Where do you go from there?

charleswood · September 23, 2015

Vices attach to people as subjects, not to trees, bushes, cars, etc. Szarkowski made the attribution of vices to people, not me.

Phil - "There is something non ordinary about the sense of place that's there in many of Eggleston's photographs but it's Eggleston's particular photographic rendering that gives it this and not necessarily the places or subjects photographed."

Szarkowski faced the ineffable when facing Eggleston's work. There is something non ordinary about Eggleston's rendering of place, something fascinating as Szarkowski puts it. How would I attempt to explain the rendering and its effect on the viewer? Attempt?

Eggleston is an introvert. My guess is that he is an introverted intuitive. That's a rare personality type. His rendering recreates his own perceptual field, and he uses color to accomplish that transform from our ordinary perception to his perception of the world at large. Color is the figurative that creates the feeling tones that give the viewer a glimpse of his world. He isn't a kinesthetic. It isn't perceptual in the ordinary meaning of perception as physical, sensation. Therefore color in Eggleston is a metaphor for vibes, and it is disturbing in his presentations.

Disturbing is what any object is to an introverted intuitive. An object is disturbing because an object for an introverted intuitive is a mere transmitter of vibes, of disturbances. The object is just an object, it's banal, purely material. An object is almost irrelevant to an introverted intuitive because what the object does to such a type is primarily to create a vibe. It's the vibe to which an Eggleston as an introverted intuitive would relate to, the object in and of itself with all its material properties is almost nothing to that type, the object is more of an after thought, at best banal.

Such is Eggleston's world, such I propose in an attempt to explain what the something non ordinary is to the viewer. Eggleston renders an object not as what it physically looks like, no, he renders his compositions to produce the vibes that he negotiates daily as the content of his own rare perceptual field. The problem is that those vibes are information rich. What a viewer is disturbed by is packed, dense information that can't be sorted out, but it is there. Showing it to the viewer is Eggleston's genius.

Norma Desmond · September 23, 2015

But a critic could read in so much that just wasn't there

</blockquote>

Alan, yes, if a critic found your photo or body of work interesting he could, indeed, read stuff in. I wouldn't be so sure he'd be reading in stuff that wasn't there. Just because you didn't have the time or inclination to think about what you were doing, doesn't mean all that much. You found this scene interesting enough to photograph and whether you felt like you were choosing it or you just naturally did so, you framed the scene the way you did. Someone else might not have taken the shot to begin with and might well have framed it differently. If a critic had access to your body of work, as Szarkowski did with Eggleston, even though you might not have been conscious of any of this, he might find repeated themes and a consistency of subject or types of scenes or types of moments and situations that moved you enough to take a picture and that could start to give some him some information about you. And, even if he couldn't put together a picture about you, the photo itself might have some things worth thinking about and talking about, similarities to the work of other artists, etc., again whether you intended that or not. One thing I love about my own photography is how much I learn about myself when I look at my own work over time. Stuff I don't realize until I see it and until I see what I'm drawn to over the course of time. It doesn't happen necessarily because I think about stuff when I'm shooting. But a lot may happen because of my predilections, my taste, my interests, my history, my genetic makeup, the culture I was born into or have adopted, the opportunities I have. Of course it's not a science, which makes it fun. Not always, but sometimes I think our photos make us much more transparent than we might think, even when we shoot candidly and spontaneously and "without thinking."

spanky · September 23, 2015

Here are a few thoughts of mine should anyone be interested. First of all, the most recent work of Egglestons that I'm aware of was a series of mural sized photographs called At Zenith which were of nothing more then white clouds and blue sky. These were shown at the Gogasian Gallery in Beverly Hills a couple of years ago. https://www.gagosian.com/artists/william-eggleston

I stopped by and took a peek inside and decided I had more important business to attend to then to look at pictures of clouds. Now if this is a logical progression of Egglestons work, then so be it. It might make perfect sense in a physical way. I saw Eggelston in person at LACMA a year or so prior to At Zenith and there's no getting around the fact that that he is getting up there in years and when he came out to talk and sign books he had some difficulty with walking. So maybe he just can't move around as much anymore and laying down in a field and taking pictures of the clouds made perfect sense. Who knows?

As to Szarkowski, I attended a talk he gave at the Getty shortly before he died. He was plugging his book but his lecture was mostly about the nature of photography itself. He was an amazing speaker and didn't resort to any overly academic gobbledygook. As I mentioned before, I could have sat there all day and listened to him.

