Tag: thoughts

It (Was) World Photo Day!

As legend would have it, the date for World Photo Day came about because it was on 19 Aug 1839 that the French government purchased the patent to the Daguerrotype process and announced that it was being given away to everyone for free.  It seems a good a reason as any to choose a date for celebration.  If it had not been for the generosity of the French, photography as a process may have taken a very different path to development.  This year marked the World Photo Day’s 7th year of celebration, which isn’t too shabby considering the growing pains it had to endure its few couple of years.

I had pretty much decided that I was going to take the day off from making images and, instead, reflect on my own personal views in this world.  I’m going to be honest, between work, watching preseason NFL Football, and enjoying an incredible Italian dinner, I didn’t get much thinking done.  In fact, I had even planned this blog entry to coincide with the ending of World Photo Day in the Midwest, but ended up falling asleep early.  Bad, Rick.

I did, however, think about my own evolution in photography.  Some of my earliest images are lost forever due to hard drive failures and getting lost in moves from one hard drive to another (1 lesson learned – file organization is important).  I did come across this one, however:

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Williams Tower – Houston, TX (2007)

I recall my own innocence (for lack of a better term) in taking this photo.  I was still learning everything I could about photography, but it was very slow going at the time.   Magazines such as Popular Photography seem to assume one has a baseline of knowledge.  I didn’t even have that baseline when I took this picture.  It wasn’t until a little over 2 months later that things would finally start to gel for me.

Beneath The Massacre at Summer Slaughter 2007 in Houston, TX

Beneath The Massacre at Summer Slaughter 2007 in Houston, TX

An early concert photo taken in 2007 (before the image of Williams Tower).  This was among the first taken with my DSLR.

Cy Fair College - Houston, TX (2007)

Cy-Fair College – Houston, TX (2007)

That was my first film image taken after I enrolled in a photography course at Cy-Fair College.  I was amazed at how one class worth of lecture crystallized everything for me in terms of the camera settings.  I had achieved a baseline of knowledge (and quickly learned how very little use a certain magazine had for me in terms of teaching).  I knew I could only get better from there.  I had to, since this negative was pretty messed up by my repeated attempts to load it on the film roll for processing. It also awakened the artist that was always inside me and had been suppressed since graduating from high school.

I’d like to say that I did get better.  In these early days I still had my innocence (again, for lack of a better term) about photography.  I learned technical aspects (such as metering for extreme lighting conditions), effective composition, and color balancing.  I would go on to learn about conceptual things such as the language of photography (which eludes me a little, but with each day it gets a little slower in avoiding my grasp), the essence of photography as an index and how it relates to art, and the limits and possibilities of the medium.  The conceptual stuff destroyed my innocence, but gave me new focus (pun not intended) in terms of how I was going to proceed.

This is an interesting time for photography.  Like the proliferation of hand held cameras in the 1960’s and 70’s, cell phone cameras have brought an old challenge back to photography, albeit in a way that is much more intense.  A couple of years ago an artist was inspired by an exhibition at the Museum Of Fine Arts Houston that explored photomanipulation prior to the advent of Photoshop.  He created a little project of abstract photos taken with his iPhone.  He said that he was “faking it” by attempting to create art with a cell phone camera.  Not much was discussed about that project (he was submitting 2 for critique), but it does illustrate the challenge posed and the resistance to it.  The explosion of social media has also brought new importance of the snapshot just by virtue of the proliferation of snapshots in the wild.

The 2 issues above pique my interest each in their own way.  The proliferation of cell phone cameras (along with their growing capabilities) has led some agencies to actually eliminate photo staff and rely on the field reporter to get images for a print or web story.  Can an untrained (relatively speaking) photographer capture an image that will have the same effectiveness as one captured by an experienced professional?  That is the biggest question.  The growth of social media, fueled by the growth of cell phones, challenges our personal relationship to photography.  The snapshot is generally a personal image made to document our relationship to the world.  When those images are out in the wild, is it still “just” a snapshot?  How has our relationship to the world changed when a personal photo is published for all to see?  How is medium challenged in general?  Is “art” photography elevated or cheapened?  These are just a few of the questions we find ourselves asking.

Thus ends my contribution to World Photo Day.  I will leave you now with a recent image I created, just to show my own progress in photography.  I will also leave a snapshot I created at the same event.  Maybe it will help my faithful and not-so-faithful readers to ponder their own questions regarding the medium within the context of my discussion.  If not, well, that’s perfectly fine with me.  Not everyone thinks about it the way I do, but I do hope you at least enjoy the images.

