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I am Spirit, formless and free;


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<p>If you were blind at birth and couldn't see could you still photograph? And if you couldn't would you still have a spirit or conscience to guide you on your paths?</p>

<p>Photography is just a way to record an awake state of being and how one feels about the world around them. Are blind people spiritless? What path do they walk since they can't photograph or even see to record their world around them? Can they still be curious? Ha! There's the connection! They can!</p>

<p>Curiosity is a noble path. It's both an internal and external behavior that doesn't get judged unless it shows truth that someone doesn't want to see or want shown to others. The awake and wondering eye of curiosity is inextricably tied to photography. </p>

<p>Yeesh! Am I full of it or what?!</p>

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<p>Allen, neither of the two (in a black and white all inclusive sense) I think, yet something in between the nature of which I am still exploring and defining. But we are in control to a large (enough) degree, and not spirit rather than approach, or maps created by others.</p>
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<p>Allen wrote: "... a structure based on paths others have walked before?" Let's run a scientific experiment. We'll use Allen as our white rat. Describe the path you have already walked. Walk it again. Describe it again. Is it the same?</p>

<p>Or, look at this picture:</p>

<p><img src="https://unrealnature.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/nowhere6081_700px.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="560" /><br>

.<br>

.<br>

Now, without looking at it, tell me what you saw.</p>

<p>Wait thirty seconds. Tick, tick, tick. Now look at the picture again. Look away. Tell me what you saw. Is it the same? [Hint: there are at least fifty things that have been digitally repeated in this picture.]</p>

<p>If you ever find yourself thinking you're on "paths walked before" (not to mention by "others") you're not paying attention. Which is no surprise. Nobody ever really pays attention.</p>

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<p>At the risk of being a misguided contrarian I'm pretty sure I choose to make pictures out of light sensitive materials for very opposite reasons:<br>

Freedom from spiritualising, vaporising, flights of fancy. The photographs I make are reassuringly parts of the real world. They are a refuge from an overload of fictions plausible and implausible.<br>

Unlike monitor images which are literally formless unless there is a monitor to display them physical photographs have a native substance and a native appearance accessible by just looking. They are a blessed refuge from formlessness.<br>

Making physical photographs demands discipline rather than freedom. The work involved is uplifting and offers the satisfaction of doing a well defined <em>something</em> rather than an infinitely indulgent <em>anything</em>.<br>

I try earnestly to follow my own limited path. Failure is possible.</p>

 

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<p>Both extremes are delusional. We can't help but inherit form and structure from our predecessors no matter how free we convince ourselves we are, and we are plenty free even with such inheritance. And there are lots of fictions even within the so-called physicality of traditional photography. There's also physicality in digital photography and in screen images. Younger people know this. Only old fogies don't get it.</p>
We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>Believe me, Julie, I know you think that. And I think there may be a pathology at play that walls you off. I'm not hesitant to see myself as part of something bigger than me.</p>

<p>[by the way, I wasn't actually responding to anything you said, Julie, but rather to both Allen and Maris, though I'm open to hearing anyone's thoughts on the matter.]</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>OK, so getting back at the subject at hand, I said that we inherit form and structure from our predecessors which still allows us to be free and I also said there are lots of fictions even within the so-called physicality of traditional photography and that there's physicality in digital photography as well. How does your being a "me" instead of a "we" relate to those ideas?</p>
We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>In any case, what I'm suggesting to Allen is that it's not an either/or proposition and that one can pay attention to, learn from, and respond to what others have done without one's losing one's own voice. And what I'm suggesting to Maris is that traditional photography is not the only path to truth and digital photography is not the only path to fiction . . . and that there is fiction in truth and truth in fiction.</p>
We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>I feel, 'standing on the shoulder of giants' applies not only to science, but to art as well. What we observe and learn can either refine or color our thinking. I try not to fall victim to the latter.</p>

<p>I can understand Maris's feeling about film photography being tangible, vs digital which is made of formless bytes (I understand his message, not necessarily agree with him). However I don't understand "Making physical photographs demands discipline rather than freedom." . It is true that digital cameras have resulted in trigger happy tourists who snap everything and anything without discretion. However to serious photographers, 'freedom' is not indulgence, but a means of uplift.</p>

<p>A small example: A writer can write something, review it, and throw it away and start fresh, and he/she can do it over and over until he gets it right. If every time, the writer had to go to a darkroom and 'develop' the piece of paper before reading his work, would that constraint uplift the quality of the work?</p>

