Did It Really Look Like That?

There is one question that I've gotten more than any other from people looking at my photography: "Is that what it really looked like?" This is a question that has so much baggage attached to it, that it needs to be unpacked before I can answer it. This blog post is an attempt at that unpacking.

Motivating this question is a sense of incredulity about the picture in question. Usually, I take it as a compliment, understanding it to mean, "Wow, I've never seen anything this beautiful or interesting myself. How lucky you were to be there with a camera to capture it." However, another way to take this question is that it is calling into question the authenticity of the photograph. Slyly, the questioner is suggesting that the picture isn't an accurate representation of the original subject. In this digital age where Photoshop and similar programs make it extremely easy to manipulate images (Iranian missiles anyone?), it's hard not to understand this suspicion.

A full discussion of the complications Photoshop adds to this issue will have to wait for another post to do it justice. For photography generally, though, the issue surrounding authenticity is intimately tied into the concept of what the original "really looked like" and that ultimately is a question of phenomenology, and as such, I can't answer it. I have no idea what *anything* looks like. I only know what my senses tell me about it. Hell, if you want to get really into it, you can ask whether we know with certainty that "it" is there at all outside of our perceptions of it. In this way, I have no way of knowing what it looks like in "reality," but only what it looked like to me at the time.

Let's look at a specific example. I took this photo last summer at Coney Island:





GOLDEN TICKETS (original)




GOLDEN TICKETS (processed)

Now, as you can see, there's quite a difference between these two images. I didn't crop this image in the processing stage, but I did do some color correction which resulted as you can see in a much more vibrant photo.

Now, you could say, "Aha! This *isn't* what it really looked like. I *knew* it!" but such a supposition implies that the camera blindly and completely captures what was actually there to be captured. Instead, the technology itself in getting that original RAW image is working all kinds of voodoo on the subject, not the least of which is its transmuting the subject from three dimensions to two which results in various shifts in the visual geometry of the original subject.

Along with that, the sensor doesn't capture light and color in the same way the eye does. It can capture spectra of light that the human eye can't even see, for example, and so this original file is only an approximation of what the *camera* "sees," not the photographer. Therefore, that image straight from the camera doesn't resemble what I remember seeing nearly as much as the final, processed image does.

So I ask you, "Is that what it really looked like?" Depends on who you ask, me or the camera. For me, the artist, I can only say that the final, processed version is my best approximation of my memory of the subject on that day. It captures not only the physical actuality of the subject as closely as possible, but it also is my best attempt at capturing how that subject made me feel because ultimately that is what photography is all about. A photograph shouldn't just document the physical reality of the subject, but should attempt to communicate its emotional and subjective reality as well. That is my very long, and I'm sure, incomplete answer to a very short question. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, I'd love to hear from you. Please comment below. Thanks and take care.

RAV

Coney Island, Baby

On July 18th, over 32,000 photographers around the world gathered at various locations and spent the next few hours photographing everything they could get their cameras on. This was the second year for Photowalk, an event inpired and organized by Scott Kelby, and based on the results of the photos I've seen taken on that day, it couldn't have been a more rousing success.

My brother Jacob to come down from Illinois to do the walk with me at Coney Island. At our location alone there were around 40 other participants and we couldn't have had a more beautiful day. It was an amazing experience for at several reasons. First, Coney Island. What an amazing riot of color and people and activity. Normally, I feel too self-conscious and invasive to take pictures of strangers on the street, but because Coney Island was so crazy no one even noticed if I snapped them. Of course, it didn't hurt there there were so many other people doing the same thing. It made what I was doing with the camera just background noise. The other photographers also made the day special by giving me a sense of community that is all together too easy to be without. Photography can be such isolating work, just you, your camera, and your computer. It was wonderful to be with other people just as obsessed with the visual world as I was. And oh what amazing images they created. I felt honored to able to be a part of the group.

For those interested, you can go here to see a stream of the worldwide photowalk images. If you want to see some of the images I captured at Coney Island, you can see my photostream here. As a part of the event, Scott Kelby is going to choose some photographs from the entire walk as prize winners. Below, I'm including my two entries. If you get a chance to go next year, I highly recommend it. You don't have to be a professional. You just need to have a camera and love photography. As Émile Zola said, "In my view, you cannot claim to have seen something until you have photographed it." Take care.