The "professional" image

The “professional” image

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The snapshot

Generalized Thought Patterns

(Un)fortunately, I lost (as in the relationship was destroyed) a family member last week over a disagreement over some words that were uttered by this person.  I felt the need to point out something  I felt was wrong with the statement made. I probably should have kept my mouth shut, but what’s done is done. The result was for me to be called brain dead and told to fuck off.  After being told to do so, I made a comment about epistemic closure (a bit of a misapplication of the term, but I felt it was apt in this case) and the “friendship” on Facebook was terminated by the family member.  I was attacked later that day by the same family member over something unrelated.  After a bit of a back and forth, it was done and I went on with my life.  It was a couple of days later I was showed a comment made on the original thread where I was called brain dead and told to fuck off a 2nd time.  Only this comment was made immediately before the Facebook relationship was terminated and the privacy controls were set to prevent me from seeing it.  To say I was angry is an understatement as I felt what was done was something that is usually relegated to the elementary school playground in terms of maturity level, not to mention cowardly.  I had the opportunity to respond directly, but I chose not to do so.  Instead I made a snarky comment on my own Facebook page using language ambiguous enough so only those who knew what happened would get the reference.

I’m not really sure how I feel about it at this point.  I mean, I looked up to this family member and never had a bad thought about him.  Unfortunately, something happened a couple years ago that caused the relationship to begin to sour.  Over the past few years a transformation has taken place to the point where he is no longer the person I admired as a young adult.  I realize that people change and I’m not so naive as to believe that changes in my own life have affected my outlook on people, events, etc.  On the one hand I’m hurt that our relationship has gone bad.  But then again, do I really need this source of stress in my life?

The Fall 2014 semester started out with me and one of my professors having an adversarial relationship.  I’m not sure why, but there was definitely a tension between us that lasted a good portion of the semester.   It started to dissipate late in the semester as we both seemed to back off each other.  It was unspoken and just sort of happened.  The anger I felt was powerful (and I want to thank my friend Claire for putting up with me through it), and letting it go allowed me to breathe again.

In terms of the adversarial relationship with the professor, I wondered out loud on many occasions if art school actively tried to cultivate adversarial relationships as some sort of twisted method of fueling inspiration.  The theory has legs, but those details would need to come in another entry in about 20 years.

I was having a conversation with my friend Shannon Duncan outside her studio space this past weekend and she mentioned something about strong personalities.  That particular phrase seemed to crystallize things for me.  Strong personalities tend to create adversarial relationships, even when views and goals are somewhat aligned.  It reminded me that my own hardheaded nature can sometimes be detrimental.  I already knew this, but sometimes a reminder is necessary.

Facebook tends to amplify those strong personalities because it’s much easier to snipe at people from the relative safety of a keyboard (especially when one is 1200 miles away).  Face-to-face confrontations tend to be a lot less dramatic and people are more easily swayed into accepting compromise when their counterpart is right there.  I’m not saying I’m immune; my opening paragraph is my testimony that I’m not immune to that phenomenon.

As I was laying in bed the other night, for some reason a particular moment from 1991 came into my mind’s eye.  I was on the confidence course at Lackland AFB enduring my basic military training.  I was on the very last challenge – monkey bars over a pond.  I failed the previous challenge (after successful completion of the 13 that lead up to that point), where I was to catch a rope and swing across a pond (I missed catching the rope).  I was very wet and very tired.  Monkey bars were never my strong suit on the playground growing up, and this was a long set.  The bars were also wet from previous airmen who had failed the rope swing.  I got just under halfway done negotiating this obstacle.  I was having trouble gripping and my forearms were burning.  I knew I would pass the confidence course portion of basic training even if I failed this challenge.  In one instant I just said “fuck it,” let go of the bars, and dropped into the pond.

I had given up when I had a chance to really and push myself beyond anything else I had been capable of prior to that moment.

I don’t know why that moment flashed in my mind when it did.  All I know is the phenomenon are related somehow.  My job at this point is to figure out why.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for taking this journey with me into my own mind.  A lot of art is about thinking, and I’ve been doing a lot of that over the past 2 weeks.  An exploration may be in order soon.  To that end, I will leave you with 2 images – 1 made by me and the other made by the aforementioned Claire.  We all made a book a few days ago in one of my classes.  I called mine “Something Had to Change/Undeniable Dilemma/Boredom’s Not a Burden/Anyone Should Bear.” This entry is definitely different from any other…  I wonder if that day was prophetic?

