photography as art...

Dylan's new Album. edition #4/12 ($18,000)

riddle me this?

A painter creates one painting.
A sculptor creates one sculpture.
An architect creates one design for one final structure.
A photographer creates one negative or digital file
and then makes an edition size.

Imagine, for a second, if other artists followed that standard.
Hunter S. Thompson only sold his books in edition of 10 at $6,000
or Dylan only produced 12 CD's for his latest album at $18,000.

how much that would suck? I know I'd definitely be attending more of
Dylan's live shows for $40.

Just a thought.

note: I know I'd splurge for a Pieter Hugo print at $80! and if only 5,000 others did as well.... you do the math.

fuck taking pictures

Me and my brother getting a "photo with the parrot". My bro is the geeky one. Circa 1981 in NYC at some (obviously classy) restaurant in Little Italy. Photo by the Landscapist (my father)

This past Monday I drove the 5 hours to NYC to listen to Gregory Crewdson speak at the Guggenheim. I wasn't sure what I'd enjoy or relate to from this lecture. Crewdson's process and mine couldn't be more polar. He shoots with complete film-like crews, a director of photography, lighting out the whazoo, models, etc... I shoot alone with a duct-taped $35 tripod, natural lighting, self-portrait, etc... (oh and the $50k price tag difference in our work too). I guess you could say that I am the anti-crewdson of mise en scene photography.

So what a surprise it was for me to hear the similarities between himself and myself spout from his lips during the talk. Besides watching reality TV shows, what stood out most was the way he felt about his photos and picture making in general. Like my post a few weeks ago (link) where I proclaimed that I hate people with camera's or general picture taking after I took a typical Adirondack landscape, Crewdson admitted how uncomfortable he felt holding a camera. He talked about how he would much rather enjoy time with his family and children in the "actual moment", rather than viewing them through some viewfinder or fiddling with a camera. I feel the same way, that is why you'll rarely ever see any evidence of my vacations, exhibit openings, family get togethers', etc... unless the family member or friend accompanying me emails me their images of the event (link).

Luckily I also have the Flavor Flav of photographers (if Flav wore SLR's instead of clocks) living within 35 miles from me and his grandson. So family portraits/snapshots (see opening photo) are not hard to acquire.

More importantly than the refusal or disconnection of family snapshots and point and click type photography, were the reasons why he (and I) actually enjoys taking photos when he does take them. For him it was this "moment of stillness" for a few seconds after all the models were ready, camera was set, everyone was quiet and he makes the call to his camera director to shoot. I don't have a moment of silence during my shoots, but I do have 10-20 minutes of creative and emotional release during which I am making up my narratives on the spot, unplanned and in unfamiliar settings. It takes a lot of internal dialogue, gut reaction, and creativity to compose one of my scenes in this manner and it is the quintessential reason I do what I do. Even if I didn't produce a final image (which in some cases I don't get one), or if I never had my work seen in so many exhibits in such a short amount of time since I started shooting, I would still need that outlet or release. It's that internal artistic need to communicate.

One other point he made that I never thought about before is how after the whole process is over and the images are seen by others or exhibited, the attachment to them is gone. It's almost like viewing someone else's work. I again completely understand and can relate to that. That moment in the photograph, was for me, just that single moment. I don't read into the image anymore and I don't feel any emotions when viewing them, other than enjoying them aesthetically perhaps. I guess you could say in that way I am a typical manly man who after photographic coitus, just rolls over and doesn't cuddle?

With that said...I was happily satisfied by the lecture and it made the 10 hour round trip drive worth it.

Why I shouldn't watch Fox News

Occasionally I tune into Fox News just to make my blood boil, much to my wife's chagrin. So with that said, last night as I lay awake in bed trying to fall asleep around 2am I tuned into Fox News. I tuned in to the lovely [clears throat]...errr, I mean insanely insensitive [insert c-word here] anchor named Julie Banderas who was anchoring the late night live coverage of Gustav's Approach on the Gulf Coast.

They had live remotes going on in various locations in the region and one of those included a live view of Lake Pontchartrain. Normally a tranquil, smooth as glass lake, Pontchartrain was now brewing with 3 foot waves crashing over it's shores. At one point in the lull (who would guess that during a 24 hour news network there would be a lull?), she actually had the audacity to ask to go back to that live coverage at Pontchartrain because viewer's were "psyched by the excitement that was growing there".

