Postcards from the Creative Journey

What’s new Pussycat?

From "Oakwood Cemetary"

One of the most common venues for photographic exposure (pun intended) these days is the Juried Exhibition. Buried in the prospectus fine print is the phrase, “Only work completed within the last two years is eligible…” If you submit art to juried shows (also known as “photo lotto” – but with smaller payouts) you see this phrase, or something like it, in every prospectus. What’s new Pussycat? What is your current work? The latest things you photographed or what you’ve currently working on? The dilemma for me is how digital photography and Photoshop have redefined “current work”.

Virtually all of my photographs fall into either a project or follow a theme. It takes quite a while for me to develop and complete a project. Sometimes the “raw material” for a project can span several years, or in my case, several decades of art making. I am finishing the work now so it is my latest work – even if it contains images from sometime in the last century. (That’s the twentieth century.)

If this digital stuff is supposed to give me instant results, then how come I have digital files that are more than two years old? Really, I do. The digerati tell us, “You can do more, faster, better work with digital cameras that with film.” Well, I guess so, but you couldn’t prove it by me. It seems to take just as much time to get a project completed digitally as it did with film. Maybe I can do the work faster, but maybe subconsciously I don’t want to complete this work because I haven’t thought about it, meditated upon it or worked on it long enough. I started photography when the craft took a lot of time and maybe I want that space taken up by the creative process of thoughtfully completing a project rather than rushing through just to get something done.

Eyesight and Vision

The Ark

from "Light Through a Window"

My Wife and I went to a local “under the stars” band concert sponsored by our city’s arts commission. The featured music was provided by a “big band.” This style of music was popular in the 1930’s and 1940’s. As one might expect, the practitioners of this musical style are usually more “mature” than most bands. The audience is even older. During the show, I was struck by a certain discord among the tones. It seemed as if the entire orchestra was out of tune, but consistently out of tune. Then it struck me. Maybe the collective “hearing” of the band was declining due to age. This hearing loss was affecting their art. I began to ponder this topic.

When is the eventual loss of eyesight that comes with age going to affect my art? I was told Chris Burkett is concerned about how aging will affect his ability to evaluate his famously precise high resolution printing. I gave up my view cameras a few years ago. The 5x7 was first to go. I still have the 4x5, fewer film holders and fewer lenses. The Zone VI standard tripod (all fifteen pounds of it) is also gone. The days of hop scotching across the tops of rocks in remote streams with a backpack full of view camera gear and the big tripod are gone. Long afternoons in the darkroom rocking print trays are now a memory. Well, almost. (My darkroom has been converted into a brewery, so it hasn’t been a total loss.)

Now it’s a sling bag, a carbon fiber composite tripod, a digital camera with a zoom lens and good photo printer. The equipment and technology are extending my ability to work in the field. I can continue to create art for quite a while longer. Maybe it will take a bit longer, but eventually age will catch up with me.

It’s cruel. It takes decades to sharpen your vision and then your eyesight gets blurry.

It’s Not About You

Street Scene, Charleston, SC

I read Lenscratch blog this week (a blog worth following, too) and had two other people point out the recent post about having a difficult time of making a living as a “Career Fine Art Photographer” (hereinafter CFAP – sorry, the new job is really kickin’ in here). Well, golly, the concept of a CFAP is something I just can’t get my head around, although this month has been really great for me. Seriously. Cindy Sherman and I between us averaged about $1.75 million in sales this month. So, I have that going for me, which is nice. (For those of you that pay attention to the arts scene, one of Cindy’s photographs sold for $3.5 million this month. Me, I sold the usual number.) Between Cindy (bless her heart) and the other folks out there not being able to arrange shows and make money as the CFAP business, I got to thinking about this.

So I started thinking about the shows my acquaintances and I have been able to mount in recent memory. There’s my show (I’m always thinking of myself first, you know) of the transformation of a Public School in my home town. Another show of abstract color photographs illustrating the balance of forces found in one’s life. There is a show of hand-made fishing boats, the people that make them and the culture surrounding the fishermen. Lastly, an exhibit of street photography (people still do that!) of how we represent genders in society. The last topic was esoteric, but appealing to a wide audience.

A few years ago I heard Joyce Tenneson lecture at the Southern Photography Triennial exhibit at the Gregg Museum at NC State University. Joyce Tenneson is an accomplished and successful photographer. Her thirteen published books allow us to do an extensive evaluation of her body of work. In publishing her books she noted that books of her photographs had total sales in the order of 1500 to 3500 copies for each book. This seems like a small number (and it is) but it is relatively successful number in terms of books for a CFAP. One of her books, “Women of Power” sold over a half million copies. Why such a big difference between the two types of books?

