Alfred Stieglitz' quarterly journal Camera Work can now be found on-line. The on-line archive includes issues from #1, Jan 1903 to #50 Jun 1917. I believe this is the entire run of the journal. This era is when photography was coming into its own as a serious art form and this journal was a pioneer and strong advocate for that position. If you are looking for something to do in this winter of our discontent (Dec 2020 and into 2021) each of these issues make for fascinating, educational, and inspirational reading and viewing. Even the ads for photographic equipment at the end of each issue keep my attention.
Here is the link: Camera Work.
The images are grim, in that I find no joy in what he sees and chooses to express.
My life is too short and precious to pander to that attitude.
The above comments were made by someone regarding the book The Americans by Robert Frank. The Americans is a book of black and white photographs shot by Robert Frank, published in 1958, and with an introduction written by Jack Kerouac of On the Road fame. The comments were made in an on-line discussion group in which I participate, following the death in September 2019 of Mr. Frank at age 94. They represent a personal opinion and are therefore perfectly legitimate, neither 'right' nor 'wrong'. Quite likely this opinion of Frank's book would be in the majority. In any case, what follows is a cleaned-up and slightly expanded version of my response to the comment poster originally written back in Sep 2019.
To the commenter: I certainly don't wish to fault or criticize your opinion of Frank's photography but the sentiment expressed in your two sentences troubles me personally. I haven't seen The Americans in decades so have forgotten most of it. I've seen maybe a half dozen of the images in the past few days with the announcement of Frank's passing. For me personally, it was photography of this sort along with the work of Eisenstadt and the other Life Magazine and depression era photographers that influenced me greatly as I came of age in the 1960s. Yes, one can in general, and with one word, describe his (and much work of these other photographers) photographs as 'grim' but they do portray fundamental aspects of the day-to-day human condition. I don't experience 'joy' in looking at such work but I experience an inner prodding to reflect on the human condition. Also, while 'joy' may not be in strong visual evidence I sense a strength of character in many of the faces of those portrayed, in their dealing with the circumstances and situations in which they reside, that I admire and am compelled to sympathize with. Perhaps it's imagined but pondering the human condition revealed in these sorts of photographs is more meaningful to me - and a better use of my short life - than gazing at images of the 'joy' I see in the smiling faces of folks posing for selfies and group shots in front of this or that monument or geologic wonder. And while I might find some momentary joy in looking at books of sunrise and sunset landscape photographs from Iceland, Tierra del Fuego, or Alaska I don't get nearly the same satisfaction that I do looking at Frank's and other similar sorts of works. That's my quick two cents, and given my wonder and and amazement at the variety of humanity, I respect your two cents as well. I thank you for sharing it and prompting me to think more about it and to write out my muddled thoughts.
"The past, the 20th Century
Throughout my education in the early second half of the 20th century I excelled in mathematics and the sciences. The humanities were always a drag on my grade point average but I still opted for more such courses than the minimal requirements. In mathematics Platonic idealism and Aristotelian logic reign supreme. But in college, majoring in mathematics and minoring in mechanical engineering, I was drawn in my leisure time to the literature of Dostoyevsky, Kafka, and Camus among others. From this inclination I discovered the related existential school of philosophy. In my final semester as an undergraduate I arranged with the Philosophy Department for a one semester “special study” course in existentialism. Existentialism was, and is, more of a literary trend and an outlook on life than a philosophical school. Its variations span the religious gamut from atheism to Christianity and Judaism. The ideas of existentialism had their birth in the 19th century in response to the industrial revolution and the advances in science fostering the alienation of the individual in an increasingly mechanized society. It gained further prominence in the first half of the 20th century resulting from the continuation of the mechanization, the rise of totalitarian governments and the other dramatic events that occurred in those decades and which brought to the fore the absurd quality of human existence. Existentialism responded to the conflicts between the rational and irrational components of our being. It reached its apotheosis in the 1940’s, in particular through the work of Jean Paul Sartre who coined the characterization of existentialism as “existence precedes essence”. Given the environment in which existentialism had its birth and the anxieties surrounding our individual existence that it seeks to address, most folks would say it offers a rather morose response to our predicament – and there’d be some accuracy in such an assessment.
By the early 1970’s when I came along existentialism was already in decline but for me personally the ideas, the outlook, resonated. As I look back on that time I realize that my inclinations in photography, which took serious hold in my early teens and predated my college exposure to the literature and the name, already had a strong ‘existentialist’ component. As a viewer I was drawn to the work of the depression era photographers such as Dorothea Lange, to the European street photographers, to the book “The Americans” by Robert Frank, the photo essays in Life magazine, and in particular those works that depicted seemingly alienated individuals living in a world not of their making, a world in which their essence as humans was subsumed beneath the anxieties of addressing their basic existence. Without doubt this photography played a part in shaping my philosophic outlook on life.
I would characterize the works of the mid-20th century painter Edward Hopper as having an existentialist leaning. It would not be surprising to me discover that there have been more than one master's degree thesis written characterizing the existentialism embodied in Hopper's work (although I have no explicit knowledge of such).
The present, the 21st Century
Today existentialism is little more than a historic artifact of the previous two centuries. Post-modernism is in vogue and most everyone suppresses their life anxieties via their cell phone and the internet. With the ascendancy of “Big Data” and “Artificial Intelligence” it seems the irrational side of our natures has been completely conquered. In the dawning 3rd decade of the 21st century, man’s essence is reduced to an algorithm. For me, I have completed a scientific career with the Department of Defense, I am a happily married father and grandfather, I too should have moved on and to a large extent I have. But in some ways I am an intellectual anachronism. I remain a child of the mid-20th century, one who is fascinated by the deep questions of how and why we are here and for whom the purely scientific response is inadequate. Like Dostoyevsky’s man writing his “Notes From Underground” I find this modern day Crystal Palace of AI and BigD more than a little troubling. In the middle of the night the plays of Samuel Beckett, the musings of Soren Kierkegaard, and the novels of Kafka and Camus still strike a chord with me.
My “humanities”, right brain side finds its outlet in photography. Whenever I’m asked what I like to photograph it is a struggle for me to articulate what it is that attracts me to a scene and compels me to frame a composition. Reflecting on this question, it has become clear that on a subliminal level it is my own sense of alienation and the absurd nature of human existence that draws me in to a scene and that I seek to portray in most everything at which I point my camera. Although I’ve never gone out on a photo excursion with this as a conscious intent, and until recently I was not consciously aware of its influence, that subtext was there and it has always been there, of that I am now certain.
Addendum
After having written the above on the status of existentialism in the 21st Century I am coming to the conclusion that perhaps I was wrong and that existentialism may not be simply a dead artifact from previous centuries. I am not alone (but of course a true existentialist revels in being 'alone'). I am noticing what appears to be a resurgence of interest in existentialism among the 'intelligentsia'. In particular there have been several recent books written on Kierkegaard and Camus. I read one on Camus, "A Life Worth Living" by Robert Zarestsky and I can recommend it. I even discovered that there is a philosophical video game, made around 2014, whose characters are loosely based on existentialist philosophers such as Sartre, Kierkegaard, and others. See this link Nier: Automota for details. Who'd a thought.
I have self-published a coffee-table book of photographs. The book has 118 photographs, 118 pages (that is a coincidence, there are some pages of text and no photos and some pages have more than one photo per page). It also has nine haiku's written by me to introduce each of the nine sections. You can preview the book here
Should you wish to see it and hold it in your hands, or purchase one, contact me. You can purchase it directly from Blurb, the on-line publisher but be advised the coffee-table hardback cost is $170.00! You can also purchase a pdf digital version for $24.99.
I recently read the book Hold Still, A Memoir with Photographs, by photographer Sally Mann. I recommend it. Sally is not just a very talented and creative photographer but a remarkable writer as well. Sally is a product of the south, the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, where she has lived all of her life – except for her school years – and she fits well into the rich tradition of the many remarkable writers from the south. Her choice of words is precise and her descriptions are vivid. This book weaves family history going back several generations, autobiography, very poignant tales of race relations in the 20th century south, descriptions of the Shenandoah Valley, the creative process in art and photography into a single whole that kept me captivated throughout. I found it inspirational.
Sally is a large format film photographer and she discusses her projects that have continued into the first decade of the 21st century. She gained fame and somewhat infamy in the early 1990’s when her project Immediate Family went on public display. It consisted of photographs of her three young children, from birth to about 10 years of age, some of which showed the children nude. The photographs are captivating, large format black and white images depicting the innocence of youth. But, somewhat understandably, some folks were offended. How could a mother put such images on public display? Is this not child abuse? Understandably, this project has the most words among her project discussions. The thinking and motivation that went into it, the surrounding controversy, the impact on her family, and her reactions and defense are covered in the book. Like her family photography, her writing about herself and her family holds nothing back.
To make my case that the book is inspirational and her writing exquisite, here are three short quotes from the book that I copied out and added to my (long) list of quotations worth keeping and reflecting on in the future (a list that includes words from Montaigne, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Kafka and others). I think you will agree these thoughts are rich in ideas for photographers, and actually for everyone, to ponder and discuss. They are precisely and concisely written and each would make a great topic for an essay or blog posting, taking a pro or con position.
In response to one critic’s complaint about a photograph in Immediate Family, she writes:
How can a sentient person of the modern age mistake photography for reality? All perception is selection, and all photographs – no matter how objectively journalistic the photographer's intent – exclude aspects of the moment's complexity. Photographs economize the truth; they are always moments more or less illusorily abducted from time's continuum.
Sally Mann, Hold Still, p. 151
The following two snippets are from the book's preface and again, I just find them to be sublime and profound:
I tend to agree with the theory that if you want to keep a memory pristine, you must not call upon it too often, for each time it is revisited, you alter it irrevocably, remembering not the original impression left by the experience but the last time you recalled it. With tiny differences creeping in at each cycle, the exercise of our memory does not bring us closer to the past but draws us farther away.
Sally Mann, Hold Still, p. xii
Photography would seem to preserve our past and make it invulnerable to the distortions of repeated memorial superimpositions, but I think that is a fallacy: photographs supplant and corrupt the past, all the while creating their own memories.
Sally Mann, Hold Still, p. xiii
Not all of her photography is to my liking, some of it is too graphic and gritty for my taste. Immediate Family is not in this category. There is no need for me to further expound on my likes and dislikes here. Like all good artists she pushes boundaries, the reader should be prepared to have his or her boundaries challenged.
To conclude, I found a personal connection with Sally as well. We were both born the same year and came of age in the tumultuous 1960’s. Our introduction to photography also bore some similarities, both of us getting our first cameras, an old Leica, from our fathers in our teen years. She lists Steichen's The Family of Man as a book she came across in her teens that inspired her, the same happened to me. Finally she married at age 19, the age my wife was when we got married. Sally is still married to the same person as am I, we are both past our 40th anniversaries.