Let me repeat she thought it was great that viewers were "psyched by the excitement that was growing there".

As if somewhere in the world a small group of folk (from the nearly 2 million evacuees) were sitting around a TV set in a Red Cross Shelter with bean dip and nachos high fiving each other in anticipation of what will happen next? What the fuck?

I believe Americans love to see sensationalism and tragedy, I don't understand it, but I believe there is a population that does. But to make a completely fucking insenstive comment like that on a reputable national news station [chokes on cigarette] is just flat out fucked up.

Anyway... I'll get back on track to photography discussion soon after I catch up on emails and work that I missed over the long U.S. holiday weekend. But for now, I've got to go tune into the O'Reilly Factor.

Swift's fictive self-portraiture poetry

Haply you judge these lines severely writ
Against the proud usurpers of the pit;
Stay while I tell my story, short, and true;
To draw conclusions shall be left to you;

Jonathan Swift, "to mr. congreve" 1693

I wish I could have transcribed my own work this well. Alas, my gift is for the lens, not pens...

excerpt from page 107 in "Contemporary Studies of Swift's Poetry" By John Irwin Fischer

"Perhaps most significant of Swift's reasons for writing his poetry of fictive self-portraiture is the desire to leave a record of himself to combat what he described in the "Ode to the Athenian Society" as "Careless and Ignorant Posterity".

In some part Swift may have wanted to "turn private crisis into public example" as Geoffrey Hill suggests, but in the main his self-absorption seems more personal, more a question of mastering private crisis by establishing his own version of it. By controlling in art what he knew could not be controlled in reality, Swift could exorcise those threats to the self that he found so fearful, those judgements – whether malicious, uninformed, or merely imagined – which gave him less than his due.

Swift's poetry of fictive self-portraiture is a response to what Robert C. Elliott calls the satirist's "primordial demand" for overcoming, through ordering and controlling within the verbal universe of his art, those fears and confusions inspired by the self's troubling encounters not only with the world but with its own spirit as well."

"great scott!"

© Gustave Courbet: 'Self Portrait (The Desperate Man)'


I guess I missed out on the big photographic SP movement that was 20 years ago. Apparently "For the better part of the last few decades, self-portraits haven't been a part of contemporary artistic production".

Self-portraits go populist

from Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog

A couple of weeks ago I signed up for Facebook and Twitter. One of the first thing both sites asked me to do was to upload a picture of myself. Well, that seemed a little overly familiar, so I supplied both with a fantastic 1906 Matisse self-portrait from the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen. A week later I became Pierre Bonnard.

Once upon a time self-portraiture was an artistic staple. Self-portraits are some of the most famous, recognizable work by Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Courbet, Picasso, Beckmann, Warhol and hundreds of other artists. For the better part of the last few decades, self-portraits haven't been a part of contemporary artistic production. There's Chuck Close, there's Cathy Opie and after that the field thins. (The most common contemporary self-portraits are the distanced, filtered, Cindy Sherman/Nikki S. Lee/Matthew Barney type.)

Enter Facebook and Twitter, which have been where self-portraits go to live. While artists are increasingly disinterested in self-portraits, the rest of us are in love with them. At right is part of my Facebook friends lineup. It's got it all: Straightforward head shots, quirkiness, a picture of a tech geek with a satellite telescope in the background, legs, and look-how-casual-I-am. My Facebook pals are using their self-portraits to tell us something about them... which is not so different from what artists have done for hundreds of years. Picasso was reminding us that he's an artist and a worker. Courbet's self-portrait is image-as-marketing. Opie shares her journey from 1994's leathergirl to today's mom (and by so doing reminds us of changes in GLBT America).

At some point self-portraits will come back. Art history as a way of pulling artists back in, if only as a way of allowing themselves to measure themselves against the past. Gerhard Richter's 1996 self-portrait 1632 vs. 1669). There's this Las Meninas-referencing 2005 David Hockney too. Richter and Hockney waited until they were old enough to compare themselves -- if Richter made a self-portrait before 1996, when he was 64, I can't think of it. When 23-year-old David Hockney made a self-portrait, he hid any obvious reference to self. ('48' = David Hockney. 'D' is the fourth letter of the alphabet, 'H' is the eighth. Hockney pictured himself with '23 23,' Walt Whitman.)

