charleswood

<p>Catherine perhaps that structure reflects first in our capacity for language?</p>

<p>Marc - "If so who bears responsibility for this - the photographer who is creating a visual description or whomever looks at the photo and reacts to it based on their own psychological make up?"</p> <p>My answer would be both.</p>

<p>Marc she writes with a broad brush and I don't take her, or myself, too seriously. And to me it would be in a series or a body of work that we might get some better sense of Ricky.</p>

<blockquote> <p>“To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.” Susan Sontag</p> </blockquote> <p>I get more out of that quote today than I did a couple years or so ago. That's due to a large extent to my having participated in discussions here in the PoP forum. So I also know that I'm getting more from photographs than I did before. For example, Brad with his photo posted here comes off to me as pointing something out to the viewer. Same as to Alan Zinn's photo, he is pointing something out, not just pointing at something for the sake of pointing at it.</p> <p>So I could rewrite Sontag: To point at people is to violate them, pointing them out as they never would seem to themselves, pointing to knowledge of them that they can never have; pointing turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed [whatever that means]. Just as a finger is a sublimation of the gun, to point at someone is subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.</p> <p>What do we do with that knowledge of someone else, knowledge of them as they would never seem to themselves? How tenderly would we point to it, if with tenderness at all? Indeed, are we that tender with each other ever, or ever so tender to our own self? And if life imitates art, what is our responsibility in our art knowing that it might be imitated in life? </p> <p> </p>

<p>Thanks for the explanation Fred.</p> <p>And I'll take a look at Being in the World Phil.</p>

<p>About looking shared, shared way of looking.</p> <p>Yeah I think I see your points of views. If I walk myself through it when thinking about what I was just doing, rubbing out a finish on a picture frame.</p> <p>A picture frame can function as a picture frame without a rubbed out finish and polishing shellac takes time. The reason I took that extra time is the reason I made the picture frame. I selected wood that with a polished finished would exhibit those woods in an exceptional way. I was also motivated by my wanting to share with others my appreciation of how those woods look with a good finish applied, the chatoyance of quarter sawn mahogany with it's shimmering ray fleck patterns best emphasized with several layers of shellac that's then polished. The point of the exercise for me is to share my enjoyment and appreciation of just how good wood can look. The point is looking shared, or to share a way of looking, and so forth.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Phil I primarily see your photograph an illustration of the richness of your mind. I can be shown what it's like to see. I'm not sure I can be taught to see that way.</p>

<p>The other point of his that Phil may be illustrating is that beauty is also to be found outside the museum. I hadn't thought he was speaking quite that literally.</p>

<p>There's a philosophical question as to whether a visual representation of a thing reveals the richness of the thing v the richness of the photographic process; or even v. the richness of the photographer's private view of the thing crystalized in the photograph. However I'm pretty sure I could go to where you where standing and directly view the pyramid beautifully conforming to your representation.</p>

<p>I like that. Don't ask me why.</p>

<p>And who knows what was the entire exchange that prompted this post. If the point of the post was to understand what might have prompted such a strong statement of dislike, tinged as it was with irrationality, then I've contributed some musings on how I think that might have all come about. A discussion about why the irrationality I propose in the alternative, not happy with an endless discussion of anything BUT the feelings and emotions that distinguish us from each other and that for being men we often, but not always, discuss in the guise of being rational when really we're just hurt.</p>

