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TOP: A HOUSE IN DOLGEVILLE, NY AS STUMBLED UPON during a self-impused detour drive just outside of the southern foothills of the Adirondacks along the Mohawk River Valley, aka: The Leatherstocking Region.
Bottom: Me in my Halloween costume-the porn photographer-c.1980.
Happy All Hallow’s Eve to one and all.
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CURRENTLY, I HAVE 19 CAMERAS IN MY LIFE (including the iPhone). Format wise they range from 8x10, 4x5, 120 format, 35mm format, and a widelux pano (all film cameras), plus 5 µ4/3 (digital) cameras + iPhone + 4 SX 70 cameras . My primary picture making device is the iPhone with the occasional use of one of my µ4/3 cameras (with a tele lens for sports / action pictures).
I can honestly attest that I have thoroughly enjoyed making pictures-commercial and personal-with each and every camera. That written, I can also attest that I never “loved” or fetish-ized any format or camera brand. To my way of thinking, they were all very nice tools which answered various picture making demands. In just about every case, switching brands would have never impacted my picture making results. …with one notable exception…
…that is the camera I would choose if I were forced to choose one camera to use for the rest of my life-the SX 70 Polaroid camera-with, of course, a lifetime supply of Time Zero film.
The enjoyment that came with the use of that camera knew no bounds, but, it was not just about the camera. Although…it must noted, who could not like the sleek folding design and the wonderful (and loud) slap of the mirror and the whirl of the motor as it ejected the print?…The camera itself was just a part the the picture making universe you entered when using it cuz the Time Zero film it used was something of a trip down the trip-the-shutter-and-who-knows-what-you will-get lane. And, of course, what you got was almost immediately available, and here’s the clincher, in the form of a print.
In addition to the unique look of the SX 70 / Time Zero prints, there was also the ability to play etch-a-sketch on the surface of the Time Zero print. I had a self-created kit of burnishing tools for use in pushing the Time Zero emulsion around as it developed. Countless hours were spent on this technique.
I used my SX 70s for both commercial-mainly editorial-and personal work. It was always a wonder to me how Polaroid went out of business cuz, as the photo gods must know, I thought that I used enough Time Zero film to keep the company going all by myself. I have 3 large poly bins loaded with what must be a couple thousand Time Zero prints. And, guess what, they are, literally, just tossed into the bins cuz, short of an encounter with a fire or a shredder, they are practically indestructible.
So, OK. Fine. I’ll admit it. I loved that camera(s) and the picture making universe it created and inhabited.
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A FEW DAYS AGO I WAS THINKING ABOUT HOW MY ADOPTION of the iPhone as my primary picture making device has changed my picture making habits. To be certain it has not changed or altered my vision in any manner but it has changed the promiscuity quotient in my discursive promiscuity manner of making pictures inasmuch as I am now more promiscuous* than ever. Add to that, an extra dollop-or is it a cherry on top?-to my joy of photography.
Fast forward to this morning when I came across a New Yorker article, Candid Camera ~ The cult of Leica, written in 2007. The article is a good read. It even added a few new words to my vocabulary-a. “Leicaweenies”. A word used by Leica user Ralph Gibson to describe Leica addicts who are prone to writing scholarly papers on certain discrepancies in the serial numbers of Leica lens caps, and, b. “Visualus interruptus,” the brief viewfinder black-out caused by the flap of the mirror in a (D)SLR, a “malady” with which the Leica is not afflicted.
In any event, the article chord-struck me with a number of topics:
[Leica is] “a machine constructed with such skill that it renders every user—from the pro to the banana-fingered fumbler—more skillful as a result. We need it to refine and lubricate, rather than block or coarsen, our means of engagement with the world: we want to look not just at it, however admiringly, but through it. In that case, we need a Leica”…
…”the simplicity of the design made the Leica an infinitely more friendly proposition, for the novice, than one of the digital monsters from Nikon and Canon. Those need an instruction manual only slightly smaller than the Old Testament, whereas the Leica II sat in my palms like a puppy, begging to be taken out on the streets.”