I'm not suggesting that Caryn Coleman-on-her-couch-reading is destined for MoMA. But when artists are surrounded with self-portraits at every digital turn, it's easy to understand why they don't bother to compete with their cousin's camera phone-as-self-promotion. Thanks to technology, we're all Courbet.

From Blovius...

-15° Fahrenheit self portrait while smoking of course, 2007

These quotes were mentioned this morning on my father's blog. He has no problem telling people his honest opinion. I, however, will just share these two quotes and not feel the need to tell you that you just might suck at picture taking. Chime in if you have an opinion on these quotes...either here or on his blog here.

"The type of photographs you make, the subjects you single out, reveal the person inside of you."

"Of what use are lens and light to those who lack in mind and sight?"

I can say that I agree 90% of the time with quote #1, but if it is 100% accurate, then someone please explain what this series (a favorite of mine) says about the photographer and the person inside of him:

Bill Sullivan's "More Turns"

The Polaroid Kid

I'd just like to point out, while there is some good discussion on schooling vs. non-schooling, that I was very apprehensive about even attempting to forge a path into the art world because of the overwhelming influence a degree has on curators, collectors, gallery owners, etc...

It's hard to find a review of a prominent photographer that doesn't include "and the artists depiction of early dutch rennaissance painters is very well presented by his/her use of the lighting and colors reflective of..." blah blah blah. I didn't think anyone could make a name for himself/herself without this line of tripe inserted into their artist statement or bio.

The one artist that really inspired me to keep on keepin' on was Mike Brodie (aka The Polaroid Kid). No formal training, just an sx-70 and a bunch of stolen (yes, stolen) time zero film, and leaving the nest at 18 to train hop with friends around the country. No ambition of making the "big leagues" of photography and I wonder if he ever even thought about photography more than just documented his travels?

His level of straightforwardness is great as evidenced in this outtake of comments on a blog about his work where he (the artist himself) chimed in to argue his case to a non-fan of his work. How do you think the art world felt about that? But Brodie doesn't give a shit and that's fucking great! (pardon the language, but I assume most of my readers are over 15 years of age)...

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For some reason.....This annoys me and kind of makes me angry. Im not sure how to sort it out yet. Maybe......it's because all of this is self imposed. Like self imposed "look at me and how rough I have it." Maybe not. Maybe its anger at the way things are in this country that makes people have to go find some life like this just to feel like they have a war of their very own. I'm not really "trying" to pass judgement, it's just something that seems strange to me. Someone who actually grew up in poverty and busted ass to get out of that. Great Photos.

-The Hyena

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HYENA

I feel what yer saying - it obviously comes from your gut. Since im not the most educated person its kind of a way i deal with shit, from the gut. But given the context that these photos are presented in theres ALOT of room for misconceptions to be made. Notice not ones have i ever metnioned poverty, the poor, hobos, bums, struggle, etc. those are in the comments. Art is wierd that way, think of music, half of the songs i hear i cant even understand the lyrics to and when i can i dont even get them usually, i just apply them to my own life as i see fit, i make shit up. I guess some types of photography have less room for that kind of interpretation, especially when its photos of a culture thats percieved as "sacred" or something. People think of freight trains and they want to think of the depressions years, but fact is- it went on and on and on, train riding that is. None of my friends ride trains because they cant afford a plane ticket, they just like the way Mt. Shasta looks at 7am with the cold air blowing against their face, or shitting in the woods, or eating out of cans. I think its just the stares that giving people the ideas of destitution. So yeah, truth is, this is ALL very strange.

brodiebike

Justine Reyes

Before I introduce you to Justine Reyes, I'd like to point out a trend I have recently noticed. Being ever so watchful for self portrait photography and finding new ones, I have discovered that a vast majority tend to be female... Cindy Sherman, Francesca Woodman, Kate Pollard, and Susanne Junker to name a few off the top of my head.

Maybe it's just me? Maybe there are more men than women? I'd like to research this more and if that is indeed the trend, I'll have to spark a conversation on here to rationalize why that is?