Lastly I have to agree with Eggleston in that the photographer shouldn't have to to explain anything about his/her work. I can see why people would like to know more, I feel the same way when looking at some work, but isn't that just like wanting to know how a magician on stage makes a lady under a sheet float up off the table? I think it is and it takes away from the magic of photographs. In academic circles one expects this I suppose. I recall many years ago a young woman I know was majoring in graphic design at some local state college. In one of her classes the students were assigned to interview an artist and to show some of that artists work to the class while discussing the interview. She asked me for this favor and while I was flattered that she thought of me as an artist I really wasn't interested in talking about my pictures. I had no idea what to say about them. We met at a coffee shop and as far as I can remember I probably just talked about the techniques of using traditional photographic materials and most likely gave her the old "The work has to stand on its own so no explanation is required" statement while I handed her a handful of prints. People are always going to interpret artworks in their own personal way and they may come to all kinds of conclusions about what the artists is all about and this is OK, it's human nature. However, I think this should be of no concern to the artist.

AlanKlein · September 23, 2015

Fred: Thanks for taking the time to comment on my photo. The one thing I believe about my theme, or should I say temperament, is that I have a thing about balance. My pictures are always weighted towards a balancing act. If I missed that in the OOC shot, then I adjust when cropping. This may make them boring as they lose an edge. On the other hand, I lean toward aesthetic peacefulness so balance helps accomplish that. Enough of my photo. I'm starting to sound like a critic.

Mark: I think you reminded me of a thing I heard years ago about effective communications: write in short, declarative, simple sentences. Your comment about when you heard Szarkowski speak reminded me of that. You said he didn't resort to overly academic gobbledygook. Maybe that's my concern with critics. If they would write in plain English, they would accomplish more in getting people to understand their points rather then coming off as confusing, trying to sell the art with pretentious rhetoric.

charleswood · September 23, 2015

Phil "I think it's much more rewarding - and often necessary - to look at a series of pictures rather than approach it from the single picture."

Your presented series 1.

<a href="http://www.chicagonow.com/neighborland/files/2012/06/3_136292-624x937.jpg">http://www.chicagonow.com/neighborland/files/2012/06/3_136292-624x937.jpg</a>

It's a decorative flower basket hung on a door. That makes it an attempt by the basket hanger at an aesthetic, a woman's touch attempting hominess. The basket is in the way of the door knocker, somewhat impeding its function. Eggleston's photo is a comment on that aesthetic and on her aesthetic attempt. He's expressing something about what he sees. What he sees isn't perfect, and it is the image of a half salute to aesthetics that welcomes the book's viewer to his collection.

<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VnH1mU8B_ks/TWaA7L0K9kI/AAAAAAAAH8c/Z_592R0UvJA/s1600/artwork_images_230_70524_william-eggleston.jpg">http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VnH1mU8B_ks/TWaA7L0K9kI/AAAAAAAAH8c/Z_592R0UvJA/s1600/artwork_images_230_70524_william-eggleston.jpg</a>

Last picture of the book. Jacket on wall. Again an impediment: the crib. How get the jacket down when the crib is in the way? You would have to bend awkwardly to retrieve the jacket. It might be the baby's jacket, but is it too big? Is it used instead as a blanket? Eggleston is noticing things that don't quite work? A door knocker impeded by a flower basket, a crib in the way of getting the jacket? Jacket picture is set within dysfunction and the ugly.

Eggleston welcomes his viewer with a poorly placed flower basket on a home's front door, inviting. He closes his book with a fairly disturbing image where again, things don't quite work in perfect concert.

<a href="https://antonioperezrio.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/050820101160_resize.jpg?w=590">https://antonioperezrio.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/050820101160_resize.jpg?w=590</a>

An old graveyard. Followed in the book by this:

<a href="http://theclassical.org/sites/default/files/Eggleston(Grizz%20sting%20the%20ball%20on%20the%20perimeter).jpg">http://theclassical.org/sites/default/files/Eggleston(Grizz%20sting%20the%20ball%20on%20the%20perimeter).jpg</a>

An image of a prone youngster who could be taken for dead. There's a basketball hoop on a wall. The kid isn't playing, is down. Oppressive heat and humidity. Things aren't working.

charleswood · September 23, 2015

"Even photographs that don't have the intent of a maker behind them can have an embedded meaning."