“You could tuck it into a jacket pocket, wander around the Thuringer woods all weekend, and never gasp for breath.”
If you were to substitute iPhone for Leica, Fuji / Sony for Nikon / Canon, and Adirondack for Thuringer in these excerpts, it would, iMo, pretty well describe the iPhone as a picture making device. Which leads me directly to the question (ludicrous for some):
“Is the iPhone the new Leica?”
Answer:
let the caterwauling commence.
I would try to answer the question but my puppy [is] begging to be taken out on the streets.
*the pictures in this entry are but a mere handful culled from those that I have made over the past couple weeks.
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“….Color photography’s poor reputation derives…from a school of slick, sensationalized, “creative” photography that has saturated the public (and artist’s) consciousness of the medium for the past quarter century…many photographers consider visual and/or sentimental excesses as key to expressivity…their lust for effect is everywhere apparent. Technical wizardry amplifies rather than re-creates on-site observations. Playing to the multitude of viewers who salivate at the sight of nature (in the belief that good and God are immanent)…such photographers burden it with ever coarser effects. Rather than humbly seek out the “spirit of facts”, they assume the role of God’s art director making His immanence unequivocal and protrusive” ~ Sally Eauclaire / The New Color Photography
THE EXCERPT ABOVE WAS WRITTEN 42 YEARS PAST but it still rings true today. I worked as a consultant on the book-my name is in the Acknowledgments. It is especially true at this time of the year, re: fall color, when photographers are busy taking saturation to the max in manner way beyond what was possible in the analog, aka: film, days.
In my neck of the woods, the Adirondack Forest Preserve (larger than the state of Vermont), the landscape is awash in Autumn color. It is a big tourist season wherein the leaf peepers descend upon us in droves. One can hardly drive down a road without passing a zillion stopped cars on the side of the road where the peepers, cameras, or phones in hand, are out snapping pictures. And soon enough, Facebook is loaded with “spectacular” pictures which bear no resemblance to the real thing.
Each leaf peeping season I feel good when I manage to avoid making landscape pictures of the cliched Autumn color genre. Which is not to write that I do not appreciate the Autumn Spectacular. The wife and I will regularly take a drive in Abarth with the top folded back and enjoy the experience. However, that written, I prefer to make pictures that whisper rather than scream. To each is own.
FYI, there is a new body of work on my WORK page, early landsccape (ku), which bear witness to my Autumn color picturing style.
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THERE IS A NEW BODY OF WORK, a wider view of things, on my HOME page, aka: WORK page.
All of the photos in the a wider view of things body of work are made with the use of the 0.5 lens (14mm equivalent) setting on the iPhone. I find that that lens, with its inherent optical “distortion”, lends a visually interesting emphasis on the visual elements of line, shape, and space as seen across the 2D plane (aka: a flat plane) of a photographic print.
To my eye and sensibilities, that visual emphasis creates images which, while true to my vision (an emphasis on form), are somewhat different from my “standard” picture making fare. Hence, these pictures are organized in a new body of work.
Unlike the oft written / spoken conventional “wisdom” of the photo world wherein the use of a wide or very wide field of view lens is suggested as a way to create depth in a photograph, I simply do not believe that a photograph can have any actual depth. Therefore, iMo, the idea of trying to create '“depth” in a photograph is a pursuit reserved for rank, camera-club amateurs cuz, the fact of the matter is, when viewed on a photographic print, the earth and everything on it is flat as a pancake.
iMo, accepting that fact is the key to making and viewing-and understanding-photographs that are about more than the actual thing depicted in a photograph.