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That being said, here is the work of Justine Reyes... You can find her images scattered about after a google search, but there was no real homepage for her.

There is power in the photographs of Justine Reyes. Behind their veils, these women are hauntingly ancient and sexual. Pantyhose fetish takes on the proud, dark eroticism of Spanish Baroque. The eyes are piercing and provocative. Through gauzy nylons and lace, they peer with unblinking directness wantonly out at any taker. —She is your willing victim, perhaps, who owns you; or the one who will kill you, slowly, to your infinite pleasure.


“The mystery that the veil or mask creates,” says the artist, “is one that is highly sexualized. There is a tension created by veiling. Some people are afraid of not knowing what lies beneath the veil. In this work, I use the mask to explore issues of identity, veiling and the gaze in relationship to power and sexuality.”

Well scratch my back with a hacksaw!

The elephants have reps!


Medium: acrylic on elephant dung paper
Dimensions: 22" x 30"
Unframed
Available $500

And if you think it's just untrained spattering, think again. The elephant Paya from Thailand does Self Portraits!!!

to manipulate or not?

is it wrong to manipulate? I'm not sure why it would be? everyone else seems to be doing it.

There was an amazing sky today at lunch, so I took a panoramic of it. Then I roughly placed it into an image of mine that had ample headroom and I must admit that I like the outcome. I love the "ultra" real or 3d-like quality it adds to the image. Plus, I took both photographs, so I don't feel bad about a fake final scene. Bear in mind, this was roughly put into position...the proportion and angle and stitching would need refinement of course, but you get the gist of it.

ET Self-portraits...

Some ask with all the photographers out there shooting today and those that have come before them, "is there anything that hasn't been done or photographed before?"...

The answer is of course, yes, but if you were thinking of catching a ride with NASA to get some cool extraterrestrial self-portraits. Think again. It's already been done. Now I just hope the Mars rovers "Spirit" and "Opportunity" don't cash in on a martian cinemascape before I do!

Social Psyche

In my first post, I mentioned an article that talked about diagnosing the self-portrait, in which the artist is the one being diagnosed. If you have ever seen my work, you might have presumed a few things about me from the "darkness" of my images. I've read reviews or received emails commenting about how forboding and disturbing the scenes are. Not "seem to be", but "are". To me, being the keeper of the true stories behind my work, I just sit back and enjoy watching how the human psyche works, not my own. It is apparently so easy to look at my images and assume the worst. But why is that? Do those comments come from people who watch too much television, whether it be Fox News or the latest Rob Zombie flick? Or from people who live in the posh abodes of gated communities? I sometimes wonder what the homeless person or an inner city school kid's impression would be?

I'll take this moment in this blog platform to share with my small audience the true story behind one image in particular that draws a lot of assumptions of horror and gore.

first the image...
"and now for the rest of the story" - Paul Harvey (ABC news legend)

When I was 16 years old, living on the Northside of Pittsburgh, PA., my friends and I would spend our summer evenings taking swigs from a half gallon jug of Wild Irish Rose (the $6 vintage bottle of course or Hobo wine) down behind the H.J. Heinz factory. We usually did this under a highway overpass on the decommissioned (let me stress decommissioned or this could have been a horror story) railroad tracks that ran along the Allegheny River.

This is a reenactment of one of those times. I do believe that day in particular it was fairly hot and humid, and my belly was probably empty. That combined with a few pints of wine and I was done. Out for a short nap. It just so happened that my friend had a curfew (once the street lights came on, his ass was supposed to be home). Instead of taking the time to wake me, he just took off. Obviously fearing the repercussion of a lashing from his father for being late, more than the concern of leaving me where I was.

I have taken some liberty with this image from my memory of the event, because after all what's a good story without some exagerration. I am almost certain that I was probably wearing shoes, and perhaps a shirt as well. I also don't think (?) I ended up lying face first on the rocks...but I cannot be certain of that? The memory is dark and fuzzy, and so is the reenactment.

I love the fact that people like to look at my images and see what they want and that they are all open to intepretation. That is after all one of the reasons I love to shoot and share my stories. But I just can't help but to wonder what type (social class, ethnicity, nationality, etc...) of viewer see's one scenario and if someone completely different has a completely opposite reaction?

everyone can shoot themselves...

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