When someone from east of Nevada hears the word 'California', images of beaches, of youthful males and females in bathing suits splashing in the surf, of actors driving expensive convertibles on LA freeways, of San Francisco streetcars, of dotcom moguls sipping Napa wine and tranquil sunsets over the Pacific come to mind. Yes, these generic images describe a diverse land with lots of glitz and glitter, but there is another entirely different face of California. A drive down US 395 just west of the Nevada line and east of the majestic Sierra Nevada Mountains will give the visitor from “back east” an entirely different picture of the geography and inhabitants of our most populous state.
From Oct 22 - 27, 2015, my wife and I went on a mini-vacation to the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. This is a vast and largely rural area but it affords amazing opportunities for sightseeing and viewing. One can find remarkable and unique geology, plant and animal environments, and the resulting plants and animals that inhabit the region, along with remnants of the hardy people – Native Americans, explorers, miners, ranchers and farmers – who passed through or settled it throughout our nation’s history. Given all these elements it comes as no surprise that this region affords many great opportunities for photographers to capture unique and inspiring images. In this note I lay out our itinerary for a whirlwind five day visit that brought us into contact with a large swath of the area, to include places to stay and eat, approximate cost, and things to see and photograph along the way. I should add that I have been to this region several times previously (and I hope to return many more times in the future) so this five day trip in no way does justice or provides the time to experience everything it has to offer. But if all one has is five days and wants a good sampling of the the eastern Sierra Nevada, the plan laid out here is not unreasonable, or if one has more than five days or is revisiting, what is laid out here can be useful as well.
Given the size of the region and the sparsity of roads, to maximize what one can see in a limited time a loop route – starting and stopping at the same place – is insufficient. So the route laid out here has one starting at the northern end, in Reno, NV, and driving south along the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, primarily along US395, to the town of Lone Pine, CA, where it turns south east driving through Death Valley National Park (NP) and into Las Vegas for the tours end. Thus for my wife and I, from our home airport outside Baltimore we booked an outbound flight to Reno-Tahoe Airport and a return flight from Las Vegas. We then booked a one-way rental car from Reno-Tahoe to Las Vegas McCarran Airport. The five days of the rental car with a one-way drop-off from Enterprise Car Rental came in at less than $200.00. This was a real bargain! Getting such a rate again is most likely impossible but that's OK, I'd do the route again at 3 or 4 times the rental car cost.
Before I get into the details, here are a few of the highlights from along the route that illustrate what makes this area special and why five days is not nearly enough time to experience everything that you will pass through or that will be tempting nearby.
Virginia City, NV: the famous mining town that sprung up in the 1850’s with the discovery of the Comstock Lode silver deposits and which was immortalized in the TV show “Bonanza”.
Bodie, CA: an amazingly preserved gold mining town from the mid-19th and early 20th century, frozen in time and preserved today as a ghost town. Bodie is a Calif State Park and there is a $5/person admission fee.
Mono Lake: a large saltwater lake with large exposed tufa formations that were formed when the lake was much larger and deeper. There is a $3/person fee to visit the south Tufa formations along the lake.
The eastern side of Yosemite NP: a natural wonder that deserves its own multi-day visit. There is the usual National Park entry fee to be paid on entry to Yosemite proper.
Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest: this is the home of the oldest living thing on the planet with trees still alive known to be over 4000 years old. This is a $3/person (to a max of $6) per adult fee.
Mt. Whitney: the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states.
The Alabama Hills: an amazing geological formation in the Sierra foothills, the location for many western movies and TV shows from the mid-20th century.
Death Valley NP: a natural wonder that deserves its own 5 day visit. There is the usual National Park entry fee to be paid on entry to Death Valley NP.
Although it was not specifically planned, given the dates of our trip in late October I knew there was some possibility of fall colors. Since I live in the northeastern US I expect that the best fall color photography is in my backyard and the eastern Sierra have much more enticing photo ops than fall colors. But, it turns out we were there when fall colors were at or near their peak and given the majesty of the Sierra Nevada Mountains as backdrop, I expended a good portion of my photographic energy on photographing yellow and red aspen and cottonwood trees. Spring is also a good time for a photography visit given the possibility of wild flowers blooming. In winter, and into early spring, all the roads at elevation are closed due to snow, this includes Yosemite (Tioga Pass), Bodie, and the Bristlecone Pine Forest.
Finally, to conclude this preface,
Itinerary
Lodging rates given are approximate, one room for two, w/o tax (estimate tax at ~10%)
Fly Baltimore, MD, to Reno, NV, arrive approximately 9PM
Overnight Reno, NV: Hyatt Place at the Reno-Tahoe Airport
Afternoon drive Reno to Bridgeport via Virginia City, 125 miles
Stops for sightseeing/photography in Virginia City, NV
Overnight Bridgeport , CA: Silver Maple Motel $99.00 (nice, clean, friendly, continental breakfast)
Another interesting place to lodge in Bridgeport (note that I did not stay here) looks to be the Bodie Hotel. The proprietress, Jean, saw me photographing the exterior and invited me inside to photograph the interior of unoccupied rooms. It looked like one imagines how rooms in old west hotels would look (see the pics in my Sierra gallery), in other words it had lots of character and could make for a memorable stay.
Highlight of this area: Bodie Ghost Town State Park ($5/person entry fee)
Sidetrips to Bodie and Twin Lakes, CA
Additional stops for fall colors photography along US395
Bridgeport to Bodie, 24 miles but 1 hour travel time (final 3 miles are gravel, suitable for any car)
Bridgeport to Annett’s Mono Village at Twin Lakes via Twin Lakes Road: 27 miles roundtrip
Overnight Lee Vining, CA: Lee Vining Motel $70.00 (you get what you pay for, look elsewhere unless you really want to save money - we didn't necessarily want to go cheap but oh well, we didn't have this blog)
Highlight of Lee Vining: Mono Lake (note that Bodie is also within short drive of Lee Vining)
Sidetrips to eastern Yosemite NP via Tioga Pass on CA120
Sidetrips along June Lake Loop for fall colors, CA158
Photography everywhere – Mono Lake, June Lake Loop, Tioga Pass, etc
Lee Vining to Olmstead Overlook in Yosemite NP via CA120 and Tioga Pass, 30 miles
Lee Vining to Bishop via June Lake Loop & Benton Hot Springs along US395-CA158-US395-CA120-US6: 140 miles
Overnight Bishop, CA: Creekside Inn $130.00 (very nice, substantial breakfast, worth the expense)
Highlight of this location: Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest (outside Big Pine, CA)
Additional highlight: Manzanar WWII Japanese Internment Camp
Bishop to Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest via Big Pine along US395-CA168: 45 miles
Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest to Lone Pine along CA168-US395: 74 miles
Overnight Lone Pine, CA: Dow Villa Hotel & Motel $87.00 for room in hotel (nice, clean, comfortable). The hotel is historic, and many movie/TV personalities have lodged here (1940’s – 1950’s) while filming westerns in the nearby Alabama Hills
Highlight of Lone Pine: Alabama Hills and entrance road to Mt. Whitney
Stops for photography in Death Valley Junction and Tecopah
Route through Death Valley NP merits multi-day visit but we’ve been here before so except for a pass-through it was not on our “stop and visit” list this time.
Lone Pine to Shoshone via CA136-CA190-CA127 through DVNP and Death Valley Junction: 162 miles
Shoshone to Las Vegas through Tecopah via CA127-Old Spanish Trail Highway-NV160-I15: 90 miles
Finally, fly Las Vegas, NV, to Baltimore, MD, departing Las Vegas at 4:40PM arriving BWI at midnight.
Meal Suggestions with approximate price or price range
Taste rating scale: Blah, OK, Good, Very Good, Outstanding, Excellent
Reno: Peg’s Glorified Ham and Eggs
Outstanding skillet breakfasts with southwest flair (chili relleno, tamales, etc), $8
Bridgeport: Burger Barn
Outstanding hamburgers, $5 - $9
Lee Vining: Nicely’s Diner
Good breakfasts, $5 - $9
Blah coffee
Lee Vining: Latte Da Coffee Shop
Very good breakfast sandwiches $5
Very good coffee
Bishop: Back Alley Bowling Alley. Yes you can still find great food in the lounge of a Bowling Alley. Is this a great country or what?
Excellent Fried Chicken, $12
Very good Ribeye Steak, $24
Bishop: Erick Schat’s Bakery. You have to see this place to believe it! As one who loves good bread and baked goods, I was in 7th heaven.
Excellent pastries
Very good sandwiches
Lone Pine: Texas Barbecue (across street from Dow Villa Motel)
Outstanding beef brisket
Shoshone, CA: Crowbar Café and Saloon
Very good breakfast omelets, outstanding pancakes!
Vivian Maier was, in my estimation, a photographer of the first rank. She was a "street photographer", taking photographs of the random scenes she encountered while out and about on city streets, mainly the streets of New York and Chicago. Vivian had a day job that was not photography, she worked most of her life as a nanny for a well-to-do family. Thus one could call her an amateur photographer, but there was nothing amateur about her vision, her timing, and her technical prowess when it came to composing a picture, focusing, exposing and pressing the shutter release. She made captivating images of life being lived from the 1950's through the turn of the century. I personally can't get enough of her photographs, of the faces, the eyes, the expressions she encountered and froze in time forever. I find myself wondering about the people in the photographs and what became of them, how did their lives turn out after that 1/125 second encounter with Vivian, what were they like before the encounter? But each photograph also has me reflecting on and admiring Vivian herself, each image speaks to me of the awareness and empathy she had for her fellow man, of the tenderness that must have flowed from her, the prescience she had to recognize such scenes as those she photographed occurring in real time. However, it also appears (to me, but I have no concrete information to substantiate this) that Vivian did not outwardly express that tenderness and empathy that I see so clearly in her photographs. She apparently was an introvert, how else to explain that most all of those photographs she took over 50 years sat unprocessed or unprinted in her private belongings. What makes this story, and her photographs doubly (or triply) fascinating, is the details of Vivian's life and how her photographs came to be discovered - after her death - and ultimately made available for the likes of me to be touched and moved by them.
These photographs, the images themselves and the stories they tell, the thousand plus words embodied in each one, what they tell of the person who made them, and then the actual details of the life of the person who made them, in total constitute for me one of the sweet and glorious mysteries - enigmas - of human existence. She had an uncanny sense for finding signals in the noise (see my earlier blog entry from Jul 7, 2013) and the signals she found resonate strongly with me.
Vivian's photographs and the story of her life, as best it can be pieced together, can be found here:
I wish you could find photographs on my web site that were even 1% as good as what you will find there. Go there and look at the images in silent thoughtfulness, imagine walking down a street and noticing such scenes unfolding, of having a camera and composing and pressing the shutter at the "decisive moment". Look at the image, imagine.
I have the good fortune of spending two weeks in New York City. To be more exact, I am residing in the neighborhood of Red Hook in the borough of Brooklyn, in an AirBnB discovered "huge artist loft" (this last is the lodging owner's AirBnB title characterization but it is rather accurate). It's quite an interesting place on the top (fourth) floor of a former luggage factory. It offers a great view of the lower Manhattan skyline to the west, some of it seen through the tall cranes along the Brooklyn dockyards on the East River. It is more than a little different from my ordinary residence back in suburban Maryland, middle class suburbia on steriods. In the loft is a bookcase packed with titles that I find extremely interesting. One such is a short book by Susan Sontag titled Regarding the Pain of Others. Susan was an American intellectual who, among much other work, wrote very eloquently about photography. Her most noted work in this regard is On Photography, a series of essays published in 1977.
