I’ve been in PDX and won’t return to NYC until the New Year. It’s been a much needed reprieve. I look forward to getting home, but until I do I’m afraid this tiny bleep on the internet’s radar is going to continue to go neglected.
In the interim, for some company, here’s T.S. Eliot reciting “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Such a brilliant poem, and Eliot was a wonderful reader, so mull over it, and if it doesn’t inspire insight or ideas then you probably need to listen again. Really, listen:
[audio:eliot-final.mp3]Some people love, collect, and cherish photography books. My interest in them has always been slight, except for a small few. The Map (1965) by Kawada Kikuji, was recently added to that list of the small few. It is a reconciling, or not even a reconciling as much as an elegy, of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima. There were collaborators on the book: Kikuji was the photographer, but the poetry and design were done by a few other Japanese artists.
The irony is never slight in cases where beauty arises from the harrowing.
photo: from, The Map, by Kawada Kikuji 1965
photo: from, The Map, by Kawada Kikuji 1965
photo: from, The Map, by Kawada Kikuji 1965
In the vain of lessons learned I recalled this project I began briefly around 2 years ago photographing Senior’s. It was a heartfelt project, but after only two days of shooting a bowling league I realized my futility with the subject I’d raised. Mostly, I just couldn’t not make it garish and blithe, despite my different attempts (in retrospect, I imagine the bowling alley probably didn’t help much on this front). I’d the sympathies necessary, but lacked the maturity aesthetically. So now, after only two years, I look back at these images and the word fumbling comes to mind.
photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2004
photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2004
photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2004
This is a minor insight, but I bring it up b/c it lends example to the creative process, which is fascinating b/c it’s so unique for everyone. Usually, personally, I have a theme stuck in my head. Then it becomes correlated to very specific imagery imagined. There is much mulling over these, digestion if you will, often while walking. Then there is the will to begin to make the ideas tangible, or the waiting for a good opportunity to do so. Then a series of compromises as the idea is born to reality. Then, as per the example, there is the failure, success, reconsideration, or dismissal of the project. All of it is, for me, private and internalized – I’ve only know two people in my life I can freely deliberate over projects with.
photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2004
photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2004
This is a much different process than many other people I know, which doesn’t lend anything to understanding the work, but is just entertaining to think about. Now, personally, I envy the artists I know who are prolific and produce work with no apologies and no explanations, where every piece is successful just in it’s realization, intended or not. But, more the school I belong to, there are more common those that know very much what they want, but don’t know what they don’t want, making their creative process a series of rejections – albeit usually private rejections. This is fine, more than fine in fact, since as I pointed out, none of it beyond the ideas and works have any merit when the day is done.
photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2004
photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2004
In all, maybe there are a handful of lines of thought I’ve ever been interested in, and maybe I’ll come against a few more with time. It’s weird how natural it seems that all of this effort and strife is an attempt to explore, explain, elucidate, and share one of these simple themes. It makes me think of Joyce’s Ulysses, a massive difficulty that in the end, really, boils down to one word, “that word known to all men.” I hope someday I can muster the courage to attempt to take on that word to such effect. Attempt, mind you. Attempt.
photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2004
photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2004
What I’m doing is not original by any means, quite the rather; the saying goes that everyone in NYC is a photographer, which turns out to be not much of a hyperbole at all, b/c everyone is a photographer in NYC…along with their roommates. I’ve gotten a little further than some, and not nearly as far as others as far as succeeding here is concerned – well, actually, success here in general is a pretty narrowly defined mark that looks something like this: $. Well I never seem to have any of that ($), making me in fact pitifully and tremendously unsuccessful, but in regards to not having a day job and being able to call myself a photographer w/o being full of shit, in these regards, I’ve had my little victories. The point of this…oh, yes, the point is to offer a little bit of perspective on the process of trying to make it in NYC as a photographer. Make it, make it, so to speak I guess. It’s a simple goal, making it, populated with simple devices, taking pictures, printing pictures, etc. The problem is that, it’s just not easy to do well in practice. This is fine, b/c as my dentist said a long while back when I garbled at him that making it here is one of the hardest things I’ve attempted so far, he offered softly and with great lucidity, “anything worth doing is.” Well, said, I thought, I’m going to use that.
