tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6547543386325260912024-03-17T11:56:46.965-07:00Photos and StuffA blog about the art of photography, more or less.amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.comBlogger1801125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-68888586967569354432024-01-04T14:17:00.000-08:002024-01-04T14:17:53.846-08:00I'm Not DeadReally, I am not dead.
<br/>
<br/>
I just can't think of anything to say about photography. Drawing has kind of eaten my brain lately,
but I am utterly unqualified to talk about Drawing, really. Maybe some day. I draw a lot. Every day.
I am substantially less bad at drawing than I was a year ago, but I'm not <i>good</i> as such,
and I certainly have no expertise or theory.
<br/>
<br/>
It's always tempting to just pivot to a this-is-my-life blog, but for whatever reason I am loathe
to do that. Lots of people do, and that's fine, but I just don't feel it for this blog here and now.
<br/>
<br/>
To an extent this is a knock on effect of the workshop/retreat I did with Jonathan Blaustein
a year or so ago. I came away from that with a serious plan to do serious work, a sort of "stop
screwing around and get down to business" situation, and it turns out that I'm not quite ready
to do that. Or I don't have the time. Or the energy. Or something. Maybe I simply haven't got the stuff
for anything except screwing around.
<br/>
<br/>
Anyway, it was time to fish, or cut bait, and apparently I am doing whichever of those doesn't
include doing a lot of photography or writing about photography.
<br/>
<br/>
Consider me on indefinite hiatus, I guess. Sometimes saying "I am on hiatus" stirs the pot,
so it's 50:50 I'll be back in short order with 20,000 words, each more unhinged than the last,
but I make no promises.
<br/>
<br/>
I do plan to actually get back to <i>doing</i> photography at some point, to <i>doing</i> that
serious project, but it's just a hypothetical for now. Don't take me seriously until I actually
deliver some fucking pictures.
<br/>
<br/>
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-3346802587521272602023-11-08T10:08:00.000-08:002023-11-08T10:08:55.176-08:00Vandalism and Local ArtA couple days ago, I guess, some protestors entered the National Gallery (the British one, not the American one)
and had a go at a painting, because that's a thing we're doing now. To be clear, I don't think people ought to do
this in general, and I don't think these protests make any sense. It's clearly just a "bit" the kids have settled on.
<br />
<br />
That said, it raises in my mind the question of who actually cares? There's been an outcry, of course, about our
cultural heritage and so on. These valuable artifacts must be preserved, and their destruction is a crime against
humanity! I've seen calls for much more vigorous security arrangements, which seems like a terrible idea to me. I don't really
want angry, tense, guards on a hair trigger.
<br />
<br />
What, exactly, is the value that any of these paintings is bringing? I'll accept extremely abstract answers! I'm
not here to reduce culture to dollars or to British pounds. Did the Rokeby Venus enlarge anyone's life? Does a Monet?
I am, for reference, extremely pleased that these things existed! I am pleased that they exist, and I don't think
people should destroy them! At the same time, I am not entirely sure why we should mourn their loss. There is no
"mysterious air" here, it's just a picture.
<br />
<br />
If the painting had been, instead of vandalized, suddenly revealed to be a modern forgery, well, what then? The painting
would quietly vanish from the walls, and the consensus would surely be that Culture writ large has been Improved
rather than Impoverished. And yet, it would be the same painting. The fact that we <i>believe</i> it to be authentic seems
to be an essential feature of whatever actual value it's bringing to us. Berger covers all this in "Ways of Seeing"
of course, with his marvelous takedown of da Vinci's "The Virgin of the Rocks," it's not new with me.
<br />
<br />
Functionally, the Rokeby Venus has been the subject of a few million glazed-over glances, a few hundred art student
sketches, and a very small handful of the weeping fans. What its current existence does for Culture is pretty vague.
<br />
<br />
Also, the mirror looks like a fucking head in a box, not a mirror. Dude, wtf were you thinking?
<br />
<br />
The history of the thing is pretty interesting! It occupies a notable position in art history! Something something
nudes Spanish Inquisition, you can read all about it on wikipedia. The physical artifact on the wall doesn't seem to
be particularly relevant to that, though, except as a sort of moral anchor to the story, a reification of the story. It performs the role of a photo illustrating a news item.
<br />
<br />
Let us compare, though, with an annual event here in Bellingham, the 6x6 show hosted by our local art store.
<br />
<br />
This is an open show. You can pick up a 6 inch by 6 inch square of one of several materials, for free, from the art
store. Cover it with art. Anything. Paint it, carve it, attach sculpture to it, sew it. Return it to the shop,
they'll give you a coupon for future purposes as a reward, and they'll hang your work. Zero curation, everything goes up. They have a show for about a month with a grid of 100s of 6x6
artworks on the wall of their gallery. You can buy any piece for $25. Proceeds to a local art non-profit.
<br />
<br />
The work is everything from 5 year old kids scribbling with crayons to professional working artists painting small
landscapes. One piece was made by the artist's pet snails crawling around with pigment.
<br />
<br />
It is, <i>easily</i>, my favorite Art Thing in the world.
<br />
<br />
I'm now going to stealthily replace the Rokeby Venus with Monet, because the position of Monet in our culture while
similar is more immediately salient. You won't have to think as much.
<br />
<br />
I put things in the 6x6 show, and so do my kids. I am, this year, the only photographer (I think) in something like
470 pieces. Which is wild! My kids draw/paint stuff. Usually, nobody buys anything we put in, about which more anon.
<br />
<br />
But what about this small, often poorly made, extremely local, art? It hits quite differently from a Monet. I could
write at length about why a Monet is "better" but at the same time some child's crude drawing of a frog has its own
intense value. At the bottom, the Monet and the Frog are the same: a piece of decor, with the potential to move us
emotionally, to enlarge us as humans. They are the same in that both Claude and the child, let's call her Susie,
essentially wanted to show us what something looked like: A Garden, A Frog.
<br />
<br />
There are endless details of scale, of technique, of scope of imagination, and so on that could be brought to bear
to show how the two paintings are different, and one much superior. Mostly, though, the Monet painting is superior
because the people we pay to tell us what's superior have said that it is superior.
<br />
<br />
Looking at a Monet can hit pretty hard! The effect is real! I love Monet, and have travelled to see Monet paintings!
At the same time, though, a part of what I experience is the cultural baggage, the stamp of approval from the
curatorial staff of various museums, the stamp of approval from critics and historians. The Frog hits differently,
it has <i>no baggage</i>.
<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, it manifests with awful clarity the sincerity of the artist. The Monet and The Frog both reveal the will, shared by Susie and Claude,
to <i>show us what something looks like.</i> Looking at Monet, the cloud of cultural baggage tends to obscure this will; looking at Susie's Frog nothing is obscured. There is a reason theorists and critics are obsessed with the ways
children draw. There is an authenticity, a clarity of purpose, a purity of method (as it were) that a more thoroughly
educated artist, or even art appreciator, loses.
<br />
<br />
Monet is in a sense sealed in amber and elevated to a pedestal. We cannot but react to the paintings, because
we're told to do so. Monet is distant. You literally have to take a trip to see a Monet. For $25 I can have Susie's
Frog in my home, over my desk, and look at it every day by raising my chin slightly. Susie's Frog was made here,
in my town, by a child who probably lives no more than 2 miles away from me. There is an immediacy here, a
nearness. Susie's Frog is a radically different cultural artifact than is a Monet painting, and in many ways
it's much more salient.
<br />
<br />
Looking at a Monet can be a powerful experience, but in the end I leave the gallery and return to my life
much as I was before. This kind of High Culture, as defined and managed by the priesthood, feels like a
separate track, a kind of entertainment I can step into when I want to, but which doesn't live and breathe
with me, with us. It has nothing to do with my daily life, with the daily clockwork of my little town.
<br />
<br />
Something is lost when an artist matures. The childish authenticity fades as the artist works to become more
technically proficient, to make something look real; or perhaps the artist is trying to imbue their work with
some sort of abstract meaning. Passing "beyond" the desire to show you what a frog looks like, the mature artist
tries to make the frog look "real" or tries to make the frog stand in for something else.
<br />
<br />
This is, of course, the business of High Art, but damn is it hard. Many, perhaps most, artists spend a long
time in the doldrums between childish directness and the actual ability to make the frog <i>mean something.</i> They're not painting a frog, they're painting a painting of a frog but no more than that.<br />
<br />
Interestingly, the pieces that sell quickly at the 6x6 show are exactly these pictures. The realistic but
ultimately kind of empty paintings of bicycles or boats, the well-made pictures with silly jokes, and so on. I like these things too, but I don't much want to own one. As well, there are certainly a few artists in play who are genuinely injecting meaning and depth into their well
made pictures, and those sometimes sell as well. The childish frogs don't really sell, which is in a way
a pity. I dare say people want to have something that's obviously well made, rather than something
clumsy. Perhaps they're not very interested in the art children make; their loss.
<br />
<br />
In the end, I love 6x6 more than anything else Arty, because it hits inside my world, rather than outside it.
It's Art that lands inside my life, my existence, not outside it in some temple to culture, not on a track that
is parallel to my life, but actually on the rails my life runs on.
<br />
<br />
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-10803882671685867052023-10-24T11:06:00.004-07:002023-10-24T11:06:46.562-07:00The War for CultureI've stumbled over a few items randomly, which just coalesced into something in my head, so, here we go.
<br />
<br />
Sam Bankman-Fried, currently on trial for operating an enormous kinda-Ponzi scheme in the crypto world
(it doesn't seem to have been as coherent and organized as even a proper Ponzi, it seems to have simply
been a sort of maelstrom of money that leaked a lot until the money was gone) is having his private
conversations closely analyzed. As some point
he seems to have written something or other about Shakespeare, arguing that so many humans have been
born since Shakespeare that, statistically, there must have been many better writer after Shakespeare.<br />
<br />
This illustrates a profound failure to understand how culture arises. Interestingly, while everyone had
a good time making fun of Sam, I didn't see anyone offer a coherent explanation of why he was wrong.
I plan to correct that here!
<br />
<br />
Second item: there's a guy, Devon Rodriguez, who's made something of a name for himself drawing
and painting People On The Street. He's all over social media, and if you're looking for youtube videos
on drawing portraits you're gonna have a hard time avoiding this guy's useless videos. He's a skilled
technician, but mainly he's a social media presence.
<br />
<br />
He has millions of followers, and the backing of at least one NYC real-estate developer, and so he got
a little popup show for his paintings. This show was reviewed on artnet by some hapless critic, who
pointed out that the paintings were not very good, and went on about social media influence.
<br />
<br />
Devon's PR machine, noting an opportunity, decided to pull out the "I won't let the haters stop me!"
page from the Social Media Influencers Handbook, and has been running that play for a while.
<br />
<br />
Here again we see the intersection of "Culture" in the form of Art and Criticism of Same with something
more populist.
<br />
<br />
Finally let us recall that Larry Gagosian got himself a pretty girlfriend, painter Anna Weyant, a hair
older than 1/3 of his age, and appears to be trying to make her into a Major Painter using his credentials
as an art dealer. Weyant appears to be a significantly more interesting painter than Rodriguez, and is also
a fine technician, so I don't really have a sense of whether she's "good" or not, in any way that makes much
sense to me.
<br />
<br />
Let's keep these three little examples in mind.
<br />
<br />
Culture, contrary to common understanding, is not a distillation of the finest products of the finest
creative talents, elected by some alchemy that inexorably whittles away the inferior and reliably, eventually,
locates the best. It's just not. It's a hell of a lot more venal than that.
<br />
<br />
Bankman-Fried missed the point about Shakespeare: we have <i>defined</i> him to be great. Yes, the work
is technically good, the meter or whatever you want to name is excellent. Shakespeare is <i>great</i>
largely because, for him, the standard is <i>how much like Shakespeare are you?</i> Obviously, he is the
best at being like Shakespeare. The attentive observer might wonder out loud how much of "Shakespeare
was really good at specific important technical things" is actually "these specific technical things
are important because Shakespeare was good at them." It's fair to suggest that there's a bit of push and
pull going on here.
<br />
<br />
Larry Gagosian's efforts on behalf of Anna Weyant are specifically interesting, because Larry is absolutely a member of
the club of people who get to decide things like "who are the really great painters anyway?" He's not the only
member, though!
<br />
<br />
And finally we get around to Rodriguez. He has essentially no backing from anyone in that club, but he has a lot
of social media followers, and he's got some rich people in his corner. Rich people who would probably like
to be members of the taste-making club, rich people who probably go to some of the same parties that Larry
Gagosian attends.
<br />
<br />
What interests me here, though, is whether we're seeing something larger.
<br />
<br />
Why should a small club of goobers like Gagosian be in charge of High Culture? There certainly seem to be days when
they're picking shit at random (abstract expressionism? really?) and there's really no doubt that they do a lot
of selection based on how hot and/or slutty the artists are. Why shouldn't TikTok select the Important Artists?
<br />
<br />
The crypto bros made a brave attempt to seize a beachhead in Culture with NFTs. Unfortunately for them they were
thoroughly embedded in the crypto world, which turns out to be 100% scams, and also their art was really really terrible
shit, not even rising to the level of kitsch. It wasn't even populist, it was just dumb. The try was bold, though,
and it looked like it might work for a while! Beeple and his dumb $69 million dollar whateverthefuck looked like
a real thing for a minute (before we learned that it too was a scam, oops.)
<br />
<br />
I don't much like Rodriguez, in part because his work isn't very interesting (it all looks like it's an excellent
copy of some extremely bland reference photo, and some people think that's because they are in fact excellent
copies of extremely bland reference photos.) I also dislike him, though, because his videos gum up the search
for "how the hell do I draw a nose" with what are essentially ads for his work and his classes. I just want a few
pointers on how to draw a nose!
<br />
<br />
My opinion, though, should not really carry any weight. Who gives a shit what I think?
<br />
<br />
The very idea is insane that these things should be decided a small group of people with degrees in art history, and an even
smaller group of wealthy assholes who've eased their way into advising even wealthier assholes about which art to buy.
Why should this specific group be in charge of determining what we see when we go into museums and galleries? Especially
the museums and galleries funded by our tax dollars! Maybe we should be seeing a lot more kitsch!
<br />
<br />
On the other hand, there seems to genuinely be value in some small group making insane selections, however venal
the reasons, for future generations. Maybe it doesn't matter what gets picked, as long as it's weird enough, as long
as it's not populist kitsch. Maybe the job is simply to weed out things that are easy to like and pick some vaguely
coherent selection of stuff that's hard to like. Future generations then have something to think about, something to struggle with. I think I'd rather live in a culture where we have abstract expressionism to gape at, than a culture were it's all likable kitsch.<br />
<br />
In general I would rather see the collapse of Art As High Culture. I believe in local art. Rodriguez would do
well as a Local Artist. He's entertaining, people like his pictures. I think people should totally be able to
buy his pictures, sit for portraits, whatever. I don't think we would be well-served by making him into
a Great Artist to Stand With Monet, but then, I'm not sure we're well served by the very idea that artists should
be elevated to some stratosphere.
<br />
<br />
But my opinion doesn't matter. This isn't the first time populist art has made an assault on the cathedral, and it
won't be the last. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out, I guess.
<br />
<br />
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-5343671687859742242023-09-15T11:36:00.001-07:002023-09-15T11:36:16.754-07:00The Photo GriftA number of threads of thought crystallized this morning, abruptly. Let's see if I can write them down.
<br />
<br />
In 1800s quite a number of photographers mostly took pictures and were paid for pictures and that was
that. Gradually companies formed to supply those photographers, and those companies presumably made money.
There were amateurs, to be sure, but they knew who they were, and there weren't all that many of them
in relative terms.
<br />
<br />
In the 1900s the number of amateurs exploded. Kodak and others enabled a several generations of nerdy fellows
to take up the Hobby Of Photography. Magazines evolved to serve them, camera manufacturers built cameras
and advertised in the magazines, and so on. A whole economic thing arose to serve the enthusiast. And, to
be sure, many of those enthusiasts aspired to "go pro" in some sense, but most of them didn't. It was
a hobby.
<br />
<br />
By the time I arrived on the scene the industry was largely funded by amateur photographers. They bought cameras,
film, and magazine subscriptions, and that was the money that made the industry hum. Yes, Vogue bought photos and
paid photographers, but that was not the engine that drove the industry.
<br />
<br />
Enter the digital camera. Suddenly everyone with disposable income could be a photographer. You didn't need
a darkroom, you didn't need to be particularly dweeby, it became a normal, even cool, thing for basically anyone
to do. Good! How fun! Now you can enjoy my hobby too!
<br />
<br />
A little later youtube arrives and the concept of a "content creator" shows up about the same time.
<br />
<br />
Poeple are blogging and setting up forums and so on. We start to see guys like Michael Reichmann on the
scene.