May we see an example?

AlanKlein · September 23, 2015

Those are fascinating photojournalism shots. Most pictures that work are simple. They say one thing. They grab the viewer with it. Their meaning is apparent. Pictures that are too complex lose the viewer. Most viewers give a picture a second of their time, maybe three if it catches their attention. They move on if they have to figure out what you're trying to say or what the subject is. If they want a novel, they'll read a book.

Think about yourself when someone posts a picture here or when Googling or visiting someone's home and looking at their pictures hanging on the wall or reading a magazine. How long do you spend analyzing what a picture means? That's why I believe that most critics see things that aren't there. Because they aren't. If the picture is so complex with oodles of obtuse and arcane meaning, then chances are viewers will skip right over them. Maybe not the readers of the critics. But the rest of us.

I find getting a photo that just works exceedingly difficult. They're very rare. Getting something that just jumps out is hard. Culling the noise in a scene to capture in a photo is a huge task. Our brain filters out that noise with ease. What makes good photography is often the content such as in photojournalism. But just as often, especially in landscape photography, its the light that makes the picture special. It aesthetic in nature. Long analyses are superfluous like trying to explain why ice cream tastes so good. Anyway that's my take on it.

Norma Desmond · September 23, 2015

Simple and complex both work for me.

That's why I love both Bach and Mahler.

I do get it, most pictures that work for you, Alan, are simple and say one thing and grab you relatively quickly and easily.

And I also get that for others, pictures that are complex don't lose them. Many complex pictures attract me. They don't grab me right away but percolate and reveal themselves over time. Which I have.

Most photos on the web and most photos in homes don't command more than a passing glance. On that, we agree. This says nothing much about the kind of photography I do spend more time on or the the kind of photography most critics write about.

The way I see it is not that critics see things that aren't there but that critics see things you don't. Honestly, sometimes they see things I don't. Whether these things are "there" or not isn't the point, to me. It's not an objective science. They're telling me they see them and I take that information and it either confirms what I'm seeing, opens me up to seeing something I hadn't or in a way I hadn't, or simply doesn't do much to affect my view of the picture. Again, it does take some time. Which I have.

charleswood · September 23, 2015

I think the discussion point that I raised has been at best deflected, at worst ignored. Let me raise that question with this Eggleston picture, already linked to, Phil's link to the first page of one of Eggleston's books, William Eggleston's Guide.

<a href="http://www.chicagonow.com/neighborland/files/2012/06/3_136292-624x937.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.chicagonow.com/neighborland/files/2012/06/3_136292-624x937.jpg</a>

I previously commented that photo, in part now with emphasis added: "The basket is in the way of the door knocker, somewhat impeding its function. Eggleston's photo is a comment on that aesthetic and on her aesthetic attempt."

Now quoting from Szarkowski's forward to an Eggleston picture book: "We have been told so often of the bland, synthetic smoothness of exemplary American life, of its comfortable, vacant insentience, its extruded, stamped, and molded sameness, in a word its irredeemable dullness, that we have come half to believe it, and thus are startled and perhaps exhilarated to see these pictures of prototypically normal types on their familiar ground, grandchildren of Penrod, who seem to live surrounded by spirits, not all of them benign."

I ask, considering the flower basket on a front door photo of Eggleston's, is the hanging flower basket exemplary of what Szarkowski described as American life, of its comfortable vacant insentience, its extruded, stamped, and molded sameness, in a word its irredeemable dullness?

A related question, is Robert Frank's The Americans an elitist aesthetic? Is Eggleston's aesthetic elitist? And I'm asking Fred and Phil those questions who quite obviously can read and who don't need my translation ability to emphasize for them the elitism of Szarkowski, which should be obvious to them anyway because both are highly educated people.

Norma Desmond · September 23, 2015

is the hanging flower basket exemplary of what Szarkowski described as American life, of its comfortable vacant insentience, its extruded, stamped, and molded sameness, in a word its irredeemable dullness?

</blockquote>

Szarkowski said we've been told this is American life. He did not describe it as such. I take him at least in part to be saying we've been told this in all sorts of ways, including photographically. And it's been told to us in stories, in the press, in pictures, and we start believing it. Szarkowski seems to be suggesting that Eggleston is asking us to look without those impositions we're used to in order to find a more authentic spirit in these people and things.

is Robert Frank's The Americans an elitist aesthetic

</blockquote>

Possibly in the same way that someone could make the case that Bob Dylan's is. Szarkowski seems to me to recognize the concreteness in Eggleston's work.