The idea here is, that there are a few things I’ve learned and much I’ve unlearned, and I’m not talking about how to take pictures or make art or anything like that, one is on there own amid those deserts, but I’m speaking more about basic advice. Or let me say it like this, if I ran into a younger I, someone about to partake in the adventure of moving here to shoot and work, what could I offer them. People told me anything from “become inspired” to “make lots of money.” Boring. The only really useful one was, “have lots of fun.” So sitting here this afternoon, I came up with my small list, which is as follows:
-attrition: it takes time, hard time, and chances are you’ll have to do ample amounts of it before you take even a small step.
-a sense of humor: the chances are you aren’t going to make it to the top, only a few people do out of many, and even then, it’s only pictures.
-ideas: good photographers are a dime a dozen, good ideas are not (ideas is interchangeable with style or vision).
-connections: as the old adage goes…
-work ethic: shoot as much as you can, and work your ass off. Exhaust yourself.
-direction: at least in an A market, don’t come to dabble or figure things out, come knowing what you want.
Gosh, there’s more, but I’d say that’s plenty for the time being, and frankly the rest are more vague, opinionated, and artsy fartsy. And I fear what I have already needs more than a grain of salt…
This isn’t intended to sound curmudgeonly, or discouraging, the opposite actually. I write it with a harrowed grin and a hearty pat on the back, as I’d encourage anyone daydreaming of jumping into the deep end to do it without reserve.
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2006
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2006
I was at the MOMA last night. I was there specifically looking at Lartigue’s car racing image, which I’d never seen before in person,
photo: “Papa at 80km/hour” by Jacques-Henri Lartigue
when I began a conversation with two gentleman standing next to me trying to understand what was happening in the image, or why it was distorted. I explained to them how the horizontal shutters on old Graflex Reflex cameras worked, and the effect it would have in regards to panning.
I then moved on. These two men remaining next to me, talking, I guess not having the appreciation of solitude as I do in such a place. They thanked me for explaining the Graflex and were very genial, but then amazingly almost instantly began to inquire about whether I only shot film (since I had a camera slung around my neck), whether I used Photoshop and etc etc. At this point I was standing in front of Irving Penn’s photo of a woman in bed on the telephone.
photo: © Irving Penn
Now I’ve never loved Penn, appreciated yes, greatly, but I’ve never really been able to get past a certain surface level in his work. So I stood, looking at this print, while these two gentleman standing to my side began talking about how amazing and powerful Photoshop is. I would not deny them this, but at the same time I cared so little and became so bored with the topic that my eyes began to fog over. Then, right then, I fell in love with Penn.
Sometimes if you look at a photograph without focusing on minutia, and allow yourself to stop thinking and blur into the image, so to speak, it will have entirely separate affects. This happened at this juncture with Penn and I, thanks to these gentleman. I saw that Penn had in some ways managed to transcend the subject into a perfect form, rhythm, line. A perfect photograph. Refined and immensely creative, the photograph literally becomes the content itself. Whatever is actually in the photograph, in this case a woman in a bed, almost becomes incidental. She’s but a building block to an act of, well, attempted perfection.
Brilliant, really.
photo: © Irving Penn
photo: © Irving Penn
photo: © Irving Penn
I have strong evidence that Andy Goldsworthy is actually an alien. He and William Eggleston – who was most aptly described in an article as a man who takes photographs as though it was his first visit to planet Earth. Indeed. It was most likely Goldworthy’s ancestors who built Stonehenge. Now he is amongst us working on an utterly different creative plain. If his sculptures don’t sell you on this premise, then say his last name aloud, ‘Goldsworthy,’ and try and convince yourself it wasn’t fabricated from the minds of beings that have been intercepting AMC movie channel Bond marathons for too long.