<br />
<br />
At this point there is a substantial shift. It's no longer pretty much just photography companies selling
cameras and film to hobbyists. It's Content Creators and Influencers selling workshops, memberships,
subscriptions, and advertisements. It's a money spinner. Anyone can play. Set up a web site, crib some
articles from someplace else, and watch the money roll in!
<br />
<br />
Well, not quite. You have to be both lucky, and skilled at being a Content Creator. It wouldn't hurt you
to be pretty good at photography (Reichmann was a skilled technician, for example) but it honestly isn't even
required.
<br />
<br />
In the background here there is a constant thrum of "you could go pro, you could make money at photography, all
you need is whatever it is that I am selling." I don't even know why this turned up. I think maybe the
Content Creators felt the need to justify their revenue, which they couldn't on the basis on their fairly
thin content.
<br />
<br />
I don't mean to suggest that in 1990 everyone was an innocent and happy hobbyist without a thought of going
pro, and that 20 years later it's some Lord of the Flies situation with everyone desperate to become a Pro
Photographer. Not at all. But there's been a shift in mood. The vague hope, the idea, is a little more present. Maybe
a lot more.
<br />
<br />
You could probably point at economic conditions, maybe everyone's a little more hungry, a little more on the
lookout for a quick buck. I dunno. It doesn't matter, because the point is that it's a thing.
<br />
<br />
Anyways, to my eye from the 2010s there was an enormous wave of Content Creators attempting to take money
off of photographers who were themselves looking for fame and/or fortune. The main thing to note here is that
the successful ones were good at being Content Creators; they may or may not have been interested in photography,
but whether they were or not doesn't matter. They're "professional" Content Creators which means they have
a whole bunch of skills around attracting eyeballs. This is their actual expertise.
<br />
<br />
In some sense, this is the same as it ever was. It's not like Nikon was giving cameras away in the good old
days, they were definitely making money. The difference to my eye is that in the first place when you gave
Nikon money you actually got a camera, and in the second place there was less of a "you too could be a pro,
you could make money at this." In fact, Nikon had several lines of camera, and only one was explicitly the
"many money with this camera" line. The others were all implicitly "have a good time taking photos with these
cameras."
<br />
<br />
In the 2010s you often didn't get anything. You could watch a Tony Northrup video or read a Lloyd Chambers blog
post, with the result that you would be older and dumber by the end. You could pay a few thousand dollars for
some workshop, with the result that you'd have a folder with 10,000 completely uninteresting photographs of
icebergs or whatever. Even then, though, at least everyone was <i>trying</i> to give you some value. Lloyd at least
did (does?) detailed if pointless testing. I'm sure Tony thought he was telling you.. something useful?
<br />
<br />
Somewhere in here MFA programs arose or were retooled based on, apparently, little more than "we can put
butts in seats at $10,000 per butt-year" and guys like Colberg got jobs teaching in them. Based on the results
it's honestly unclear wtf they were even trying to teach these kids? Most of them, of course, have not become
successful artists although many have given a bunch <i>more</i> money to glorified vanity presses. Again, there
was at least an attempt to deliver value, kinda. I am sure that Colberg really thought he was helping. I dare say
some of his colleagues were more cynical.
<br />
<br />
And now here we are in the 2020s. At this point to be honest I think everyone's given up, and they're just trying
to extract as much money as possible for as little effort as possible.
<br />
<br />
I, for instance, am apparently still publishing articles on Luminous Landscape (no, I am not, I wrote the
piece currently at the bottom of the front page in 2017, not the August 2023 date indicated.) PetaPixel and
fstoppers are descending rapidly toward click-farm link-mill stage, with articles about reddit posts
and other articles describing videos they found on youtube. The filler doesn't quite dominate. Yet. It will.
<br />
<br />
Andy Adams, a relentless engagement farmer across many platforms, has a substack newsletter he's making thousands of
dollars a year on, which is insipid to the point of transparency but which offers "exposure" to photographers
who almost certainly make less money on photography than he does.
<br />
<br />
And this is the theme. The money flows from photographers to everyone else, the same as it always has.
<br />
<br />
The difference is that the photographer's aren't getting anything for their money, or for their attention. Andy's newsletter
is read by absolutely nobody except your peers, who are all also vaguely hoping to "go pro" or become well known, better known, <i>something</i>, some day. Nobody reads
PetaPixel or fstoppers except the same crowd, and on and on. The content available is essentially nil on all fronts,
it's just the same recycled drivel, or often literally nothing at all. Newsletters about "how to find
inspiration, we interviewed 5 photographers" will tell you it's "light" or "taking a walk." Youtube
videos will begin and end with 3 or 4 minutes "like, share, and subscribe" with 2 minutes of content in between
which is even more insipid than "I am inspired by the light!"
<br />
<br />
All of the "content" around photography has been reduced to a way to destroy some time. A ten minute video doesn't
do anything except make ten minutes of your life go away. An 800 word blog post makes.. well, how long does it
take you to read 800 words? That's how much time it will destroy. It will not make you a better photographer,
it will not even entertain you particularly, it will not inform you. At best it will validate some life choice you made,
and tell you that you're special (despite the evident fact that you are not.)<br />
<br />
All this empty content still produces money for someone. You're paying for it, either with your
wallet or your attention. You're getting nothing in return except maybe a little empty validation, a little
tease that one day you might be someone.
<br />
<br />
At least when you went to the Galapagos with Michael Reichmann you got to see some turtles. It mighta cost
you $10,000 a turtle, but at least there were turtles.
<br />
<br />
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-19659368002778065362023-09-11T09:30:00.001-07:002023-09-11T09:30:16.499-07:00AD Coleman on Trump's mug shotAD does a nice analysis of this photo, of just the sort I would do. A little more partisan than I would
have written it, but AD's philosophy on that is perfectly clear and to my eye a perfectly reasonable
approach. If he were disingenuous, I wouldn't like it, but he's not.
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.nearbycafe.com/artandphoto/photocritic/2023/09/10/election-2024-image-world-3">Read it here.</a>
<br />
<br />
Really, do. It is well worth your time.
<br />
<br/>
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-19159966027675070132023-09-07T11:10:00.000-07:002023-09-07T11:10:00.894-07:00On Visual LiteracyThere is a school of thought, largely among the low-rent photo-academics that I so enjoy making fun
of, that <i>visual literacy</i> is a thing, a thing which can be learned, ought to be taught, and so on. They
say supremely stupid things like "one can read a photo just like a novel" and so on. This is one of
those ideas that feels immediately kind of stupid. It gets a lot of its traction because of this, it's
a <i>strange but true</i> idea that lets dummies imagine they have access to secret knowledge.
<br />
<br />
Let's dig in!
<br />
<br />
The first thing one might think about, if one asked oneself seriously "what is visual literacy
actually" is that perhaps it's just about seeing things. A photo, of the sort one <i>reads</i>
with ones <i>visual literacy</i> is generally just a picture of some stuff. Perhaps one could just
read the stuff?
<br />
<br />
I am nearly certain that this is never what is meant. To be honest, I'm not 100% on this since these
guys never explain what they actually mean, but I'm pretty sure.
<br />
<br />
Nope, <i>visual literacy</i> is specifically about the photo. It fits into that narrow gap between
just looking at stuff, and just looking at a piece of paper with blotches on it. It's about decoding
the photographer's methods and choices. What did the photographer choose to represent here, when,
and what techniques did they apply to render the stuff they're photographing?
<br />
<br />
At this point even a moment's thought reveals that there cannot actually be any secret knowledge
here. Suppose the photographer carefully applies Methods to make the subject look heroic, or venal,
or whatever. If this doesn't actually come through to the ordinary citizen, if the sensation that
the subject is venal or expensive or whatever does not come through to the untrained eye, the
photo has failed. This isn't like a novel, where you're assuming that the person holding it can
read the language. We don't encode things in a photo using a system of signs that one learns in
school.
<br />
<br />
Yes, there are signs and tropes that get used, but they're culturally ubiquitous. A low angle
and dramatic lighting to make the dude look heroic, or threatening, or whatever? Sure. That's
totally a thing. It might be a bit of biology, it's definitely a lot of culture, but the point is
that the great unwashed masses who didn't go to your stupid MFA program can read it just fine. They read comic books too.<br />
<br />
<i>Visual literacy,</i> if it means anything at all, means that one notices and inventories ones
own responses to a photo. The advanced course might conceivably teach us how other cultures, other
people, might respond, so that we can imagine their responses and inventory those as well
(wait, this sounds a lot like Molitor's theory of criticism, huh.) There cannot be anything interesting about our responses, those <i>must be</i> universal. The literacy arises in that we notice them.<br />
<br />
The trouble we run in to immediately here is that we have trouble separating our reactions to the
photographic methods and tropes from our reactions to the content itself.
<br />
<br />
As a critic, I don't see much point in separating those. I am interested in the total effect of the
photo on me, and on other people. Trying to comb apart the lighting techniques from the content
isn't something I am much interested in.
<br />
<br />
It is, however, of central importance if you're trying to do <i>visual literacy</i> and decode
the Language of Photography or whatever. You can't just be reacting to the content, that's not
<i>visual literacy</i> that's just looking at stuff. So, the <i>visually literate</i> academic
weirdo has to pretend they're reacting to the way the photo is made, rather than just the contents
of the frame.
<br />
<br />
Case in point, Jörg Colberg's <a href="https://cphmag.com/the-problem-with-helmut-newton/">more or less unhinged critique of Helmut Newton</a>.
<br />
<br />
The underlying drama here is that Colberg is a prude, and also believes that Men should not
photograph Women, ever, and especially not Nude Women. Which, you know, ok. He's perfectly entitled
to his opinions here, and these are not even particularly odd ideas.
<br />
<br />
You can, however, see him muddling up the content and the method, constantly. Newton's photos
are sexist and misogynistic <b>not</b> because it's a dude photographing women with their clothes
off, but because somehow something something male gaze. Colberg flatly refuses to admit that
his beef is that dudes shouldn't photograph women with no clothes on, and so he wanders endlessly
around saying ridiculous things like "In a most obvious fashion, Newton’s world is entirely heterosexual."
<br />
<br />
Not only is Colberg somehow gleaning the sexuality of a nude woman from the photo, which is itself
pretty suspect, but Helmut Newton's photos are famously some of the gayest shit ever! It's all
flirting with sexual fetishes. We do not in these enlightened times think of gayness as a fetish,
but in Newton's time it absolutely was. The Fetish/Gay/Camp blend was 100% a thing, and Helmut Newton was a master of it, if not <i>the</i> master.<br />
<br />
Colberg goes on to argue that Newton's photos are "sexist and misogynistic" because it's obvious
that they are and if you dared argue that they weren't, well, your argument would also be "sexist and misogynistic" and therefore wrong. Q.E.D. I looked this up in my Logic 101 textbook, and I think we formally refer to this syllogism as
<i>Modus Dumbass</i>.
<br />
<br />
Anyways, this is pretty much a perfect case study of some dude who earnestly believes in <i>visual literacy</i>
and earnestly believes that he has more or less mastered this arcane art, and that he is therefore qualified
to offer us a "reading" of Newton's work. He sees himself as diligently decoding the dense thicket of
symbols encoded in Newton's photographs, to reveal to us the inner meaning.
<br />
<br />
I don't even much like Newton, but I don't think there's any inner meaning that you need special
training to decode. The magazines who commissioned Newton's work would likely be surprised and
upset to learn that special training was necessary to make sense of that work. It is as if
The New Yorker commissioned 2500 words on dogs, only to receive a manuscript written in Latin.
<br />
<br />
No, Newton is pretty much all surface. It's all fetishistic and sexy, in a sort of blunt and dated
way, and that makes Colberg <i>extremely uncomfortable.</i>
<br />
<br />
Is it "sexist and misogynistic" to represent women as powerful but also sexual, and also kind of
pervy? Maybe? That seems to me like a cultural judgement that's gonna give you different answers in
different times and places. Ultimately, I don't particularly care. I am interested in the total
effect of the photo, content and method combined.
<br />
<br />
There's nothing wrong with noticing and inventorying your reactions to a photograph. I do it
as a hobby. The difference, as near as I can tell, between simply looking at a photo with
your eyes open and <i>visual literacy</i> is that the latter tries, fruitlessly, to
separate content from method, to catalogue in some meaningful the reactions to method
separately from content.
<br/>
<br/>
Invariably, the reaction to content bleeds in, and the whole effort collapses into a
re-iteration of the visually literate nimrod's politics. In the end it's never more
complicated than them being mad that someone photographed a naked woman.
<br/>
<br/>
It's fine to be mad that someone photographed that, or that the subject exists, or whatever,
I don't care. What's dumb is to pretend that you're <i>actually</i> mad at the secret
neoliberal coded message that you can't articulate but which is definitely in the photo
probably as a <i>punctum</i> or something.
<br/>
<br/>
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-75202458386368353612023-08-31T10:56:00.001-07:002023-08-31T10:56:44.468-07:00A Photo TestifiesA photograph which looks like a photo of something or someone, as well as anything else which isn't a photo but
which looks like such a thing, mainly does one thing: <i>it testifies to that-which-was.</i>
<br/>
<br/>
This has been my thesis for a little while now, and it's recognizably lifted <i>directly</i> from Barthes,
so if I'm a crank, at least my crankery has a pedigree! What I mean is that a photo, or something that looks
like a photo, which also looks like it's of something (not an abstract, obvious collage, or what have you)
mainly asserts <i>that something existed, and it looked like that at a moment in time.</i>
<br/>
<br/>
There's other shit these things do, of course. They're a mass of tone and color in pleasing, or less pleasing,
arrangements, and so on. Paintings do all those things, but paintings do not <i>testify</i> in the same way.
<br/>
<br/>
Let us now turn our attention to AI-generated photo-realistic imagery.
<br/>
<br/>
It functions in the same way a photo does, if it is sufficiently photo-realistic. It cannot do otherwise.
It testifies to <i>that-which-was.</i>
<br/>
<br/>
The point is not that it's functioning differently but that <i>its testimony is false.</i>
<br/>
<br/>
An unaltered actual photograph cannot be false in the same way. Within the limits of its capacity, its
testimony is completely, utterly, true.
<br/>
<br/>
The attentive reader might notice here that I am introducing the idea of <i>index</i> in a way that sidesteps the
traditional analysis of that concept (light particles physically induced a blah blah blah therefore it's a direct
blah blah index index) in order to include digital imagery or whatever. The point is that the testimony is 100%
truthful, within the extremely narrow limits of the medium.
<br/>
<br/>
To be clear, I am perfectly aware of the many ways a straight photo can misrepresent reality. My point here is that
there is a core of visual facts about which no straight photo lies. <i>It looked like that. That thing was in that
visual relationship to that other thing. Those two forms overlapped thus.</i> And so on. It is this core of truth
that is the testimony of the photo, no more, but also no less.
<br/>
<br/>
It is this core of truth that begins to erode the moment we modify the photo (yes, including burning and dodging, contrast
adjustments, etc, so yes the core truth of the testimony begins to erode immediately, I am <i>also</i> aware that
digital cameras do image processing, thank you.)
<br/>
<br/>
An AI generated "photo" testifies in the same way, but its testimony is a complete fabrication.
<br/>
<br/>
A perjurer and a priest testify in exactly the same way. The former, however, lies, and we like to imagine that the latter
does not.
<br/>
<br/>
What is the value of any testimony? Most photos testify as indicated, but nobody cares. <i>Oh, what a nice
bowl of tomatos. The light falls just so.</i> Who gives a shit? The aesthetics might be nice, and maybe you even
want to decorate your kitchen with a copy of it. But, it doesn't matter if it's real, photoshop, or AI then.
So what if the tomatos never existed? Or did? It simply doesn't matter.
<br/>
<br/>
Most real photos testify to facts that almost nobody cares about and that don't matter even slightly, to anyone.
If we're talking about aesthetics, and if aesthetics is all we care about, then it doesn't matter how the
dumb thing got made. Its nature as a piece of testimony doesn't matter a fig, although the fact that it adheres
to a photographic aesthetic may.
<br/>
<br/>
That said, most real photos testify to something that <i>someone</i> cares about, at least a little.
You and I don't care, but to whomever went to the trouble of hauling out her phone, it matters, at least
enough to take a photo. It's trivial, but it's real. The photo testifies, and to the photographer, that
is in fact what matters. <i>My kid did a cute thing. What a pretty flower. Look at my latte.</i> AI imagery
has no place here.
<br/>
<br/>
AI imagery only applies to circumstances where we either don't care about the testimony of the image
(i.e. Fine Art and Fucking Around, ok maybe Stock) or in places where we explicitly want false testimony.
Everyone is focused on the "where we explicitly want false testimony" case because they're worried
about things. Let's look at that in a moment.
<br/>
<br/>
The point though is that in almost all uses for photography it is the testimony which matters to whoever is
taking the photo, albeit to almost nobody else. Nobody
looking at an especially pretty flower wants an AI to make an even prettier one, they want to record
the one they're looking at. That's literally the point. It's <i>my</i> flower, <i>my</i> child, <i>my</i>
town, whatever. If you just want to make a pretty picture of a flower or a child, you could take up
painting, and nobody paints.