Regarding the Pain of Others is a book about photography but more so, it is a book about photographs and their influence upon us and what, if any, impact a photograph of human suffering can have on us or should have on us. The opening paragraphs quickly set the central theme of her discussion, referencing a 1938 book by Virginia Woolf (written during the Spanish Civil War), Three Guineas, in which the female writer responds to a letter from a male friend posing the question "How in your opinion are we to prevent war." Woolf disputes the "we" in the question, since the question is posed by a male to a female. Woolf asserts that war is primarily a male endeavor so the two parties to the discussion are coming from different directions. To demonstrate the difference in viewpoints, Woolf writes, "Let's see, whether when we look at the same photographs we feel the same things" and goes on to describe a photograph in that day's paper from the Spanish Civil War showing the aftermath from a bomb blast in a house. This question of how one responds to photographs showing others in agony and pain is the core of Sontag's discussion. The "pain of others" in her title refers to human-on-human inflicted pain primarily under the auspices of war. The question Sontag ponders is if and how the medium of photography, through its graphic depiction of the horrors of war, can possibly mitigate the human tendency to engage in war and more generally how should we respond to photographic images of human suffering that is caused by the action of other humans.
At this point you could be thinking that humans have depicted the pain of others well before the invention of photography and you would be correct. Paintings, etchings, and sculptures through the centuries have depicted human-on-human inflicted suffering and pain, whether through wars, religious persecutions, martyrdom and/or all of the above. Museums and churches are filled with depictions of such events and we call such images 'art'. Sontag discusses this and very nicely I might add, but she goes on to make a good case that photographs are different. They are not just images that sprang from the imagination of the artist, most often made with the intent to inspire, mystify or motivate. Even if made by a realist artist who may have been an eye-witness to some depicted event, a painting or any representational depiction, was made afterwards and is tainted by the inability of the eye-witness to see and remember everything and by the artist's biases and goals in making the representation. Photographs on the other hand are generally assumed to represent the unvarnished reality of what transpired. We expect that photographs of a battle scene or its aftermath are the depiction of the reality of some event that took place in an exact place and at an exact time. If there are dead or maimed individuals, these are or were living, breathing human beings like ourselves. Yes, photographs too are influenced by the photographer's biases and decisions as to where to point the lens and when to press the shutter release - but whatever is represented in the image is what was there, at least that is what most viewers assume. Even before photoshop however, things were not so simple. Photographs of battlefield scenes were often altered, posed or staged in order to present images acceptable to the side sponsoring the photographer. If anything, with the transition to digital over the past 20 years and all that digital manipulation permits, ethical standards for photographers in war zones have become much more stringent. Sontag makes the case that this more rigid adherence to non-alteration began with the Vietnam War, the addition of television to the battlefield, and the transition of journalist/photographer from propagandist/booster for a war to potential anti-war activist.
Sontag discusses the history of photography on the world's battlefields, the impact it made, and the controversies that inevitably followed. The first known war photographer was Roger Fenton, who was sent under contract to the British government to photograph the Crimean War. He was precluded from photographing the British dead, maimed or ill. At the same period another Brit, Felice Beato photographed several British wars, the Sepoy rebellion in India, the second Opium War in China and the Sudanese colonial wars. In the US, Mathew Brady was approved by none other than Abraham Lincoln to photograph the US Civil War. Sontag discusses the choices and changes made by each of these photographers to present images that would be deemed acceptable to the home front. Still, their images could not help but show the suffering and ravages their wars inflicted, at least to those on the other side. As for the 20th century, sadly there is simply too much to relate. There were the two World War's with the Spanish Civil War in between, the Vietnam War, the Cambodian killing fields, the Rwandan genocide, and the Balkan War each with their iconic photographs of human-on-human atrocities.
The book does not show any photographs, to do so would be blasphemous to Sontag's reverent intentions. It does discuss many specific photographs of relevance, most so iconic that one does not need to see them. Among them are the Robert Capa photograph from the Spanish Civil War of the republican soldier at the instant of being shot, the many photographs from April-May 1945 of the eastern European concentration camps, the Eddie Adams' photograph of the point blank execution of the suspected Vietcong insurgent in a Saigon street, and the 1972 photograph by Huynh Cong Ut of the naked children running down a road, fleeing the napalm bombing of their village. Controversy surrounds some of these and others that she discusses, were they 'staged' and if so by how much. But she is concerned with much more than the controversies of spontaneity and realism, the main concern is how should 'we' - who are in a sense disinterested and removed from the actual horror and fear and death of the instant being viewed - view such images. What should we come away with?
This book was written after 9/11 so Sontag discusses the images from the World Trade Center collapse as well. Here she goes on brief but well stated diversion of professional vs amateur photographer, I quote her:
Photography is the only major art in which professional training and years of experience do not confer an insuperable advantage over the untrained and inexperienced - this for many reasons, among them the large role that chance (or luck) plays in the taking of pictures, and the bias toward spontaneous, the rough, the imperfect.
Some folks may take umbrage at her view, I do not. I agree.
Human behavior since the invention of photography has given us far too many examples and case studies relating to photography's influence on war and violence. Sontag's best writing is in regard to what such photographs should mean for us, how we should view them and what our response should be. She has no answers, she only raises questions and ponders alternatives. I praise her unbiased and non-judgemental analysis and I thank her for asking the question of what it means to view such images.
As for me, I don't believe there are 'answers' to the questions she raises. We can ask the questions, they are good questions, they are worthy of thought, reflection and discussion, and we can reflect on what these questions mean for each us individually. And then we can go about living our lives, hopefully trying to make peace and bring peace wherever we can, loving our neighbor and doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.
Here is the link for a review of my present show at the Howard County Community College Art Department Gallery.
http://lewlortonphoto.com/blog/2014/2/review---john-petro-at-horowitz-center-art-dept-gallery
You do need to hurry to see it, it ends on March 23.
I have another solo photography exhibition opening soon. It will run from Jan 24 - Mar 17, 2014, at the Howard County Community College Art Department Gallery in Columbia, MD. I'm calling it, Signals in the Noise. Below is my "Artist Statement" for the show. These statements can sometimes be perceived as being pretentious and self-important and possibly you will consider this one as an example of such. I won't dispute you on that perception but if you read the statement you'll see that your perception, whatever it is, is an example of what I'm talking about. You've found a personal signal in the text.
In any case, if you're in Columbia, MD, sometime during the dates of the show, stop in and check it out. There is a reception on Thurs Jan 30 from 5 - 7PM. If you are reading this, consider yourself invited. Location details can be found here (or email me with questions):
http://www.howardcc.edu/visitors/artgallery/index.html
Our conscious lives are spent searching for and responding to signals that are embedded within the noise that bombard each of our senses every waking minute.
It has taken me the better part of a long lifetime to arrive at this personal “aha!”, but for me now, that about sums up what it is that human beings do with their lives. Deeper analysis reveals that what constitutes a “signal” is often unique to each individual. Sensory stimulus that resonates with me and thus becomes a signal that rises above the noise I swim through, be it a particular piece of music, a particular image, a particular feel or touch, a particular political or scientific concept, may not resonate with you. We use the metaphor and simile as means of conveying the essence of some signal we perceive to another, in hopes of transferring the resonance. How each of us responds to the signals we get, well, that is life. I should add that I don't see the perception of signals by an individual as necessarily awarding any absolute validity to the signal. I mentioned “scientific concept” as a signal, but some scientific concepts are more valid than others, some are in fact completely bogus but still they resonate with folks. Some signals that resonate with an individual can be detrimental to their well-being, e.g. an excessive fondness for alcohol or living a life on the edge. But enough of this...
Having “Signals in the Noise” as a theme for a photographic exhibition is in a way a cop out. It allows the exhibitor (me in the present case) to hang pretty much anything he or she wants – these are my “signals” after all. What you see displayed here are some of the visual perceptions I have made over the past few years and that somehow resonated with me sufficiently to warrant being photographed. Each of these displayed images was perceived by me, at the time they were captured, as not being noise but rather as saying something to me. My response to these signals, beyond the photograph itself, that is a work in progress.
It is my hope that some of the displayed images resonate with you, the viewer. I hope you don't find all of them to be noise....not that there's anything wrong with that.
We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
– Anais Nin
The cuban born Italian writer Italo Calvino wrote a short story "The Adventure of a Photographer". It was first published in 1958, but it appeared in English in his book of short stories, Difficult Loves, published in 1971. It presents a marvelous characterization of the obsession of photography through its effect on one individual, Antonino. The date the story was written has some relevance to my ramblings here since it was well before the technology changes we've undergone in the past 20 years. Like any good story (at least to my taste) the explorations that Calvino makes into the lure and obsession of photography - more generally the human need to record the events of our lives - has a timeless quality.
Using the terminology of the computer era, humans are endowed with "internal memory" but unlike digital memory our internal memory is 'soft', it is perishable, we forget, and it is malleable, we 'remember' an event one way when in fact it actually happened another way. Yes, I know digital memory too is perishable but not in the same way. With coding and error correction-detection mechanisms (ah, mathematics) digital memory readers know when the memory has gone bad and can notify us not to trust what is being output. Our brains on the other hand are not so precise, a piece of some memory may morph or perish but we don't necessarily know it - that darn malleability. We swear things were this way, when in reality they were that way. With writing and painting, mankind acquired "external memory" (peripheral memory?) that is much more permanent than the soft stuff in our heads, but writing and painting are malleable too. They are dependent upon the interpretation of the event by the writer or painter making the record. Photography, and other mechanical recording devices (video, voice, etc), are not dependent on the human operator to the same extent. It has been said that a photograph "speaks for itself". But not so fast you say, a photograph too depends upon the whims and biases of the photographer. The photographer controls where to point the recording device and then there is the conversion of the raw recording into the visual image ultimately displayed. While it is more evident today than ever before, given the precision and simplicity of digital image manipulation, it has always been possible to manipulate the final image displayed in order to convey an impression different from the reality that was originally taking place and allegedly recorded. A photograph can be made to present an image more perfect than the reality it records, the smiling faces in the family portrait masking tensions and rivalries for example. There are deep philosophical questions here. What is the 'reality' of an event that happens in time, especially going forward into the future, when the event is now in the past? Is all that matters of an event our internal memory of it, even if that memory morphs into something different from the initial reality? What matters more, the initial reality or our current memory of that reality? What of all these external aids to our memory, especially today given the limitless amount of memory now available via digital means, how far do we go in recording and preserving these records, how much is too much? Time spent recording, processing and cataloging events takes time away from actually experiencing the events of our lives, from making new events worth recording, when does such activity turn into obsession? And what of the records, who is to play them back? Where does the time spent playing back a record, reliving a recorded memory come from? I better stop here with the questions, before I get to "what is the meaning of life", it's not too far away.