Goldsworthy makes his work in and from nature. Often he photographs the sculptures and brings them back to galleries. B/c even aliens need to eat.
sculpture and photograph: ©Andy Goldsworthy
sculpture and photograph: ©Andy Goldsworthy
sculpture and photograph: ©Andy Goldsworthy
sculpture and photograph: ©Andy Goldsworthy
Graham Smith has an essay on his father with accompanying photographs called “Albert Smith” in Granta 95: Loved Ones. I believe it is still in bookstores as of now. It brought a lump to my throat, and I’d offer that to any it didn’t do likewise is w/o a heart.
It’s not online, unfortunately, but here’s info. The picture on the issue’s cover, below, is one from the essay.
I was rummaging for an old photo when I found these images from a portrait project I shot years ago at Burnside in Portland, OR. Gawd, they bring back memories, just of living in Portland and the wonderful people and vibe of that city. A different time and place indeed…for me at least; really it was only a few years ago, but sometimes life can come up with a lot in a little time…
It was back too when I thought shooting 4×5 was “really cool” and when my pictures had some modicum of a sense of humor…both areas I like to think I’ve come a ways on.
Is Burnside still around? Or did they end up closing it?
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2004
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2004
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2004
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2004
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2004
Part 7:
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2006
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2006
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2006
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2006
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2006
Bresson is admirable for his photography and, more simply, for his wisdom. It is palpable.
Watch the interview here.
If you’re shooting in NYC and need to rent a studio, consider Avedon’s old studio. It is neither particularly big, nor is the location fun, but neither of these qualms can possibly deter from that auspicious cyc.
I can imagine Avedon brooding around those halls alone, rife with anxiousness, looking at the board of dimly illuminated work prints riddled with his corrections…possibility and history weighing upon him…
Despite the whole “fashion photographer, blah, blah” title, there’s little, I know, very little, here to obviously do with fashion photography. There are clearly connections for me, hence “footnotes,” but I think so much about photography that it’s mundane for me to talk about directly, and I can’t imagine anyone being interested in hearing about lighting and technique and securing location permits, nor my liking Lindbergh and Roversi and so on and so forth. Rather, instead of talking on these things or the latest spread in Chinese Vogue, I go to other more obscure things that are equally as influential on my work and more importantly of much more interest conversationally. For instance, last night, rereading Camus’ The Plague, I was struck by this passage (recall, this was written in 1948):
There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.
[…]When a war breaks out, people say: ‘It’s too stupid; it can’t last long.’ But though a war may well be ‘too stupid,’ that doesn’t prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.
–The Plague, Albert Camus, ©by Stuart Gilbert 1949
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2005
Magnum photos has a new site up. I suggest checking it out, especially Trent Parke’s work. I’ve mentioned him before as I think he is doing especially meaningful, honest, and beautiful work.
photo: ©Trent Parke/Magnum
photo: ©Trent Parke/Magnum
photo: ©Trent Parke/Magnum
photo: ©Trent Parke/Magnum
photo: ©Trent Parke/Magnum
William Gedney’s Kentucky photographs are the sort that invoke Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg Ohio…no, no, something grimier and more spirited, something less grotesque and melancholy…I can’t place an appropriate comparison, only some reverie of a time and place more simple and real…I’m not sure what to say – in effect they leave me speechless (a place good pictures should leave you) except for that on this winter afternoon, it is hard for me to imagine that photographs could achieve anything more.
photo: ©William Gedney
photo: ©William Gedney
photo: ©William Gedney
photo: ©William Gedney
photo: ©William Gedney
photo: ©William Gedney
There are so many more if you follow the link above.
“I am Cuba” was a film done as Cuban social propaganda in the sixties, which I won’t pretend to know anything about, politics that is…or the sixties. It was funded and shot by the Russians, and it is an absolute must see if you’re into beautiful and trippy film experiences. Incredibly long takes, wide angles, huge huge pans and cable cam shots, all black and white, a camera that NEVER stops moving. I’ll just say, that half way through I was exhausted b/c I had numerous ideas tumbling around in my head inspired by the film. For more specific details on the movie read here.
My personal suggestion is put the film on, turn the volume off on the tv, turn on some Air, and just let it go.
still: from I am Cuba
still: from I am Cuba
still: from I am Cuba
still: from I am Cuba