I noticed traffic from Leicaphilia yesterday and went to look. They, he, whoever it is, had re-posted my "The Nikon" parody piece without, as far as I know, asking me permission. I posted what I hope was a mild comment to that effect. The result was that the piece vanished, without a word.
I am baffled as to why they didn't ask me in the first place, and then why they didn't ask me in the second place. I don't really care if people repost my stuff, it's just polite to ask first. I'd have said yes. Leicaphilia doesn't seem to be some sketchy ad-ridden content farm? The site looks like the kind of site that would ask first, and if they didn't, they'd apologize and ask second. But, nothing.
Anyone know this guy?
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
Excuses, Excuses, EXCUSES!
Another bit I see quite often is to place the blame on the viewer for being "uneducated."
The standard conversation goes something like "wht do I (or someone else) get a million likes on some picture of a kitten, while my serious photographs only get 6?" with the response "well, people on instagram are not educated."
This is hilariously awful and wrong. "Educated" here seems to mean "has mastered the boring tropes of whatever forum or blog I read" and anyways it is to completely to miss the point.
The reasons kittens and pretty girls get all the likes hasn't got anything to do with photography. People like kittens and pretty girls. Literally. They click the like button. They probably like your serious photographs OK too, assuming they're not too awful, but those things are photographs not kittens. Only a madman likes a photograph more than a kitten.
Most serious photos we see on instagram or wherever are instantly recognizable as serious photos because they are first and foremost photographs. They are self-consciously a photograph first, and whatever the stuff in the frame happens to be second. That's a problem right there. A photograph is a basically pretty unlovable thing. A sheet of glossy paper, or a grid of tiny colored lights. What is there, really, to love here?
Yes, I see that you got the key light high enough, congratulations. Still not a lot to love here. My, the greens certainly are saturated in your landscape. No, that doesn't look a lot like Cartier-Bresson, but the blacks are certainly very rich.
Look, Kitten. KIITTTTEEENNNNN!!!!
People click Like on a photograph when the photograph disappears and what they see is the photographed and they love that. A likable photograph is a passage, not an object, and education hasn't got a thing to do with it. Incidentally, a good photograph is also a passage, not an object. And education still hasn't got anythng to do with it.
The standard conversation goes something like "wht do I (or someone else) get a million likes on some picture of a kitten, while my serious photographs only get 6?" with the response "well, people on instagram are not educated."
This is hilariously awful and wrong. "Educated" here seems to mean "has mastered the boring tropes of whatever forum or blog I read" and anyways it is to completely to miss the point.
The reasons kittens and pretty girls get all the likes hasn't got anything to do with photography. People like kittens and pretty girls. Literally. They click the like button. They probably like your serious photographs OK too, assuming they're not too awful, but those things are photographs not kittens. Only a madman likes a photograph more than a kitten.
Most serious photos we see on instagram or wherever are instantly recognizable as serious photos because they are first and foremost photographs. They are self-consciously a photograph first, and whatever the stuff in the frame happens to be second. That's a problem right there. A photograph is a basically pretty unlovable thing. A sheet of glossy paper, or a grid of tiny colored lights. What is there, really, to love here?
Yes, I see that you got the key light high enough, congratulations. Still not a lot to love here. My, the greens certainly are saturated in your landscape. No, that doesn't look a lot like Cartier-Bresson, but the blacks are certainly very rich.
Look, Kitten. KIITTTTEEENNNNN!!!!
People click Like on a photograph when the photograph disappears and what they see is the photographed and they love that. A likable photograph is a passage, not an object, and education hasn't got a thing to do with it. Incidentally, a good photograph is also a passage, not an object. And education still hasn't got anythng to do with it.
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
Excuses, Excuses
In an otherwise moderately sensible post, Ming says this:
This is an oft-repeated theme from photographers and, perhaps, other artists and wanna-bees.
The idea is that different people like different things, you can't please everyone all the time, so just do what suits you.
The last phrase is right, but the start of the sentiment is just a giant bloody excuse to give up.