Back to Calvino's story. In the opening paragraph he describes the unnamed city's inhabitants who spend their weekends taking photographs. He says of their weekend lives
It is only when they have the photos before their eyes that they seem to take tangible possession of the day they spent, only then that the mountain stream, the movement of the child with his pail, the glint of the sun on the wife's legs take on the irrevocability of what has been and can no longer be doubted. Everything else can drown in the unreliable shadow of memory.
Antonino is introduced as the rebel, one who sees nothing but folly in the clamor to record every aspect of one's life on film. Then Calinvo tells us what it is with Antonino that underlies his discomfort, he is a bachelor. His circle of friends are getting married, having children, and these events bring about the need to record. Those six month old toddlers will very soon be seven months old and thus a record must be made. It is because they love that they photograph. Well, with Antonino the process works in reverse. While on an outing with acquaintances, he is asked to take some photographs of a female acquaintance, and gradually through the posing and framing in the view finder he falls in love. The love fuels his desire to photograph, and vice versa. His compulsion becomes obsession as the need for the perfect photograph, for recording his love's every waking and sleeping moments overwhelms him, bringing about his downfall. Along the way, in telling this tale of Antonino, Calvino gives commentary on the human need to record the events of our lives, on compulsion, memory, love and obsession.
As for what "The Adventure of a Photographer" tells me about myself, well, that opening characterization quoted above fits me. I find that in my travels, they are not 'real' until I get home and see - and process - the photographs I've taken along the way. As I say on the home page of this site, "I acknowledge change, therefore I photograph". Change, really decay, the 2nd law of thermodynamics, is the way things are. My memory is fleeting, photographs are how I slow that down. As for what I photograph, well, see "signal in the noise" elsewhere in my blog. Like Antonino, I too seek some undefined, unattainable 'perfection' when I look through the view finder and press the shutter release. My concept of perfection is not necessarily in composition or framing or technical precision (mind you, those things are important), but just some glimmer of a signal hidden in the noise.
Calvino's story is in the open domain, it can be found here in the link below. It is entertaining, thought provoking, and, in this rushed day and age, it is short - not much longer than a 'tweet' (not that I have any idea what a 'tweet' is). Read it.
http://beauty.gmu.edu/AVT459/AVT459-001/Calvino.pdf
I better begin this by asking any reader to stick with me on this till the end. We're going somewhere (I'm not sure myself just where right now) and hopefully we do get there and we find the destination worthwhile.
In communication engineering one gets introduced to the "signal to noise ratio" (SNR). The 'signal' is the stuff that the sender intentionally wishes for the receiver to recover, the 'noise' is everything else that the receiver recovers as well in his attempt to acquire the signal. The receiver gets both signal and noise and has to filter out the noise part. This notion of signal and noise can be much more general however. Signal can represent anything that the receiver gets from the environment (surroundings) that has potential to provide some value to the recipient. Noise is everything else in the environment that the receiver also gets but does not use, the stuff that is filtered out in the search for signal. When the 'receiver' is a human being, he/she gets data from the environment via his/her senses: vision, hearing, smell, touch and taste. Since this is a photography web site (it is a photography web site isn't it?) let's concentrate on the vision thing.
During our waking hours, our eyes are continuously bombarded with data. In the sense of the discussion above, I will call it noise. Depending on what we are consciously engaged in at the moment on a subconscious level our brains are filtering that noise looking for signals within it - stuff that matters. What sort of stuff matters? Well it could be signs of a threat to our safety and well-being, e.g. a bear or other threatening wild animal in our path, a run-away automobile bearing down on us, etc. It could be, and thankfully usually is, more benign, e.g. an acquaintance entering one's field of view, a scene or image that reminds one of a pleasant experience, etc. Even if we are consciously engaged in something involving our vision, e.g. reading a book or driving, in which case our vision is consciously engaged in the act of processing some signal, subconsciously our vision is still engaged in filtering noise in the data received by our eyes, for example via our peripheral vision.
The psychologist Daniel Kahneman theorizes that human brains have two distinct components for processing information. In his book Thinking Fast and Slow (a very worthwhile read) he calls these components simply "system 1" and "system 2". System 1 is fast and intuitive, system 2 is deliberate and analytical, but as a result also somewhat slow. Sensory data is initially processed by system 1 - it acts a a gatekeeper if you will - and only passed on to system 2 if system 1 perceives some signal that merits further deliberative attention. While walking along if one's vision suddenly takes in the sight of a lion, system 1 will send a "flight" response to one's muscles, not waiting for system 2 to analyze the situation. After the initial flight response, and while running away, system 2 will be performing analysis of the situation and possibly offer more reasoned additional options beyond just running to insure safety. For another example, when driving a car on a clear straight road with little traffic, system 1 is sufficient to process the visual data in order for the driver to safely control the vehicle. But, when in heavy traffic or on a winding road, then system 2 is called upon to aid in the effort, it must be applied to analyze the incoming visual information and guide our response if we are to remain safe and in control. Now as I recall Kahneman does not use the word 'signal', I am putting it there since I believe it means essentially what he describes as the relevant incoming data to which our brain responds.
Now what about visual arts? Here we leave Kahneman and his theories and go back to my musings. System 1 can initially process our reaction to viewing a piece of visual art. Our quick "I love it" or "Ugh, I hate it" is a fast, intuitive reaction to an image. If our reaction stops there, whether love or hate, and we move on, then the 'art' did not really have much value for such a viewer, essentially the image is noise. Possibly we can consider it to be pleasing noise if the reaction was "I love it" but noise none-the-less. It is only if the viewer was compelled to engage system 2 and consciously and deliberately reflect on the image and seek the signal, seek the message therein, that the image is truly art. The beauty of signal processing within the human mind is that the signal the receiver perceives can have no obvious relation to the message being sent by the transmitter (whoever or whatever that is). What one person 'sees' in viewing the Mona Lisa, that is the signal his system 2 picks out when his eyes process the data of that image, can be very different from the signal another person discerns when viewing the same image, and both of these can be different from whatever it is Leonardo Da Vinci intended.
I hope that whoever stuck with this item till now finds some signal in the noise of my musings.
I like the headline for the local press review of my "Parked Outside the Door" exhibit at the Kish Gallery in Columbia, MD, Apr 21 - Jun 1, 2013. I have to save the link here permanently. Check it out:
While visiting and photographing in Charleston, SC, on a Sunday afternoon in March I had the tables turned on me. Another person was taking photographs and had set herself the goal for that afternoon of photographing people. I was her first victim, er, subject. I was "Stranger #1". She took a few candid shots while I was getting ready to photograph some architecture. Then she came up to me, asked if she could take another picture or two and post her work involving me on the web. Since I do this to others and I appreciate it when they are friendly and accommodating, it only seemed fair for me to give her my permission. We had a brief friendly chat and she took several 'posed' shots. While I did not give her the best material to work with, but she did a respectable job in making me look good. You can see her post, and get introduced to the "100 Strangers Project" here:
In Nov 2012 I joined the modern age and upgraded to a smart phone. It comes with a navigation app that can get me from wherever I happen to be to absolutely any address in the United States, probably the world. For a few years now, my wife has had a Garmin which does likewise and I have taken advantage of it many times. In her job, where she regularly travels to new locations throughout the US, it is indispensable (although she got by without one for a few years).
I still like paper maps. They are my friend and my favorite benefit from my AAA membership. For my photography, which primarily relies on what I randomly encounter "on the highways and byways, the back roads and side streets", I don't want to go directly from point A to point B. I want to meander. I don't want a voice (sweet though it is) telling me "In one-quarter mile turn right on Clarksville Pike", etc.
Recently I drove from my home in Columbia, MD, to Orlando, FL. I had work to do in Orlando but I chose to drive because I wanted to see some of the south that I had never seen before. I did not want the I-95 direct route to Orlando (I'd have flown were that my only drive option). I budgeted 5 days to get there and hoped to do at least 50% of that on non-interstate roads. I had paper maps from AAA for Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and North and South Carolina.
Here is my rough itinerary for the trip south, sketched before I departed (using Google Maps for the distances which are "shortest route" distances so primarily interstates, much less than the distances I expected to encounter on my drive):
Wed Mar 13: Columbia, MD to Wytheville, VA, 327 miles
Thu Mar 14: Wytheville, VA to Chattanooga, TN, 292 miles
Fri Mar 15: Chattanooga, TN to Milton, FL, 370 miles
Sat Mar 16: Milton, FL to Wakulla Springs, FL, 172 miles
Sun Mar 17: Wakulla Springs to Orlando, 244 miles
I was to overnight with a friend in Milton, FL, on Friday and that was my only hard constraint, besides arriving in Orlando by 4PM on Sunday for a business meeting. All else was best guess that looks reasonable. Here is roughly the reality of the trip, thanks to the outline and those paper maps when on the road:
Wed Mar 13: I-70 to I-81 to Christiansburg, VA, then leave I-81 and meander to Abingdon, VA, where I spent the night.
Thu Mar 14: US 19 west through towns of St Paul, Coeburn, Norton and Appalachia in VA, then on to the Cumberland Gap (VA, TN and KY convergence) and into Tennessee. I make my way over to I-75 and continue south to Chattanooga where I spend the night.
Fri Mar 15: I-75 into Alabama then exit in Gadsden. Exit and continue south on Rt 77 to Talladega. Continue south on US 231 to Montgomery. There take I-65 through city and on to Georgiana, where I exit and take US31 working my way to Evergreen, AL. I continue south on US 31 to Brewton where I take Rt 41 into Florida and on to Milton, FL.
Sat Mar 16: Head east through the Florida panhandle, mainly on US20 with brief encounters with I-10. Eventually work way to Rt 267 and Wakulla Springs State Park.. Overnight at the Wakulla Springs Lodge in the state park.
Sun Mar 17: Continue east on Rt 267 till merge with US 98. At the town of Perry 98 merges with US 19 and turns south, towards Ocala. At Chiefland, with time running out thanks to many photo stops, I take US 27 east, at high speed, for I-75 and the Florida Turnpike to Orlando. I arrive at the meeting with 5 minutes to spare.
For the return trip I took an easterly route with the same philosophy. I drove north through central Florida and hit the coast at the Florida-Georgia state line, overnight in St. Mary's, GA. I spent two night there, visiting Jekyll Island. The weather was not good, heavy overcast with intermittent rain all day. The next day I departed St. Mary's and it rained hard and steadily so I took I-95 into South Carolina. My goal was to visit Charleston, SC, a city I'd never visited before. I overnighted in Charleston, a beautiful city. From there I took back roads, mainly Rt 41, north through eastern SC and into NC. Arriving in Lumberton, NC, at 4PM, I decided I would spend that night in my own bed at home, so I got on I-95 and made a bee-line for Columbia, MD, with only a 1 hour dinner stop. I arrived home at 10:30PM.
I don't know how I'd have seen all that I saw, enjoyed myself as much, and taken the semi-random route I did, without good old paper maps. Did I take a lot of photographs? You bet I did. I chronicled some of the vanishing, rural south.
