civilized ku # 5036 ~ stella strikes

one of our cars (iPhone picture) ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK (embiggenable)

Winter storm Stella has dropped 20 inches and is expected to keep on snowing for another 24 hours.

civilized ku # 5035 ~ it pleases the gods

Yet another quote from the Greek god Hermes:

Adam ... takes the plates she is carrying ... and sets them on the draining board beside the stack of their fellows he already placed there. Dishes, sink, the sunlight in the widow - how precious suddenly they seem, these perfectly commonplace things.

Now that quote could be understood in 2 ways; a.) I see things like a Greek god, or, b.) a Greek god must really like my pictures of my kitchen sink.

In either case, I like it. Although, I do prefer option a.).

civilized ku # 5034 ~ a conceit

While I was contemplating what picture to submit for consideration for a juried exhibition, Intimate Portraits, I read the following quote from the jurist, Joyce Tenneson ...

A true portrait can never hide the inner life of its subject. It is interesting that in our culture we hide and cover the body, yet our faces are naked. Through a person’s face we can potentially see everything — the history and depth of that person’s life as well as their connection to an even deeper universal presence.

Which led me to think about what the Greek god Hermes - from the book The Infintites - had to say about the subject. Or, more accurately, not about the subject per se but rather applicable to it ...

He knew, of course, the peril of confusing the expression of something with the thing itself, and even he sometimes went astray in the uncertain zone between the concept and the thing conceptualized: even he, like me, mistook sometimes the manifest for the essence.

The quote by Hermes - not an actual quote, of course - is one of many from the book The Infinites which I had earmarked for use on this blog. Quotes which, iMo, while not intended to specifically address the medium of photography and its apparatus, are applicable to it. It was by coincidence that I came across the Tenneson quote so soon on the heels of reading the Hermes quote.

iMo, and I am by no means alone in harboring it, the idea that a photograph, no matter how true it might be to the depicted referent and moment of its making, can not see everything — the history and depth of that person’s life or any other depicted referent. A photograph may indeed suggest a relationship to a commonly held truth but even that manifestation is primarily the construct of a viewer's interpretation of the photograph.

Now it should be noted that I have always liked most of Joyce Tenneson's pictures, especially her flower pictures. However, that written, and try as I might, I feel that I know very little about the depth of the depicted people's lives in her portraits other that which is projected by those people at the moment of the portrait making and as seen on the shallow surface of the photographic print.

Without a doubt, her portraits depict visually apparent manifestations of human characteristics of dignity, strength, warmth, wisdom, weariness and other human traits. However, while these depictions of character may be considered to suggest a life-long attribution of those traits for the person depicted, they are incapable, especially so in a single picture of a singular moment, of informing the viewer of the complex make up and history of a human's life. iMo, to suggest otherwise is an extreme conceit* on the part of the picture maker.

Re: the picture of a picture in this entry. I consider that picture to be one of the best, if not the best, picture I have made of the woman affectionately referred to as "the wife" on this blog. In that picture the wife is depicted as a person in the throes of a happy moment but I feel that I have captured something more than just a passing moment of happiness / pleasure ...

... there is something in her look (at my camera and me) that goes beyond the moment depicted. Although, it is possible that only I see. that something-extra look in her eyes and demeanor. However, even if you the viewer see it as well, I can state unconditionally that you do not know the history and depth of her life.

Unless she were to write a biography in which she "revealed all" or unless you lived in my shoes, how could you know the history and depth of her life. I mean, hell, I'm married to her and even I don't know the "depth" of the her history or life. I know a lot but I don't pretend to know everything.

While much about the wife could be assumed or conjectured upon the basis of this picture of a solitary moment, it would be something approaching pure folly to confuse the expression of something with the thing itself.

*A conceit which it might be necessary to maintain when one is asking $10,000 for a portrait. sitting

ADDENDUM:That's the wife in the center picture, not the top picture.

Hello, World!

civilized ku # 5033 ~ He stands aghast

Another quote from the Greek god Hermes (as presented by the author of The Infinites) ...

How to conceive of a reality sufficiently detailed, sufficiently incoherent, to accommodate all the things that are in the world? He lives in that reality yet cannot fully conceive of it. He stands aghast before the abundance of things, all of them separate, all of them unique.

Is that not the aim, intentional or not, of art, to conceive of a reality sufficiently detailed, sufficiently incoherent, to accommodate all the things that are in the world?

main street triptych # 2 / Main street quadtych # 2 / civilized # 5032 ~ wake up and smell the money

west side Main Street # 1 ~ Au Sable Forks, NY (embiggenable)

west side Main Street # 2 ~ Au Sable Forks, NY (embiggenable)

mural ~ Vankleek Hill, ON CA (embiggenable)

Re: Main Street #1/#2; of the 7 storefronts depicted only 2 are occuppied. The only survivors are a bar and a liquor store, 2 establishments selling products which are always in demand. Feeks Pharmacy, which appears to be occuppied, closed - owner retired - at the end of February.

Re: Main Street #2 and the Vankleek Hill mural; one of the signs that a small town Main Street is in the survial mode is murals. While this is not always the case, murals are commonplace in towns and on Main Streets in decline. That is especially so when murals are painted on vacant storefront windows with the intent of masking the vacancy. However, to my eye and sensibilities, those window murals seem to scream "vacancy".

Vankleek Hill is a small town that displays definite signs of decline. However, the town seems to be on the rebound thanks to a micro brewery which now employs 200 people (and rising). Au Sable Forks on the other hand doesn't have any prospects for such an enterprise like a brewery.

The fate of the Au Sable Forks Main Street is linked to the (dare I write, limited) imaginations of a group of citizens on the Revitalization committee / organization. Those earnest (and they are genuinely so) citizens seem completely oblivious to the fact that Main Street Au Sable Forks is the major artery - infact, virtually the only artery - into the Adirondacks for Canadian and northern Vermont tourists. So, while they continue their quest for community-based businesses - say, a hardware store - many 10s of thousands of money spending tourists past through town without a single reason to stop.

civilized ku # 5027 / main street triptych # 1 / main street quadtych # 1 ~ rural Main Streets

Main Street ~ Fort Covington, NY (embiggenable)

Main Street ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK (embiggenable)

This Sunday past, while I was making the pictures for the triptych Main Street ~ Fort Covington, a thought did come into my head that, to a greater or lesser degree, structures like these were, more common than not, to be found on small town rural America Main Streets.

I live in a rural America small town and, although the Main Street buildings in Au Sable Forks are not in a derelict state, only 6 of 17 storefronts have tenants (2 of the 7 storefronts pictured above). That written, we are lucky to have a bank, mid-sized grocery store and a seasonal (part of Spring, all of Summer and part of Autumn) movie theater (none of which I counted as a storefront).

Were I to pursue a rural America small town Main Street body of work, I can think of at least 8-10 small towns in New York State within 100 miles of my location which would most likely be candidates as subjects for such a project. If I were to traverse the entire state, there would be many more. And then there's Vermont where there is more rural poverty broken Main Streets than they would like to admit - doesn't fit the small town white church steeple surrounded by a sea of autumn foilage calender image they would like to project to the tourist crowd.

Tune in tomorrow for a few detail pictures of rural America small town broken Main Streets.

boarded up ~ Fort Covington, NY (embiggenable)