<br/>
<br/>
Almost all uses for AI image-generators that I observe today consist of fucking around and discovering the
limits of AI image-generators. The only use case is to post the result online and say "wow, check out what this
AI image generator did." This is already starting to get worn out.
<br/>
<br/>
As for the case where someone wants false testimony, well. The trouble with false testimony is that as a rule
it doesn't work. Nobody accepts any testimony of any kind by itself. Whether we mean to or not, we place
testimony in the context of our own world-view, we place it next to other testimony. Even photos, perhaps
especially photos: we don't believe testimony unless it supports a larger, more or less coherent, picture
of the world.
<br/>
<br/>
The only actual use cases for AI imagery that strike me as having any legs at all are basically variations
of <i>I wish I could paint, but I can't</i> which honestly seems a bit thin. Not sure there's a big market here.
<br/>
<br/>
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-28347203501779725342023-08-29T12:23:00.001-07:002023-08-29T12:23:51.434-07:00Guest Post: David Smith reviews Someone for EverythingDavid is a regular commenter here, and a friend. Normally he's substantially more
acerbic, which I suspect means something. The book sounds fascinating.
<br />
<br />
<hr style="align: center; width: 80%;" />
<br />
<br />
<b>
<u>Someone for Everything</u> by Michael LeBlanc — a review<br />
(and a speculative digression)<br />
by David Smith</b>
<br />
<br />
Michael Leblanc is a visual artist, and a professor of digital design who I studied under in the early '90s. We
stayed in touch, trading news and projects. I recently emailed him to ask if he or his colleagues had any truck
with AI (he’s unaware of anything specific), and learned of his latest work,
<a href="https://www.blurb.ca/b/11678235-someone-for-everything"><u>Someone for Everything</u> 100
Sequential Drawings</a>
<br />
<br />
<b>Photobook?</b>
<br />
<br />
Why would this book of drawings be of interest to aficionados of photography? It manifestly isn't a photobook,
but it is a book that includes many photographs altered in ways familiar to those of us who have experimented
with collage and other graphical devices. Working with stock photos, Michael has turned these experiments up to
eleven.
<br />
<br />
I was particularly interested in Michael's take on AI, because he's a 'skeptical enthusiast' who introduced Luddite
me to the uses of digital technology in visual art. But what, exactly is meant by "AI"? Well before the ChatGPT
and Stable Diffusion (etc.) marketing blitz, AI encompassed many, less hyped applications that don't depend on
the extravagant resources of deep fake manufacture.
<br />
<br />
<b>"Before we go any further, let’s get one thing out of the way."</b>
<br />
<br />
In his text, Michael takes considerable pains to make clear the 100 drawings were not AI-generated. Based on
his emailed comments, I think it possible they were, at least partly, AI-inspired — if true, an interesting conceptual
switch! Indeed, the methodology he lays out in detail sounds a lot like the AI process of assembling and
modifying fragments of found imagery into a composition — a process historically known as collage.
<br />
<br />
To recap what is widely understood about the collage medium: one starts with source images clipped from
newspapers, magazines, and other printed ephemera (other materials may be introduced). The images may be
close-cropped to particular subjects/details, or (less commonly) they are included 'as is,' and glued down in a
arrangement. In the digital era, many artists have adopted the collage method with scanned source and/or
digicam images. There have been bitter accusations of plagiarism leveled against some AI image-generators,
but this is a core precedent for the process itself.
<br />
<br />
If one takes the narrow position that a drawing is mainly comprised of brush or stylus marks made by human
hand, the works in Michael's book look more like collage than drawing at first glance. Closer inspection reveals
another possibility: the collage elements are a matrix on which drawing is overlaid. This doesn't take anything
away from the book’s expressive power, but I feel it is important for understanding its conceptual provenance.
<br />
<br />
In his text, Michael describes his intentions for the series, reaching back to his practice of traditional printmaking
(intaglio, lithography, etc.): maximal tonal range, 'richness,' and the idea of successive proofs in the development
of a print. I'm going to say here I wish I had looked through the drawings first (my bad, I should have just skipped
ahead). I've lately become interested in 'prompts' (titles, captions, and texts) — how they affect our readings of
visual art. While I think such texts may ideally provide some insights into what a visual work might mean and
why, I much prefer to absorb the information visually, and make up my own mind first. I strongly feel the proper
role of visual art is to mystify and delight, rather than instruct (Michael is a professor, so…).
<br />
<br />
<b>The 100 drawings</b>
<br />
<br />
The sequence begins with <i>Someone for Everything I</i>, a charcoal drawing of a central figure delineated in, and
surrounded by blocky tones. The scanned drawing is a scaffold for ensuing digital overlays of collage and drawn
elements that shift, morph, are replicated and replaced. It may also be taken as a signal the work is to be
interpreted as a series of drawings — something that might otherwise be overlooked! Compared to what soon
follows, the composition is relatively simple and stylized, which makes it easier to spot superimposed drawing in
later iterations.
<br />
<br />
The next few drawings in the sequence build up complexity and depth ("richness"). By the fourth (<i>Someone for
Everything IV</i>), Michael has got his vocabulary, but the best is yet to come.
<br />
<br />
Some of the details feel 'off,' in a way that is uncannily similar to how AI image generators conjoin source
fragments by attempting to conjure up the missing bits from the sparser reaches of a database. One obtains the
strong sense that Michael isn't working to cross an uncanny valley to a seamless realism, but he is deeply
interested in the surreal glitches and artifacts AI throws up in near-misses and abject failures. This tracks to his
previous works on technology. I have to say again, that flipping this phenomenon into a basis for human
invention is an impressive conceptual feat (cf. Francis Picabia’s Réveil Matin).
<br />
<br />
Michael repaints the collaged photographs, masking and fading elements, and sketching in new details in a kind
of loose impressionism, as he builds each drawing.
<br />
<br />
Paging back and forth through the drawings, I am immediately struck by how they function together as a flip-book
animation. This bridges the variable 'completeness' or polish of the individual drawings. While many of the
drawings work very well as stand alone visual statements (and I'd like to see a tighter edit with these in), the
sequence benefits from the inclusion of intermediary states in comprehending the greater whole.
<br />
<br />
Michael's collage sources include early Soviet photographs, and I think this is a good place to bring up what I
see as possible conscious or unconscious influences on the overall direction of the series: Alexander
Rodchenko and other Constructivists worked extensively with dynamic collage compositions during this era,
along with Germans in the Dada movement (Hannah Hoch, Raoul Housmann).
<br />
<br />
Most of Michael's figures here are similarly poised for action, and are often rotated or flipped to an unstable
angle for heightened dynamic tension. They are combined and recombined with other figures, whom they seem
to be dancing with, fighting, or otherwise spatially interfering. Many of the figures have acquired exaggerated
expressions through Michael’s overlaid drawing. Others appear as bland, anonymous ciphers. Drawn elements
keep things in the frame, by setting up pauses in the action, and routing our attention around the composition.
<br />
<br />
The narrowly vertical (6:10) aspect ratio of the drawings perfectly frames a straight-on shot of a standing person
with ample margins, and many of the drawings are of this configuration, often with limbs and other visual
elements flying out at odd angles. The format, and placement on the page spread support both the 'book of
drawings' identity in terms of traditional presentation, and the flip-book browsing experience — variations (and
there are many) are locked into this layout scheme.
<br />
<br />
Michael alludes in his text to the possibility of the drawings printed large scale for an exhibition of the white-cube
persuasion. It is easy to imagine LXIV, LXV, LXXV and LXXXI (among others) making for a very dramatic show
indeed. He also states that he now considers the project a sketchbook of studies for (e.g.) large paintings.
<br />
<br />
I feel fortunate to have learned of this very interesting project, which has great depth and many facets of interest
to me personally. I will be returning to this book as I try to unravel its meanings, and absorb its lessons.
<br />
<br />amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-78277455203322069192023-07-30T11:14:00.002-07:002023-07-30T11:14:29.945-07:00RubricsI think I've made a little headway on discovering what on earth I've been on about lately.
<br />
<br />
Perhaps it comes down to the rubric in play. If you're a hull-polisher, your rubric for measuring
the quality of a boat and team is how shiny the hull is. This is borderline offensive to someone
who's using the rubric "who can get the boat around the course more quickly" which is a more
standard racing approach.
<br />
<br />
What rubs me the wrong way is when people, be they Mike Johnston, or Jörg Colberg, describe a photo
as "good" unconditionally. This is pretty normal, most photography types are quite fearless about
judging photos good or bad, without bothering to reveal their rubric. They speak exactly as if there
was a single objective standard, that they are privy to it, and that they are qualified to judge.
At the same time, bizarrely, they will often lean on an idea of subjectivity.
<br />
<br />
So let's think about rubrics. A rubric, for our purposes here, is any sort of system for measuring
the goodness of a photograph. You can imagine it assigning a score between 0 and 10, let's say, where
10 is the best and 0 means terrible.
<br />
<br />
I am an unrepentant relativist, and believe that there are no immutable, universal, standards
for much of anything, and certainly nothing as trivial as a photograph.
<br />
<br />
Every photograph produces a trivial rubric: "how much does your photo resemble this one" and
obviously the photo itself scores 10, other things will score more or less, but probably not 10.
<br />
<br />
So there's a lot of rubrics out there. As many as there are photos, at least.
<br />
<br />
Storefront portraitists have a rubric that involves the balance of lighting and whether you got
the subject to pose in some approved fashion. Ansel Adams wannabees will measure densities, and
may or may not look at anything else. Nobody has been able to figure out what Colberg's rubric
is, but it certainly includes "dismal."
<br />
<br />
In the 1980s and 1990s a variation of 19th century oil painting's notions of composition ruled
the roost. I was brought up to photography with a rubric (usually presented as universal) that
boils down to a re-working of Victorian composition: balance, unity, etc etc. I wrote a small
book on it, largely as an exercise in understanding it, 10 years or so ago. I thought that if
I just understood the rubric more thoroughly, I would then be able to make "good photos."
<br />
<br />
I don't think there is a universal rubric.
<br />
<br />
A more realistic example of multiplying rubrics than my trivial one above: every project generates
a rubric of sorts. A photo is "good" if it works within the context of the body of work. A brilliant
landscape that hits every Ansel Adams button is "bad" in the context of a portraiture project. It's
tempting to argue that this is different from a more general "good" or "bad", it's tempting to argue
that "it's still a good photo, it just doesn't work in the project" but to be blunt, I fail to see the
point. It's a distinction without a difference.
<br />
<br />
The "quality" of any photograph exists in a sort of quantum superposition of states until the moment you
see it, in whatever context you see it. Either it works or it does not, at that moment, when the quantum
states collapse.
<br />
<br />
This is, essentially, AD Coleman's position on editing. A photographer does not, in his formulation, exist
until the work is edited and prepared for public consumption. The job of the photographer is not complete
until then. My formulation may be a little more radical, and is probably not as well-defined, but we
do what we can.
<br />
<br />
My complaints over the last few days can be expressed at this: many photographers evaluate work under
rubrics which are opaque, confined to fairly insular communities, and at the same time treated
as universal. A rubric that is not more or less accessible to normies may be perfectly fine, I don't
want to yuck your yum, but it's not <i>interesting.</i> Nobody cares except you and your friends.
There's nothing wrong with that, but to pretend that you're not in a closed club, to pretend that you're
making universal art, is to partake of falsehood.
<br />
<br />
Take the now complete "Bleak House" project, assembled by Brad Feuerhelm: <a href="https://void.photo/bleakhouse">Bleak House -- Void</a>
<br />
<br />
Nobody wants any of this stuff except the people in that very small community. There's some variety, but even the
irrepressible Katrin Koenning appears to have been smashed down to dull incomprehensible gibberish. The people
inside, of course, love it. Do they love it because the photos specifically meet some opaque rubric? Well,
kinda. Mainly they love it because these people are their friends, and they're all in this mess
together, all producing more or less the same piles of incomprehensible gibberish. They're literally
taught how to do it, they're judged on how well they do it, and so on. They're polishing the shit
out of the hull of a sailboat.
<br />
<br />
This doesn't make them bad people, it doesn't make the photographs or the books "invalid" or whatever, it
just means that nobody much cares about the work. It's possible some of the artists will get jobs as
a result, so that's good! I don't know any of these people, but I want them to all be able to eat and
have a warm place to sleep! If this is how that happens, then great. I don't like the work, at all, though.
<br />
<br />
And, again, this is a community of people who are earnestly convinced of the universality of this bewildering
rubric which they use to evaluate work. From the outside, they look like a bunch of schizophrenics, living
inside an absolutely impenetrable bubble of their own imagination.
<br />
<br />
Do I have some ultimate summing up, some sort of answer, here?
<br />
<br />
Of course not. The whole point is that there are rubrics, and there are rubrics, and it's all relative.
<br />
<br />
I do think that it behooves us to think pretty hard about what we are trying to accomplish. How should we evaluate
a photograph. There is no such thing as <i>quality</i> in a universal sense here (<i>pace</i> Pirsig) there are
only properties of how photographs behave, and how we might use these objects with these properties to accomplish
whatever it we seek to accomplish.
<br />
<br />
Consider, again, the "Bleak House" project. I have no idea who Brad wanted to impress here, but it probably includes
more or less his peers. This includes a bunch of curators and other gatekeepers who will examine the CVs of
the participants, note the MFAs and so on, and glance at the photos to verify that they Meet Standard. Everyone
gets another line to add to their CV, thereby increasing their chance of getting a grant or a show or whatever.
To this extent I dare say "Bleak House" is a success. It looks like Brad was able to leverage his
C-list status to lend status to a bunch of artists, which in turn burnished his apple a bit. Victory all
around.
<br />
<br />
If the aim went beyond that, though, it's an abject failure. No normie is going to look at these books
and get much out of them. Sure, there's an indie zine vibe in there, a kind of punk-rock aesthetic, but
then you get to the photos. It's all tryhard Walker Evans wannabee grey architecture, mixed up with a
few weaksauce Ren Hang copies (no porn, no guts) and the occasional damp design exercise. It's not
going to speak to anyone, because it's all the vague gibberish that can be re-tasked at a moment's notice
by re-writing the artist's statement.
<br />
<br />
I'm not sure Feuerhelm had a clear notion of what the point was. Certainly I've never seen anyone admit
that their work isn't supposed to impress normies, that it is all grant-bait. But it is, in the end and in this community,
all grant-bait. The vagueness is a feature. Your portfolio can be about whatever you
need it to be about today.
<br />
<br />
A similar sort of deconstruction, though, can be applied to lots of other photography. Mike Johnston's photos
are at least attractive, and he does actually sell them on the strength of his strong graphical skills.
Nevertheless, I'm not sure that he has much notion of a specific rubric to which he's adhering. His writing
suggests that he imagines himself to be adhering to a universal rubric of some sort, and that his photos
are in some objective sense "good." The fact that they are more broadly appealing than the average MFA's work
does not make his rubric universal.
<br />
<br />
Ditto the storefront portrait guys. Ditto the street photography guys. Ditto the guys who can't stop
taking pictures of peaches and forks in beautiful rectangular gridded arrangements.
<br />
<br />
It's not all subjective, not by a long shot. We, humans, fall into communities, into affinity groups,
and tend to like and dislike things en masse.
<br />
<br />
It is, however, all relative.
<br />
<br />
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-89516885316422650112023-07-29T12:02:00.000-07:002023-07-29T12:02:35.455-07:00Photos about Themselves III got the sense from the commenters on the previous remarks that my notes maybe read as an indictment of
all photographers, or almost all photographers, and I don't mean that at all. Just... a lot of them.
<br />
<br />
The thing that got me started on this train of thought is a photograph and some remarks by Mike Johnston
over on his blog, ToP:
<a href="https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2023/06/photographs-are-gifts.html">Photographs are Gifts</a>.
<br />
<br />
Allow me to be perfectly clear: I like and respect Mike, I like this photo pretty well, and I think by certain
standards it is a "good photograph."
<br />
<br />
At the same time, though, this illustrates the point I am trying to make. Mike and I are roughly contemporaneous, he
is slightly older. We both came up to photography feeling that, to a large extent, it's a problem of graphic design.
Yes, to be sure, the graphic design is intended to be the tool by which something else occurs, something larger, something
about communication. At the same time, we get a little too focused on the graphic design. You can read Mike
ruminating a little about "final" versus, I guess, not final. You can tell he's thinking about contrast and shadow
detail. We both spent far too much time learning about Ansel Adams and the rhythm of dark and light, the full range
of tone, etc etc etc. All, of course, in aid of something or other larger and more important which we have for the
moment mislaid.
<br />
<br />
It is, I feel, time for an extended and elaborate analogy built around, of course, racing sailboats.
