Honeydew (from "Objets de Vertu")

Yes, I have gone through Leslies portfolio and in my opinion he is more a graphic artist then a photographer. I dont think this statement will offend him either since he probably agrees.

 

Matt: here is something for you to chew on;

 

Lets say I take a picture of a vehicle passing under a street light at night. My exposure time is one second from a tripod with the only source of light being the streetlight. When I develop the film the vehicle has left a series of 50 individual consecutive images as if I had used a strobe. Now could you tell me which half of the globe (North America or Eur-Asia) the exposure took place?

 

I have made many such discoveries as I practice the art of photography. Yes it is simple physics but I did not learn it through a textbook or a classroom.

 

'art can deliver new points of view but not new knowledge'. I disagree, art can deliver new knowledge - for eg microscopic or macroscopic photos depicting structures we were previously unaware of (due to being invisible to the naked eye, or simply being novel to our eyes - NASA pics for eg). I think what Leslie is saying is that all is in the eye of the beholder/perceptor/interpreter, as if nobody can say 'this is fact/knowledge' - it is merely perception. If this is right (?) I don't agree.

 

What is, just is, outside of our perception/knowledge/interpretation. To us it is just perception yes, but irrelevant in the grander scheme nevertheless. Even if we do continually make judgements on everything based on individual perception (after all what else do we have?) The question here is about 'reality' so Leslie does have a point, but my point is that there is a reality - which resides and exists outside human perception. Just because the sun is hidden behind cloud and we can't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there. It is - fact. I suspect Leslie may have his own agenda in his photos, but he is presenting subjects for viewers to perceive in their own way, with 'reality' being non-existent.

 

On the other hand I may be barking up the wrong tree entirely (a much more realistic proposition) ..... Philosophy and speculation are interesting & sometimes fun, and 'art' Leslie appears to be saying, is a case of attaching any meaning you so desire.

 

I agree with Kyle (in this photo at least) that this is graphic design. As such this honeydew has grown on me. The melon appears to illuminate more than previously, against the dark bgrd. It looks almost detached, and if it weren't for the shadow would appear to be floating in space.

Uh-oh. Kyle M. objects: "'I'm an ithyphallic reductionist with a hard-on for physics.' Well you are only cutting yourself off at the knees. You have successfully 'reduced' a cultured object to superficial sterile image of correctness." Given the ithyphallic metonymy, let's be thankful that unkind cut comes at the knees. :-) Anyway, Kyle, are we talking about the same "reductionism"? Handy definition: reductionism posits that all human experience derives from biological processes explicable by the laws of chemistry and physics. (For a more generous view see Edward O. Wilson's recent book Consilience.) An argument or a person can be reductionist, but not a photo. This photo's simply a still life, for which the French have (naturally) a franker name: nature morte. I didn't say it, they did.

'By me, art can deliver new points of view but not new knowledge.' That is really sad to hear. The choice to deny any possible knowledge that may come from art is my definition of ignorance." Yo, I'll take knowledge wherever I can find it, but the "knowledge" that comes from art is, to be kind, illusory to be less kind, it's propaganda. With that great American C.S. Peirce, I believe that knowledge is a public matter if you can't test it or even agree on it, it ain't knowledge.

As to ignorance, well of course. Calling any human person ignorant is mere rhetoric, like saying that women are effeminate. Ignorance is the human condition.

"Some people are less ignorant and more persistent and determined and eventually break free from that proverbial cage, they are called professional artists." Nonsense: professional artists are by definition folks who live by selling their art wedding photographers, for example. Most of them are sweet guys, but I never met one who said he'd achieved satori.

Matt S. adds:"Before jumping all over Leslie for his statement, I'd want to know what he means by 'knowledge.'" (Hey, pile on, that's what I'm here for.) "Clearly, a photograph or other work can impart raw 'knowledge': a picture of two sloths mating can impart on me knowledge of how two sloths mate. A picture (artistically composed and exposed) of a sign that says 'The distance between the earth and the sun is 93 million miles' can impart that knowledge too."

Well... A camera, like our eyes, can deliver information that's new to us, if only as a photocopy of an informative text. But we were speaking about art, not photography.