As pictures, however, these seem to me perfect: irreducible surrogates for the experience they pretend to record, visual analogues for the quality of one life, collectively a paradigm of a private view, a view one would have thought ineffable, described here with clarity, fullness, and elegance.

</blockquote>

I don't see that as elitist. He's educated and intellectual. That can sound, but not be, elitist. I see this observation as not unlike yours that Eggleston's work is literal in the documentary sense and I agree. (I had said "too literal" referring not to Eggelston's work but to your metaphor of back of head as blind spot.)

Norma Desmond · September 23, 2015

Knowing that sarcasm doesn't always come through effectively on the Internet and probably being overly concerned with being misunderstood because it does happen, I want to be sure to assert that I don't think either Frank or Dylan are elitist. The same person who would want to make that case for Frank would likely make it for Dylan as well. It would be, IMO, quite a stretch.

charleswood · September 23, 2015

Szarkowski also said that we half believed it and in contrast to what we've been told we instead of a confirmation of what we half believed, instead in Eggleston we see the Penrodesque along with a long list of vices. That is in the text, the text, the text. Let's stick to the text.

I don't think there is anything wrong in calling out that flower basket for what it aesthetically is, it is a pretty sorry decoration. On the other hand, it is a fact that curators have within their authority the ability to begin a process of legitimizing works as art. Dylan legitimized becomes just so much state art. Wabi sabi in Japan was extolled, after it was found, by those at the top of that Edo period and prior basically two class society. Wabi sabi was a reaction to an elitist aesthetic, later became a part of an elitist aesthetic, tea ceremony, etc. These are complicated realities and it's hard to tell one thing from another. But any objective approach to art and art history includes an honest discussion of elite and non elite tensions that always exist and are handled in many ways in different social systems. Art is, as Fred has pointed out many times to me and to others, a conversation and it is a broad conversation.

I haven't had time to read carefully the posts that followed my exasperated question. I'll return to them later and agree there are some good, honest, well considered ideas expressed within them and I thank you for that.

Norma Desmond · September 23, 2015

On the subject of door knockers, I have several friends who have them on their doors, not obstructed by flower baskets. I don't use them. It's always felt clunky for me. I much prefer and lean naturally toward a simple knock on their doors with my fist. I guess you could say I find door knockers extra-functional so hanging a basket over them might say something slightly different to me. ;-)

charleswood · September 23, 2015

We do agree that those two pictures are juxtaposed by what they represent, the first of two beginning the book, the second the book's closing shot if I remember correctly. As to knockers I think I'll leave that topic alone.

Phil - "Robert Frank's The Americans is the epitome of anti-elitism, both in a social and artistic context."

How so? For its apparent realism? And you mean at the time of publication?

Also I did the best I could to tie Szarkowski's text to an Eggleston photograph, that connection always in my mind. He does say 'we have been told' and that we half believed it (and why not believe it all the way?); and he isn't committed to that view expressed by his enumeration of vices, of it declaring "Such speculations, however, even if not simple nonsense, presumably relate only to Eggleston's pictures..." In other words he undermines not only 'what we've been told', but his Penrodesque characterization of what rings so true to me as a common mischaracterization of the American South.

Fred - "Szarkowski seems to be suggesting that Eggleston is asking us to look without those impositions we're used to in order to find a more authentic spirit in these people and things."

Yeah, so I see him as modeling for the reader a possible stance to assume when enjoying the book.

"As pictures, however, these seem to me perfect: irreducible surrogates for the experience they pretend to record, visual analogues for the quality of one life, collectively a paradigm of a private view, a view one would have thought ineffable, described here with clarity, fullness, and elegance."

I think that's well said and had thought if he had just said that it would have been enough. And I can relate to "irreducible" since I'm toying with the idea that art I enjoy most has an irreducible expressed within it, not sure that without something irreducible within it art can connect to me at all.