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<p>I find some photographs inspiring, an example <a href="/photo/18191480">here </a>from a Photo.net member, Alain D. who submitted it for critique. I don't mean to invite further critiques here, just sharing another person's picture that makes me want to achieve something like it and not necessarily in photography.</p>

<p>As inspiring to me is Gordon Parks' <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gordon_Parks_-_American_Gothic.jpg%20">American Gothic</a>. Was Gordon Parks free to not create? I don't think he was. What does free mean? It means a lot of work involved and yes, Supriyo I suspect that a written piece destined for the printers is an example of a constraint that uplifts the quality of a written work and there is a lot of 'we' in that process.</p>

<p>So I would ask, am I free to walk away from endeavors in photography that are sincere attempts to express something even if I don't know what? I think I am free to walk away from photographic expression if something can be expressed better elsewhere.</p>

<p>I thought it was interesting that, in an interview, Werner Herzog said of his film <em>Fitzcarraldo</em>, that the central metaphor of that film was hauling a boat over land and Werner said in passing in the interview that he had no idea as to what the metaphor was, had no idea what it meant. I mean, the work he put into that film, to express, what exactly? No answer from Werner.</p>

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I think, I have the freedom to walk away from something where I am not sure of the interpretation, but I probably wouldn't.

As a photographer transforms reality into photo, the photo also transforms the photographer. I see art as an adventurous

journey, where all the answers don't have to be known. The taking of the photo is just the beginning of that journey of the

art and artist together.

 

Sometimes a photo does not make any sense in the beginning, and it may take months, even years to obtain full merit of

it, or never at all. Had I never taken that shot to begin with, there would be no journey for me.

 

 

"I suspect that a written piece destined for the printers is an example of a constraint that uplifts the quality of a written work"

 

Charles,

I don't think the pressure of getting published necessarily uplifts the quality of work. It may force the writer to compromise for sure to make the piece commercially appealing. I have seen examples of that.

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<p>The 1967 <em>New Documents</em> exhibition at MoMA is a model for Allen to consider:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>"Documentary pictures of the past -- particularly the pictures produced for the FSA and the Photo League -- almost always featured identifiable subjects that could be quickly apprehended: ragged children, defeated adults; joyous children, proud adults.</p>

<p>[<em>line bread added</em>] The pictures were often made with considerable skill and formal competence, attributes necessary to convince viewers to swallow the alluringly clear photogenic facts. But the subject work of Friedlander, Winogrand, and Arbus [in <em>New Documents</em>] was often altogether mysterious and oblique.</p>

<p>[<em>line break added</em>] There are few outright dramatic moments in their pictures, and virtually no clichés about human behavior. Their photographs seem to come out of a raw and direct apprehension of the world, each image a "document" providing proof only of a process of investigation, not an illustration of known principles or ideas." — <em>Susan Kismaric</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>There have been many photographers inspired by that MoMA show to further develop and expand that kind of aesthetic.</p>

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<p>Julie, your leaves and twigs remind me of photo constructs by Barry Frydlander and now also Bill Arons, only they repeat and sneak people in their pictures. Are you familiar with them? Frydlander works in Isreal and Arons in Los Angeles and New York. I admire the skill and thought it takes to pull it off.</p>
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<p>Barry, no, I haven't seen their work. I'll have to look it up. The word "sneak" makes my hackles stand up, though.</p>

<p>Even though I'm guilty of it in the example posted above, I try to make all of my digital manipulations very explicit. I used the idea for that series (<em><a href="http://www.unrealnature.com/Nowhere_thumbs.htm">Erehwon / Nowhere</a></em> ) to make patternings that would hopefully be pleasantly/enjoyably apparent after (if!) one looks at the pictures for more than a few seconds. I was thinking (very loosely, obviously) of something like the patterning of Islamic art.</p>

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<p>" We'll use Allen as our white rat. Describe the path you have already walked. Walk it again. Describe it again. Is it the same?". Julie.</p>

<p>I would be a very bad specimen of a white rat having a poor sense of direction and a tendency to day dream. Fortunately there are other white rats, without these failures, who be far more helpful in proving your analysis.</p>

<p>However, I do understand your thoughts and reasoning, that on any path there are different tales to tell....so, that path is not necessarily restrictive it is the individual walking it.</p>

<p>But its a path. If we keep walking the same path we do not explore others...no matter the opportunities on that path seen by ourself or different individuals.</p>

<p>I will respond to all posts but I need time to digest them all.</p>

<p>Blue string.</p><div>00dqdC-561898284.jpg.a5241fee6195958eb3ff22e929bd5291.jpg</div>

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