My gallery exhibit will open in just over two weeks, on April 18. The "Meet the Artist Reception" will be on Sunday, April 21, from 3 - 5 PM. The gallery, officially known as the "Bernice Kish Gallery at Slayton House," is located at 10400 Cross Fox Lane in Columbia, MD, in the village of Wilde Lake. I will have fifty of my photographs on display and for sale. The title suggests the subject of the photographs. You might be wondering how someone can build an exhibit of fifty photographs around such a theme, well, come and find out! These photographs are from across the country, Alaska to Texas, California to New Jersey (and even one from the UK). Actually, I have more but the space cannot contain them all (kind of like Fermat's proof of what has become his famous "Last Theorem").
Oh, there are a few surprises amidst the fifty on display. I did not explicitly say what was "parked outside".
My motivations for pointing my camera at vehicles parked outside doors:
Vehicles and buildings are the two fundamental constructs of ingenuity that long ago separated homo sapiens from brutes. They both enabled and formed the foundation of civilization. In buildings we conduct the business of our lives while our vehicles wait outside the doors, ready to efficiently transport us on to another location, another building. Almost as soon as they made their appearance, these objects went beyond being merely utilitarian. Using his creative nature man has adorned them and made them unique personal extensions of his individuality. In the modern age, these fundamental constructs are an inherent part of our existence, but they are also part of the background noise of our lives, often unnoticed and unremarkable except in their absence. In this exhibit we take notice of these incidentals, placing them on the center stage. These scenes of permanence and mobility, as expressions of someone's individuality, are often not only beautiful, with off-beat colors and textures and randomness, but in the viewer they can awaken old memories of vehicle makes, and architecture styles, all embedded in the surrounding landscape of the nation. In addition, these images can also provide cause for reflection – what became of the humans who influenced the scene being witnessed, what inspired them, who were they, what statement were they trying to make?
The following is a slightly modified version of a response I made to an on-line photography forum, in response to a question someone posted about one's opinion on the differences, if any, between photographs printed on some tangible physical media vs photographs on electronic media and that remain in digital form. If you're reading this, you've seen some of my photographs in digital electronic form.
Nevertheless, here is my opinion:
A photograph that is printed on paper and is tangible has more substance than one that is and remains digital. It is always present, not just when the battery is charged or the power is on. Also, printing - even of a digital PhotoShop processed image - exacts a price and puts some limits on the quantity. One cannot reasonably store mega-4x6 prints, one does not have the wall space to hang kilo-16x20 framed images. Having these harder constraints compels more thought, care and, ultimately, meaning into the finished product. I much prefer seeing a photography exhibit hanging in a gallery, than one on-line. I love photography and when photography web sites started appearing on the internet in the late 90's and early 2000's, I enthusiastically joined several. I enjoyed viewing and commenting on the images and posting my own work. More and more however I find myself bored with these on-line sites and the posted photographs, not because of poor quality and not because of jealousy (although there are plenty of beautiful photographs of which I am envious), but rather simply because of the sheer quantity. Every day one can log on and cycle through image after image, heck, one per second for 24 hours, and never see the same photograph twice and still not see but a small fraction of all the photographs posted on-line that day! Herons, portraits, Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Rockies, the Pacific Ocean, old barns, rusty cars, sunrise, sunset (swiftly flow the years), you name it, some are extremely good, but so what, tomorrow there will be an entirely new batch. This exercise make me feel like Sisyphus pushing the stone up the hill only to have to redo it again tomorrow, but at least pushing a stone gives one a cardio workout. Personally, for me, walking through a gallery looking at framed photographs hanging on a wall has much more meaning.
To my delight, I was approved for a solo photography exhibition at a local art gallery. The show will take place in Apr-May of 2013, and the gallery has space for about 50 pieces. Since this is a solo show, the burden is entirely on me to have 50 matted and framed works ready for hanging before show start. I was notified of my acceptance back in mid-October, so I've been working on this for two months already. In this note I will describe my post-PhotoShop work flow, equipment, material sources, and expenses for this show preparation.
First off, I am a do-it-yourselfer, so I do everything myself, from pressing the shutter release to final matted and framed 11x14 (or whatever size) piece, it is all done by me. That is not entirely true, I do still shoot film and slides occasionally, and when I do, the exposed film does get sent out for processing by experts, before I scan the negative/slide and process in photoshop (PS). But, in any case, here we describe what happens after the photoshop processing, how we go from a bunch of bits viewable on a monitor to a framed print suitable for hanging on a wall.
There are four advantages for doing the entire post-PS process in-house. Some of these advantages are of course based on my beliefs about how photographs should be displayed, if your opinions differ then this list may not apply. I believe that a frame and matte should not compete with the photograph for attention. Frames should be low key and unobtrusive, they should simply outline the matted photograph and separate it from the wall on which it hangs. I also believe that each photograph is unique and thus should be free to take on any aspect ratio and size the photographer deems appropriate for that image. Even though I did both the taking of the photograph and the framing of it, I much prefer to be complemented on the beauty of the photograph, not the matting and framing. Also, setting the idealism aside and getting practical, I offer my matted, framed photographs for sale and I want to break even if not see an actual profit and my name/photographs do not (yet?) command fine art prices, so expense of materials matters a great deal. My choice of frames, while meeting my beliefs about how photographs should be displayed also meets my requirement of allowing me to very nicely display my work without exorbitant expense. In summary, here are four advantages of doing the work oneself:
There are two big, as in expensive, non-recurring cost items one needs for this endeavor.
As for the printer, I have the Epson 3800 Color Inkjet printer that I bought four years ago. As with much electronic equipment now-a-days, there is a new and improved version, the 3880 that one can buy for several hundred dollars less than I paid for the 3800. To further rub salt in my wound, presently (Dec 31, 2012) I see that Epson is offering a $300 rebate on top of the already lower price for the 3880. I don't know how long this will last and possibly this means there is yet a more improved version about to be released so they want to get rid of old stock. In any case I find that the 3800 is excellent, but I also know there are many other excellent printers on the market by a variety of makers. If you do go with an Epson product, it should be one that employs their ultrachrome inks. It should go without saying, but you do want to be sure that whatever printer you purchase, that it will allow you to print in sizes you wish to display. There are many blogs and tutorials on how to print, most are focused on specific printers as the technique varies for different printers so I will say nothing more about the actual printing process.
As for the matte cutter I have a Logan SimplexPlus Model 750 that I bought about 10 years ago. It can handle matte sizes up to 40". I see that Logan now makes a model 750-1 called the Simplex Elite. It generally looks like the one I have but comes with many more additional components for cutting glass, plexiglass and paper and an 8-ply matte bevel cutter. I am jealous and wish I had this new model. I like my SimplexPlus model a lot and have gotten lots of use out of it over the past 10 years, so I can with reasonable confidence recommend the new model. I see that on amazon.com, the newer Simplex Elite can be had for about $320.00.
Here is a link for a youtube video made by Logan on the Simplex Elite and how to use it to cut mattes for photographs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qebIfdHjO6M&feature=player_embedded
The recurring costs are for the actual framing materials:
I purchase all of the above on-line, from one of two places (but there are many others as well). I use either
Both offer complete kits, all precut to size, for frames, plexiglass, foam core backing and assembly and hanging hardware. They also sell matte boards in bulk or single quantity. I like that one can order these frame kits - at least for the style of frames I buy - in completely arbitrary sizes down to the eight of an inch.
The frame style I use (see my philosophy on frames above) is exclusively what GraphikDimension call Economy Metal. Within this group are many styles and finishes, but I prefer matte black finish. For each frame/size selection one can then add plexiglass and backing also cut to size. Since my older matte cutter did not come with the plexiglass cutter (like the new Logan Model 750-1) I purchase it precut. I prefer the non-glare plexiglass which is slightly frosted on the outer side to prevent, as the name implies, glare. I also get the foam core backing as opposed to the much less expensive cardboard.
I purchase mattes in bulk. A box of 16 mattes, 32 x 40 inches, costs around $94 for the basic and around $236 for the acid-free rag mattes. Note that there is no cost advantage on GraphikDimension for buying in bulk as opposed to single mattes. I buy in bulk so I'll have a good supply on hand. A single matte board, 32 x 40 can provide mattes for four 16 x 20 framed photographs.
I almost exclusively use a 3 inch boarder on my mattes regardless of final frame size. Thus for a given print size I must add 6 inches to each dimension to get the frame size needed. So to display a 10 x 14 image, I need a 16 x 20 matte and frame. If I used this size consistently I'd have no matte board wasteage, and a single board would provide mattes for four photographs. But, as I said above, I like flexibility in print size so I can crop each image uniquely before printing. But, I am not obsessive about cropping, I have three sizes I use very frequently, 10x13, 10x14 and 10x15. I find that most of my images fit one of those aspect ratios, 10x15 is essentially full-frame 35mm format (either FX or DX). The other two sizes enable with more or less cropping of the sides. So the frames I most often order are 16x19, 16x20 or 16x21. Note that from a single matte board I can also get two 16x19 and two 16x21 mattes with no wasteage (cut the 40 inch side at 19 inches gives a 32 x 19 and a 32 x 21, then cut each of these in half along the 32 inch edge). But really good photographs I like larger. Two other common print sizes I like are
These result in matte wasteage but so it goes.
There is one additional sizing feature I employ that you may or may not find useful. I left it out so far to simplify the description. I actually like for the photograph to have an additional framing feature and that is that the image be inset in the matte window by an additional 1/4 inch, so the white of the print paper shows inside the matte window by 1/4" all around. Thus my actual cropped print sizes are 1/2 inch less in all of the above descriptions. Instead of 10 x 14, I crop the image to 9 1/2 x 13 1/2 (but print on paper that is at least 11 x 15 with the image centered in the paper). Now I center the image inside the 10 x 14 window, so there is 1/4" of unprinted paper all around that also shows in the framed product. I like this presentation style. Also, I can title, date and sign the image on the print paper just below the image and it will show in the matte window.
AS FOR PHOTO TITLE AND SIGNATURE: This is something I have been struggling with recently, here's why. Traditionally, fine art photographs were printed on matte finish photo paper. They were then titled and signed (or sometimes just signed) with pencil along the bottom. Originally I printed my photographs on Epson Archival Matte paper and I signed them in pencil along the bottom. But I have slowly transitioned to Epson Premium Luster paper, preferring that finish over matte finish. Now that all my matte stock has been depleted I have been printing exclusively on luster paper. The problem is, one cannot write on luster paper, not in pencil for sure and most pens also do not adhere. So I have been experimenting. For my upcoming show I have some signed using a Sharpie pen, but my handwriting is not good, and while a pencil on matte was still OK, I do not like the Sharpie. My new method is to use Photoshop. After the photograph is sized properly, say for example 13.5 x 9.5 (for a 20 x 16 frame), I increase the canvas size of the image to 14 x 10.25, giving the image a white border with the photo centered, so it has a border 0.25 inches on the sides and 0.375 inches on top and bottom. In the white border along the bottom I use the text tool to type in any desired information, e.g. title, date, place and my name. I use the Bickham Script Pro font for my name so it looks like John Hancock on the Declaration of Independence. I like this solution, but I'm not sure how the public will respond. We will see in several weeks when such signed photographs are officially unveiled.