"What makes 'art' special is the facility with which more subtle forms of 'knowledge,' like 'points of view,' can be transmitted."

Close, and I appreciate the sentiment, but I won't concede that a point of view is "knowledge" note that even Matt uses quotation marks.

But nobody quoted my next paragraph, which says why I think art is such hot, such necessary stuff: We're just out of the trees, and full of bush devils who will destroy us if we don't give them something to do with their hands. Art keeps our demons from tearing us to rags. Whatever comes after us will have no demons and no art. I stand by that.

My fifteen minutes will be over tomorrow, I guess, and I doubt I'll get many more comments. If I don't get another chance to say so, thanks to everybody. Sorry I can't give every comment a personal answer.

You guys probably don't know me, but I visit here and never post a comment. But since someone thinks that this photo "evokes no emotion", I just wanted to give my own feedback. I love this photo. In fact, if Leslie ever makes this available as a poster I'd get it. The first thing I saw was how the eaten up and dried up honeydew rind represented a person to me. A person going through life. You have your adventures, and at the same time you get beaten up too. But in the end you learn a lot, and truely appreciate peace.

Thanks Leslie for your very civil response to my cheap shots. I stand by my opinions although I might have been more tactful, sorry.

 

Call me un-educated, but I dont understand your last demon analogy, hence I cant take a position on it.

 

I dont want to start a religious debate here but it seems to me that your reductionist beliefs dont allow for spirit, soul, or emotion? If this is true then I can look at this picture and know that is a Leslie. In other words, I would understand the relationship or correlation between you and your art, with out the need to agree or disagree.

 

No more honeydew, as I see it... Bearly photography, rather philosophy... Maybe that's due (or dew?) to the fact that the Golden POW carriage is about to change back into a pumpkin... ooops, sorry... into a honeydew - excuse my French...

Well, that bit of philosophy, anyway, was interesting too. And loud ! So loud that it called me back to my keyboard...

 

" The arts are endlessly interesting -- what a monkey wants to see most is another monkey -- but their function is to help us dream free of our cage, and to give the artist that illusion of purpose that keeps him alive. "

Said Leslie...

As Saint-Exupery and Thomas Mann also said in other words, " Art isn't a power, it's a consolation "...

 

Well, one can disagree with this, of course, and with all the rest of this very very long page too, but I wanted at least to tell Leslie that I found this sentence very artistic indeed, and very beautiful... I leave it to philosophers, and they are many, to find out whether that was the truth or not...

 

 

I had to look it up: Satori is the spiritual goal of Zen Buddhism. (The Chinese version of this word is wu.) Satori means individual enligthtenment, or a flash of sudden awareness. Satori is also an intuitive experience. Brief experiences of enlightenment are called kenshos. The feeling of satori is that of infinite space. HMMMM - I'm a wedding photographer and I had to see what I was missing as you say "you never met a wedding photographer that had achieved "satori""... I would think none of us "achieves" "it".. until we die... But, speaking for a "wedding photographer".... I will say that I get amazing flashes of enlightenment, joy and spiritual fulfillment from my wedding work... ;-) The beauty of human emotion is a wonderful thing to capture on film and is an art in it's own right. At least the kind of non-cookie cutter type wedding work I try and achieve. Poor old wedding photographers often get bashed as non-artists... I just had to speak up for them/us.

I have to drawn the line. Do you suppose if I took an orange peel and stuck it on a background and lighted it just right it would be art? Granted this is comment is coming from a photojournalist, but really lets give credit where credit is due.

Mary B. writes: "Poor old wedding photographers often get bashed as non-artists... I just had to speak up for them/us."

Let me speak up too.As I said somewhere above, "Professional artists are by definition folks who live by selling their art wedding photographers, for example."I wasn't being flippant.As the sun sets on my fifteen minutes of fame,I'll ride off praising the unsung heroes of photography those whose work never turns up in museums because it doesn't have a revolutionary message, those who sell a long day's work for a few hundred dollars and won't ever see one of their prints on sale for $17K in a Madison Avenue gallery. Those who get a salary from the local paper, or who spend their days in a studio photographing clogs and Barcaloungers for mail-order catalogs, or who (and a special star shines for them) coddle and sweet-talk red-faced parents and wet babies into poses fit for posterity.

