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On ‎11‎/‎30‎/‎2018 at 10:29 PM, stray cat said:

 

OK we are most certainly entering heady territory here. I love the ideas and connections and connotations that are constantly motivated by this thread. "the accretion of indecisive moments". "the fact that something screams at you, and has been screaming, but has become background noise.............Until". We have reached, I think, a really important juncture here. We can throw out the book on decisive moments if we so choose. Remember that scene in Dead Poets Society where the Robin Williams character got the students to tear out the page of pompous gobbledygook from their poetry readers? Are we at that point? Don't get me wrong - Cartier-Bresson and the whole decisive moment thing are critically important moments in the evolution of photography, and his writings are far from gobbledygook. But we can liberate ourselves, as Rog so eloquently points out and as Wayne's work so eloquently testifies, and still be in the vanguard of modern photographic practice - and it is of our choosing to do so. The visual poetry of the decisive moment is no more or less right than the visual poetry of a grand tree and picnic table that have remained in the view of the artist for years - decades. Or of a construction formed in response to and appreciation of a lingering memory of climbing to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa. It might be in a photograph from 1976 of the back of a goods train which contains a rusty panel that for all the world looks like a beautifully painted snowy landscape. Tear out those pages! Seize the day! Let's liberate ourselves further from whatever it is that holds us back in our pursuit of our art! Who cares if people think we're nuts? Hell - maybe we are - but still who cares? Find frozen citizens in the street, ladders that go nowhere, lascivious statues set against azure skies, statuesque foals in the fields! And photograph them! So many subjects, so little time!

"So many subjects, so little time!" So true! I hear you sounding the clarion call to action; oh, to resist the cliché, the conundrum, and claim new territory with fresh insight. What's at risk?

The presence of absence. A photograph is not always so much what is shown but rather what is not shown. Thinking of Samuel Beckett.

Looking at Eggleston, there is a disquieting nothingness. Vacant. Remote. Fraught with vague possibilities. The cast sometimes ambiguous amber. Kodachrome daydreams. Frustrated, the opening shot to a David Lynch film without any of the resolution . . . or irresolution. Why didn't Ansel Adams appreciate Eggleston's photographs? What did John Szarkowski see?

Mr. Keating, an allusion to John Keats. "Tear out the page. Rip it out!" A challenge to conformity. More a metaphor. What is more at stake is the conformity of the class to the adapted mindset of Mr. Keating himself. Still, the crux of the metaphor is amply demonstrated by artists, such as Robert Rauschenberg I've mentioned before, who made a statement demonstrating by erasing a De Kooning drawing and calling it art. Art that was only possible using art that preceded it. Without the De Kooning, there would be no erased De Kooning by Rauschenberg. Still another spin on production by negation is Gerhard Richter's painting Tisch, which has the central subject of a table, painted in photographic-looking gray values, which the artist has obliterated for the most part, as though he was in the process of wiping the canvas clean for another painting. It seems the record of a painter demonstrating the creative process and making decisions, perhaps changing his mind and abandoning the work. As a fragmented image that alludes to its prior wholeness, the complete table, it is now a completed fragment, even though indeterminate. Mr. Keating's call to "tear out the page--rip it out" is to fragment the poetry textbook, and in so doing, make it whole. This is Hollywood's notion, which borrows from Perrine's Sound and Sense, used in many English classes today, fleshing it out with some mathematics on the XY axes, which Perrine later discounts.

The real J. Evans Pritchard on poetry: "If it is to communicate experience, it must be directed at the whole man, not just at his understanding. It must involve not only his intelligence but also his senses, his emotions, and his imagination. Poetry, to the intellectual dimension, adds a sensuous dimension, an emotional dimension, and an imaginative dimension." Sounds more than something like Mr. Keating. Such is Hollywood. This is why many academics discount The Dead Poet's Society, since it efficiently deconstructs itself.

Phil, your most valuable point for me is extending your metaphorical example, to challenge conformity, the cliché, in photography, and realizing in so doing, the creative spirit sometimes lurches forward. As photographers, where would we all be without each other?

I am reminded that in James Whale's Frankenstein with Boris Karloff, Victor Frankenstein proclaims at the moment the Creature is re-animated, "It's alive! It's alive!" Or was he characterizing LUF online?

I am for lurching and Phil's poetry, for which I'm grateful.

Cut and print,
Rog

Edited by Ernest
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2 hours ago, Ernest said:

Don't worry, Wayne. The jury has finished deliberation, reaching a verdict in less that fifteen minutes, owing to closing time of Starbucks, and you have been found by your peers, after a perusal of your voluminous artistic footprint, which arduous task was interrupted time and again by outright applause by the jury members, you have been found to be completely, to use the clinical term, NUTS. So, don't worry. Not only are many already in the club, but many are bumping elbows to line up to get pass the bouncer. Screaming an issue. Leica earbuds by Master & Dynamic ME05BR or Leica Edition 0.95 Over-Ear Headphones Master & Dynamic MH40. You say, three or four rolls? Do you need to be reminded how many takes Marlon Brando requires for a single utterance, which may not even be a line? Capitalize on background noise--that's just your sanity skipping grooves on your well-worn vinyl LP brain. It's a familiar tune that loves the replay.

