONE OF MY FAVORITE ROCK-A-BILLY / ORIGINAL SUN RECORDS RECORDING ARTIST, Sleepy LaBeef, has a saying that I believe accurately sums up my way of picturing ....

"It ain't what you eat, it's the way how you chew it."

I knew Sleepy just enough-on a few ocassions we would drink a few beers together-to believe that, re: this comment, he was not being literal but, rather, he was referring to how he "chewed" his music. FYI, a LaBeef show-I always saw him in small bars with a small attached music venue-was a 2-set performance, each set was an hour-long, non-stop (not a single break between songs) of stream-of-consciousness-like rock-a-billy music. He was known as The Human Jukebox.

In any event, I like to think of the way how I chew it as my way of seeing, aka: my vision. And, come to think about it, it is not too much of a stretch (at least for me) to think of the totality of my picturing as a Sleepy LaBeef-like stream-of-(picturing)-consciousness, or, as I call it, discursive promiscuity.

May be I gotta get me a black ten-gallon hat.

# 5607-09 / people•ku•natural world•landscape ~ I look, I see, I picture, therfore I am

January 5, 2021

man with Sanshin ~ Naha, Okinawa / Japan - c.1967 (embiggenable) — ***man with Sanshin*** ~ Naha, Okinawa / Japan - c.1967 (embiggenable)

"The process of photographing is a pleasure: eyes open, receptive, sensing, and at some point, connecting. It's thrilling to be outside your mind, your eyes far ahead of your thoughts....Part of it has to do with the discipline of being actively receptive. At the core of this receptivity is a process that might be called soft eyes. It is a physical sensation. You are not looking for something. You are open, receptive. At some point you are in front of something that you cannot ignore." ~ Henry Wessel

I CAN ONLY ASSUME-WITH A HIGH DEGREE OF ASSURANCE- that just about everyone gets pleasure (of one sort or another) from the process of photographing. I mean, why even bother if there ain't no pleasure / joy / satisfaction / positive vibe involved in the activity?

That written, I am also certain that whatever sense of pleasure may be derived from the act of photographing, any specific pleasure is dependent upon the motivations of the picture maker him/herself. After all, the medium and its apparatus provide a broad landscape for satisfying a wide range of pleasure seeking....there are those who revel in the "pleasure" of acquiring / using and "mastering" gear and/or, likewise, technique. Then there are those who seek to "express" themselves or elucidate the viewer, re: the "meaning" of various referents.

And then there are those, much like me, who indulge in the act of photographing simply to see what something-any thing and/or every thing-looks like when photographed (as presented / expressed on the 2D surface of a photographic print).

That is, the making of a fairly stict visual thing. No expression of my "innner self", no "meaning" or "message", no technical / technique driven tour de force. Nope, none of that stuff. I just want to make prints that are visually interesting, capitivating and involving to view. Not cuz of what is depicted but, rather, how it is depicted.

For me, the idea of receptivity, aka: soft eyes, is paramount to my way of seeing. I rarely go out and about "looking for something" but, that written, I am forever-I am convinced that propensity is preternatural-looking and, seemingly, my thinking does not get in the way of my seeing. My eyes are ahead of my thoughts.

Consequently, throughout my entire life, I have consistently found myself "in front of something I cannot ignore".

# 5606 / ku•landscape•natural world ~ the act of pointing

January 2, 2021

"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. [...] The talented practitioner of the new discipline would perform with a special grace, sense of timing, narrative sweep, and wit, thus endowing the act not merely with intelligence, but with that quality of formal rigor that identifies a work of art, so that we would be uncertain, when remembering the adventure of the tour, how much our pleasure and sense of enlargement had come from the things pointed to and how much from a pattern created by the pointer." ~ John Szarkowski

IN THE ABOVE STATEMENT JOHN SZARKOWSKI SUGGESTS THAT a work of art, in this case a photograph, is comprised of 2 primary ingredients...a thing pointed to and a pattern created by a pointer. He also suggests that the viewing of such a photograph could be comparable to an "adventure of a tour" accompanied by "pleasure and a sense of enlargment". And, the way I read it, Szarkowski implies that a really good photograph-with a thing pointed to and a pattern created by the pointer-can capture a viewer's attention / interest but, in a very real sense, leave a viewer wondering about why he/she is attracted to that photograph...is it the thing depicted or the manner in which the thing is depicted that has drawn the viewer in?

I can write with authority-based upon my actual experiences-that I have encountered quite a number of viewers of my pictures-at a gallery openings of my pictures or showing someone one of my photo books-who have run smack dab into such a dilemma. Simply written, they are confronted with a picture of a thing, a thing which they can not begin to fathom why I (or anyone) would make a picture thereof. That written, what really confuses them is the fact that they feel unexplainedly attracted to the picture.

Most often heard at such a juncture is, "I don't know why I like this picture(s) but I do." A statement which I consider to be a very high compliment indeed cuz I truly believe that I have zapped them with my "secret weapon", the "hidden"-to their eyes and sensibilities-pattern I have created on the 2D surface of my print. That is, a concept of which the average viewer has no conscious knowledge or perception.

And, have no doubt about it, it is at this point in such an encounter that I make absolutely no attemp to try to explain the concept of a "hidden" pattern on a 2D surface to the viewer. The reason for that is simple, the viewer has "felt" something in the picture in addition to what he/she has "seen" and I have no desire to practice confuse-a-cat psychology. Not to mention the fact that I am not about to tell a viewer-who is confused as to why he/she likes the picture-why he/she likes the picture cuz that's for the viewer to figure out.