<br />
<br />
Suppose a fellow buys a boat to go racing. Quickly he learns that polishing the hull makes it go faster, so he
really gets into polishing his hull. In fact, after a while, he stops sailing entirely. A community of people
arise who buy boats specifically and solely to polish the hull. They develop rules and standards, they have
contests, they judge one another's boat hull polish levels.
<br />
<br />
Now, there's a lot of stuff you can do with a sailboat. You can race it. You can go camping in it. You can
travel long distances. You can seduce lovers. You can get exercise. On and on. And also, you can polish it.
<br />
<br />
Someone fond of one of the other activities might reasonably get a little testy about the hull-polishers. They
might angrily point out some of the other things, things the damned machine is actually built to do. On the
one hand, this is unfair: who is this asshole to yuck the polishers' yum? There's no law against polishing the hull,
nobody's getting hurt. On the other hand... boy that does seem like a waste of a boat and of your time.
<br />
<br />
A great deal of photography is done by people whose main goal to to make photographs that their peers will
approve of. That is, they seek to make photographs that comply with the more-or-less arbitrary standards a group
of photographers has invented for themselves, in the same way the hull polishers seek the perfect sheen.
<br />
<br />
On the one hand, who am I to yell at Mike to stop obsessing over the graphic design (so, obviously, I didn't
and I won't, nobody else should either, and anyways I agree that the graphic design is good, and I was literally
taught that this is what matters, so... I have some feels here, and they're complicated.)
<br />
<br />
On the other hand, Mike's photograph (like all his photographs) does little more than testify that Mike is
very good at noticing things that make photographs of the sort Mike takes.
<br />
<br />
There are many things you can do with a camera, including make graphic design exercises. You can also make
dreary grey photographs of nothing, if you're in the right sort of MFA program. You can make warm cozy photos
that somehow evoke the paintings of Hopper without any of the angst. You can make photos with that kind of
weird sheen of plastic-y perfection that get you to the front page of whatever photo sharing site you
favor. You can take portraits with a million lights and balance them just so.
<br />
<br />
Who am I to yuck your yum, if that's what you want to do?
<br />
<br />
But in all those cases, you are making photographs intended to be liked by other photographers, and you're
doing that by adhering to essentially arbitrary criteria your community has invented for itself.
<br />
<br />
The essential action of the photograph, its ability to testify to that-which-was, gets lost here somewhere.
The essential action of the artist, which surely involves complying with the demands of an inner voice in opposition
to the voice of the community, gets lost here somewhere.
<br />
<br />
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-67489455607995832422023-07-26T13:52:00.001-07:002023-07-27T11:20:17.913-07:00Photos About ThemselvesMost photos, almost all photos, are naive witnesses to something or to someone. The snapshot from the party
or the beach, the selfie, whatever. These are maybe not well-made, these are maybe meaningful only to
a few people. That's ok. All they do is attest to that-which-was, and that's all they are meant to do.<br />
<br />
At the other end, there are well-made photos that are about something else. Maybe they're very
beautiful, or they witness something more universal, more accessible.
<br />
<br />
In the middle, where all the photographers live, there is a desperate hell-scape of photos that are
about themselves.
<br />
<br />
Consider the dismal grey mess from the MFA student, the photo that's allegedly a biting
critique of late-stage capitalism but is in the end a cluster of weeds in front of a trash bin.
This thing isn't about capitalism or weeds or trash, it testifies only to the student's
opinion of themself as an insightful commentator of late-stage capitalism, whatever that
even is. With a quick adjustment of the text, it's a profound commentary on patriarchy,
or a plea for de-growth, or a satirical commentary on climate change. It witnesses nothing
except that the photographer is in an MFA program.
<br />
<br />
By the same token, the minimalist photo of the peach on a cutting board, illuminated by the
well-placed warm ray of sunshine witnesses nothing more than the insightful eye of the photographer.
It may be in some way beautiful, but god damn it we've seen this picture so many times, and it's
always the same, and after a while you realize that most of what you like about it is the
way the photographer cranked the saturation and warmth sliders up.
<br />
<br />
The witty juxtaposition street photo. Look, the pedestrian walks <i>left</i> under the big arrow
pointing <i>right</i>! Ha ha it looks like the steam is coming from the person's head! The giant
hand in the poster appears to be grabbing the bus! Ha ha! Nobody cares. Again, the photo does
nothing more than testify that you're in the hands a sharp and curious photographic eye, an
insightful and witty commenter on the human condition.
<br />
<br />
Except that none of these actually comment on whatever. They all comment on the photographer,
and ultimately, on themselves. They are hermetically sealed into a self-referential container. These photographs mainly observe that they themselves are examples of a well-worn trope, the well-observed something-or-other.<br />
<br />
As a rule, photographs like these are made to appeal to other photographers, and photographers,
as a rule, are the only people who like them.
<br />
<br />
There are endless awful little silos of photographers. There's the "5 light studio portrait"
guys, the Miksang guys, the nude figure studies guys, the dismal grey bullshit MFA guys, the
street photography guys, and so on. The common thread is that people in the silo are the only
people in the world who give the smallest shit about the photos made by the people in the silo.
Even they don't care that much. They print their own photos, and drone on about how important
it is to print your work, but they don't even want prints of one another's photos, and don't much care
about them. They buy one another's books, but it's purely a <i>quid pro quo</i>. The average self-styled
Serious Photographer's interest in printed photos, while intense, begins and ends with their own
photos.
<br />
<br />
You can tell the narrowness of interest by the commentary. Everything is "wow! So good. Just.. so
good. wow. wow." We might reasonably expect many photographers to be kind of inarticulate, but surely
not every single one?
<br/>
<br/>
Normies don't care about any of this shit even slightly. None of these photos would incite even
a flicker of interest from anyone outside the relevant silo. Ok, maybe the first time you see
that goddamned peach photo, you'll glance at it. But normies instinctively feel the emptiness of
these things, they're much more interested in even the naive snaps.
<br />
<br />
To be fair, it's not like normies pace slowly through the gallery, minutely examining everything.
Still, for even the most jaded normie there's that one painting, that one photo; they'll wander over
and puzzle over it for a minute or two.
<br />
<br />
This is, essentially, why photo communities are bad. They seem, inevitably, to turn into weird echo
chambers that endlessly refine an increasingly uninteresting set of tropes. Everything from
twitter to forums to MFA programs to local photo clubs of middle-aged ladies does the same
thing: they all converge on some remarkably limited and uninteresting set of visual ideas, and
grind them into a sort of thin gruel that nobody likes. I don't know if painters
do the same thing. Maybe it's just photographers that are special in some way.
<br />
<br />
Certainly photographers are, as a group, remarkably lazy. Many a photographer aspires to
creativity without labor. The AI Art community seems to have a lot of photographers in it,
presumably because it's even easier than taking photos. Photographers, more than any
other single group, seem to be in love with the insane idea that "art is subjective"
especially as a justification for pretty much any kind of dumb shit.
<br />
<br />
I won't describe it as universal, but it is at any rate common to discover that the photographers
I actually like are loners, or at best hang (hung) out in a fairly small, fairly thoughtful, community
of like-minded people. Often they hang around with literary types, but not photographers.
What a poet has to say about a photo might be a lot more interesting than what another
photographer has to say about it. And, perhaps, vice versa.
<br />
<br />
In any case, do try not to take photographs mainly for the purpose of illustrating your
own incisive wit or whatever. Or, you know, do, if you like. It costs me nothing, after all.<br />
<br />
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-43799009382243286442023-07-06T11:41:00.000-07:002023-07-06T11:41:03.540-07:00On Escaping OneselfThere is in this world a wide spectrum of human circumstance, from very comfortable indeed to extremely uncomfortable.
At the same time, there is a spectrum of desire-to-change ones circumstance. If one is very uncomfortable indeed, it makes
sense to want to change your lot in life, perhaps even to change in some meaningful way who you are.
<br />
<br />
You might think, in fact, that the desire to change oneself might correlate more or less with the comfort of ones life, and
that might even be true. True, that is, in general terms. Comfortable people, presumably, prefer to change little or nothing.
<br />
<br />
When you get down to specific people, though, you will find that many many many people who are in fairly comfortable situations
nevertheless seek, sometimes desperately, to change their lives, to change themselves, to somehow escape their comfortable
and yet somehow unsatisfying situation.
<br />
<br />
This manifests in a lot of ways. A <i>lot</i> of ways. People look to religion, they take up hobbies, and sometimes they just whine
a lot on social media.
<br />
<br />
One variant is the would-be artist.
<br />
<br />
Now, I am very much in favor of art-making. Big fan. What's less appealing is the assumption, or the investment in the idea, of
art-making leading to some sort of "success."
<br />
<br />
We have photographers who are struggling to become Professional Photographers, or Fine Art Photographers, and I suppose we have
the same in all the other arts. Mostly, of course, I see photographers who seem to, with varying degrees of desperation, want
photography to somehow save them from themselves. Maybe they want to make money, or get featured in FOAM or get a show somewhere,
or maybe they just want their photography to somehow turn them into interesting people, or get them laid more, or something.
<br />
<br />
To an extent, I don't necessarily disapprove. We do grow and change, sometimes through the mechanic of "trying new things."
Taking up a new hobby isn't a bad way to be human, to live your life, to expand oneself in good ways.
<br />
<br />
On the other hand, to ask too much of such a thing, to hope that it will in some meaningful way provide an escape from oneself,
that can easily turn to pathology.
<br />
<br />
Perhaps there isn't, in the end, much difference between the child of poverty who bets it all on basketball, and the dweeb who
buys an expensive camera. Both hope to alter their lives, maybe profoundly. Both are long shots; both enable much if the plan happens to work out.
Still, one is hoping to escape from being cold and hungry, the other dreams of not being a boring dweeb. Perhaps there is a difference
after all.
<br />
<br />
As someone who is essentially pretty comfortable, who is not seeking to escape cold and hunger, and at the same time as someone
who's aware of what a long shot art is, I am trying to do something else artistically.
<br />
<br />
I don't want to escape myself, or my circumstances. I'm fascinating and cool, my life is really very comfortable indeed. Why on earth
would I seek to escape this excellent set of circumstances?
<br />
<br />
There is a scene in a Terry Pratchett novel, <u>Witches Abroad</u>, in which Granny Weatherwax is trapped by her evil sister
in a hall of mirrors, endlessly reflecting images of Granny back at herself. Her sister cackles from afar, something
about how she must now figure out which one is real, and she never will, or whatever. Something like that. Granny
instantly identifies herself as the real one and smashes the mirrors, completely unfazed.
<br />
<br />
This, while funny and somewhat silly, is a useful little parable. You are right here. There's no mystery. Perhaps you make
art, and that is a wonderful and fine thing. However, there is no mythical you, no potential-you that is great artist
or a professional photographer (or, for that matter, a movie star or a captain of industry.) There's just you, right here.
Someday, maybe even today, you are or will be any one of those things. When that happens, you will still be, you are, right
here not mythical at all but very real, very much present in all your meat-based imperfect glory.
<br />
<br />
I spend too much time online, and I see a lot of people looking for answers. They want to know how to be someone else.
Ironically, many of them seem to tinker with Buddhist ideas at some time or another, which I find especially odd seeing
as Buddhism seems to be as much about being yourself as you are right now, as it is about anything else. Buddhism as
a way to transform yourself to someone new seems to be rather missing the point.
<br />
<br />
I don't want to make art to transform either myself or my life, but rather to be myself, and to live my life, in as fully
human a way as I can manage.
<br />
<br />
Rumor has it that Bill Watterson (author of Calvin & Hobbes) paints a painting every day, and burns it that night. Kurt
Vonnegut famously advised students to write a poem, as good as poem as they can, and then to tear it up. The point here
is that art can simply be made, you don't have to show it to anyone. You don't have to try to "succeed" somehow. You can
simply do it, and if you like, you can do it as well as you can. Or not. You can take the same photograph over
and over, and if you like that photograph and you like taking it, well then why not? Larry Gagosian will not be telephoning
you either way, so in the end what does it matter?
<br />
<br />
At the same time, I object to the "I neeeeeed to take photographs" (or the related "I neeeeeeed to write" or whatever)
which is almost invariably a mere performance by someone who wants you to consider them interesting and fuckable. They,
as a rule, have no such need, and probably don't even much like whatever art they like to imagine themselves experts at.
<br />
<br />
This is the fundamental distinction: does photography (or whatever) actually do something for you, or do you simply fancy yourself
in the hat?
<br />
<br />
Because photography itself is specifically so extremely easy, it's kind of a standard landing place for those who want
to appear interesting, those who hope to escape their boring selves and either get laid, get rich, or both. Learning
to play the piano is hard, and learning to play it well is much harder, and anyways you can't exactly wander around
with a piano trying to impress girls. The camera is more or less the one Art Accessory you <i>can</i> roam around with
without looking like a weirdo.
<br />
<br />
Anyways, I don't think most of my readers are trying to escape themselves. I do see hints, from time to time, of someone
I suspect of reading these little notes being unsatisfied with their photographs, and I urge you: don't be.
<br />
<br />
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-17210754672379177742023-06-28T14:50:00.003-07:002023-06-28T14:50:59.113-07:00Notes on DrawingAs previously remarked, I have been making an effort to pursue drawing more seriously. This has been going on
about 7 months now, I've worked through <u>Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain</u> and I've been trying
to draw every day. There has been some success.
<br />
<br />
The central problem of drawing is that of seeing what is actually there.
<br />
<br />
The goal of a drawing "from life" is to reduce the visual reality to a sheet of paper, with marks on it,
which evoke more or less the same response as the visual reality. You want to <i>perceive</i> in the
page more or less what you <i>perceive</i> in life. The constant persnickety difficulty is that you tend
to mark on the page not what is there, but what you <i>perceive.</i>
<br />
<br />
A child draws a human head as an oval with two ovals for eyes near the top. The eyes on the human head
are in reality vertically centered, but this is not the <i>percept</i> of the head, it is the reality.
<br />
<br />
If you draw what you <i>perceive</i> than upon re-perceiving that, a double layer of perception (with
the accompanying intense interpretation the brain does) the second order perception is all wrong.
<br />
<br />
In short, if you want your drawing to look like Bob, you have to draw what Bob actually looks like, not
"how you see Bob."
<br />
<br />
This is all standard stuff. Arnheim wrote about it at length, and any modern book on drawing or painting
will probably go over it.
<br />
<br />
The central act of drawing is thus to see what is actually there; to somehow step around the perception,
to see what is actually there. Teaching drawing, to a large degree, consists of teaching gimmicks to
trick yourself into skipping the perception step, the step that interprets and classifies and reduces
visual data to things and people and stuff we can think about. To draw a recognizable portrait of a person
is to observe and replicate an incredible mess of extremely exact proportions and shapes. I find it quite
difficult.
<br />
<br />
Interestingly, to draw non-people, you can work largely from vibes. You don't have to get the proportions
very close, but if you get the various more emotionally accessible bits and pieces right, the drawing
will feel about right. We see faces quite differently than we see trees. I think the same applies to painting.
It's a lot easier for someone like me to paint a sunset that feels like the sunset I'm looking at than it
is for me to draw a picture of my wife's face that looks like my wife.
<br />
<br />
Photographers know this all too well.
<br />
<br />
It's easy to make a photo of someone that looks like them. The camera preserves in agonizing detail all those
little proportions and relationships that make a face recognizable. It's hard to take a photograph of a sunset,
because the impact of the sunset does not lie in the precise geometrical, optical, relationships of the parts.
A sunset's impact is as much context as anything.
<br />
<br />
To bring these two ideas together: it's quite difficult to make an emotionally "truthful" portrait. It will look like
the subject, you can recognize them. But it might not feel like them, it might not portray their kindness,
or their mood, or the way you personally feel about them.
<br />
<br />
The point I want to make here, though, is this: photography makes it possible to create a visual reduction
of something onto a flat piece of paper <i>without ever examining what is actually there.</i>
<br />
<br />
I think was, as of 1830ish, almost unprecedented. If you wanted to reproduce something, you had to look
at it. I guess you could dip an object in pigment and press it on a surface, prior to photography, but
it's hard to think of anything else.
<br />
<br />
Even the use of a camera obscura required you to look at what was actually there. The device was simply another
way to sidestep the machinery of perception.
<br />
<br />
Indeed, perceptive photographers tend to recognize their photographic failures specifically as failures to see
what was actually there. We react to the vibes of a tree, or a sunset, and snap it. We are disappointed with the
result, because we didn't want to photography the visual reality, but rather how we felt.
<br />
<br />
I don't want to propose that you can't Truly Make Art without the deep insights offered by drawing, a position
that is of course tempting to me as a recent convert. Still, there's something here.
<br />
<br />
Does one approach art-making with the camera as a sort of variation of drawing, and demand that the photographer
see what it truly there before taking the picture?
<br />
<br />
Or, is there something else? Is this a new way of art-making, in which perception proceeds directly to new perception,
without examining the underlying reality too closely? Perhaps you can make the argument that this is what some schools
of modern painting were actually about in the first place?