What you decide you want to achieve is up to you. I do not presume to dictate. However, know that it is possible to make art that is universally appealing, it is possible to make art that is broadly appealing. It is possible to make art that is broadly appealing, as well as meaningful and powerful. It's not easy, but god damn it, it's possible. Falling back on some "well it's all just subjective innit" or "hey, tastes vary" or "most people just aren't educated enough" is just a damn excuse, and if you catch yourself using it, knock it off.
By all means, make photographs that are not broadly appealing. It's a lot easier, for one thing, and perhaps it lets you get to something meaningful without killing yourself, or perhaps you just don't care that much about broad reach. But don't tell yourself that it's impossible to do anything else, it's not. It's merely difficult. Perhaps it's beyond your capabilities.
But by golly, if you want broad appeal, go try for it. Reach for the stars, you wimp! Stop making excuses!
As much as I’d like to say that a sense of proportion is a) developed to various degrees in different people and b) leads to a fairly consistent sense of what ‘works’ and what doesn’t, I think this is about as far from the truth as you can get.
This is an oft-repeated theme from photographers and, perhaps, other artists and wanna-bees.
The idea is that different people like different things, you can't please everyone all the time, so just do what suits you.
The last phrase is right, but the start of the sentiment is just a giant bloody excuse to give up.
What you decide you want to achieve is up to you. I do not presume to dictate. However, know that it is possible to make art that is universally appealing, it is possible to make art that is broadly appealing. It is possible to make art that is broadly appealing, as well as meaningful and powerful. It's not easy, but god damn it, it's possible. Falling back on some "well it's all just subjective innit" or "hey, tastes vary" or "most people just aren't educated enough" is just a damn excuse, and if you catch yourself using it, knock it off.
By all means, make photographs that are not broadly appealing. It's a lot easier, for one thing, and perhaps it lets you get to something meaningful without killing yourself, or perhaps you just don't care that much about broad reach. But don't tell yourself that it's impossible to do anything else, it's not. It's merely difficult. Perhaps it's beyond your capabilities.
But by golly, if you want broad appeal, go try for it. Reach for the stars, you wimp! Stop making excuses!
Friday, February 3, 2017
Crit: Katrin Koenning, Indefinitely
I suggested I'd be back to Katrin Koenning in a little bit, and here we are. The previous remarks about Explanations will get mentioned as well. Hat-tip, as the kids say, to Conscientious Photographer, for pointing me at Koenning.
Ms. Koenning has done a bunch of stuff, I'm going to talk about Indefinitely. I suggest that you look through the pictures before reading the explanatory text, and then read the text (and, optionally, poke around a little on the Internets for more text) and then re-examine the pictures.
The first thing that pops out is that she's really very good at sequencing and layout. There's a very beautiful flow to the thing, and even some rather un-beautiful pictures are made beautiful. Indeed, there is hardly a frame in this collection that wouldn't be viciously panned in any of the numerous internet forums that style themselves providers of critique. There's a lot of vernacular photography (or fake vernacular) filled with awkward poses, hidden faces, overexposure. Much of the rest is underexposed nearly to the point of incomprehensible murkiness.
Arranged on the page as wave upon wave of light and dark, it's lovely.
Repeated notes of air travel, of wildlife and natural things, of family. The ocean keeps turning up. And, let's be honest, if I've picked up on half of the motifs I'm probably doing well. This thing is dense.
It's dense with motifs which become symbols, but of what? It is exceedingly clear that she is trying to denote something, what is less clear is what she is attempting to denote. It's a bit like the Voynich Manuscript, there's a great deal of "text", of syntax, but the semantics are largely opaque.
To an extent, I think that might be a good thing. We get to push whatever we like onto the work.
Taken from another angle, though, the artist helpfully provides us with some explanations. The text tells us what she thinks it means, and that explanation, to my chagrin, falls somewhere between the Aha, yes! and the Well, I guess it fits. My first reaction was that it fell firmly in the latter, but upon spending more time with the pictures I find the explanation growing on me. Indeed, my first reaction was probably more along the lines of what a bunch of BS, but there was enough in there, barely, to support Koenning's interpretation.
The more time I spend looking at the pictures, the more her explanation seems to fit. This is surely in part because the series is enigmatic; it is not that the explanation fits particularly well, but rather that nothing else fits at all.