But I do recognize that at the time Eggleston was becoming known he was considered to be southern regional, and the southern stereotype at the time was not exemplary American stereotype, it was stereotyped American South, not told to us to be "comfortable, vacant insentience, its extruded, stamped, and molded sameness, in a word its irredeemable dullness". The American South stereotype in that era was worse than 'exemplary' America and Eggleston's entrance onto the scene was in some ways perhaps an introduction to a South that was in the process of adopting standard English and making a degree of progress towards refuting the notion of its backwardness compared to the rest of the USA. However down there at the time they watched Hee Haw, they didn't necessarily watch Laugh In. I mention that to note in passing a tension that exists still between two cultures in the USA, one roughly English, Yankee, the other Celt. Szarkowski was aware of Eggleston as a product of southern culture as much as he was aware that so to a product of his culture was New York born Garry Winogrand.

I do acknowledge that color photographs were "not 'elitist' within the world of fine art photography", as Phil points out. It does get difficult for me to sort it out, that Szarkowski was an elite by the position he held is separate from the question of whether he was in the pejorative sense of the word an 'elitist'. I agree that, in Phil's words, philosophical inquiry is existential in nature and not elitist, and add uncontroversally that a juxtapostion of one's social position against a loosely defined 'nature' is also found in art. Of Szarkowski's photos linked to "Hey! A barn!"

charleswood · September 23, 2015

Szarkowski: In practice a photographer does not concern himself with philosophical issues while working; he makes photographs, working with subject matter that he thinks will make the pictures.

Gordon Parks?

Norma Desmond · September 24, 2015

Charles, what are you asking about Gordon Parks? I think Szarkowski would likely recognize that plenty of photographers concern themselves with or at least have a philosophy. I'd underscore the while working in Szarkowski's statement. How many times have we heard silly statements like, "I could never philosophize about my work because I'm too in the moment when shooting to worry about such stuff"? As if the only time one could philosophize were when one was holding the camera or pushing the button. My own philosophizing doesn't substitute for all the things I do when I'm shooting, like working with subject matter, making exposure choices, noticing lighting, relating to the people I shoot. But all the philosophizing I do at night in bed or in the shower in the morning (I try to do less of the latter in an effort to conserve California's dwindling supply of water) informs my shooting even though I'm not practicing philosophy when I'm shooting.

Now, I'd take issue with Szarkowski to some extent, because I think there are chances to philosophize even while one is working. He probably overstates it. One thing I've come to appreciate over the years when reading philosophy, criticism, and artists themselves, is the art and effect of overstatement. It's provocative. The reader is often in the position of dialing back the overstatement but still being nudged by it.

It would be hard to think of one philosopher or artist I've ever read who didn't overstate some things. I think that often shows up in their work as some combination of commitment and ego, which are probably necessary to both.

charleswood · September 24, 2015

I was thinking of Gordon Parks' American Gothic where Mr. Parks in an interview said he posed his subject specifically to express an issue, a philosophical issue broadly speaking. So while working with his subject he was concerning himself specifically with philosophical issues. Parks concerned himself while working with the mop. He concerned himself with the broom. He concerned himself with the flag. Mr. Parks described his working process with his American Gothic as very much a reaction to his listening to his subject's life story and immediately putting his body into motion to make a statement about that story, juxtaposing a dream of reality (philosophy with the flag as the literal that pointed to the dream) with actual social reality at that time. In the interview he addressed the question of whether or not his American Gothic was truly a derivative work. He said that he really was thinking of Grant Wood's American Gothic when he conceived of the shot. So I thought that Gordon Parks was at least in the case of his working process with American Gothic, very much working with subject matter while working to express broadly his philosophy on human bondage and freedom and justice.

So I was offering Gordon Parks as an exception to Szarkowski's generalization or overstatement more because generalizations are generalizations and can't apply to every case. I was then trying to move the conversation forward, wasn't thinking the quote was elitist. A take away for me from that earlier discussion was that if I want to approach viewing a photograph with a method that would aid me in understanding it, I could use Szarkowski's approach of doing a visual scan of the elements, tag those elements, (borders, etc.) try and comprehend how the visual elements work alone and how those elements work in combination to try and get a sense of what a photographer is attempting to express. That's a methodology and my methodology before being schooled by Szarkowski wasn't necessarily productive.