I affix the photograph to the back of the matte using an acid free artist tape. One should only tape along the top and leave the sides and bottom free. This prevents buckling or bowing of the image inside the frame when temperature and humidity cause any expansion or contraction.
Matte cutting requires a good flat space such as a large table, ideally slightly taller than a regular eating table (usually they are around 30" in height), say at drafting table height. One can get a sore back if one has to bend over too much. However, until several months ago, so for 10 years, I used a no-longer used ping-pong table, also about 30" high, that I had in my basement and it worked perfectly fine. It certainly provided lots of surface area that I managed to keep filled with junk and cut matte piece scraps, etc. I've since re-finished my basement and gotten rid of the ping-pong table. I now have a smaller room in which to work but acquired one of the taller dining room tables that is 35" in height and has a 48" square table top. It just fits the matte cutter with a full uncut matte and I like it a lot. All my preparation for the current show has been done on this table. The matte cutter itself does not take up but 20% of the table top so after the matte is cut, I can do the actual frame assembly on the table as well.
So far, over the past three months I've framed over 40 photographs in all of the various sizes described above. It's been a fun and rewarding process and I'm extremely excited about the up-coming show in April. When the on-line announcement for the show is up and running I'll send out a link, check it out. And if you live in the greater Columbia, Maryland, area (Washington, DC, Baltimore, Annapolis, etc) come on by and see the real thing.
Today I came across the work of a photographer, Dave Jordano, that simply put, blew me away. His photographs speak for themselves, and they say all that needs to be said about "Why photography". In my earlier postings I discuss what is art, and this work of which I now speak embodies what 'art' is to me. It stops me in my tracks, grabs me by the collar and makes me take notice, and makes me reflect in a profound way on what it means to be human.
It exemplifies what I would like to achieve with my photography. It is inspirational and also humbling, since I know I will not come close to this level of perfection.
I've said enough. As I said, the work speaks for itself - as truly great work should. The link below is where you can see - and judge - for yourself. He has many portfolios, all are outstanding, but check out in particular the ones on Detroit, Marktown, Praireland, and Articles of Faith.
As I say on the welcome to this website:
I acknowledge change, therefore I photograph.
When I photograph I feel that I am, in some meager way, stopping the clock. I know this is futile but at its core this is what motivates my desire to point the lens at something and press the shutter release. This shows up in my choice of subjects. The people and things most obviously in the throes of change, that may not be available as subjects in the not too distant future, these are the subjects that strongly attract me (yes, you see lots of 'self-portraits' here for this reason). These photographs represent my futile attempt to claw with my fingernails into the ether and stop, or at least slow down, the relentless pull of time and what that means for us as individuals and the things on this earth that we have made. Even these photographs will pass away.
Now go and have a good day, that's what I plan to do. Be thankful for this day.
For the past 5 days I have been in Vancouver, BC. I return home tomorrow.
I am here to attend wireless standards meetings, so I have been working during most of my stay. Today, Friday, the present session ended at mid-morning and since I do not return home till tomorrow I was free for the remainder of the day. Also I arrived at 1PM last Sunday and was free that afternoon and evening. I am staying at the Haytt Hotel, on Burrard Street just above Dunsmuir Street, which is in the heart of the downtown section of the city. I had no car so my mobility was quite limited. With all the previous as qualifier to my observations, here they are.
Vancouver is a lovely, vibrant city with remarkable diversity. In fact, I'd have to say it is one of the most vibrant cities I have had the pleasure to spend time in (and I've spent time in many cities throughout North America). Here is what I mean by vibrant. I remind you that it is January, that Vancouver's latitude is getting up there, certainly higher than most of the United States - excluding Alaska. So during my stay, the sun has set at around 4:30PM. The temperature most of the week has been within several degrees above and below freezing. Happily there has been essentially no rain. Given all of that, in all my walking around the city, daytimes and evenings, and I've walked every evening sometime between 6 and 9PM, everyplace I have happened to walk has always been full of people out and about! I find this very remarkable, but also for a visitor in a strange city, comforting. I don't know what everyone is out doing, but out they are. The people are of all sorts, all ages, both sexes, and appear to be of all social classes. Shops and restaurants all seem active and thriving as the evening wears on, regardless of the day of week.
Yes, there are panhandlers. There's something about the cities on the Pacific Ocean, I guess since it's a sort of "land's end" for people coming from the east, but, they have so many more panhandlers than cities further east. Vancouver is no exception in that regard. I was particularly saddened and distressed by several young women who weren't actually panhandling, but were sitting/lying down on the cold pavement outside the Hyatt and behind a crude cardboard sign that said "To Proud to Prostitute, to Honest to Beg". An inverted hat for donations was next to the sign. What has led these young 20-somethings to this state? These women could be my daughters.
Water surrounds Vancouver. The downtown is on a little thumb that sticks out from a fist which forms the body of the city. I was pretty much restricted to the thumb. A major port and cargo terminal is on the waterfront, just along the north side of downtown. The large orange cranes and acres of containers are within close view from downtown and a short walk gets one a direct view of the activity of large cargo ships being loaded and unloaded. A hotel and convention center are on a permanent pier that extends out into the water. Part of the city's public transportation system includes a "water bus" taking one across the harbor from downtown to North Vancouver, a large thriving city in its own rite. I took the water bus today to North Vancouver. At the landing on the north side is a farmer's market, called the "Lonsdale Quay Market". In the Market were many fine looking places to eat. I selected a booth called the "Soup Meister" that daily makes soups. I had a great bowl of one of the today's specials, Mulagawtany. I highly recommend the "soup meister". Just north of North Vancouver are large, snow covered mountains with skiing in sight. Some riders on the water bus were carrying snow boards and boots, suggesting they were on their way, via public transportation, to the slopes. Walk from bustling city to water bus to other public transportation to arrive at ski slopes on rugged snow laced mountains, that's diversity! Also it should be noted that Vancouver was the host city of the 2010 Winter Olympics and the major ski area of Whistler is only a car drive away.
This evening (Friday), completing a pleasant afternoon of walking and photographing, I chanced to walk into MacLeod's Books on Pender Street. What a serendipitous event! Given the state of book publishing and sales today, thanks to that marvel of technology you and I cannot do without called the internet (we are both using it in our respective 'now's'), this store is a step back in time in a very good way. I wish there were more such places. The proprietor (this title is an unverified assumption on my part) had no problem with my taking photographs. The results are in a gallery on this site, MacLeod's Books. Oh, and they have a great photography book section. I purchased a 1909 book, "The Sinclair Handbook of Photography." They don't have a coffee bar, but if I lived in Vancouver, I'd be a regular at this place (and probably poorer as a result but that's OK, I'd be less caffinated).
The downtown Vancouver waterfront itself, to the northwest beyond the cargo terminal has a beautiful waterfront promenade. In addition to the large convention center/hotel pier, there is a distinct pier called "Canada Place", that celebrates the country that is Canada. Beyond these two fixed piers heading along the promenade are luxury boat docks and restaurants. At the tip of the thumb is a nature park and preserve called Stanley Park. It is well worth a visit.
From my travel experience in the States, I'd say Vancouver is a combination of Salt Lake City with the nearby mountains and ski areas, and the San Francisco Bay area with the water in all directions, marine terminals, and upscale high rises and business district. If you have an opportunity, visit Vancouver!
Here I discuss an age old question, "What is art?" For me 'art' is any man made creation which causes me to stop and reflect on the human condition, on my own condition, and just what is this amalgam of stuff called humanity of which I am a very small part. My response to 'art' is both emotional and intellectual. As such, art takes me out of my comfort zone. Being lazy by nature, my comfort zone is that area of thoughtless bliss where I'm cruising along on auto-pilot, minimally processing sensory stimuli so as not to trip over a curb or pinch my finger in a door jamb or go too long without food so my stomach is compelled to complain. Then some human created stimulus comes along, visually or aurally, and I'm shaken out of my auto-pilot state to find myself confronting a flood of thoughts and emotions about the utter mystery of humanity, consciousness, creativity, and, yes, life. These words I use have a superlative connotation but that is because I can think of no others, this is not to imply that my socks are knocked off by every such confrontation or that every such confrontation is a positive experience. I mean to include the gentle awakenings as well as the jolts that on deeper reflection may cause me to turn away in disgust, to perhaps even experience some shame to be a member of the same species as the individual whose creation I now confront.
So at a high level, that is what I think of as 'art'. Art can be the written or spoken word, music, a visual image (this is a photography web site after all), or a 2 or 3 dimensional construct. There are two aspects of this human created stimulus I call 'art', the creator and the created. One must reflect on both the ingenuity of the creator of the 'art', from which we get the word 'artisan', and one must reflect on the created stimulus itself, the creator's creation.
One quintessential, knock-your-socks off example, is the Ninth Symphony of Ludwig von Beethoven. Whenever I hear this, I am just overcome with awe at the beauty of the sounds, with the emotions it invokes within me, and with pride in what my species can create. I reflect on the skill and talent for the performing musicians, the artisans playing the individual notes that come together to form the final product, and I always reflect on the genius of Beethoven. In this case in particular, I reflect on his condition, his deafness, and how he could create such a masterpiece and not be able to hear it himself. This example is 'art' to the n-th degree!
A second example is the painting by Edward Hopper called Night Hawks. Since he is not universally known like Beethoven, you can see this painting here:
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hopper/street/hopper.nighthawks.jpg
Whenever I see this image I am drawn to reflect on Mr. Hopper's talent and skill in rendering the image, on his choosing this particular scene to render, on then the specific decisions he made within the scene. Even more, I am drawn to the image itself and am pulled in to muse upon the scene depicted, on the humans that find themselves in the cafe late at night, on the quiet city and the empty sidewalks that must be filled in the daytime. Surely this same vantage point will be crowded with humanity in several hours, surely the cafe will be filled. In the ebb and flow or our lives, this is a period of quite. Where will the subjects in the scene be come sunrise? What are the connections between them? Are they regulars at the cafe or just passing through? I am drawn also to recall the times when I myself may have been in such a scene, in a city late at night, with most folks gone. I recall the quiet inner joy and comfort I experienced when I came across other humans like in this scene - this is partly because a city at night can be a frightening place and sometimes those we encounter invoke fear. But a cafe, well lighted and with an employee and patrons, can be a refuge. All these emotions are aroused within me when I see this painting.
I chose Edward Hopper for an example because he is a 20th century painter that I particularly admire. I feel a certain kinship with Mr. Hopper as I find that his paintings invoke the same sorts of feelings within me that I find the better of my photographs do as well. I was taking the sorts of photographs that I do before I came across Mr. Hopper (and that was a long time ago), but once I saw Hopper's paintings, I quickly came to believe that he saw the world as I did.
The created objects of art should provoke, should take one out of one's comfort zone. No, I go farther and make this a requirement, to be art they must take one out of one's comfort zone. Art must make one think, to, as a minimum, pause and consider. I am open as to what it is one 'thinks' or what it is one "pauses to consider". Yes, a valid response, within limits, could be "whatever prompted that so-called 'artist' to do/make/perform/create whatever it is he or she are putting forward as art". I don't go for so-called art that is pure shock value. But reflecting on why the artist did what he or she did can be a good jumping off point for arriving at new insights and moving forward.