<br />
<br />
I happen to suspect that the impressionists and cubists and whatnot in reality began with a traditional
drawing-artist's wrestle with what was actually there. They simply declined to reduce it to the page in the traditional way,
choosing instead to render a new thing, perceived in a different and yet related way. I could be wrong!
<br />
<br />
It is worth noting, I think, that "AI Art" also skips the underlying reality comma examination of. To paint even an
imaginary scene, you must wrestle with the imagined visual reality. How is he holding his head? How do her eyes tilt?
Where is the light hitting the rock, and what is in shadow? AI Art allows you to skip all that nonsense, and move right
ahead to how you feel about it. As with photography, you pick out the good ones, the ones that actually vibe the way
you imagined. As with photography, you don't notice 95% of what's even in the frame.
<br />
<br />
I honestly don't know what to make of this all. I do know that I look at things much more closely now than
I used to. I have an unhealthy relationship with the ratio of "nose-to-mouth distance" to "mouth-to-chin distance"
as well as the overall shape of people's heads.
<br />
<br />
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-78579169901642398072023-06-16T10:12:00.001-07:002023-06-16T10:12:29.162-07:00Crit: The Garden by Tony FouhseI like Tony and I like Tony's work, so as usual, assume a certain bias in what follows although,
as usual, I will attempt to be fair minded and neutral.
<br />
<br />
Tony gifted me a copy of his latest, and as usual, I like it. It was one of several things that arrived
in my field of view during my Crisis of Faith, and it is a nearly perfect exemplar of what I was talking
about. It's <i>open</i>, it's built using the old methods (although the photos are modern); it insists on
very little but permits a great deal.
<br />
<br />
So, what is it?
<br />
<br />
Well, it's a softcover book, about 8" by 10", more or less a magazine format but on heavy paper
that's neither matte nor glossy. Colour (it's Canadian, so you have to put the 'u' in.) 66 pages,
more or less (I may have miscounted and the exact count doesn't matter.)
<br />
<br />
The book opens with the phrase <i>Once upon a time</i> and closes with <i>happily ever after.</i> There
is no other text, the rest of the book is photos and blank pages, one photo per page. The photos are all
nighttime photos, although I suspect that a few of them may have been shot during the day and processed
to look like night.
<br />
<br />
The text frames the book, literally, as a fairy tale. Those phrases mean very precisely that, without
a shred of ambiguity. That leaves a great deal of space in between, though. We can reasonably expect
some magic, but even that is optional. I decided to go with magic.<br />
<br />
The book is filled with magic, but since it's <i>open</i> you have to supply it yourself. It allows you
to, but doesn't demand it. The book isn't in the business of supplying meaning, or magic, it's a set of
pictures you can look at, and some hints.
<br />
<br />
The photos. The photos contain a lot of brutalist architecture, which I like to look at but not to be in,
some demolition sites, some things that might be construction, some general urban material. Trees, a lot
of trees. The sequencing is, as noted, very old school:
<br />
<br />
Graphical repeats are a constant drumbeat, as are repeated elements, repeated colors, and so on. The whole
thing feels very <i>constructed</i> for this reason, it has none of the flavor of laziness that so many
modern books have. This is not to suggest that modern books are made lazily, they are not. The point is
that modern photobook authors kill themselves over the sequencing, and the result appears essentially
random and thrown together. They're so obsessed, I think, with defying obvious structure that the result
descends into gibberish.
<br />
<br />
The key with abstract painting is knowing when to stop tearing down. A bad abstract artist produces
noise. A good one stops short of the moment when the painting disintegrates into noise.
<br />
<br />
Back to Tony's book. It's old school, the graphical structure is clear, unambiguous. Graphical
structure, though, does not impute meaning, only structure. The meaning we must find ourselves.
<br />
<br />
The book opens with four photos. A tree and parking lot, and then three views of concrete tunnel
openings. The tunnels are single-lane roads, or possibly large pedestrian underpasses. They are
similar enough that you wonder if they are the same tunnel-opening, but they are not. They look like
they're in a park, perhaps. Possibly the parking lot in the first photo is attached to the park,
in which the tunnel(s) reside?
<br />
<br />
The result here, to my eye, is a kind of unity. These are not all the same thing, they are different,
and yet they look pretty much the same. Unlike a Becher typology, the tunnels are shot from
different angles, the point is not to <i>compare</i> them, but to <i>unify</i> them. Thus, I
find the magic. It's all the same tunnel, manifesting itself differently. It is one tunnel, but
also many. There is a unity that arises from the many, somehow.
<br />
<br />
This becomes, for me, the template by which I made sense of the book.
<br />
<br />
The book strikes me as a series of episodes, each depicting a <i>place</i> which is made up of
many <i>places.</i> Whether all the photos are different angles on the same thing or not, I do
not know, and I do not care. The point is that, by magic, the photos in a group in a meaningful
way depict the same place. Indeed, I rather hope that in most cases the singular <i>place</i>
has been formed from photos shot in various locations, unified by graphical character and by
magic.
<br />
<br />
Each of the places is populated by one or two people. The people are not lounging, they are
engaged in something or other, but what they are about is not clear. The denizens of these
<i>places</i> are doing something that you can't quite make out. Again, we're permitted but
not required to see magic here. Maybe they're just curious tourists, or maybe they're performing
a ritual, who knows?
<br />
<br />
In some cases I'm not even certain that the people are the same people. There's a blonde, and there
she is again (but is it really the <i>same</i> blonde, or is she a different blonde who is, somehow,
the same blonde?) It doesn't matter, though. That's kind of the point.
<br />
<br />
We don't really have a story here, that is (I think clearly) not the intention. What we have
is a series of magic-imbued <i>places</i> in which magic-imbued <i>characters</i> are doing things
that we do not understand.
<br />
<br />
It's always nighttime, the trees are always richly green and numerous, the built environment is entirely
made from concrete but coexists seamlessly with the trees. There is a fairly clearly delineated
world in which these places, there characters, exist, and it is not the real world (I have been to Ottawa,
and it doesn't really look like this; for starters, it's daylight much of the time.)
<br />
<br />
The book ends with a kiss (?) and a departing blonde. That's all you get for narrative.
<br />
<br />
<i>Figure it out yourself</i> the book says.
<br />
<br />
<i>It all puts me in mind of some Russian/Soviet film which was famously assembled from cast-off footage
from other films, a film in which the same role is "played" by multiple actors, because footage was
cast off from many different movies and re-assembled. I regret that I cannot locate the name of the dumb
film, though, and it appears to be search-engine-proof to my annoyance.</i>
<br />
<br />
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-34853261944894097152023-06-12T09:20:00.000-07:002023-06-12T09:20:02.277-07:00The White CubeThe Mainstream White Cube art community is a curious beast, at least on the photography side.
<br />
<br />
It seems mandatory for members of the community to deny membership (Fight Club?) and indeed
to denigrate the community and its mores. Lewis Bush has made a kind of a career out of bitching
about White Cube Art, while simultaneously feasting on its meagre provender as often as possible.
<br />
<br />
Jörg Colberg lunges relentlessly back and forth between complaining about it and wallowing in it. Most of his
output is the vague waffle that is the standard "critical writing" that emerges, but occasionally
he really goes off on a rant and decries the whole thing causing me to think "why are we not
more sympatico?" (Jörg hates my guts, which I have absolutely earned, but we do think along
the same lines from time to time.)
<br />
<br />
The C4 Journal people, both of whom I know slightly, seem to be thoroughly grounded normal-ass
people, who nevertheless engage is a lot of the vague waffle and identity-driven "criticism" that's
expected. Most recently, as commenter David S. pointed out, they published a review of Lewis Bush's
book; a review written by Lewis Bush for some reason. The reviewer seemed to think the book was
pretty good. Interestingly, the review specifically addresses a few questions I had about the book,
so that's nice! I see you, Lewis, and I appreciate the response! Drop me an email some time.
<br />
<br />
The whole thing leads me to suspect that everyone <i>inside</i> the White Cube hates it, yearns to
rebel against it, and yet cannot because however slender the gruel, this is where the trough is.
It appears to be a prison of their own making!
<br />
<br />
There's a vague notion that it's Deutsche Bank and so on that are driving the thing, the Large
Capitalist donors that Force Us to be such worthless idiots!!!! Except that Deutsche Bank
doesn't, itself, give a damn what you do. They fund this stuff on the advice of... you guys.
The funding decisions are ultimately made by more or less the same self-hating White Cube denizens.
<br />
<br />
If I were making a prison for myself and my friends, it would be a lot cooler, and a <i>hell of a lot</i>
more fun. This one seems really dismal.
<br />
<br />
My Cube would be pink, there would be loud music, and we'd make fun of one another relentlessly. Also,
we'd make cool-ass art that doesn't suck.
<br />
<br />
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-44003889340571533102023-06-08T15:02:00.001-07:002023-06-08T15:02:59.452-07:00Political Photo BooksMost of the Serious Artist photobooks are political. Probably most Serious Art
aims to be political. Political, that is, broadly construed: who has power,
how do they use it; who lacks power, and why they ought to have it.
<br />
<br />
A political statement, in general, will in the first place remark on how things
are now, the present state of affairs, but as a rule will add on to that any number
of things. It may propose that a different state of affairs is desirable (or, sometimes,
not desirable.) It may propose that someone or other should not have power
(usually, whoever has power now should not have it, but sometimes it is the aspirant
who shouldn't.) The proposal that someone ought not to have power involves usually
some combination of coherent argument, and straightforward character attacks.
<br />
<br />
Roughly, we can consider political statements to rely on, at least,
these three things: testimony as to the past and present, speculation about the future,
and caricature.
<br />
<br />
Thus it is that we come across a fundamental problem with the political photobook.
<br />
<br />
A photograph testifies to that-which-was. That is its fundamental operation. It shows us
something from, necessarily, the past, and offers itself as proof that whatever it was,
was so. You can do other things with photographs, to be sure, but at that point you are
arguing with the fundamental mode of the form.
<br />
<br />
In particular, photographs don't want to speculate, and they don't want to caricature.
<br />
<br />
We see this most plainly in photographs of divisive political figures. The very same
photo is seen as proof of so-and-so's venal nature, or as proof of their essentially
good character, depending on the party affiliation of the viewer. A proper caricature
leaves no such room for interpretation. Attempts to "read" photos as caricature invariably
fail, because they do nothing more than reveal the political alignment of the reader.
<br />
<br />
This leaves us with only one facet of the political. The photograph testifies, like nothing
else testifies, to that-which-was, and this is certainly a vital component of a strong
political statement. The photograph leaves it right there, however. No speculation, no
caricature.
<br />
<br />
Sometimes this is enough, perhaps.
<br />
<br />
Robert Frank's <u>The Americans</u> manages something political, despite being literally nothing
more than mute testimony. It offers no speculation, no prognostication, no proposals. It caricatures
nothing. It doesn't assign blame. It simply testifies, and somehow that succeeds, after a fashion.<br />
<br />
Whatever happens to the photo book form, and I do believe in the form, it <i>must</i> accept that
the photograph begins and ends with the testimony of that-which-was.
<br />
<br />
You cannot take a picture of a forest and claim that it supports the thesis that Nazis are bad.
Well, you can, but it's stupid and makes no sense to do that.
Nazis were and are bad! To be sure! But a photograph of a forest is not evidence in support of
that, any more than my shoes are, or a fried egg is. If you've gotten some grants and are inside
the White Cube, you can claim anything and get away with it, including (probably) that a fried egg
is an anti-fascist slogan. This, however, doesn't mean you're right, it just means you're in the Cube.
<br />
<br />
If we are to be serious, rather than Serious, it behooves us to see what the medium <i>actually does</i>
and to use that, or defy that, according the the needs of whatever we're trying to accomplish. Defy
away, if you like, but <i>know what it is you are doing.</i> If you want to try to caricature with
photography, give it a shot, but know that you're arguing with the medium.
<br />
<br />
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-83748948690176871472023-06-07T13:47:00.001-07:002023-06-07T13:47:56.890-07:00A Crisis of FaithFirst, I am not dead. Sorry.
<br />
<br />
I've been out of ideas for a long time, and am having a hard time focusing on photography.
Partly, I'm doing other things, and partly I'm having a little crisis of faith around photography.
I think many of my readers will approve, though! Let me explain.
<br />
<br />
For some years now I've been working on how best to impose meaning on a sequence of photographs.
In what ways might we arrange pictures and other materials to "say something" as specifically
as possible, or in the best possible way, or whatever. A few recent books have nudged me pretty
hard to more or less give up the struggle, and think about things differently.
<br />
<br />
On the one hand we have Bush's book on Wernher von Braun, and a bunch of other books from the
same flock of people. These guys are all about imposing meaning on a sequence of pictures, and
as a rule imagine they have succeeded. Bush's book is essentially an uninteresting essay which
repeats the conventional wisdom, and a bunch of pictures that add nothing whatsoever; but, it is
apparently revelatory of the Secret History of the US Space Program. Somehow.
We might also look at Jörg Colberg's book which appears to be a bunch of grey pictures of
stuff, but is (apparently) about the rise of fascism in Europe?<br />
<br />
These are in the end fairly silly books. They represent a kind of apotheosis of the will to
impose meaning on sequences of pictures, on the will to make something substantive and
meaningful around "the photobook."
<br />
<br />
Ultimately, the trouble is that we already have an excellent technology for making explicit
remarks with definite meaning. That technology is language, and we have a bunch of add-on
tech which lets us record language on paper. You can just write "fascism sucks" on an index
card, and you get more meaning than Colberg can cram into a book of photos.
<br />
<br />
The conceit, as I have remarked elsewhere, seems to be that the photos add a <i>different way
of knowing</i>. You can, somehow, grasp that Monsanto/Fascism/Nazis are <i>bad</i> in a different
way, a way that somehow adds something (depth? emotional weight? I have no idea) if only the
author includes a bunch of photos and makes some weird rendering choices.
<br />
<br />
To be blunt, I don't think it's true. The photos have a string tendency to distract and muddle the message, and it turns out that the message is usually pretty lightweight in the end anyway because Serious Artists don't have much to say about Issues of Global Importance. They're been busy screwing around with cyanotypes or something.<br />
<br />
At the same time, several of my readers have sent me things over the last few months which are
not this at all. These things lean in to the traditional photo book methods: the graphical coincidences,
the repeated colors, repeated textures, repeated objects. They are much more <i>open</i> documents,
you are at liberty to make what you like of them, within some bounds. I like these objects a lot better,
and they make a lot more sense to me.
<br />
<br />
By now I've made any number of photo books, and they're all over the place. Some of them are definite
attempts to impose fairly strict meaning, often because there's a bunch of text. Photos illustrating
text is a thing, I guess, and that's fine? There's probably a spectrum of some sort from the
"text" through "text with illustrations" landing somewhere at "here's a bunch of photos in a row."
<br />
<br />
My thinking at the moment is confused, it's a tangle, but I think that there needs to be some sort
of opening up, a willingness to abandon strict meaning as you move away from text and toward
pictures. There's probably something to be said about poetry in here as well. A technical report
means something pretty strict, but a bunch of free verse is a lot more open? Either trying to make the
poem strict, or the technical report open is going to be a mistake. Form does not dictate function,
but it sure as hell influences it.
<br />
<br />
Anyway.
<br />
<br />
I am coming around to the conclusion that they kind of got the form about right in the 1950s and 60s, and
the more modern efforts are essentially doomed and always were. Certainly nobody likes the modern photo
book except people who make modern photo books.
<br />
<br />
There is certainly a temptation, one might even say an imperative, to alter a form, to apply a form
in new ways. Oil painting was altered by the impressionists, and then the cubists, and then the
next batch of guys, and so on. I don't think the modern photobook represents an advance, or even
a functional alteration, on the form more or less perfected in the 1960s.
<br/>
<br/>
It's possible there
is something that could be done, a new movement that takes the old thing and makes something genuinely
new from it, but this ain't it.
<br />
<br />
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-14692736751781253962023-05-08T10:12:00.003-07:002023-05-08T10:12:52.977-07:00Confidential To Recent Commenter!Hey, I didn't publish your comment for complicated reasons, but I'd like to hear from you
and try to work something out. I sympathize. Shoot me an email at amolitor@gmail.com if you'd
like to. Or not, it's your choice!
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-61360164784997227902023-04-25T11:33:00.000-07:002023-04-25T11:33:22.843-07:00Crit Followup: Depravity's RainbowAs sometimes happens, I am unable to let well enough alone.
<br />
<br />
I spent some time digging around and thinking about Bush's book, <u>Depravity's Rainbow</u> because I found
its contents to relentlessly un-surprising, and yet his own and others descriptions are clearly intended to
lead us to believe that the book is in fact surprising. I was, as noted in my initial review, uncertain as
to whether my lack of surprise was due to my own situation.
<br />
<br />
In short, no. In terms of factual information, in terms of conclusions, in terms of the archival photographs
offered up, Bush's effort hews entirely to the well-established mainstream contemporary story. His textual description of
relevant history could be assembled in an afternoon from Wikipedia, with one exception I was able to identify.