High Cotton



Coney Island Cone

Jersey Art Splash

I am finally entering my first New Jersey art show. It's the prestigious 2009 New Jersey Arts Annual. This is a very selective show which showcases the best of Jersey fine arts. While getting picked for such shows is always a dicey proposition no matter how good your work is because judging is such a personal process, the topic this year is one that I think my subject matter is well suited for: Local Life. This is how they describe what they are looking for:

"In these transformative times, the headlong rush into 'globalization' sometimes obscures the intimate, familiar details of life immediately around us. We are asking artists to turn their vision towards their own communities, their own homes, their own lives, their own thoughts, to explore life as an intimate experience, and through art find what is profound in the familiar."

Needless to say, if you read my entry about my struggle to create an Artistic Statement (one of my first entries), then you know how well this fits what I am interested in capturing already. Couldn't be more tailor made for me. As long as they don't interpret this to be a Norman-Rockwell look-a-like contest, I think I have a good chance, but as I said, you never know.

Without further ado, here are the 8 images I submitted:



The Duke in the John




Elsie




First Grade, Mrs. Maskew




The Santa of Christmas Past




Smiley




Spellcheck




Spigot




Take a Number

I'm very excited about this show and the images I've sent in. Regardless of the outcome, it's exciting to finally start my entrance into the New Jersey art scene. If you are interested, the show will run at the Morris Museum from April 29th to June 28th. Wish me luck!

Good Shot

I've been playing basketball with a very interesting group of guys most Friday nights at a local Catholic school. We usually don't get done till after 11 and afterwards, a few of us go to a bar close by to complain about our aches and pains and enjoy the sunset of our athletic careers (needless to say, both "athletic" and "careers" need scare quotes there).

This bar happens to be next door to a run down old roadside motel called the Boundary and when we pulled up the first time, I told Jon, who is kind enough to give me a ride to and from these games, that I'd love to take a picture of the road sign for the hotel. He expressed great surprise and asked me why. To him, it looked like one of a countless number of motel signs not worthy of a second look much less a photo. To me, though, I had a knee-jerk reaction to capture it with my camera. At the time, I couldn't articulate to him why I wanted to take the picture; I just knew that it interested me. Jon got me thinking about a lot of things though and this post is a delayed answer to his question.

First, let's get a look at what inspired all this:



The Boundary

I finally remembered my camera one Friday and this is the shot I got. I'm not entirely happy with it. Night photography has never been a strength of mine and it was after 1am, about 20 degrees outside, and I was in sweaty basketball clothes, so I didn't spend as much time on getting it perfect as I would've liked, but I still find the image very compelling. The real question, though, is why?

I can certainly read the photo as it exists now and try to reverse engineer the process that led to my concluding this was a good subject. The worn texture and general shabbiness of the sign contradicts the promise of comfort and class promised by cable TV and HBO. Think about this hotel, probably opened in post-World War II America where travel and mobility promised romance and adventure on the road whereas the state of the sign and hotel generally as it is today suggest that it is only used for romance of a more carnal nature. Such Americana always draws my eye and certainly fits in with my interest in engaging with mundane objects that normally escape our attention as my artistic statement tries to explain.

However, that doesn't really answer the question or at least it only does so to raise another question. I certainly don't take pictures of *all* mundane things. I still have some kind of filter in place that helps me decide what I to photograph. Why this sign and not the last 100 motel signs I'd seen?

The question finally boils down to this: What makes a good shot? There are certainly rules that most people agree about in terms of composition such as the rule of thirds and questions of sharp focus, but there are as many exceptions to the rules and reasons to break them as there are rules. Plus, these are rules for what makes a good photo not a good subject for a photo, so Jon's question is still unanswered.

I want to say that, ultimately, what makes a good subject is a personal choice of the artist that can't be explained rationally. The reaction is the result of a gestalt of as many things as go into creating the individual's personality itself. Maybe it's one of the things that marks the artist as "artistic," this ability to hone in on what has potential artistic merit as a subject. The success of that artist would then be how many other people also respond on some level to the subjects s/he focuses on. Other people weren't attuned to the potential artistic worth of the subject until the artist "distilled" it into a work of art.

In this scenario, the artist him or herself doesn't have to be consciously aware of what specific elements go into drawing the artist to the potential subject. The draw, the unconscious pull, is enough. Let me give you another example. Here is a photo I took on my recent return to Charleston, WV:



Take a Number

It's a picture of the shelves at a local shoe repair shop. When I went in with my camera equipment, the workers were already giving me the fisheye and when I asked if I could take a picture of their repair shelves, they rolled their eyes, looked at each other and said "Knock yourself out." To them, it was only their workplace. Nothing but a place for them to practice their craft. What could I possibly find there of aesthetic value. They didn't come out and ask me the question, but it was there in their eyes. I don't know that I would've had any more of a satisfactory answer for them than I did for Jon. I was moved by the repetition of the bright yellow tags and big, bold black numbers. The way the bags are all shelved in a row, some straight and some askew suggest a real tension between organization and chaos, the age-old battle between entropy and enthalpy.