Added Feb 2016 by request: You can find more of Edward Hopper's art here:
https://www.artsy.net/artist/edward-hopper
In a recent book review in the Wall Street Journal, Joseph Epstein wrote the following, quoting Yip Harburg, the song lyricist who wrote, among other memorable songs, the lyrics to "Over the Rainbow" from "Wizard of Oz":
In the realm of cognition there are thoughts and there are feelings, but "a song," Harburg held, "makes you feel a thought." Thus it can be more powerful than either on its own.
- Joseph Epstein, Passing the Memorability Test, Wall Street journal, Dec 29, 2012.
I find this very insightful, and certainly true with myself. And after only a little more thought, I have to say that it is obvious, so perhaps not so profound if you're one of those for whom ideas cannot be simultaneously both obvious and profound. In any case I offer the following examples of thoughts that are made immensely more powerful by the feelings invoked from being put to music. I challenge you to do likewise with your own personal repertoire of songs.
Oh well, these were some random examples that came to my mind quickly for some reason. I could go on forever by just looking through my playlists. If you're looking for some good songs any of the above are worth a listen.
Wisdom is one of those words whose very articulation contributes to what it purports to represent. It comes forth gently but with determination out of one's mouth. The sound of the first syllable "whiz" begins deep inside in the lungs and throat and proceeds outward, ending with the tip of the tongue on the palate. It comes from deep within and invites the speaker to proceed softly and slowly. That which is wisdom comes from deep within as well, unlike knowledge it does not come from without. As the syllable ends it transitions naturally and with rising strength to the abrupt first letter 'd' of the second syllable "dom". This exudes a natural confidence. The sound continues to make its way forward in the mouth as the 'd' gives way to the ending 'om' made with lips closed. This final sound is a natural sound humans make when in thought. I suspect it is universal and understood in any language that when a person makes the sound 'om' (or 'ummmm") that he or she is pausing to reflect. The word ends with the embodiment of patience, calmness, and reflection. It is not the sound of arrogance, it does not call out "Look at me!".
In Proverbs it is written in several places that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Note how the sound of the word is in harmony with this statement. Wisdom is not knowledge and certainly not book smarts. Wisdom entails humility, a recognition of imperfection, yes, fear. And wisdom also entails a recognition of something, or someone, greater than oneself. Knowledge is a linear, increasing function. We may forget, but in theory the stuff we know only increases. This is especially so in our modern world with essentially unlimited digital 'memory', not that it is all correct or true however. Wisdom on the other hand does not increase with the passing of time, with having observed more water pass under the bridge (see my earlier blog "On the passing of time" and the quote from Montaigne). Rather, wisdom is a process, it informs the continuous actions and reactions of the individual across the totality of decisions he or she makes. A decision made yesterday that turned out to be deemed 'wise', may with wisdom be deemed incorrect even under apparently similar circumstances today.
In The First Circle, Alexander Solzhenitsyn has his protagonist say, "If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?".
Today, we lead our lives with caution as an overriding principle.
As for me, who is generally as cautious as and probably more cowardly than the next guy, here are some ways I throw caution to the wind:
Here is the Monte Hall problem. There once was a game show called "Let's Make a Deal", the famous emcee was a gentleman named Monte Hall. One of the games a contestant, we'll call her Alice, could play was the following. Alice was shown three doors on the stage, behind one was a grand prize, say a Porsche automobile. Behind the other two were goats. Alice was allowed to pick a door and whatever was behind it, that was her prize to keep. Monte knew the correct door. After Alice made her selection but before opening the door and revealing Alice's 'prize' to her Monte would open one of the other doors, one that had a goat (recall he knows the winning door, and regardless of what door Alice chose, one of the two remaining doors would hold a goat, so he could always do this). At this point, before revealing the contents of Alice's original selection and to add an air of suspense, Monte would give Alice a chance to change her selection. The question we address here is, should she do accept his offer to switch? To many people it seems that it is "six of one, half dozen of the other", that changing does not change her odds of winning. To the surprise of these people it does matter, and she should always accept the offer and change her selection to the remaining unopened door. This will double her probability of getting the valued prize from the original 1/3 to now 2/3.
If you are one who does not believe this, then how about the following variation. Suppose instead of three there are 10 doors, behind one of which is the Porsche and the other nine hide goats. Alice picks a door. Her probability of being correct (choosing the door with the Porsche) is 1 out of 10. The probability that behind her door is a goat and the Porsche is behind one of the non-picked doors is 9 out of 10. Monte knows the correct door and it is always the case that at least eight out of the nine unpicked doors hide goats. He opens eight doors revealing goats. Now there are two doors remaining that are unopened, the one Alice chose originally, and the one remaining unpicked and unopened door. In the 9 out 10 chance that Alice's original choice held a goat, that 9th and final goat is behind the door Alice has selected. Monte has done Alice the favor of eliminating all the bad remaining doors from the nine unselected and left only the door with the Porsche unopened. A switch by Alice in these 9 of 10 cases would be from goat to Porsche. Only in the 1 out of 10 chance that Alice was right to begin with would switching be a mistake. Thus, her probability of getting the Porsche goes from 1 out 10 to 9 out of 10 if she blindly switches. A similar argument applies in the original three door case as well.
Or here's another way to look at it. Suppose (in the original 3 door case) that after you choose your door but before opening it to show you what you've won, Monte gives you the option to swap your chosen door for BOTH of the unchosen doors. In other words, you get what's behind both of the doors you did not originally select. Isn't it a no-brainer now that if your chance of picking the door with the car was originally 1/3 (which, unless you have clairvoyance or some other inside information is what your odds are), that with probability 2/3 the car is behind one of the two remaining unchosen doors and Monte is offering you that along with a goat (and you can donate the goat to a farm or children's petting zoo). This is the same as the original game, except that Monte is eliminating from the two unchosen doors the one with the goat. By choosing to switch you are effectively taking both of the unchosen doors. If this is still not clear, imagine the scenario with 10 doors as described above and after you've picked one door out of 10 Monte says you can trade that choice for everything behind the remaining 9 doors.
Jazz great Dave Brubeck died today at age 91. Just three weeks ago, in an antique store in New Braunfels, TX, I made a find that I consider almost miraculous (I have a low threshold for miracles). In a box of record albums I found the album Time Out by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. I discovered Dave Brubeck in my high school years in the mid 60's. It was a high school friend, an incredible drummer who loved playing along with Joe Morello, the quartet's drummer, who introduced me to him. Soon thereafter I purchased the Time Out album, probably at the E. J. Korvette's store, where I made most of my record purchases in the 60's. I loved all the tracks on it then and have ever since. But in the late 80's, after slogging it around through 20 years in the Air Force, CDs came on the scene. After they had been around sufficiently long for this skeptic to succumb to the new, advanced technology, and purchase a CD player, I purchased the Time Out CD. Then in a "clean out the old stuff" fit I offered many of my record albums at a yard sale. Time Out sold quickly (probably for less than $1.00). I eventually came to regret that decision to sell it. I still had the other two albums of the Quartet's time study trilogy, Time Further Out and Time In. They did not sell at the yard sale, thank goodness, and I could not bring myself to discarding them. Happily too the turntable did not sell. It was not long until I realized I liked the sound quality of the Brubeck Quartet's music better from the analog vinyl than the digital CD. I consistently turned to the albums when I wanted to hear that beautiful mellow, harmonious blend of piano, saxophone, bass and drum. Only reluctantly would I play the Time Out CD, when I specifically wanted to hear those tracks. So, it was not an obsession but lately, occasionally, at yard sales or antique stores I'd make a cursory look for Brubeck's timeless masterpiece. In New Braunfels in mid-November, I saw a box of record albums, and these were sufficiently organized that they were sorted by letters of the alphabet. On a whim I thought I'd look through the "B" section. Well, there were the usual Beach Boys, some Beatles and lots of other rock albums; I almost quit the search. But then towards the end of the B's there it was, Time Out, and for only $8.00! I nervously slid the album out to check its quality and to my relief it appeared intact so I made it mine. It sounds great!
See one of my photographs here, "Brubeck on the Turntable". This is the Time Further Out album spinning out beautiful music.
I am thankful for the gift he had and shared with the world. His entire quartet deserves thanks. The quartet's signature song, Take Five from the Time Out album, that you can hear now-a-days as background music in stores, hotel lobbies and Starbucks was written by his great saxophonist Paul Desmond. His music was much greater than that and deserves to be listened to in earnest. On his Time In album is the piece 40 days, written in reference to Jesus' 40 days in the desert. Listen to it and feel yourself alone, in the wilderness, reflecting on God - it is easy to do. On Time Further Out there are Bluette and Far More Blue that just blow you away. I could go on but my words don't do justice to the great music.
Salinas California lies in the middle of broad valley. This valley is roughly five miles across and runs for at least 60 miles from southeast to northwest. It consists almost entirely of farm fields and is bounded on both sides by mountain ranges. It is bisected along its length by the Salinas River that empties into the Pacific Ocean about 10 miles further downstream. The farms along the valley floor produce year-round and provide the entire nation with many of the berry fruits and green vegetables we’ve now come to expect to be freshly available year-round such as raspberries, strawberries, broccoli, lettuce and avocado. The large fields, most 80 acres or larger are each individually flat as the surface of a calm lake. This perfect flatness is not natural. The top soil was scraped off, the fields were then machine graded into their table-top-like perfection and then the topsoil was replaced. The soil looks incredibly rich, dark and fertile; there is not a rock or stone to be seen. As you leave the valley floor and begin the gradual ascent into the bordering mountains, vegetable farms give way to vineyards and wineries. Go up higher still and cattle graze the steeper hill sides under expansive California oak trees.
I spent five days here on the last week of November 2012, in a little cottage surrounded by the fertile fields, about 6 miles southwest of Salinas and just at the foot of the southwestern mountain range, the Santa Lucia’s. Surrounding the cottage were acres of freshly turned dark brown earth ready for planting, adjacent to acres of bright green broccoli and red strawberries in the process of being harvested. I’m sure there were lots of other things as well but these two I distinctly recognized. The harvesting was done by combination of humans and machines. There were dozens of individuals moving in a cluster through the rows of plants, picking and pulling, and taking what they picked and pulled and laying it on conveyor belts of an accompanying processing vehicle which swallowed up what was offered and performed further processing and packaging. I imagine this is generally how it was done at least since the great depression, when John Steinbeck wrote about the people who lived in and passed through this region. What is probably different today is that the workers appeared to all arrive in their individual private vehicles that were then parked in a long row along the field, much as one would see cars parked along any country road where some festival was taking place.
Salinas itself is a rather typical middle sized American city with a population of slightly more than 150,000. The main industries are, as you might suppose, related to farming. They include packaging, processing and shipping of the land’s bounty, equipment sales and repair, and so forth. The historic downtown shopping area, quaintly called “Old Town”, along Main Street, is clearly struggling for economic survival and relevance. Two majestic old theaters, with their lovely art-deco architecture are closed or repurposed. One serves part time as a Spanish language church. The large Greyhound Bus terminal, just off Main Street is closed. All this said, it should be noted that there are many very nice shops along the street that are still open and functioning as well. Very prominent at the north end of Main Street is the “National Steinbeck Center”. It is housed in a large, sleek, brick, aluminum and glass building and is clearly an attempt by the city to capitalize on its most well known resident, a resident who was not much loved or respected by the city during his lifetime.