Some of these folks turn out wonderful work and some don't, but two things are certain: 1) If they didn't exist, the rest of us would still be using Brownies and paying a week's salary for a roll of film; and 2) admitting you're a wedding photographer or a baby photographer, or that you do product shots or take pictures of dumpsters, is guaranteed to shrink you to the size of a microbe in artsy-fartsy circles.

A week ago I happened to be in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I transcribed these helpful hints from a gloss on the wall next to three fuzzy photos of women's profiles: "In this work, Richard Prince deploys an array of strategies (rephotographing black and white advertisements using color film, cropping, enlarging, grouping according to gesture) to undermine the seeming naturalness and inevitability of the mass cultural image, revealing it to be a fiction of society's desires."What wedding photographer dare aim so high?

Michael, you would have to light the orange peel just right for it to be art.

Leslie makes an image of a melon. contrasting colour, shape and form, intent unknown. I, the viewer, overlay my perceptions based on a unique life, and take what I want from the visuals. Leslie slips away .. seeds planted. Pollack splashes paint. I see rain streaks, I feel torment, I sense desperation. others see splashed paint. I am a mathematician .. I watch the ocean and see chaos, I sense infinity. I am hopeful others see what they need to see.

Anything can be art. As long as the relevant hierarchy welcomes it as art.

 

Inspiration strikes again... I'm off to find an orange peel. Congratualations again, Leslie, on POW. I've thoroughly enjoyed this weeks thread of comments - I wish the civility we've seen this week didn't have to end.

"Better an evocation that leaves viewers moved without knowing why..."

Yes exactly. If there is knowledge to come from art (in the "understanding" end of the range of definitions of knowledge) then it must come from the viewer exercising his or her brain to find something new... for him/herself. Precision precludes passge of the ineffable.

A photo of something "more important" makes it too easy to categorize without thought. So one of the techniques of art over the last 100 years or so has been the contextual clash: viz Marcel Duchamp et al exhibiting bicycle wheels, urinals etc etc. Putting the vulgar (strict sense) in the context of hight art.

Then of course Picasso takes a pair of bicycle handlebars and produces a representation of a bull...

So why are we still fighting about "what is art" or "what is photography"? The latter in particular seems silly: The intent of photography is so wide (from scientific microscopy through to Moholy-Nagy (sp) and his photograms) that to agree on the boundaries is a) impossible and b) pointless.

In fact it's my experience that people only seek definitions of subjects or fields of endeavour because they are insecure about their contribution: "This is biology, that's just playing with computers".

So let's just get on with it and accept that while some people will see only rotten fruit, others an exercise in lighting, some will see a metaphor for life and others a Buddhist treatise on aesthetics and prejudice.

And surely this is enough for a picture of the week...

Hasn't art always been open to interpretation?

 

Whether you like or dislike a piece of art, in my opinion, is indifferent to what the artist is conveying. The work, whatever medium of art, is an expression of themselves.

 

As such, in photography, we see what another sees if only for a brief period in time. We lay witness to that photographer's vision.

 

Whether what we have been witness to is incredible beauty, or we have been visually insulted is up to us, individually.

 

I happen to like the piece very much. I enjoy the lighting, the placement of the melon in the frame, the dark blue background and the very idea of the shot.

 

I wish you continued sucess in your photographic endeavours.

 

Thank you for sharing a part of yourself, Leslie.

 

All the best,

 

James Watt

 

 

If you desire fruits of light, plant a poet into the field of photography. Congratulations Leslie!

This looks like one of those modern and random paitings that people just look at in awe for several minutes. That's why I like this so much. You look at something so simple, yet so beautiful, wondering what the hell the peice of art means!

I like the frame on the photo, and the way that yellow (honeydew?) stands out. I usually don't like how blue and yellow look together, but in this case I'll make and exception!

Beautiful simplicity. Simply beautiful.