I love the look of the thing, unambiguously. I want to love the whole of it, top to bottom, but cannot quite. Koenning is clearly a masterful designer, and clearly has some interesting and powerful things to say. In this piece, she seems to me to be trying to cram in a few too many off-center motifs, and is not entirely successful at creating meaning.
Nor, though, is she unsuccessful. This is a very rewarding piece to spend time with. Ultimately, it is a little enigmatic for my taste.
Although it is packed with murky nearly incomprehensible pictures, and god knows I love those with a great love.
Ms. Koenning has done a bunch of stuff, I'm going to talk about Indefinitely. I suggest that you look through the pictures before reading the explanatory text, and then read the text (and, optionally, poke around a little on the Internets for more text) and then re-examine the pictures.
The first thing that pops out is that she's really very good at sequencing and layout. There's a very beautiful flow to the thing, and even some rather un-beautiful pictures are made beautiful. Indeed, there is hardly a frame in this collection that wouldn't be viciously panned in any of the numerous internet forums that style themselves providers of critique. There's a lot of vernacular photography (or fake vernacular) filled with awkward poses, hidden faces, overexposure. Much of the rest is underexposed nearly to the point of incomprehensible murkiness.
Arranged on the page as wave upon wave of light and dark, it's lovely.
Repeated notes of air travel, of wildlife and natural things, of family. The ocean keeps turning up. And, let's be honest, if I've picked up on half of the motifs I'm probably doing well. This thing is dense.
It's dense with motifs which become symbols, but of what? It is exceedingly clear that she is trying to denote something, what is less clear is what she is attempting to denote. It's a bit like the Voynich Manuscript, there's a great deal of "text", of syntax, but the semantics are largely opaque.
To an extent, I think that might be a good thing. We get to push whatever we like onto the work.
Taken from another angle, though, the artist helpfully provides us with some explanations. The text tells us what she thinks it means, and that explanation, to my chagrin, falls somewhere between the Aha, yes! and the Well, I guess it fits. My first reaction was that it fell firmly in the latter, but upon spending more time with the pictures I find the explanation growing on me. Indeed, my first reaction was probably more along the lines of what a bunch of BS, but there was enough in there, barely, to support Koenning's interpretation.
The more time I spend looking at the pictures, the more her explanation seems to fit. This is surely in part because the series is enigmatic; it is not that the explanation fits particularly well, but rather that nothing else fits at all.
I love the look of the thing, unambiguously. I want to love the whole of it, top to bottom, but cannot quite. Koenning is clearly a masterful designer, and clearly has some interesting and powerful things to say. In this piece, she seems to me to be trying to cram in a few too many off-center motifs, and is not entirely successful at creating meaning.
Nor, though, is she unsuccessful. This is a very rewarding piece to spend time with. Ultimately, it is a little enigmatic for my taste.
Although it is packed with murky nearly incomprehensible pictures, and god knows I love those with a great love.
Thursday, February 2, 2017
Explanations
In these degenerate times, we find that Art often requires an explanation. It doesn't make sense until we read something, or look at the pictures in the next section, or whatever. A single piece, often, no longer stands alone. Some people dislike this, and I occasionally stand up in favor of it. Upon noodling on it a bit, I think there's a bit more to it, because sometimes I approve of the explanation, and at other times I don't.
There's Art that needs no explanation. I think Weston's Pepper #30 fits that. Oh, it's about sex.
There's Art that needs explanation, but the explanation snaps it in to focus, and you have a little "Aha!" moment. The explanation not only fits, but feels like the only one that would. It is satisfying. Sally Mann's pictures sometimes fall in to this. Oh, it's not just some random field, it's a Civil War battlefield, and now the gloomy tonality makes sense, and it fills in the larger collection well. Aha!
A great deal of what is offered as Art comes with an explanation that fits, but one does not feel that it is the only possible explanation. It's not very satisfying. One feels that the explanation might as well have been added afterwards. Ming Thein's work often falls into this category, he offers up endless repetitions of the same two or three tropes, collected up into sacks, each with a different explanation. Oh. Ok. Sure, I guess that works. But doesn't this or that work just as well?
There is the gibberish explanation. The one that makes no sense. That is a random jumble of colors, not a portrait. Piss off.