Roger, like a powerful wind through Zion, your words are of consequence. I always enjoy reading them; and I enjoy thinking about them as I wander around.

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They, your words and thoughts, are also the wood-screws that give strength and stability. :) Thanks for the encouragement.

 

Olympus OM1, 28/2.8, Foma 200

 

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16 minutes ago, Wayne said:

Roger, like a powerful wind through Zion, your words are of consequence. I always enjoy reading them; and I enjoy thinking about them as I wander around.

They, your words and thoughts, are also the wood-screws that give strength and stability. :) Thanks for the encouragement.

 

Olympus OM1, 28/2.8, Foma 200

 

Thanks, Wayne. When I posted my response to Phil, your "Empty Room" flashed onto the monitor and startled me with its directness, its minimalism, the light ricocheting, almost as though it was animate, searching, focusing on that one door. And the pole in the middle of the floor. No apparent purpose. What purpose? And then I scrolled up to the "Selfie." At last, I will be able to identify you in the line-up! A word of caution, though: the DMV is really tightening up on the ID photographs for the new forever driver's licenses.

This suite of photographs is astounding. "Pickup w/Bollard," "Three Blue Trash Cans," and the "Nativity Scenes."

Keep on shooting.

Cheers,
Rog

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On ‎12‎/‎1‎/‎2018 at 3:10 AM, christoph_d said:

Phil, 

A manifest on this forum's mindset of photography doesn't come amiss. Descriptions such as "the accretion of indecisive moments" in my mind add up to something like a double negation of the definition of "the decisive moment":). And on a personal note I'd shy away from phrases such as "tearing out pages", with their destructive meaning; reminding me too much of unfortunate events of the past, events that led to too much beauty lost throughout the ages. We will never be able to read Aristotle's second book on poetics, never be able to see Bottecelli's paintings consumed by the flames of Savonarola, never admire the artworks lost in the Reformation ... you can go on forever.

I like the mystery in photography; photography as an art conjuring up images. Or in the words of Michel Fournier when writing about Edouard Boubat, "... the world obeys him like it once obeyed Orpheus". 

Have a good weekend everyone!

C.

MP, 50, Adox50

I really like your statement: "I like the mystery in photography; photography as an art conjuring up images." This emphasizes the interplay between the viewer and the intentions of the photographer. You have selected this shot for what it says, perhaps in a universal sense, but each viewer will construct an individual narrative. One strength of this shot is the ambiguous identity of the young couple, and in this way, it becomes universal. The "of-the-moment" entanglement of the legs, the impromptu posture, the playful caressing, the loving abandonment--all has a refreshing innocence. My question is this: this is one page of your book, what would you select as the adjoining photograph? Would they counter each other, like scenes in a film? Would it expand the moment between the two lovers? Would it contradict the visual statement, ironically? What if your facing photograph were of a battalion of young soldiers marching down the boulevard? What if it were a war torn country house? What if? And then, what about the rest of your book? What will keep us turning the page?

Cheers,
Rog

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On ‎11‎/‎18‎/‎2018 at 6:58 PM, Ernest said:

Disintegrating Translations

M-A Thambar-M
ADOX Color Implosion

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This is to share my thinking, as opaque as it is, on this piece: what I was thinking and where I was going. Abstract imagery.

I started thinking of this as a very short film, long on implications: it starts with DNA red of dried blood in the upper left panel that intimates the ancestry of the McGuffey readers, now disintegrating with time. Simultaneously, there is the analogous alphabet wooden typeset letters that transform into a mirror cloud, diaphanous, ephemeral. How do we translate what has passed into something that will preserve humanity in the Now without disintegrating? This is a piece about remnants, evidence of humankind, inventing movable type, inventing a reader for teaching. What is being taught, however, is disintegrating. The equation is a warning; there is one line of imagery over another line of imagery against gray and black forming a kind of picture equation sign; equals what?

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6 hours ago, A miller said:

Who do you think wears the pants in this household....? 😉

Portra 400, M-A, 28mm

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Superb shot Adam color and framing ....

you come back to your old love of street photos and your M-A works fine !👍

More please 🙂

Best H the "can's worms" who loves street photos in film !

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Am ‎03‎.‎12‎.‎2018 um 02:34 schrieb A miller:

M-A, 28 elmarit pre-asph, Portra 400

This is one reason why I am a fan of your street photos: very often you wait until you have a direct eye contact with one of your "protagonists". And especially in this case, this is a perfect eye contact!

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Foca Universal, 28/6.3 Oplar, Fuji 400H

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societe general....   [T-Max 400]

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11 hours ago, A miller said:

Who do you think wears the pants in this household....? 😉

Portra 400, M-A, 28mm

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i'll take a wild guess and say its not him 

 

awesome photo btw

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Two new friends today: "T" and his rescue dog, Lucky. Met them on Lucky's daily walk.

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Foca Universal, Oplar 28/6.3, Fuji 400H

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Station VII

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Foca Universal, 28/6.3 Oplar, Fuji 400H

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