Pretty highbrow stuff for repaired shoes on old shelves, but if I look at the image now, read it as if I hadn't taken the photograph but am only a viewer, those are the themes I see at work. None of these thoughts were in my mind when I had the urge to take the photo, at least not consciously. I only knew that it was a subject I really wanted to capture. According to the principle I've been describing, this would be fine. As an artist, my only immediate need is to act on this impulse. Some of these urges will result in more successful photographs than others, but overall, the instinct to find a certain subject photoworthy is reason enough to capture it. The judgments and explanations can come later, by me or by others.

However, Jon didn't seem very satisfied with this answer which essentially is "I dunno why I find that worth taking a picture of" so I wonder if I am missing a step in the artistic process. Am I not enough in touch with my process or professional enough in my approach to my work that I'm missing some preliminary, preparatory stage where I should be able to articulate my interest before I pick up the camera? Am I taking the easy way out and not rigorously enough challenging myself as an artist? One flip answer I gave Jon was "If I could describe in words what moves me about the subject, I wouldn't need the camera to capture it." I think there is some truth to that, but I'm not sure it doesn't evade some very important issues that I've tried to tease out in this post. That's where I'm stuck in the thought process. If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions on where I can go from here, I'd love to hear them.

Well, Jon, that was a hell of a question. Thanks for the rides and the blog entry topic.

Best of West Virginia

There is another Tamarack show coming up, running from June 20th to August 3rd. It will be a great show, so if you are within driving distance I strongly urge you to go, if only to see my two pieces in the show, heh.

Here are the two pieces that were accepted (you have seen them in earlier posts, but see if you can find the subtle photoshop work I did on the first one):


Final Architecture


Smiley

Frankly I was surprised that those were the two they chose from the five entries because I thought the other three were stronger. I guess that's why I'm an entrant and not a member of the jurying body. Here are the three rejects. Let me know what you think. I'm especially happy with the Duke!


The Shape of Color


The Color of Shape


The Duke in the John

Final Architecture

While I'd planned a more substantive post, life has again taken precedence, so I'm instead coming to you with a plea for your help. I'm trying to put together entries for a new juried show at Tamarack coming up this summer called "The Best of West Virginia."

I can send in five entries, but I'm very torn about one in particular. I have two slightly different versions of the same subject and I can't decide which one is a better photograph. Please let me know which you prefer and why. Extra credit points given for originality and creativity. If you actually hate both, I suppose you can tell me that as well, but don't expect extra credit for it. Neither one is perfect--wish I had a third version--but I love the "idea" of the image if that makes any sense. Thanks in advance for your help.


Version 1



Version 2

66th Biennial AAWV Juried Exhibition '08

Wow, it's been a while. I won't bore you with excuses for the long absence. Just life getting in the way of the important stuff. As a way to get back on track, though, I have good news to post. I just found out that all three of my entries to the 66th biennial Allied Artists of West Virginia Juried Exhibition were accepted. The show opens May 24th at the Huntington Museum of Art and will run through the end of June. There has been some controversy because the judge only accepted 30 pieces for the show, resulting in a much smaller collection than in the past. This show has always been good, though, so I'm looking forward to seeing what it will be like this year. Anyway, here are the three photographs of mine that were chosen. They were all taken on the road trip Dawn and I took down to Florida last Thanksgiving. Hope if you are close by, you can stop by and see the show!




Blue Waltz




Spigot




Text & Subtext

Finding the Words

Considering I've taught college writing and literature classes for over 15 years, it's not surprising that I find myself fascinated with language. Switching my focus to photography hasn't lessened that interest, so it shouldn't come as a shock that the second photographic series I'd like to talk about is something I'll call "Finding the Words." One of my favorite photographic subjects is the written word, whether that word be printed on a business sign or scrawled hurriedly on an alley wall. In the following entry I'll provide examples of both these types of found words and discuss the photographic relevance of these instances of visible language.

Looking for Signs
First I'd like to tackle the example of what I'll call official words, words that are printed up and serve an official, socially sanctioned, function, usually for businesses.

Here are some examples:


Onan Motors



Moving Prosthetics



Law and Order



Christian Porn


First, let me explain why I felt compelled to capture these words with my camera. In the first image, I felt an admittedly juvenile pleasure in seeing Onan--the biblical figure best know for spilling his seed and thereby associating his name to masturbation--selling engines. At least he doesn't have to worry about his idle hands any more.