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LAST FRIDAY PAST THE WIFE AND I WERE IN THE very tony town of Saratoga Springs, sitting at a bar in an upscale restaurant having drinks while waiting for the wife’s brother and family to arrive in town for our dinner at a different restaurant. When the text came, signaling the family’s arrival, I motioned to the young-ish, hipster, female bartender-with whom I had shared a few eye contact glances-to bring our check. A few minutes later she arrived, check in hand, leaned across the bar toward me and said, “Do you shoot?”
As the woman-not the wife-sitting next to me moved slightly away from me, I hesitated for a moment trying to figure out what she meant…was she offering me a shot of bourbon to ”shoot”? did look like I was packin’ heat? Whereupon, noting my hesitancy, she said, “I noticed your hat.” Ah yes, my hat. That would be my hat with the KODAK logo on it.
So, of course, my slightly delayed answer was, “Yes. I shoot.”, which instigated a response of…”Just thought you might like to know that film is coming back with us younger crowd.” As she walked away, I turned to the the woman next to me and told her I was not going to shoot her. She smiled and said, “I appreciate that very much.”
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“Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy.” ~ Susan Sontag
“Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the eye traffics in feelings, not thoughts.” ~ Walker Evans.
THE IDEA OF MEANING, RE: AS AN INTRINSIC CONSTRUCT TO BE found in a photograph, has been kicking about the photo sphere of late. So I thought I would contribute my 4 cents (inflation) to the conversation.
Simply written, I do not believe that most photographs have any meaning(s). Hence, my use of the 2 quotes found on the top of this entry. To wit, “photographs…cannot themselves explain anything”, and, …”the eye traffics in feelings, not thoughts.”
Consider this from Susan Sontag:
“The fact is, all Western consciousness of and reflection upon art have remained within the confines staked out by the Greek theory of art as mimesis or representation. It is through this theory that art…becomes problematic, in need of defense. And it is the defense of art which gives birth to the odd vision by which something we have learned to call “form” is separated off from something we have learned to call “content,” and to the well-intentioned move which makes content essential and form accessory…it is still assumed that a work of art is its content. Or, as it's usually put today, that a work of art by definition says something.”
To be perfectly clear, I am a joyous sensualist and proud of it. My photographs are meant to display / celebrate the the joy / pleasure of seeing. That’s cuz photography is a visual art. Consequently, I have devoted my picture making to the Art of Observation…
”…the matter of art in photography may come down to this: it is the capture and projection of the delights of seeing; it is the defining of observation full and felt.” ~ Walker Evans
While there are a zillion essays, treatises, and dissertations regarding “content”, aka: what a piece of art says, the cynic in me-or is it the realist in me….I get the 2 confused at times-thinks that it all comes down to one thing; the idea of imbuing art with meaning came about cuz artists want the populous to believe that making art is difficult, all in the cause of covering up the fact that making art is a fun / pleasurable undertaking.
I mean, ya know, how can anyone take art seriously if it comes about from artists just having fun?
Me. I just try to keep it simple and always remember the words of Yogi Berra:
“You can observe a lot by just watching.”
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“Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn't photogenic.” ~ Brett Weston
I HAVE A LARGE BODY OF WORK LABELED AS roadside attractions. All of the pictures were found and made within 0-30 feet from the road. That’s well within Weston’s 500 yards. I assume that Weston’s idea was based upon his use of cumbersome, large-format gear whereas my gear is quite the opposite. Suffice it to write that gear is not the reason for my attraction to roadside tableaux.
That written, the biggest problem I encounter with making pictures of roadside tableaux, since all of those pictures are made while driving along various rural roads throughout the Adirondack Forest Preserve (aka: Park), is finding a place to park my car. There are times when, after I find a place to pull over, I have to walk nearly 500 yards to the place that pricked my eye and sensibilities. Life, and picture making, can be so hard at times.
In any event, FYI, the picture at the top of this entry is-currently-at the top of my best-picture-I-ever-made list. And, a best of roadside attractions body of work will be posted on my front (WORK) page in short order.