One very visible aspect of Salinas is the strong Hispanic influence. The Hispanic culture is pervasive throughout the city, beginning with the people one encounters. In the 2000 census, 64% of the Salinas population was listed as Hispanic. That percentage has certainly not declined in the intervening 12 years. In any case, the people – of all backgrounds – that I passed on the sidewalks were generally friendly and not shy about making eye contact and smiling. I did not feel at all uncomfortable or unwelcome. I had a pleasant experience in the town of Chualar, a small town 8 miles southeast of Salinas, along highway 101. I came across a 1959 Chevrolet Impala parked in front of a row of brightly colored, but faded by time, stores, not all of which were still in business. It was the sort of scene I lust after in my photography. I parked, got out my gear, and set up my camera on the tripod. As I did this, the car owner who was the shopkeeper of one of the stores came out to investigate what I was doing. I therefore asked if it was OK for me to photograph the car in its surroundings. He was happy with my intentions and pleased that I found the scene so appealing. In further conversation I learned his name was Oskar and I got his email address so I could send him a file of the photograph. In his store, he made and sold a deep fried pork that he let me sample. I bought some to take back to the cottage to eat later.
One concern that very quickly confronts a visitor to the Salinas Old Town, and that is prevalent in most other inner city areas across the nation, is homelessness and the constant requests for money, often with an accompanying story such as the need for bus fare to return home, the need to make an important phone call, to purchase a meal, what have you. One will not walk very far along Main Street before receiving such requests. They are almost always made politely and a rejection of the request is met with an attitude of quiet acceptance and expectation. But if one appreciates the writings of Steinbeck, one knows that these panhandlers were the sorts of characters that made his stories what they were. I would expect that John himself would not be too upset or bothered by these folks hanging around outside his “national center” and confronting those who come seeking to gain entry. No doubt he’d still find some good stories in the mix of humanity along those streets.
In East of Eden John Steinbeck wrote “Sometimes, but not often, a rain comes to the Salinas Valley in November”. On two of the five days of my visit in November 2012, I witnessed rather heavy rain, and it came with high winds. The rich soil of the farm fields, at least the portion along roadsides, became slippery as ice and clung to shoes like metal filings to a magnet. The rain is a nuisance, yes, especially for me in my short visit and my goal of finding things in the area to photograph, but the rain brings life. I can imagine that next week, when the sun returns again, the hillsides, which in this late autumn period were rather brown and drab, will already begin to look considerably greener. I wonder about the homeless people I saw in downtown Salinas, where do they go, how do they keep their possessions, in particular sleeping bags and blankets dry?
"I am grown older by a great many years since my first publications, which were in the year 1580: but I very much doubt whether I am grown an inch the wiser. I now, and I anon, are two several persons; but whether better, I cannot determine. It were a fine thing to be old, if we only traveled towards improvement; but ‘tis a drunken, stumbling, reeling, infirm motion: like that of reeds."
Michel de Montaigne, Essays Book III, Chap 9.
The above quote from Montaigne very nicely addresses the fallacy that with age comes wisdom. The 'me' of today is not the 'me' of 1979 or 1994, we are three different people. But the 'me' of today has to live with the consequences of the good and bad decisions made by those people back then. For some things, I'd like to go back and thank them for what they did, and for other things I'd like to go back and shake those idiots for their poor judgement. But, even if we could do that it would not matter, we are here now. We must continue on from where we find ourselves in this constantly changing present, hopefully responding to the new events we encounter that require our judgement and decisions in a manner such that the 'we' of the future will look back upon favorably. Can we learn from our 'mistakes'? I think not, the circumstances will be different, the mistake then may be the proper course now, or vice versa. Do we even know what our 'mistakes' were? What we classify as a 'mistake' may be the singular event that made us what we are. The mistake may be in deeming some past decision to have been a 'mistake'.
I was one of the featured artists at the June 2012 Meeting House Gallery Show in Columbia, MD. The title of the show was "Colors off the Grid" and it ran from May 27 through July 8, 2012. I had 12 photographs in the mixed media show, shared with three other artists. The show was described in detail in the local newspapers, to include the Columbia Flier, in the June 28 issue. The author of the article did a nice job describing several of my pieces that were in the show. Here is a link to that article, check it out:
I am writing this from Atlanta, GA, where I am attending the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standards meetings. If you are reading this then you have access to the internet. If the 'connection' from your viewing device has no wires then very likely the characters of this text that appear on your screen are arriving there (over the air) via the IEEE 802.11 standards. IEEE 802.11 specifies the process for a wireless local area network connection between an endpoint device (that you're looking at now) and the network. Commercial products that employ 802.11 standards use the terminology WiFi. Every two months 802.11 participants meet to discuss enhancing and improving the standards to keep up with demands for new services, new features on existing services, and of course, faster speed. Having 'standards' can be a good thing as they enable interoperability among products from different vendors. Your WiFi enabled computer can be from anywhere and it can connect to the wireless router at the Starbucks made by Linksys or the wireless router at the airport (any airport) made by for instance Belkin, etc. Why does it work? Because both sides adhere to the 802.11 wireless standards. When standards are not used then incompatibilities arise. In photography this happens when Nikon encodes their raw digital images using the Nikon format (NEF), Canon uses something different, certainly not NEF. Other makers use their own encoding formats too. But, what if all the owners of these different cameras want to use Adobe Photoshop to process their raw camera captures? It can happen that when one tries to read in their camera proprietary files and open them in Photoshop an error message pops up that the file cannot be opened because Adobe cannot decode it. Usually, if the camera brand is popular, as Nikon, Canon, Sony, etc, all are, they give the details for their encoding formats to Adobe (or provide a decoder to Adobe) so that their files can be opened. Still it can be an inconvenience if this sharing has not happened. This is a simple case where vendors do not use standards and it creates an inconvenience for users. In this case they usually do eventually agree to share relevant details, but often as well, vendors do not use standards and do not share with other vendors. In this case, the only recourse is to use all products made by the same vendor (and this is the motivation for vendors not to share information).
While camera vendors have proprietary formats for their raw image files, happily for consumers, all vendors do comply with a universal standard for certain of their image files. You are probably familiar with the acronym "JPEG". This is a standard for compressed image files and if vendors comply with this standard then such files can be viewed on most all computers and with most all image viewing software. All digital cameras offer the option of outputting the image files in JPEG format, which can be viewed and shared immediately, without processing or conversion.
So standards can be good. But a case can be made against standards as well. Standards can stifle innovation. If individual vendors were implementing their own wireless protocols and procedures, arguably, each vendor would have an implementation with some feature that the others didn't have and the marketplace would have a chance to vote on which it liked and which it did not. By adhering to a standard the vendor has little incentive to innovate on his own in those aspects of his product that correspond to the standard. Innovation takes place in the standards meetings, like the one I am presently attending. But as one would expect, movement in these large bodies is slow, much slower than any single vendor could realize on its own. There is a danger that by the time a standards committee adopts a feature, the technology has already passed it by and moved on to something even better.
For details on 802.11 wireless standards see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11
For details on photographic image file formats see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_image_format
I've been reading lately about the demise of study in the "classics" at the college level. By the classics is meant the historical canon of western thought and tradition, starting with the Greeks and then moving on to the Romans, the early Christian era followed by the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and Romantic eras, ending in the Industrial and the Modern eras. These periods were defined by thinkers and writers in Europe and subsequently including America. Yes, they were almost all white men - and this explains why they are now no longer held in the esteem they once were. As one who has been enthralled for most of my life by the great western classics, I find this situation in our colleges and universities distressing. In 1972, when I was a junior in college (more precisely a second classman at the US Air Force Academy) an Encyclopedia Britannica salesman came on campus and in addition to selling encyclopedias, he was also selling a series called "Great Books of the Western World" (GBWW). He had a persuasive sales pitch and threw in all sorts of extras and painless payment options to get an impressionable 20 year old to buy the 54 volumes of writings of dead white men. His pitch worked with me. Although my decision to buy was surely impulsive, in retrospect, it was one of the wisest decisions I ever made. For many a year since then I have proclaimed that this was the best purchase I made in my entire life. The pleasure per dollar that I've gotten from these 54 volumes has been all that one could hope for from a purchase (and yes, my camera equipment has brought me much pleasure per dollar spent as well, but I'd rate GBWW higher). As I write this in 2012, it's now 40 years that I have owned them. The GBWW hold a prominent place on my bookshelves and more importantly, they are not just for show. They have given me priceless knowledge and entertainment since the day they were delivered back in - I'd guess - the spring of 1972 and continuing thorough to the present day. Youth today who are not aware of these writings are missing much that the world has to offer them. A few evenings spent reading "The History" of Herodotus or "The Essays" of Montaigne or the plays of Aeschylus (not to mention Homer, Plato, Shakespeare, etc) will bring home that the problems we face in society have been faced by others through the ages and dealt with, that it is in our nature for logic, myth, and feelings to struggle and that somehow this struggle when faced, accepted and blanced makes us all the more human. I agree, one should not study the classics in college in expectation of finding employment based on them alone, but as a one semester or one year survey course, they can and will make the mathematician or computer scientist or secondary ed teacher better at their chosen specialty, and possibly sew the seeds of future continued personal growth in this rich tradition. And, like it or not, we all (men, women, people of all races and nationalities) stand on the shoulders of these giants - perhaps not exclusively, but in a large degree.
Earl Scruggs died last week, Mar 29, 2012, I believe. He was 88 years old. If you don't know who Earl Scruggs is, you're missing out on some beautiful music. If I say "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" or the "Ballad of Jed Clampett" (the theme song from the "Beverly Hillbillies") then you know Earl's work. He wrote (or at least co-wrote) them and played the banjo on them. He was a banjo virtuoso. He helped popularize the back woods music from Appalachia. I have a phonograph album of his (yes, I still have some and listen to them), titled "Earl Scruggs, His Family and Friends". I purchased it back in the late 70's I would guess. On it he plays pieces with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Doc Watson and the Byrds among others. It is just fantastic and a real treat to listen to. Thank you Earl, for the pleasure you brought to us.
I finally went ahead and committed to creating a web site for my photography. I was torn between a site that does most of the work for you but is limited in flexibility or one that is bare bones and requires the user to do some actual html code development but for that reason is limiteless in what one can do (if one is willing to do the work). I opted for the former approach and went with zenfolio. I did so because it was quick and easy and cost competitive with the ones that required more sweat equity. Still, as I pressed ahead and then had to decide among the various templates for the pages, none of which were exactly what I wanted, I wished I could tweak them like I would have been able to do were I coding them from scratch. But then, the site would still be under construction months from now rather than ready to view on day 1. Heck, I've even got this silly blog posting out on day 1. There's something to be said for letting others do the heavy lifting.