That exception is found in Neufeld's biography of von Braun, <u>Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War</u> which
is the source everyone including wikipedia and Bush cites.
<br />
<br />
The photos are mostly (or entirely) available on the web, and many of them are more or less canonical.
The V2 rocketry photos, and many of the early von Braun photos, can mostly be found on the various
V2 Rocket fan sites that appear on the first page of google search results. I cannot prove that Bush simply
downloaded his photos from a couple of V2 fan sites, but there are a <i>lot</i> of V2 photos, and the
subset that appears on the fan sites overlaps a lot with Bush's book. This is the general theme, Bush's
book seems to have winnowed large collections of material down to exactly the subset that appears in the
first page of google search results.
<br />
<br />
It is, of course, much easier to reconstruct this sort of thing than to assemble it in the first place, but
I am pretty sure I could pull together if not exactly Bush's corpus of materials, at least an equivalent
one that overlapped enormously, in a few days.
<br />
<br />
It is, of course, possible and even likely that Bush labored away and assembled an enormous mass of fascinating
detail, with many never-before seen photos, many obscure facts, and so on. However, he seems to have thrown away
everything except what is essentially the mainstream contemporary narrative. The facts, the photos, the conclusions,
these are all precisely what you'd find in an even cursory research effort.
<br />
<br />
So what is the point here?
<br />
<br />
If he's done anything of value, it <i>has to be</i> in the way he's assembled these components. He's not saying anything
new, and he's not bringing any new or even slightly obscure material to the table; there's literally nowhere else this
book can contribute except to bring a novel approach to how the standard materials lead to the standard conclusion.
<br />
<br />
Let's look at his archival photos. To my chagrin, I did not notice what is in fact obvious.
<br />
<br />
He's crushed the photos into a common format. He's eliminated shadow detail entirely, rendering all the
photos as super high contrast "low quality" black and white, regardless of source. He's printed them as black and white (I think
physically — if he did it digitally it's very well done) on highly textured yellow paper, with a black border. This
brings them all into a common format.
<br />
<br />
Here, for instance, is an original:
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQixtPX6yYOO_fb2OR3E8bWB6Tngrp5gyvpJ-laftJ8Uvi_5ESOGgDGLtHkolDYr6kREg2rpwpbsHt0zJnVzB5y5ilwi9Wyyt5uaEOwBNJ84XyWfJDzgaQHTTxpyQ5Za6tsod1GWDwLTcHZOVja62-iDZn2FV5DuqrZibaDt_hhotuc-oM5KW4hTlY/s1200/V2%20trailer%20original.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="991" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQixtPX6yYOO_fb2OR3E8bWB6Tngrp5gyvpJ-laftJ8Uvi_5ESOGgDGLtHkolDYr6kREg2rpwpbsHt0zJnVzB5y5ilwi9Wyyt5uaEOwBNJ84XyWfJDzgaQHTTxpyQ5Za6tsod1GWDwLTcHZOVja62-iDZn2FV5DuqrZibaDt_hhotuc-oM5KW4hTlY/s400/V2%20trailer%20original.jpeg" /></a></div>
<br />
And here is Bush's version (note: none of my reproductions from the books are particularly good, but they should give the flavor and certain facts):
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0P6ZUYqOBvhQ48cbVgjZ0DOfDIPpSOZ4RvO2jYY0Jcdmn1TbGJec8x8jlq077P8qbjIpObSSdrrwG9R6sNJtZXg7HRNvu67LaE5rlkZCyNxyei8aTDtCdB9_gzR9mcpxT1npvWG2sq-Ll_WN0ndGfiB9JZlVq_UZP_OTDRsvMJPMAtuJarZZ9w_ZO/s1200/DSC_0417.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1008" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0P6ZUYqOBvhQ48cbVgjZ0DOfDIPpSOZ4RvO2jYY0Jcdmn1TbGJec8x8jlq077P8qbjIpObSSdrrwG9R6sNJtZXg7HRNvu67LaE5rlkZCyNxyei8aTDtCdB9_gzR9mcpxT1npvWG2sq-Ll_WN0ndGfiB9JZlVq_UZP_OTDRsvMJPMAtuJarZZ9w_ZO/s400/DSC_0417.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
You can see the loss of detail, the textured paper, and so on. But also notice the 3-hole punch hole. The original
is a copy of a page from a three-ring bound book. Bush has almost cropped out the holes, but not quite, part of one
remains. Then he re-framed the picture into a larger blank space before putting the black border on and printing it
out badly.
<br />
<br />
Here's von Braun being carried through the streets of Huntsville after Apollo 11's astronauts, the first to land on the moon, returned.
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxw-S6-bGFMnNRMhoJ2uimR_bHYPr8lYunyQkUWDG6day37FHz-gDkEEhLYehCZQnbZhlWGPhavBGlSgRxMDsnuz7bTpY63Z_Rs_RQvycljSrIpIO-wfSBPy1elbJRq-nLAJS93Q3UggBqYjQk1C_hceYU0LQ5N8bd0PrwM4jHRPF1U0GD9vYhAVVx/s900/WvB%20Huntsville.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="688" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxw-S6-bGFMnNRMhoJ2uimR_bHYPr8lYunyQkUWDG6day37FHz-gDkEEhLYehCZQnbZhlWGPhavBGlSgRxMDsnuz7bTpY63Z_Rs_RQvycljSrIpIO-wfSBPy1elbJRq-nLAJS93Q3UggBqYjQk1C_hceYU0LQ5N8bd0PrwM4jHRPF1U0GD9vYhAVVx/s400/WvB%20Huntsville.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Bush's version, smashed as usual, but also cropped and, oddly enough, rotated slightly. There's no black
border this time, as this photo appears in the front matter not in the body of the book:
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX2UXq6afj0gkOhXmUfeOYoAHqgER-dLkD_xf6t8fv3N9ebHYavaq_LHtEEbcRa1lRXTIOBDfnGv_7lFW3tFvZDN5mca5XI-cpweVx7fNdESFYX4pb-W222lAPxafr7KdSRyL1OXG9Zo5QKT21T4Oc_vIqX0EDlv-8grHKhqWj6uSCJx2Q6Sow_RxC/s1200/DSC_0418.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="953" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX2UXq6afj0gkOhXmUfeOYoAHqgER-dLkD_xf6t8fv3N9ebHYavaq_LHtEEbcRa1lRXTIOBDfnGv_7lFW3tFvZDN5mca5XI-cpweVx7fNdESFYX4pb-W222lAPxafr7KdSRyL1OXG9Zo5QKT21T4Oc_vIqX0EDlv-8grHKhqWj6uSCJx2Q6Sow_RxC/s400/DSC_0418.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
And one more, von Braun shakes hands with JFK:
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZWyqSTsXtfop-Btiyi8OEdZb0R1czlAJeV41CApYnnY5W-09hg6bYjtkZb2k9YLQTt0bu3229puQUl_GZkQoc4K7LLgPDnrQ6PCasml1lJDjIJSZv2RPoh7ojZgN0qmFynQBcupWQaCx0XTqxEFsrk2Lt_sStCTOHQ5RHx7sNaled7rTYt9LdA5rW/s600/president-john-f-kennedy-and-vice-president-lyndon-b-johnson-visit-dr-wernher-von-braun-nasa-celestial-images.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="474" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZWyqSTsXtfop-Btiyi8OEdZb0R1czlAJeV41CApYnnY5W-09hg6bYjtkZb2k9YLQTt0bu3229puQUl_GZkQoc4K7LLgPDnrQ6PCasml1lJDjIJSZv2RPoh7ojZgN0qmFynQBcupWQaCx0XTqxEFsrk2Lt_sStCTOHQ5RHx7sNaled7rTYt9LdA5rW/s400/president-john-f-kennedy-and-vice-president-lyndon-b-johnson-visit-dr-wernher-von-braun-nasa-celestial-images.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Bush, again:
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7IPZdrXv9G7peYLeF95rbgF4WzOK_jDMN8690z1I_yvVG7ozxWDn8sZYyURe7VU5LF_MQgc7N_Cfw27IVWJl-wY9mBsScBg7DPw67wkm5sgJQPyiK740YKWFYN1GF1gmtuAm--oMl083lOH-sXQbKj6q-MXHkqDAA2mXvPtUOi5mu-MmgpFyRjUay/s1200/DSC_0420.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="944" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7IPZdrXv9G7peYLeF95rbgF4WzOK_jDMN8690z1I_yvVG7ozxWDn8sZYyURe7VU5LF_MQgc7N_Cfw27IVWJl-wY9mBsScBg7DPw67wkm5sgJQPyiK740YKWFYN1GF1gmtuAm--oMl083lOH-sXQbKj6q-MXHkqDAA2mXvPtUOi5mu-MmgpFyRjUay/s400/DSC_0420.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
So.. what's going on? Well, Bush is <i>tinkering</i> with archival photos. Nothing major, and god knows
I am no stickler for "preserve shadow detail at all costs" or whatever, but some of the modifications don't
seem to be worth it. Bush is definitely not respecting these things as <i>documents</i> (but then, he wouldn't,
he's philosophically opposed to treating them as such, I think.)
<br />
<br />
If you'll recall, his gimmick here is to fold von Braun's life back on itself, in a "Memento" structure,
and so Bush wants photos to be comparable. I am certain this is how he justifies the process of bringing them
all to a common format. The common format has to be low-fi because some of the photos are pretty low-fi.
He probably argues for the yellow tone on the basis that it complements the blue tone of his cyanotypes.
<br />
<br />
But at the same time, the effect (which he cannot be ignorant of) is to imbue the archival photos with
a false oldness. They look like they were extracted from dusty files by a diligent researcher, rather
than simply downloaded from the internet and smashed with a saved Photoshop action. He has to be
aware that this effect is present; the alternative is that he is incomprehensibly stupid, and he simply isn't.
<br />
<br />
I have to say that his willingness to tinker with the archival photos and at the same time to describe
his book as:
<br />
<br/>
<center>
<div style="text-align: left; width: 85%;"><i>
... tell[ing] a little known history of space exploration that starts in Nazi Germany with the Second World and the Holocaust, and examines how these problematic origins continue to shape the field today.
</i></div>
</center>
<br />
which makes it sound, well, like a history. Like the pictures are real, and not tinkered with. Which, in a sense, they are? It's not
like he's photoshopping little green men in there, but at the same time no mainstream news outlet would <i>touch</i> these photos.
The whole business makes me uncomfortable, but I am also loathe to say it's wrong.
<br />
<br />
But what does it <i>do</i> here? How is this a novel way of using the standard materials to tell the standard story?
<br />
<br />
Other than some gimmicky color theory and a not-very-illuminating "Memento" trope deployment, there's just not a lot
here. I don't find this to be a particularly revealing new way to see the story, I find it if anything kind of a pointless
meander to nowhere.
<br />
<br />
Perhaps what he <i>has</i> done is create a novel combination. He's brought "V2 Rocket Fandom" imagery to a sketch of
the Neufeld biography, and maybe that means something.
<br />
<br />
What I am not seeing here is any kind of a novel epistemology. There is no new way of seeing the story here, it comes
across as a kind of clumsy reprise of the photo essay of the 1960s, without even the benefit of telling a new story.
The refusal to "merely illustrate" the story seems to add nothing much to the method, and the need to pile in large
quantities of visual material, likewise.
<br />
<br />
Like Asselin's <u>Monsanto</u> this is just a big exercise in "what the actual fuck?" to no real purpose, simply repeating
a well-known set of ideas, briefly, clumsily, and with a lot of more or less pointless pictures.
<br />
<br />
This is not to say that the method couldn't produce something, only that in the few cases I have looked at closely, it has not.
<br />
<br />
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-44860348993304518262023-04-22T10:28:00.001-07:002023-04-22T10:46:39.771-07:00We Need a WordWell, if not a word, at least we need to admit the existence of a category.
<br />
<br />
Since the inception of photography, we've been treating <i>photorealistic figurative depictions
of stuff</i> and <i>photographs</i> as more or less the same thing. Yes, it's certainly true
that there have always been exceptions. Photos that aren't very figurative, and paintings that
are very very realistic, and so on. Technically we have acknowledged the distinctions.
<br />
<br />
In practical terms, though, as a society, as a culture, we have tended to grumpily brush those
away. Abstract photographs have to struggle a little to get traction. Photorealistic paintings
were rare and weird. We could, in practical terms, treat the two categories as the same
by simply glaring at the occasional exceptions.
<br />
<br />
And yet there is a category of figurative photorealistic things. A photograph of a banana,
whether you believe my specific theories about photorealistic depictions, hits differently than
some abstract expressionist painting of a banana, or a pointillist painting, or even a
Renaissance still life thing. You've got to paint very very carefully indeed to land inside
the same reaction as a photo of a banana — even a black and white photo. But you know, you
<i>can</i> paint that carefully.
<br />
<br />
There are objects that people look at and think "why, it looks just like a banana" and there
are other objects that people look at and think "what a nice painting of a banana" and still others
where they think "what the fuck is that, is it supposed to be a banana?"
<br />
<br />
None of these categories have crisp edges, of course. There's an element of subjectivity, and
even the viewer's mood.
<br />
<br />
The categories nevertheless exist, and they don't mind being a bit fuzzy around the edges.
<br />
<br />
Also, we can't really ignore the situation much longer.
<br />
<br />
We've entered the land of dipshits asking if AI renderings are "photographs" and the answer is
obviously "no, and you are dumb, please close your food hole to muffle the noises coming out of it."
<br />
<br />
Just as a placeholder, let's call these photorealistic figurative representations of stuff
<i>photoids</i>. It's my blog, you can't stop me.
<br />
<br />
Most <i>photographs</i> are <i>photoids</i> and, up until now at least, most photoids are photographs.
<br />
<br />
There are things that are obviously photographs. Let's say a relatively small amount of post-processing
or whatever. I literally do not care. It's a fuzzy category, the edges probably contain a lot of
heavily photoshopped or composited stuff, or AI renders based on a photo, or whatever. It's fuzzy,
who cares? There's stuff in the middle of the category that pretty much everyone is going to agree
is pretty much definitely a photo (a frame of Tri-X souped in D76 and printed on Ilford grade 2
paper with minimal burning and dodging, say, but <i>it doesn't matter.</i>)
<br />
<br />
There are things that are photoids. A lot of photographs, for one thing, but also a lot
of AI renders, and some Chuck Close paintings.
<br />
<br />
There are photographs that pretty definitely are not photoids, notably anything that's pretty
abstract. Some photomicrograph of a bug's wing or whatever, so close it represents nothing
you can identify. So it's Tri-X souped in D76 and printed on Ilford, it's a <i>photograph</i>
but not a <i>photoid</i> because it doesn't look like anything. Except to a bug scientist, for
whom maybe it is still a photoid. The categories, while real, are both fuzzy and subjective.
<br />
<br />
There are photoids that are not photographs, like some AI renders and some Chuck Close paintings.
<br />
<br />
The point here is that <i>photoid</i> and <i>photograph</i> represent different categories.
The categories overlap a lot, but they're not the same, and they're defined completely differently.
Define them how you will in the details, <i>it doesn't matter, they're still different things.</i>
<br />
<br />
The advent of widespread AI renders of photoids means, I subject, that we can no longer
usefully ignore the distinction. Someone please think up a better word than <i>photoid</i>.
<br />
<br />
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-61009301096085082572023-04-18T14:02:00.001-07:002023-04-18T14:02:30.583-07:00The Research-Based PhotobookJörg Colberg published <a href="https://cphmag.com/depravitys-rainbow/">a review of Lewis Bush</a>'s recent book within,
I think an hour or so of mine. His opinion is somewhat different. In his review, Colberg describes this as a good
example of something he terms a "research-based photobook."
<br />
<br />
What the hell is this object? Well, obviously it's a photo book where someone does some research. I can think of some
examples, but I haven't read most of them, so I can't really judge. But let us take Bush's book as a good example
of the form, because Colberg says it is. Let's consider it as the product of a body of research.
<br />
<br />
The citations are interesting. Bush read a lot of stuff, a surprising amount of it is fiction, but most of the
rest is what we'd call secondary or tertiary sources. He's reading books that other people have written about
men and things, and pastiching information taken from them into his essay, like a gigantic high school book
report or, more exactly, like a Master's Thesis. He seems to have read no files, no original letters or
writing, he filed no FOIA requests.
<br />
<br />
This is not an indictment. I don't read a lot of files and I've never filed a FOIA request in my life. I don't
intend to. What I mean to point out here is that what we think of as traditional research is,
if present at all, present in a kind of lightweight way.