The second photo was similarly motivated by a childish sense of humor. If you look carefully at the two signs on the building, one labels it as the home of Carolina Orthotics and Prosthetics. The other sign indicates that it is actually the *former* home of the company as they have moved. I found this an odd juxtaposition, a symbol of limited mobility being on the move.

The third image was taken on a Manhattan tour boat. The axe implies how serious they are about being orderly. They will enforce that rule, but it might not be clean or painless seems to be the implicit message.

The last photo was taken in Jefferson, WV, infamous for it's adult industries. I couldn't pass up the chance to capture the odd pairing of adult bookstore and evangelical church. I suppose it could provide convenience for those wanting to sin and then be forgiven immediately.

Obviously what ties all of these images together is the humor that arises from the words and their surroundings, text and context if you will. The level and quality of the irony that arises from these juxtapositions is certainly of different values in these photos. The simple, adolescent humor of the first two images for example isn't nearly as complex or interesting as the ironic pairings of the second two images that require a little more work on the viewer's/reader's part to work out. Ultimately, though, wherever these images fall on that continuum, it is this type of juxtaposition, this ironic misconnect, that draws my interest both linquistically and photographically.


The Writing on the Wall
The second type of found-word image I like to capture is graffiti. This is a much more subversive form of visible language that is usually left by the lone individual, perhaps an artist in his or her own right, without official sanction of any sort.

Here are some examples:


Corporate Biatch



Muff Graffiti



The Tombs Have Eyes


Now, these pictures don't have the same type of subversive irony that the official signs did since they are subversive on their surface, written furtively in places not originally intended for these words. Instead, an individual felt moved to make a public statement in written form. Therefore, the content of these found words carry more weight than their context for the most part.

What drew me to the first image--taken at a bus stop in Geneva, Switzerland--was perhaps another burst of adolescent immaturity. I liked the implicitely serious questioning of a very fundamental social institution, one that undergirds modern, Western capitalism--a very weighty topic--combined with the playful street slang of Biatch. Certainly this is another form of ironic conjoinment, but in this case, it is one that the author him/herself did, whether deliberately or by accident.

In the second image found in Youngstown, OH, I'm intrigued by the hastily scrawled warning to keep our hands off that boy's muff. Reading through the possible definitions for that term provided by the link, I will let you make up your own mind as to the writer's intentions. It seemed like such a random warning and yet implying such immediacy, earnestness, and specificity--not just any boy, but *that* boy--that there was another disconnect in my experience of these found words.

In the final photograph, found at a cemetery in Paris, France, are words painted on the back of a sign which translate into English as "The tombs have eyes." Now I know that the French have a fascination with and acceptance of death that we in the United States do not. When I was visiting the graveyard, for example, there were many Parisian families having picnics, enjoying the green space. Even by this standard though, this phrase was very eerie. It recontextualized the tombs for me and indeed I felt the subject of their gaze as much as they were the subject of mine. I wanted to photograph this moment of insight someone had taken the time to leave behind.


Yeah, but is it art?
Now, I have described my fascination with the found word, both official and subversive, and why I feel compelled to capture these images. However, the question remains, if I am to set about making a series of these photos, is this visible language photo worthy? If I claim to be a fine arts photography, are these images worthy of the name fine art? Needless to say, this is a very prickly question that deserves much more attention than I am prepared to give it now, but I think it ultimately boils down to the question of whether these photos have the visual aesthetics to stand as art or instead is their true impact primarily verbal. And if that is the case, does it mean that they cannot stand on their own as visual artifacts. In other words, could these photos still have value as photographs without the viewer being able to understand their verbal messages. If someone didn't read English, would they still be worth viewing, would they still "mean"? And if the answer to that is no, does that necessitate that the images aren't valuable as fine arts photography?

I think that the picture I've presented in this entry show that actually there is a spectrum from one of these extremes to another. For instance, the Moving Prosthetics image doesn't really have any visual interest other than the signs. Without that, the picture doesn't hold up on a purely visual level. However, the Muff Graffiti picture I think does work on a visual level with the dynamic movement of the hastily scrawled warning. To state it simply, some of these images are more aesthetically pleasing than others.

Obviously, this entry has gone on far too long already, so I'll leave related questions for my next entry. I am curious for now though what you think about these images. Are they worth pursuing as a series, or is their impact limited and just good for a laugh. Thanks for your interest. Take care.

RAV