And finally, there is Art offered with no explanation, like Pepper #30, but which declines to explain itself. See virtually all the Serious Photography on the internet. What is this? Why am I even looking at this?
It is as if there was a spectrum, perhaps a circular thing, in which the last one blends imperceptibly with the first one. At one end, I am generally ok with explanations, and at the other, not so much. More on this later.
There's Art that needs no explanation. I think Weston's Pepper #30 fits that. Oh, it's about sex.
There's Art that needs explanation, but the explanation snaps it in to focus, and you have a little "Aha!" moment. The explanation not only fits, but feels like the only one that would. It is satisfying. Sally Mann's pictures sometimes fall in to this. Oh, it's not just some random field, it's a Civil War battlefield, and now the gloomy tonality makes sense, and it fills in the larger collection well. Aha!
A great deal of what is offered as Art comes with an explanation that fits, but one does not feel that it is the only possible explanation. It's not very satisfying. One feels that the explanation might as well have been added afterwards. Ming Thein's work often falls into this category, he offers up endless repetitions of the same two or three tropes, collected up into sacks, each with a different explanation. Oh. Ok. Sure, I guess that works. But doesn't this or that work just as well?
There is the gibberish explanation. The one that makes no sense. That is a random jumble of colors, not a portrait. Piss off.
And finally, there is Art offered with no explanation, like Pepper #30, but which declines to explain itself. See virtually all the Serious Photography on the internet. What is this? Why am I even looking at this?
It is as if there was a spectrum, perhaps a circular thing, in which the last one blends imperceptibly with the first one. At one end, I am generally ok with explanations, and at the other, not so much. More on this later.
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Book Teardown
I pulled a book off the "free books" cart at the library, with the intention of taking it apart to show you all how regular case bound hardcovers are made. It didn't quite turn out that way.
First, some terminology. I'll introduce a few more words as we go along.
Text Block - the content pages of a book are first made up into a text block by joining them on one edge, the spine, to create a sort of book but just of the pages of content. Normally pages are joined either purely by gluing the raw edges of paper together, essentially embedding the edges of the pages into a thin block of glue, or the sheets of content are folded, nested together to form quires, and the quires are sewn together along the fold. In this case a sheet may be thought of as a double-size page, which has to be folded to produce a book sized pamphlet-like thing.
Cover - Just what you'd guess it is. The decorative/protective covering for the text block. In a paperback, this is a piece of cardstock, more or less, that wraps around the book. A hardcover uses a more complex structure involving two boards, from and back, and another narrow piece of the board material at the spine the whole thing fasted together and hinged with leather, book cloth, decorative paper, or some combination.
Spine - Again, pretty much what you'd guess. This is the edge of the text block the pages are joined together at, and I will also use it to designate the portion of the cover that goes over that part of the text block.
Endpaper - just inside the front and back covers of a hardcover book, you will find a piece of decorative paper twice the size of a page, half of which is glued to the inside of the cover board, and the other hand of which acts a lot like the first or last page of the text block. It is, however, not part of the text block. Opening the book to that page and inspecting the spine will generally reveal that it is in fact glued to the first (or last) page of the text block, and is not connected to the spine of the text block.
Pastedown - the half of the endpaper which is glued down to the inside of the cover board.
Here's the book, ready for tearing apart. The tool is an Xacto knife, an essential tool and really the only one you need. You use it for cutting, gentle prying, and separating of glued layers of paper. There is a separate device made for the non-cutting jobs, but I haven't got one. Real book nerds have like 10 of them in different sizes.
Another view of the victim. Looks like an ordinary hardback. It's not, which surprised me.
The spine looks perfectly normal, but it's not. The sort of checked blue and white thing you see is a "headband" which used to be a sewn thing, but is now a simple thing you glue on at one point. We'll see it again. The point is, though, it's attached to the text block. The grey-covered board to the right of it is the spine of the cover, as you probably can easily guess. The first point of weirdness I noted is that when the book is opened, there is no sign that the headband is moving separately from the spine of the book. In a normal hardcover, these two move separately, although it may not be completely obvious.
Indeed, it looks very much as if the spine of the text block has somehow become fastened to the spine of the cover. I assumed that this was some sort of slight adhesion due to age or something.