<br />
<br />
What Lewis did put real effort into was traveling around taking photographs of von Braun related places, and
rendering these photos as cyanotypes. This is pretty typical of the form, I think. Long time readers
will recall <a href="http://photothunk.blogspot.com/2019/08/crit-monsanto-by-mathieu-asselin.html">my remarks on Monsanto</a>, which
is a similar kind of thing. The text there is a dumb recitation of a standard leftist position, up to and including
the factual errors. The pictures are just thoroughly dull snaps of random locations of places where something happened once upon
a time.
<br />
<br />
What <i>I</i> think of as research is a much more in-depth thing, a much more thorough gathering of facts and a synthesis
of those facts.
<br />
<br />
This is a very specific thing, a Western Scientific thing. An Enlightenment Thing, if you will.
<br />
<br />
I'm pretty sure that what Colberg and Bush and all the rest are up to is almost explicitly rejecting
Enlightenment thinking (which rejection is something of a hobby in academia today) which, well, ok.
I think this way of approaching knowledge and the world has done some pretty neat things, and I'm
not convinced by the argument that the many bad things flowed out of the method. I'm not convinced
that the Enlightenment caused colonialism, for instance, I think maybe it's just a thing that happened
at the same time. But what the hell do I know?
<br />
<br />
My suspicion is that these people are essentially theorizing a new way of knowing, a new
epistemology (as the kids would say) that is built around seeing things in photographs.
<br />
<br />
Somehow, I think the idea is, that by looking at a bunch of blurry archival photos of von Braun, and
by looking at some blue tinted photos from Peenemünde, we will come to <i>new knowledge</i> about the
thing the book is about. Somehow, as "faith" in the religious sense can be seen as a kind of
a way of knowing, this new way of knowing will inform us
and enrich us in ways that Enlightenment epistemology cannot. This sounds kind of dumb, but it's not
as dumb as all that.
<br />
<br />
Anyone who travels knows that there is a way of knowing a place that comes from simply wandering around
it a bit. You don't know <i>facts</i> about the place, although you'll pick a few of those up most likely.
What you're getting is some sort of partial sense of the place. It's recognizably a kind of knowledge, but
not something you can write down very easily, nothing you can summarize as a set of bullet points. Call
it flaneur-epistemology. The way of knowing that comes by wandering around.
<br />
<br />
There are some photo books that do transmit, in some sense, this kind of thing. Robert Frank's
<u>The Americans</u> is maybe the most famous one. Does it teach us about America? There seems to
be no doubt. What, exactly, does it teach us? Well, that's hard to explain, and it's most efficiently
explained by showing you the book. Some flavor that is recognizably "knowledge" appears, somehow.
<br />
<br />
So, there is some precedent for this kind of visual/vibes way of knowing things. This kind of visual
"epistemology" of whatever it is, and we know it can be done for a place.
<br />
<br />
Blaustein's book, <u>Extinction Party</u> I think offered up something as well. On the one hand, there's
nothing we don't know in it. On the other hand, a bunch of pictures of colorful stuff does give us
something that is, at least if you squint, recognizable as new knowledge. Not new facts, not new
information, but something you didn't have before. At least a different shading on how you "know"
about consumer culture.
<br />
<br />
Does it work for history? Or a "topic" like rocketry? I don't know. I don't think that Lewis's book
accomplishes it particularly? But perhaps it would work better for someone who didn't grow up with
the Time-Life book "Man and Space" on the shelf.
<br />
<br />
I think that it is a lot less effective with topics that are not places. Maybe Blaustein's book
argues that it works for "culture" in some larger sense, as well, or maybe "place" is just a special
case of "culture."
<br />
<br />
Photographs take you to places, specifically the place in the photograph. There is a pretty straight line
from looking at a bunch of photos from somewhere, and literally wandering around in that same somewhere. That
kind of flaneur-epistemology translates directly into a photo book.
<br />
<br />
One does not "go to" history, or rocketry, or linguistics. One cannot wander around there and
gather vibes.
<br />
<br />
It is not at all clear that the basic operating characteristics of photographs, the "how photographs
work" has an interpretation that really lets things like general research-based photo books
work. I am not sure that there is a way that looking at a bunch of pictures produces any kind
of knowledge, novel or otherwise. Certainly the books don't sell, and the only people who seem to
get anything out of them are those with a deeply vested interest in the form.
<br />
<br />
On the one hand, I think this is a thing which can and sometimes does work. It certainly can work
for a place. What I can't tell is whether it <i>cannot</i> work for, say, Wernher von Braun, or whether
Lewis simply failed to <i>make</i> it work. Is it impossible? Is it very very hard? Or is it actually
fairly easy, in the right hands?
<br/>
<br/>
I suspect that it is, at the very least, very very hard, but that's just a theory.
<br/>
<br/>
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-27786687856993230682023-04-17T09:53:00.008-07:002023-04-17T10:12:20.283-07:00Crit: Depravity's Rainbow by Lewis BushI backed this thing on kickstarter ages ago, because I wanted a copy to look at, and here it is! My wish has been
granted. Lewis is more or less the best of the Serious Academic Photography weenies that I pay attention to, and as
such I have somewhat mixed feels on him. He's sometimes very very stupid, sometimes quite bright, and most of time
he's plugging along doing OK. Kind of like most of us. Takes himself a trifle too seriously to really be <i>taken</i>
seriously, if you know what I mean, but other than that he's ok.
<br />
<br />
So what about this book? It purports to explore the dark side of space exploration and whatnot, and it took Lewis
5 years to research and produce. I've been a little bit of a space nut myself for most of my life, so I wasn't sure
what to expect. Was Lewis going to dig up deep mysteries and reveal dark histories never before seen? Or at
least unknown to me? Or was it going to be a paint by numbers Space History with the Glum dial turned up
and a lot of bitching about colonialism added?
<br />
<br />
Well. It's a bit of this and a bit of that. I don't much like the book, but in the end he does actually manage
to land the plane after a fashion. I like his book <u>Metropole</u> a lot more, though it suffers from some of the same
issues. He wasn't overthinking it quite as much. But let's look at this thing.
<br />
<br />
There are, roughly, three major chunks to the thing. One is a set of archival photos with captions that sketch
the life and career of one Wernher von Braun, Nazi Rocket Guy who came to the USA and more or less ran the programs
that eventually put dudes on the surface of the moon. The second chunk is a set of cyanotype photos of sites relevant
to the Nazi rocket program, photos made by Lewis in the present. The third piece is a 15,000 word essay that kind of
tries to tie it all together.
<br />
<br />
As a side note, it's faintly interesting to me that Lewis photographed German stuff, but not American stuff.
I realize that the USA is a little farther away and harder to get around to all the sites, but I feel like
this is an asymmetry. A few pics of Huntsville would not be amiss.
<br />
<br />
Let's take the chunks one at a time.
<br />
<br />
The archival photos, interleaved in chunks with the cyanotypes, make up the first section of the book. The format is
pretty consistent, this pattern is repeated: 6 photos, each on a page with a nearly
blank page opposite bearing only a date, for a total
of 12 pages. This is followed by 2 more pages with captions for the 6 photos. The 6 photos in each block alternate,
3 and 3, between
a history of von Braun leading up to and through the war, and a history leading from WWII through the moon landing.
The second one runs backwards, so the two narratives land together (the end of the German story and the beginning
of the American one) at Operation Paperclip in which the USA recruited a bunch of Nazi scientists at the end of
WWII.
<br />
<br />
This is, inevitably, the "Memento" trope, and it always feels silly to me. It worked in "Memento" for
very specific reasons. Copying the trope usually comes across as merely copying the trope for the sake
of the trope, not for the extremely idiosyncratic storytelling capability it offers.
<br />
<br />
The dates opposing each photograph are just indicators, not necessarily the date of the photo, which is
confusing. For example, the photo of Wernher von Braun as a toddler is marked with his date of birth. The dates serve
only to lead you to the correct caption, found in the last 2 pages of the 14 page archival-photo block. In order
to read the captions with the photos, you are endlessly flipping. It's worse than putting all the captions at the
end of the book, which you only do if the captions don't have any content anyways.
This structure is maddening.
<br />
<br />
The captions are actually a narrative, only loosely related to the photos, so in theory you could just
read them separately. You'd have to read half of them forward, and the go backward to read the
others, in order to assemble the tale in chronological order. This is also maddening.
<br />
<br />
Lewis has some ideas here, "it resembles the trajectory of a ballistic missile, up, and then down" and
"it represents the duality of good and evil" and "I have found that people flip through photobooks backwards"
but none of these explanations is, to my eye, satisfactory. This is just some doofus overthinking structure,
desperate to make Something New, and inventing a mess.
<br />
<br />
His other explanation holds a <i>little</i> more water. By folding von Braun's life back on itself like this,
he wants to locate parallels between the first half and the second. In a way he does, there are photos
that pair up — three von Braun kids, three astronauts; German rocket blowing up, American rocket blowing up; and so on.
It's not clear to me that these parallels are meaningful, but they do lend a kind of visual structure if you
ignore the captions.
<br />
<br />
The result is, after you laboriously unpack it, a sort of thin bio of Wernher von Braun. It is also pretty neutral,
which will turn out to be important. You will literally learn a great deal more from the Wikipedia page on the man,
and the photos somehow fail to even give you an impression of what the man looked like. They're overly enlarged,
often indistinct, and only occasionally relevant. Blurry photos of rockets blowing up. A picture of some Nazi
standing, we are told, in front of von Braun. It's impossible to tell which of the several blurry fellows
in the background is von Braun.
<br />
<br />
It is frankly unclear what the hell Lewis is trying to accomplish here. On the face of it, he's sketching a bio,
but the bio is so thin and this material is so physically large in the book that he simply has to have
something more in mind than simply sketching a bio. In other venues he tells us he's trying to present the
two halves of von Braun's career in a kind of evil/Nazi vs. good/USA light, while simultaneously contesting
that simplistic understanding of von Braun, and I guess that kind of comes through? Given that this is
the standard modern understanding of von Braun, it's not clear how much of what's coming through is Lewis,
and how much is just stuff that I know? And there are just so many god damned pages of this stuff!
<br />
<br />
Well, moving on. Let's look at the cyanotypes.
<br />
<br />
Between each block of archival photos, we get a set of full bleed double-truck cyanotypes taken by Lewis
in the last couple of years, of sites and whatnot in Europe relevant to his story. They're mostly just
trees and shit, maybe some broken down railroad tracks, a crumbling building, some tunnels, etc. This
is where prisoners did this, this is where rockets were launched, etc. They feel a lot like Sally Mann's
Battlefields, to be honest. Those are also "look, it's a scruffy field" photos, where something awful
happened a long time ago.
<br />
<br />
Sally Mann has earned a little more generosity, and the wet plate process she uses adds a <i>meaningful</i>
layer of crud to her photos. The many many defects look a little like the ghosts of bullets or shells, that
kind of thing. At least, if you're generous and squint a bit.
<br />
<br />
Lewis hasn't earned much, and honestly the shenanigans with the archival material are so irritating it's
hard to be generous with his cyanotypes. It's also not clear what meaning, if any, the cyanotype process
adds. Perhaps he's citing engineering drawings? It's not clear, but that is exactly the sort of twee
gibberish he'd be getting up to. If I had been doing that, I'd have rendered them in high contrast, to
make the connection clearer, but Lewis seems to have actually worked quite hard and skillfully to make
"good prints" using the terrible cyanotype process. If engineering drawing is in fact his reference,
he's undermined himself here. It does not help him that every asshole is doing cyanotypes this year, so he feels like a trend-follower.<br />
<br />
Anyways, ok. I will accept the cyanotypes, albeit grudgingly. They're not brilliant, I think that idea
could have been handled better, but at least the pictures make a point about the reality, the recency, the, no really
right here no shit slave laborers were dying while building V-2s. Stipulated.
<br />
<br />
Onwards now to the essay, which occupies the last third of the book. It's on (sigh) different paper stock,
because of course it is. This fucking "must have several paper stocks" shit drives me nuts. There's no
point to it and it makes handling the book weird, but all the cool kids are doing it. This is <i>definitely</i> trend-following.<br />
<br />
The essay is a great long thing that backs out a little and covers the same material from a more general
point of view. Kind of a geopolitical history of rocketry.
<br />
<br />
The way you normally write an essay like this is that you read a bunch of shit, and then you go off and
have a think. Then you write a new essay with your own thoughts and ideas, your own spin on the details,
and so on. You cite relevant bits and pieces of the things you read. You do <i>synthesis</i>.<br />
<br />
The other way to write it, which is traditionally how Master's student's write their theses, is you
collage up bits and pieces of stuff more or less as you read them, stringing together chunks of your
research material in what you hope is some sort of narrative, and then you try to wrap it up with a
Big Finish of your own devising. This is <i>pastiche</i> rather than synthesis.<br />
<br />
Lewis's essay feels a little too much like the latter. He read a lot of stuff, which, well good on him
I guess. He does mortar the bits together competently, so it does read pretty well, and good god does he
have a lot of citations. There's a cite for every 100 words, more or less, which seems like rather a lot
and rather betrays the collage-effect.
<br />
<br />
The content of the essay is more or less fine. It's more detailed than the von Braun sketch bio
the first 2/3 of the book occupied, and more general. There's a general flavor of "<i>OMG colonialism
is just sooooo bad</i>" throughout, but it's not too awful. Yes, war is bad, and yes, US policy around rockets
is pretty warlike, and that sucks. Insofar as the essay has a politics, I agree with it.<br />
<br />
In the end, though, when Lewis does wrap up with a couple hundred words of Big Finish in the approved
style, he does actually land the plane. Kinda. He concludes that after 5 years of research he's found
the official modern position on von Braun to be correct. There's really no way to know if he was fucking
Nazi scum, or just an enthusiastic rocket guy swept along with the rest of the ordinary blokes in
Germany in the service of a totalitarian nightmare. Lewis doesn't really <i>mention</i> that this
is the standard reading, but I suppose we can forgive him that. von Braun was rather lionized at
various times, to one degree or another.
<br />
<br />
I can't really decide if the book is doing any kind of service. It's obviously very much over-designed
and overthought, so there's no way I can actually like it. It's not really revealing anything at all
new, an hour on Wikipedia would give you 99% of the material in it, and you might come away knowing
a great deal more about rockets. It doesn't actually present a particularly new or surprising point
of view, we've been wrestling with von Braun's past with <i>some</i> degree of seriousness for some
decades, and everyone's arrived at the same conclusion.
<br />
<br />
If you're <i>not</i> interested in space, you probably don't know any of this shit, though. It's possible
that you'll learn a bunch of really interesting stuff, and for the intended audience the over-designed
photobook is probably the only way they'll ever learn this material. I do rather think Lewis oversells
his own point of view. His view is almost precisely aligned with the consensus view, and I'm not
sure that this comes through, and that could be a bit dicey.
<br />
<br />
Taken purely as a "photobook" I really dunno. There's the visual structure of formally similar frames
in the archival photo section, and the cyanotypes kind of work to a degree. I don't really think it's
particularly notable, though. It's kind of ringing the changes on some overworked territory in a pretty
lackluster way. Not that "hey, let's make a book of archival photos" is ever very successful, it's
a pretty shitty idea that basically never works; but it doesn't particularly work here, either. Reaching
for an alternative process to try to invest your pictures with meaning is also dicey, but it does actually
work sometimes. I don't know if it's working here.
<br />
<br />
Taken together it's a sort of meh photobook with a kind of meh conglomeration of writing and kind
of overdone design. I'm not seeing it as any greater than the sum of its fairly dubious parts.
<br />
<br />
I think Lewis ultimately wants to be Allan Sekula, but he's just not. He seems unable to formulate a
novel or even interesting point of view. <u>Metropole</u>, which I like, presented a 100% standard prog-left
view of real estate development. Huge swathes of Londoners hold precisely Lewis's values here, and
most of them know in broad strokes the kinds of things his research turned up. He's got an ongoing project
on offshore finance that feels very much the same. He's digging up publicly accessible and ultimately
boring details that reify what everyone Lewis socializes with already "knows" and adding in a few
pictures that don't really contribute anything.
<br />
<br />
To be honest, I don't really know Sekula as a photographer at all, and what I can recall is at least
as underwhelming at Lewis's pictures, but as an essayist and researcher he could really pull some shit
together. He had actual ideas that went beyond merely reflecting his social circle.
<br />
<br />
Lewis, I think, needs to spend more time with himself, trying to figure out what he himself actually
thinks about things. My take is that he views research as an expedition to find things that confirm a
point of view he already has (although, to be fair, I think he started out aiming to "expose" von Braun
as Nazi scum, so maybe I have this backwards.) If he treated research more as a way to fill his brain up
with material which he would then digest, and thus produce a novel frame, a synthesis,
I think he'd be a lot better off.
<br />
<br />
This isn't that book, but he's still pretty young and he's out there trying. He pretends to not give
a shit what people think, and eventually maybe he'll actually get there. I don't think he's going to
be Sekula, but he could get a lot closer if he shook free of a few habits.