<p>It's often hard to say why I like a particular building's appearance, just as hard to say why I don't. I don't like the pyramid at the Louvre and I don't like the pyramid stadium at a local college. I just don't like them. Why? I have no idea why. If I was asked by another "Why don't you like the pyramid at the Louvre?" I might say in reply "Beats me." Or I instead might give a rational sounding reason. That reason, upon closer inspection, wouldn't stand up to reason, why would it, I just made something up to deflect the question. Not practical. Right.</p> <p>If I said of Gehry's pictured building that it didn't fit into the neighborhood, some might say to me "You're the only one who feels that way", which would be their own use of my uniformity aesthetic against me, me now the person in the neighborhood who, like the building in question, just doesn't fit in with the other buildings. Some might call me the odd building in their own quest for uniformity in aesthetic appreciativeness not even realizing a self-contradiction.</p> <p>A western aesthetic might be in part an "Oh, look at me!" based aesthetic. Look how I look, aren't I special. Isn't it great to look special and all unique?</p> <p>In contrast to that, that which might be a western aesthetic, look at the uniformity in the dress of school children in Japan, assuming that is still the case. Fit in or die is an extreme characterization of what in practice may not be such an extremely enforced aesthetic, if that is the aesthetic at all. But there is another aesthetic in Japan, I say just speculating because I really don't know much about Japan. That aesthetic has to do with the appearance of one's teeth. Beauty there is in dentation's non-uniformity. But here, in the land of individualism, if your teeth aren't uniformly placed and uniformly colored you aren't meeting a standard of beauty just for being random and different, just for being an individual and letting your individualism express itself in the placement of your teeth as nature intended. "As Nature Intended" can become an aesthetic and people with uniform teeth by nature could become the new pariah people. Long ago in Japan this controversy was temporarily settled by teeth blackening by the stevedores of cultural beauty, upper class women. Lower class women in that day, when they smiled and you could see their teeth, felt forced to then cover their mouths with the backs of their hands to hide that whatever the standard of beauty happened to be, their teeth weren't it. Note that I'm kinda of making a joke there and please don't take me too literally.</p> <p>Nevertheless, joking or not, if there is any truth in my quasi assertion that an individualistic western aesthetic is behind an appreciation of Gehry's building, then it would also be the case that different aesthetics exist where for being an individual and all uniquely expressive you just get your head cut off. Above all else don't stand out from the rest, and no one will see that you really do stand out because when your head is down on the ground, no one is looking at your teeth arranged in your mouth at least as nature intended. With head again raised you might wince a little upon seeing Gehry's building, that wince a little participation mystique with an object, where you feel it's you in some mystical sense and know that you can't behave that way and live, why should it? Remembering that here you can figuratively get your head cut off for having crooked teeth.</p> <p> </p>

<p>I feel there's some benefit to taking up another creative activity, something you've never done before, to keep things fresh, even if its say interpretive dance, yodeling, basket weaving, wood carving, etc. Something expressive and maybe a little primitive where I feel there is some cross pollination with photography as a side benefit to taking on something new with some level of commitment.</p>

<p>Got it. That too a derivative work then. I like your galleries.</p>

<p>Szarkowski - "<em>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.</em>"</p> <p>I like that quote quite a bit. It's very open ended and suggestive. </p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>OK Fred I put an on line PDF of Philosophical Investigations on my favorites bar.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>"<em>In practice a photographer does not concern himself with philosophical issues while working</em>..."</p> <p>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 "<em>in practice a photographer does not concern himself with philosophical issues while working..." </em>Gordon Parks did, while working to get to the point of clicking the shutter, concern himself almost exclusively on philosophical issues.</p> <p> </p>

<p>I was thinking of Gordon Parks' <em>American Gothic</em> 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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Szarkowski<em>: 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.</em><br> <em> </em><br> Gordon Parks?<em><br /></em><br> <em> </em><br> <em> </em></p>

<p>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.</p> <p>Phil - "Robert Frank's The Americans is the epitome of anti-elitism, both in a social and artistic context."</p> <p><br />How so? For its apparent realism? And you mean at the time of publication?</p> <p>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.</p> <p><br />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."</p> <p>Yeah, so I see him as modeling for the reader a possible stance to assume when enjoying the book.</p> <p>"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."</p> <p><br />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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.<br /> <br />Of Szarkowski's photos linked to "Hey! A barn!"</p>

<p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p> </p>

<p>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, <em>William Eggleston's Guide</em>.</p> <p><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> <br> 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. <strong><em>Eggleston's photo is a comment on that aesthetic and on her aesthetic attempt.</em></strong>"</p> <p>Now quoting from Szarkowski's forward to an Eggleston picture book: "<em>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.</em>"</p> <p>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?</p> <p>A related question, is Robert Frank's <em>The Americans</em> 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. </p> <p> </p>

<p>"Even photographs that don't have the intent of a maker behind them can have an embedded meaning."</p> <p>May we see an example?</p>

<p>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."</p> <p>Your presented series 1.</p> <p><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></p> <p>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.</p> <p><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></p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p><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></p> <p>An old graveyard. Followed in the book by this:</p> <p><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></p> <p>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.</p> <p> </p>

<p>Vices attach to people as subjects, not to trees, bushes, cars, etc. Szarkowski made the attribution of vices to people, not me.</p> <p>Phil - "There is something non ordinary about the <em>sense of place </em>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."</p> <p>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?</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p>