This next picture is just a side note. We're looking at the endpaper here, the pastedown specifically. The text block is in the upper third of the frame, then the hinge is the diagonal crease, and then the pastedown fills the lower 2/3 of the frame.
Notice the slight lines, as if there was some sort of material underneath the pastedown? One at the hinge, and one along the edge. The material, the "mull", does indeed come off the spine of the text block to be glued onto the cover board. That's the excess thickness visible along the spine. Along the other three edges of the pastedown, we're seeing bookcloth folded around the cover board from the exterior. The pastedown covers all. So we know our book has a mull.
Endpapers are just tipped onto the first (and last) pages of the text block. A narrow stripe of glue on the face of the page, at the spine, attaches the end paper to the text block. This is generally step one of disassembling a book, you can just gently tug on the end paper and peel it off the text block.
Normally this is not structural, but occasionally you see very light, or very cheaply made, books with no mull which rely entirely on this tipping-in job to attach the text block to the cover. In a well made book, the mull, or the mull plus some tapes, do this structural job. In these cases, the endpaper is decorative only, and carries no loads.
Continuing to peel it off. We're actually lifting the pastedown a little as well here.
And now the endpaper is entirely free of the text block, here, and the pastedown is lifting off a little as well all the way down.
Here I have torn the endpaper away entirely, much of the pastedown got left behind. The hinge of the book is exposed here, that's the visible crease down the center of the frame.
In this next frame, I've run my Xacto knife gently down the hinge, cutting the text block away from the cover board. The text block, still attached to the other board (indeed, the endpaper at the other end of the book is completely intact in this picture), in on the left, the cover on the right.
I have discovered that the spine of the text block was glued to the spine of the cover, which is extremely weird. The exposed raw cardboard down the center of the frame is where the spine of the cover, a narrow strip of book board, actually delaminated under my knife. A layer or two of book board is still on the text block, which lies off on the left of the frame.
The spine of this book was completely inflexible, being glued down to a quite sturdy chunk of cardboard. Book board is merely a dense and sturdy grade of cardboard, hopefully acid free.
Another view of the same stage of things.
Repeated for the opposite side, the text block is now free of the cover. I cut the endpaper free on the other side, rather than lifting the pastedown, hence the cleaner edge visible right of the cover's spine, as compared with the ragged one left of the cover's spine.
Lifting off the half-endpaper still tipped onto the text block, since I cut it rather than peeling it up previously.
See that stuff in the next picture, that looks like cheesecloth, glued down to the book covers under the pastedowns on each side of the spine? That's the mull. Everyone uses this cheesecloth shit, and it is awful. In this book, it was not merely awful, but irrelevant, and I find its presence quite puzzling.
The loading on the mull involves a lot of shear, under which loading this cheesecloth shit is useless, which is why heavy modern books disintegrate under use. I rebuild them using book cloth, which is basically light canvas, for a mull.
Anyways, this is the stuff we noted underneath the pastedown some number of pictures above.
In the next photo, we see the other part of the mull, glued to to the spine of the text block. Before I got in there with my knife, this part was contiguous with the stuff we saw glued to the covers.
A wide strip of this stuff is glued to the text block, leaving "wings" on each side of the text block. Those wings are glued to the cover boards (as they were in this book). Normally the point of this is to attach the text block to the cover without having to glue the spine of the text block directly to the spine of the cover. Normally, these spine areas move independently, allowing the spine of the text block to flex.
Not for this book!
So how the hell does this book work at all?
It turns out that this book is "backed", which means that the spine of the text block has been formed into a mushroom shape. It's somewhat inelegantly backed, but here it is.
To be honest, I know that backing makes books function better, but I don't quite know why. I think it's because the pages are sort of pre-bent to permit them to open more easily and fully before they begin to ask the spine to flex. In this book the spine cannot flex at all, so backing is pretty much required.
Headband detail. It's just a thingy glued onto each end of the spine of the text block, to cover the exposed end of the spine.
You can see the mull here, again.
By now I am convinced that this thing isn't even a sewn binding. The page count was all wrong, a sewn binding is always a multiple of 4 pages in length. This thing is 208 pages, which is indeed 4 x 52. But what size are the quires? 52 is 13 * 2 * 2. So are we looking at 52 quires here? Or 4?