<br />
<br />
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-31109613818369968662023-04-14T11:07:00.001-07:002023-04-14T11:07:49.071-07:00Crit: 77 rue du Prince Moulay Abdellah by Tony FouhseIn the spirit of disclosure, Tony asked me to review this work, but I'd already resolved to
do so. Possibly I would have punted without Tony's nudge, but you should consider this
to be <i>essentially</i> if not <i>literally</i> un-nudged. Also, I like and respect Tony
so this isn't going to be an unbiased review. I'll attempt, as always, to approach it
in a neutral way with probably mixed results.
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://mailchi.mp/228d8d184491/77-rue-du-prince-moulay-abdellah">This little project</a> is, for
now, strictly online and opens with a short explanation. You should go read that and at least glance at the photos.
We'll pick up when you get back.
<br />
<br />
To start with, the reminds me of at least one other set of photos. André Kertész did a whole
book of pictures taken from his window, many of them looking down on Washington Square Park
at people milling about being people. I have this notion that either Steichen or Stieglitz
did a similar thing, but a cursory google didn't turn it up so I gave up. The point is, this
is a point of view that's been exploited before, and for very good reasons.
<br />
<br />
It's tempting to say that it's been done before, but I don't think that's at all fair. I
think that is a little more like "using a 50mm lens" than "photographing a guy covered with
bees against a white background" in the sense that you can say different things with the
same technique. You can shape many stories, perhaps infinitely many, around "looking
down on people from a high place."
<br />
<br />
In this case, we have a highly structured thing that's filled with motion. We see the terrace
(I think) in question, and then the view from it. We examine a building, and pan down to look
at people on the street next to it. Another building, another pan down. Then the author takes a trip
down the stairs, onto the street, some city sights, the terrace again from the street level,
and then back up the elevator. We examine a a third building, a rooftop, pan down to the people
one more time.
<br />
<br />
Verse, Verse, Bridge, Verse. Just like a pop song.
<br />
<br />
At the same time there is a sense of passing time. We see the same things in the daylight, in the
morning, at night, and so on. The "bridge" passage starts in the morning descending the stairs
and ends in the evening with the return to the terrace.
<br />
<br />
All these things create mood a-plenty. Despite the fact that the whole thing is shot from a distance,
at a very real physical remove, there is plenty of affect in play here. The use of night-time plays
a role here, but also the people depicted are very much alive, in motion, doing and living.
<br />
<br />
The high viewpoint creates a sort of theatrical viewpoint (this observation has been made
<i>ad nauseam</i> about the Kertész book.) You're in the balcony, watching the
show, but the show is life. This is, ultimately, why this is a technique rather than a trope
(insofar as that means anything.) Life is inconstant, the show we're observing is endlessly
renewed, endlessly different. The distance, rather than draining off affect, lends mystery.
We have no idea what any of these people are up to, not really. One of them might be doing
something with laundry, but we don't know what she's thinking, who she is. Why does that guy
have two gas cans, and where is he going with them? The kid seems excited, but by what?
<br />
<br />
What amuses me, here, is that while we are watching the play unfold before us,
Fouhse has built a strong narrative that takes place
entirely <i>here</i> rather than <i>there</i>. The action that is <i>legible</i> to us is the action of the
photographer. He moves here and there, time passes for him and he returns, and so on. The
action in front of the lens is interesting, arguably riveting if you give it a chance, but
completely illegible.
<br />
<br />
Hence the fascination and the mystery.
<br />
<br />
Overall the thing yields up a mood, a sense of presence. I can't quite believe that it reveals
any essence of being in Casablanca in a general way, but I do think it gets at the sense
of being on that specific terrace in that specific way. And thence, it gets at a piece of
being in Casablanca, but at the same time a piece of being a distant observer. It isn't just
any balcony, it's this specific place, but at the same time it feels like any balcony, all
balconies.
<br />
<br />
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-91627582062370313202023-04-05T15:19:00.003-07:002023-04-05T15:19:47.274-07:00Photography sans AffectWell, I was gratified to see that a few people still swing by now and then to read my
languishing little pseudo-publication here, and thank you all for that. It doth warm
the cockles etc.
<br />
<br />
I've been thinking about the affectless photography I was bitching about in the
previous remarks, from a handful of angles, since it seemed to get me all het
up. Thus, some random notes which might or might not lead anywhere. I write to
find these things out, so let's find out.
<br />
<br />
Firstly, there is clearly a bag of tricks in play. As one commenter noted, simply
isolating your subject inside a larger more-or-less blank frame creates a lot of
emotional distance. Remember the triteism "if your pictures aren't good enough,
you aren't close enough!" This trick literally pushes the subject away in space.
Given how photographs function, you react to such a picture as if the subject were
physically quite far away.
<br />
<br />
Flatten the tonality. Make the bulk of the frame fall within a narrow
range of values, usually mid-tones, sometimes a little brighter. Again, this
is a big no-no in terms of the way I was taught to do photography, and again
it tends to damp emotional response. Masses of darkness especially lend a
punchy emotional quality, for reasons I do not pretend to understand.
<br />
<br />
Remove people.
<br />
<br />
If you must have people, direct them to display little to no emotion, and
consider having them unfocus their gaze.
<br />
<br />
Every one of these things is on full display on the APP web site, but also
every MFA program (not just the North American ones, but they call them MAs
in Europe I guess) and many other tranches of Serious Art Photography.
There's just a lot of it about. You can see it, for instance, in the
Mahler's <u>Kleinstadt</u> — the whole book is flat grays and dead-eyed
teenagers, and even features a few centrally isolated subjects.
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN9_3IguX6WBU_UvgtwdDwbxCQSXUy8QqeOXGXum9PJ6qX-wJJ9WaL50Jd7kaxEVNrLu3TkSzkaZUQnR8blkXtquZh4n2_SHKA7v7pefFjq-naIQbA-M9ylK3hLoWewWATPBpzpKDuHl5jCjyYV4T0NTEcj8TwBfdXyyI29foOPNy_p0oU28ecH7kj/s665/Ks.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="532" data-original-width="665" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN9_3IguX6WBU_UvgtwdDwbxCQSXUy8QqeOXGXum9PJ6qX-wJJ9WaL50Jd7kaxEVNrLu3TkSzkaZUQnR8blkXtquZh4n2_SHKA7v7pefFjq-naIQbA-M9ylK3hLoWewWATPBpzpKDuHl5jCjyYV4T0NTEcj8TwBfdXyyI29foOPNy_p0oU28ecH7kj/s400/Ks.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
As I noted at the time, this one literally has the two girls doing the thing where you
huddle together to fit in the frame. If you crop it closely you get a quite
standard and kind of charming photo booth snap.
<br />
<br />
Ok, so we can see the techniques on display, and we can recognize them as
being apparently designed to drain affect from the picture. These things
are made, quite literally, by doing the opposite of what people were taught
in the 1970s and 1980s to do in order to produce emotional impact.
<br />
<br />
I honestly have no idea why anyone would do this stuff, but I'll hurl some
ideas at the wall.
<br />
<br />
Part of this feels to me like an effort to show things as they really are.
The idea is, maybe, that we should document what these things actually
look like. In reality, we normally don't walk right up to the thing, we stand back;
in reality people often do have a neutral expression; in reality the shadows
often are not all that deep and dramatic.
<br />
<br />
I counter that by remarking that in reality things are not small, flat, and
printed on little rectangles of paper. Do you want to render things "as they are"
or do you want us to react "as they were?" These are two quite different goals.
<br />
<br />
Affect, you might argue, distracts from the actual appearance of the things,
it muddies the water with emotion. Which is probably true, and if all you're
interested in is surfaces then perhaps approaching photography this way is
a good idea.
<br />
<br />
It is essential to my philosophy of photography, and of criticism, that
photography's strongest suit is that it recreates the emotional, somatic,
experience of being there. It can do lots of other things, but this is the
unique thing it does; this is the thing it does best. So, when people do
things which undermine that, I more or less insist that they bring a strong
A-game to whatever it is that they're up to, and all too often they do not.
<br />
<br />
Another reason, obviously, for doing photography like <i>this</i> instead of like
<i>that</i> is precisely because <i>that</i> is how they did it in the 1970s
and it's not the 1970s any more. We need to break new artistic ground!
<br />
<br />
Maybe it's just one of those pendulum things. 120 years ago photographers were
trying to cram extra affect into their pictures by hand-working the negatives
and doing Pictorialism. That was, people eventually decided, a bad idea.
Hence Modernism and so forth, which definitely drained off a lot of the excess
affect and certainly produced any number of heartless photographs. There
was at least a kind of optimism to these photos, though.
<br />
<br />
The modern affect-free style does rather reflect the times, at least the times
as seen by the Serious Artist. If you want to gesture vaguely at "everything
sucks and I have a sad" this stuff is great. My trouble is, basically, that
I don't give a shit if you have a sad, because while you try to hide it and
cosplay poverty, you're an utterly uninteresting trust-fund brat. As photographers
I suspect they want to "document" the world "as it is" and since all artists
are required to see the world as fundamentally broken, here we are. Some
of the styling tics of modernism are on display if you squint, but none of the optimism.
<br />
<br />
Nobody is going to give some up and coming artist a book deal or a gallery
show if they're <i>optimistic</i> for god's sake. Actually now that I think about
it I did run across this Fen de Villiers guy who seems to be speed-running
1930s Futurism or something. He's associated with a bunch of pseudo-fascists.
He seems to have gotten a couple little shows at a local gallery in
Antwerp. He's optimistic, in a kind of horrifying way. This video is hilarious,
though:
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CgP76HXA7yI" width="320" youtube-src-id="CgP76HXA7yI"></iframe></div>
<br />
<br />
Maybe a little <i>too much</i> affect here. There may be limits to how much
affect you want. Anyways, I see a lot of optimistic and charming art here
in Bellingham, and sometimes it's really very good. At the other end, Jeff Koons
seems to be a relentlessly happy bugger, so maybe it's just something
in the middle.
<br />
<br />
Certainly nobody actually likes this shit except people on the inside.
APP functions, I am informed, exceptionally well, but it's fairly clear
that it's because Iain has worked out how to build a viable press around
the extremely tiny available market for boring, numb, photos.
<br />
<br />
It <i>is</i> possible to sell photo books to the general audience, just not
this stuff. A bunch of nudes? Sure. A bunch of photos of Obama? Definitely.
A bunch of ... whatever the hell the celebrity of the day shot? I bet Beckham's
kid's terrible book sold a lot more copies than anything MACK has ever printed.
But Michael Mack doesn't <i>want</i> to print that, he wants to print
Serious Artists, and eke out 100 books here and 100 books there. Well, it's
his publishing house and he can do whatever he wants! I don't much like it,
though.
<br />
<br />
On a final note, I recall wringing my hands over the absence of "schools"
in modern photography. There is nothing, I moaned, analogous to the
Impressionists (or choose your own school) but I see that as of now this
is wrong. There is <i>very much</i> a style of the present. Scroll
down the front page of Another Place Press and if you have any sensitivity
of the soul at all, it will jump out at it. It is a flat and affectless
photography, a numb and numbing puppet theater of the world.
<br />
<br />
I wonder what they'll call it in 50 years?
<br />
<br />
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-40208119116892108652023-03-29T14:50:00.000-07:002023-03-29T14:50:25.789-07:00I Hate Art PhotographyI've been struggling to put this together for a while now, how to get from my angry
reaction to some sort of words on a page. Let's take a look at the fairly well
respected small press <a href="https://anotherplacepress.bigcartel.com/">"Another Place Press"</a>.
Click anything.
<br/>
<br/>
Here's a bunch of pages from a book by Andrew Jackson:
<br/>
<br/>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-DhonaeNqBkkTu_qSFjmnOEGosmxNhPNI-W2zyai2a7rKPmVXwJp5OLfSieuzmFcRg1yXz5KCj0bHTljp4Q2uLUiRC_5Jshec-ALwjPZal3k69Qyh-fDGpm89ze_wqhtEl4P2I3DP6P_l42IyF8I-8yHaoUBNLGxkZNQhEyudoCP37FKR_Q6yI-wI/s1749/AJax.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="1749" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-DhonaeNqBkkTu_qSFjmnOEGosmxNhPNI-W2zyai2a7rKPmVXwJp5OLfSieuzmFcRg1yXz5KCj0bHTljp4Q2uLUiRC_5Jshec-ALwjPZal3k69Qyh-fDGpm89ze_wqhtEl4P2I3DP6P_l42IyF8I-8yHaoUBNLGxkZNQhEyudoCP37FKR_Q6yI-wI/s400/AJax.jpeg"/></a></div>
<br/>
and another from Roei Greenberg:
<br/>
<br/>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJVr0jJMAXwT2P3QO5WLCFTPpvuAMLpRbyg-Lip5P2T1EqFI3w6z2wwRRp4uz5xJRYDIlfFDo5d3cf3kitbI8CJuYLZfeByhtRzedmypHeWFBe0tcxg9F65lWllP2uoc3qBCL89OGbnjNYGbg4TlDdSiGmCm-9v0ndBaixxJC-FPl4tVO-1DWvtSaV/s1144/Greenberg.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="1144" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJVr0jJMAXwT2P3QO5WLCFTPpvuAMLpRbyg-Lip5P2T1EqFI3w6z2wwRRp4uz5xJRYDIlfFDo5d3cf3kitbI8CJuYLZfeByhtRzedmypHeWFBe0tcxg9F65lWllP2uoc3qBCL89OGbnjNYGbg4TlDdSiGmCm-9v0ndBaixxJC-FPl4tVO-1DWvtSaV/s400/Greenberg.jpeg"/></a></div>
<br/>
but it doesn't matter, the whole product of the press is the same. How does Greenberg manage to make that photo
of a car look so utterly lifeless? I can't even tell you entirely how the effect is produced. The product of a great deal of Serious Art
Photography is the same. I've gone on at length about the
"<a href="https://photothunk.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-i-hate-genre.html">I Hate Germany</a>" genre, which is the same, but in
black and white.
<br/>
<br/>
It's tempting to say it's pictures of nothing, because it often is, but clearly it is more than that. There
are photographs of people here as well, there are photographs of objects and buildings of geopolitical import
or whatever. It's not all just trash bin and curbs in Berlin.
<br/>
<br/>
What ties all this together is the relentless, deliberate, lack of affect. This is absolutely mandatory, as far as
I can tell, in contemporary Serious Art Photography. You have to wring out any sense that anything in the picture
has any emotional import. You have to remove any sense of feeling. The result must be both utterly numb, and utterly
numbing.
<br/>
<br/>
Compare with this:
<br/>
<br/>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfzGWFBrSEqIs4j6oT0wfHJMumolbILXudha1rhgqHiOUv7qswfutUufF1Nmb4C8ilPjdTnOPaAw33j1PiyPjGmFMIJm5Bk_kF_PM2f1KkLKsnoWgtb6nQusjTUgwpba80AEORPZwvrsETrKmuD5eU4t_Y9zZMl48zgJ55XJRiaPGGItctna_4lFiK/s1280/mann.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1047" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfzGWFBrSEqIs4j6oT0wfHJMumolbILXudha1rhgqHiOUv7qswfutUufF1Nmb4C8ilPjdTnOPaAw33j1PiyPjGmFMIJm5Bk_kF_PM2f1KkLKsnoWgtb6nQusjTUgwpba80AEORPZwvrsETrKmuD5eU4t_Y9zZMl48zgJ55XJRiaPGGItctna_4lFiK/s400/mann.jpg"/></a></div>
<br/>
Not only does the kid (that would be the mighty and all-powerful Jessie Mann there) have some affect, there's a whole terrible
story present in the frame if you're willing to look. There is import here, albeit of a small scale.
<br/>
<br/>
It's tempting to say that the affectless modern work is trivially easy to produce (and often it is,
<a href="https://www.blurb.com/b/9744828-deutscher-gef-lschterstiermist">Deutscher Gefälschterstiermist</a> was not very difficult) but a lot
of these things, the wrung-out, dead eyed pictures of people, these have to take some sort of effort? I don't even know
how to direct someone to look that <i>flat</i>, that <i>numb.</i> There's a branch of "female gaze" photography that specializes
in this sort of look, posing women (usually some particularly oppressed population of women) with a 1000-yard stare to symbolize
their oppression, but you can tell that it's a batch of women that would rather be and usually are laughing together.
<br/>
<br/>
Some of it is simply that "mom's taking a photo now look serious" look that children are forced in to at Disneyland by
particularly relentless mothers with cameras, or at least were in the 1970s. You can do it, by simply being savage with
your subjects, I guess. Make them ill-at ease and lost as to what they're supposed to be doing, and they'll shut down
to a sort of still, nervous and yet affectless, mood, perhaps.
<br/>
<br/>
I suspect that producing a complete and coherent body of work with a core that is so thoroughly dead requires its own set of
talents.
<br/>
<br/>
I hate it. I hate it. Not the pictures one by one, some of which are merely dull. I hate the giant portfolios
full of these corpses of photos, these numb, dead things, that people are making over and over and over, on
purpose.
<br/>
<br/><br>
amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.com14