For myself, when I think about where I want to go with my own photography, if anywhere, it is that I want to approach it more like I've grown in my woodworking. In my woodworking I began with wanting to imitate a western aesthetic in that craft. But like a Garry Winogrand when he was in school, I began to question the general rules of composition there. Why must I round corners, why must I soften rectangles into curves, why must I blend out any mistake, why must there be symmetry. When making a small box, the working rule is to leave it without a finish on the inside. But shellac will work as a finish inside a box or drawer because it will stop off gassing whereas varnish or oil will always smell bad inside a box. But philosophically, I want to see the beauty of a high gloss rubbed out finish when I open a small box, not bare wood, not felt on the bottom and that expresses a simple philosophical idea say of how beauty is on the inside where the custom is to put in box making all the emphasis on the external. So I thought, gee, it is possible in woodworking craft to make symbolic, philosophical statements and conceptual photography then became interesting to me at least in theory as I haven't seriously picked up a camera in a while. Should I pick up the camera, and I'm getting irritated enough by my neighbors to do so, I want to specifically make philosophical statements about them and for me to do so I would have to approach it in posing, in subject selection, etc., do it while I work to produce as clear a visual expression of what I am thinking philosophically as I can in my practice, while I'm working, while photographing.

A fashion photographer very much is working in philosophy when working, a philosophy of beauty and each muscle movement of the photographer works to give expression to a philosophical idea.

Norma Desmond · September 24, 2015

In terms of your project inspired by your neighbors (and, perhaps, in part uninspired by them!) and in combination with your thoughts about philosophy, your rejection of traditional woodworking paradigms, your desire to be clear, and your recognition of the value of the documentary aspects of photography, I might recommend Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. This is a later work of his and a repudiation of much of his earlier work, so much of his earlier work will give a very different picture. That self repudiation in combination with his repudiation of traditional metaphysics, might, to begin with, fit nicely with where you find yourself. His Investigations are a rejection of traditional approaches to Philosophy and can be classified as being related to the (Oxford) School of Ordinary Language Philosophy. So, for instance, in thinking about the word "reality," Wittgenstein rejects it as a definitional symbol of certain properties which philosophers had been debating for centuries. He, instead, prefers to look at how it's commonly used. Loosely and very briefly described, meaning is use and grammar as opposed to definition. His Philosophical Investigations, rather than written discursively and analytically, which is what he was steeped in earlier and how Philosophy mostly proceeded, are a series of aphorisms which seem to act more suggestively and even poetically than definitively.

Norma Desmond · September 24, 2015

How that might translate to photography is to approach the project more gesturally than symbolically.

charleswood · September 24, 2015

OK Fred I put an on line PDF of Philosophical Investigations on my favorites bar.

Phil I'm reading the Szarkowski quote out of context. I trust that you have the benefit of knowing many contexts for that quote that I don't have. My wish is that you trust me when I say that I don't read the Szarkowski quote as Szarkowski stating that photographers don't have philosophical or theoretical ideas to express in their photography. That is not my reading of that quote. That photographers do have philosophical or theoretical ideas to express is a given and I don't read Szarkowski as saying that photographers don't have such ideas to express in their photography.

"In practice a photographer does not concern himself with philosophical issues while working..."

Gordon Parks described very specifically what he was thinking and doing while working to create his American Gothic photograph. Parks said in an interview that he grabbed objects (props) with philosophical intent; while working Parks concerned himself primarily with a philosophical issue, a specific philosophical issue guiding his every muscle movement. Parks' self-described practice is different from Szarkowski's statement that "in practice a photographer does not concern himself with philosophical issues while working..." Gordon Parks did, while working to get to the point of clicking the shutter, concern himself almost exclusively on philosophical issues.

charleswood · September 24, 2015

I don't have other contexts that would allow me to understand what Szarkowski was more broadly getting at. I just have the one quote. I do acknowledge and appreciate that you have broader contexts including experiences that can enrich my appreciation of photography.

charleswood · September 24, 2015

Szarkowski - "From his photographs [the photographer] learned that the appearance of the world was richer and less simple than his mind would have guessed. He discovered that his pictures could reveal not only the clarity but the obscurity of these things, and that these mysterious and evasive images could also, in their own terms, seem ordered and meaningful."

I like that quote quite a bit. It's very open ended and suggestive.

charleswood · September 24, 2015

Got it. That too a derivative work then. I like your galleries.

thomas_k. · September 24, 2015

At what point are you done with a picture? Or, at what point are pictures done?

</blockquote>

I try to be "done" with single pictures pretty quickly and make it final. It does not mean that I'm done - I may keep going back to same idea or place working on it trough the years.

Norma Desmond · September 24, 2015

Phil, love the homage to Gothic. I much appreciate a good use of that sort of construction of a photograph!

Here's my own NSFW Am. Goth. Loosely Inspired photo:

http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17445739-lg.jpg

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