Neither makes any sense. I wondered if we had variable sized quires, or if I had just miscounted, and moved on. In hindsight, opening the book wide shows no sign of sewing, but then the spine is stiff as hell, so maybe we're just not looking deep enough.
Time to clean up the spine of the text block. I ground off the glue and crap on the spine with coarse sandpaper, and here we have the result.
Detail. No sewing.
This weird thing is perfect bound, like a paperback, but with a crippled spine. Who the hell even DOES that? Even a paperback's spine can flex, because it hasn't been glued to a damned piece of lumber.
Next up, I'll try to find a normal book to take part, to show you mull details, and then maybe I'll show you my interpretation of modern hard binding, which is I think better than any machine bindings available. Although, it's sort of moot, since a good machine binding is certainly good enough for normal use.
Sunday, January 29, 2017
Hasselblad, Again
It's in the news! Perry Oosting has stepped down as CEO, and some other chap is in as an interim CEO. Lots of speculation and so on. Some suspect that this is a harbinger of doom for H, others that it is a new beginning.
Let me add my own speculation.
Perry's a luxury guy, remember? Bulgari, Gucci, Prada. Then he put jewels on cell phones (VERTU) and now he's some kind of management consultant type (Perely BV). So he's a CEO-type, professional business/management guy with strength in jewelry and luxury. As I've said before, he was obviously plopped in to H to try out a luxury play. So he did that, first restoring the brand's credibility with the H6, and then rolling out the X1D to see if there was something there, and also the always-forgotten True Zoom Moto Mod (a clip-on add-on camera thing for a Motorola phone).
This was a relatively broad set of products.
The goal was, obviously, to see if there was a way to make an H branded object that would be a coveted status object for every wealthy woman in the PRC.
The answer seems to be "no, there is not." Hasselblad can make many beautiful things, but not that. It's entirely possible that there is no camera-like device that is that coveted object. They did not quite take the path I recommended or predicted or whatever it is that I did, but close enough.
Perry has, to my eye, clearly gone back to the board and told them that there is no billion dollar luxury play here. Mass photography is at present firmly in the hands of the mobile phone, H has no capacity to build a mobile device, and there does not seem to be a point of entry through which H can use their brand power to dominate a photographic aspect of the sector.
But, there is a decent little camera company and some cross-branded and technology transfer possibilities. He no doubt recommended to the board that they hire someone with specific expertise in those areas to CEO this thing going forward.
In my opinion, there is no way he was unwillingly ousted by DJI. He was operating as a workout specialist, not a long term CEO. He was there to explore and repair, not to run the thing as a career.
Let me add my own speculation.
Perry's a luxury guy, remember? Bulgari, Gucci, Prada. Then he put jewels on cell phones (VERTU) and now he's some kind of management consultant type (Perely BV). So he's a CEO-type, professional business/management guy with strength in jewelry and luxury. As I've said before, he was obviously plopped in to H to try out a luxury play. So he did that, first restoring the brand's credibility with the H6, and then rolling out the X1D to see if there was something there, and also the always-forgotten True Zoom Moto Mod (a clip-on add-on camera thing for a Motorola phone).
This was a relatively broad set of products.
The goal was, obviously, to see if there was a way to make an H branded object that would be a coveted status object for every wealthy woman in the PRC.
The answer seems to be "no, there is not." Hasselblad can make many beautiful things, but not that. It's entirely possible that there is no camera-like device that is that coveted object. They did not quite take the path I recommended or predicted or whatever it is that I did, but close enough.
Perry has, to my eye, clearly gone back to the board and told them that there is no billion dollar luxury play here. Mass photography is at present firmly in the hands of the mobile phone, H has no capacity to build a mobile device, and there does not seem to be a point of entry through which H can use their brand power to dominate a photographic aspect of the sector.
But, there is a decent little camera company and some cross-branded and technology transfer possibilities. He no doubt recommended to the board that they hire someone with specific expertise in those areas to CEO this thing going forward.
In my opinion, there is no way he was unwillingly ousted by DJI. He was operating as a workout specialist, not a long term CEO. He was there to explore and repair, not to run the thing as a career.
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