My good friend and fellow photographer Brooks Jensen podcasted (Brooks' Podcast site is here.) on one of our many of our conversations last week. The summary of the podcast is, “A mandatory prerequisite for autobiographical art would be to have an interesting life. So, if you choose to make autobiographical art, you should be interesting. Not just to yourself, but to others.”

I think that is the key thought for this whole affair. If you make art that is of interest to the viewers and not just yourself the chance for success in gaining acceptance for your work is greatly increased. I think the experience of Joyce Tenneson covers the concept perfectly. Present work that is of interest to you, sell 3,000 books. Present work that is of interest to others and sell 500,000 books.

Something to think about.

Compulsories

 
Number 52, Charleston South Carolina

 

Compulsories. I came up with this description of a type of photograph many years ago. I appropriated this term from the world of figure skating. Compulsory events are never shown on TV. This is the technical judging of the skater. Can the skater do a figure eight, skate a perfect circle and other tests to determine if the skater is competent? We photographers have these compulsory photographs, too. They are especially prevalent in the world of large format photographers.

So you know what the compulsory photographs are:

Pepper in a tin funnel.

Sand dune at dawn or dusk. Strong shadows and S shapes

Nude on Sand Dune

Zone VIII Church or house

Zone VI barn

Tunnel View (I should not have to tell you where this is located.)

Abstract Rock photograph

Any long exposure that makes water look like cotton candy.

Kitchen utensil still life.

Nautilus Shells or bleached bones.

Calla Lillies

So you know what a compulsory is...

True confessions time. The first thing I did when I bought my large format camera was open it, unfold it, set it on a tripod, put the lensboard and lens on the front of the camera and run to the refrigerator for a green pepper. I will admit this. If you are smiling now, you know you did it too. I don't know if it is more disturbing that I can tell you this story, or that you just saw that photograph, or that as a polaroid it's still in great condition.

I was at an exhibition of photographs and came upon a compulsory photograph of an old barn. My companion said, “That’s really nice – the first twenty or so times you see it.” My response was, “It’s something I would have thought wonderful twenty years ago.” (Meow, Hiss.)

We had not considered that for some people compulsories are new and exciting. Photographers exist in a continuum of existence and progress. There are those that started before us and have achieved more. We seek them for guidance and inspiration. There are our fellow photographers whose evolution mirrors our own. We seek them for their company and to discuss mutual problems. There are those that have started after us. We can inspire and guide their efforts, especially if we have those same barn photographs in our portfolio

 

It Was an Acceptable Level of Ecstasy

The show is hung, it looks great, the opening is over and I don’t have too much to say about what happened. Everything turned out well; a good crowd, absolutely wonderful weather and some really good photographs. Being a blog about photographs, I thought it would be best to give you an idea of what the show looked like at one of the three venues at the Town Hall Campus. The other two venues are more public spaces and don’t have the gallery feel the Page Walker Arts & History Center has. Then again, I really like old buildings.

Looking into the Main Gallery

at the Page Walker Arts & History Center

Looking backward

Entry to the Main gallery

 

The star of the show was the Keepsake. I finally saw the completed product last night. They turned out just as well as I thought they would. They are far superior to a magazine sized exhibition catalog that was originally planned. I wouldn’t tell you that if (a) I didn’t design it and (b) it wasn’t true. Here’s what they look like

Here's a folio, unopened. It's 8" wide and 6" tall. If you flip it over and open it...

You see a photo of the front of the school. Open that page and...

Another photo of the school entrance. Flip that page to the right and...

The right page holds a CD version of the show and much more.

In the center is a booklet telling about the show. Then you can scatter thirty pictures all over the living room floor in a semi artistic manner.

Inside the folio is the eight page booklet, thirty of the sixty plus photographs in the show and the aforementioned CD.  The CD is special because it has the folios for all three photographers with "photographer's choice" extra images, the text of the booklet, a history of the school site, a "Scrapbook" with historic photos, the script of a play about the school from our youth theatre group and video interviews with former students. We have taken the old and made it new. We have used historic and contemporary photographs, text and video to describe a Cary landmark.

It’s almost time to get back to reality. Los tres amigos have one more activity to do and this exhibit is finished. We have a gallery talk on May 19^th gving our impressions about the project. I have a pretty good idea of what I am going to say, but I have to commit it to paper and practice to make sure it is as good as the rest of the exhibition.

Even more important, is having to come up with more new topics for the blog. Next week it's back to reality and thinking about photography and not going on about a specific topic.