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Claire Gage

Shannon Duncan

Quick Updates

Regarding the Rock and Roll call for entry, unfortunately I did not make it in. The juror, Paul Natkin, had a vision different from what I had submitted. I will be honest in saying that I was a little disappointed and that some of his selections left me scratching my head a little bit, but I did see where my images just didn’t fit in with his vision. I don’t doubt the man’s credentials – he’s taken one of the most iconic photos in the history of rock music (click here to see). I do want to extend a congratulations to all those who did get into what I am sure will be an extraordinary show. I’ll just have find another excuse to visit Minneapolis in the near future (better yet – Mankato – I love the topography of south central Minnesota).

Two other call for entries have garnered my attention. I am debating on whether to answer them or not at this point. The deadline on 1 of them is 1 December, so I have some things to think about.

This past summer and early autumn were particularly stressful for me. I decided to channel some of this into some more personal work for the semester. Here are 2 examples of this work:

Sketch 7

Sketch 13

I created a total of 14 of these. They received mixed reviews, mostly because there did not exist something to tie them all together. That, I confess, is a fair critique because all of these were reactions to different situations. A lot of my peers had their favorites. During the midterm critique, I was asked how I was going to make the audience want to look at them because they didn’t seem, to this person at least, to be something I was creating to visually please others. I didn’t remark at the time, but I did later answer that question in a private conversation with this individual – those who go up to see it will be the ones who want to take the journey with me. I didn’t mention the fact that I noticed this person did not go up to look at them closely. That’s a fact that made me think the question was a little unfair – if this person had gone up to view them closely, but felt forced to do so, it would have added a bit of intellectual weight behind the question. To be fair, however, it is entirely possible this person went up to look at them closely prior to my turn at critique, but absent any evidence of that happening, I will assume that this person did not. I was also told by another individual to avoid “art as therapy” as it is usually nothing more than a resting stop between projects. I remarked that these “resting stops” often are the genesis to some great things. This person then backtracked a little and told me that they weren’t trying to denigrate my work, but I’m taking that with a grain of salt.

The good news, at least in terms of the semester, is that I’m back to creating work that will satisfy the academics. I have the series discussed in my previous post (Condensed Information). This won’t be included in my final for the semester as the concept has morphed a bit and needs some more work to fully flesh out. I’ve also revived another concept that had to be put to rest due to equipment issues. This one is exciting to me and I will share it with everyone in about 2 weeks.

I’ve also been creating videos for my program’s video section. To be honest, if there is one thing that art school does well, it’s instill self-doubt in students. I have my opinions on why this is, but I’ll save those for a night when I’m feeling a little more akin to sounding off. Let’s just say that this section is the one where I feel the most in terms of self-doubt. But, here is one video that I think will become part of something good:

I’m finding that my work is trending toward focusing on the individual. I’m finding that everyone has a story to tell, and I find these fascinating. In fact, my to-be-revealed series deals directly with individual identity. With my previous portraiture series, I learned a lot about the people who participated, especially in the “Emotional Portraits” series. Through the video above (and subsequent series of videos I plan to make based off this), I may just learn something about myself. We will soon see.

I also have a couple of other concepts that I want to try out. These will start soon. For 1 I need to find a willing volunteer and the other I can start with a self portrait over the semester break. Actually, both will start over the semester break as that’s when I will have the time.

Last night I had a dream wherein I referenced, in a conversation with the other person in my dream, a past dream. I woke up this morning and my head was spinning from it. As I get ready to retire for the day, I wonder if something like this will happen again tonight. At one point I was keeping a dream journal. Things started getting a little vivid as I was keeping it and I stopped. I wonder if I shouldn’t start again with this dream.

Ok, these updates weren’t so quick, but things have picked up in the last month. I’m creating again, which is very good for me. I also still have a show to plan. At this point, I’m going to call it a night. Comments and questions, as always, are welcome.

“Judging America” by Joel Pares

Stereotype is defined, in sociology, as “a simplified and standardized conception or image invested with special meaning and held in common by members of a group.” (dictionary.com), and the act of stereotyping is to cast someone in a stereotype (same source).  Since a stereotype is a simplified conception, it stands to reason that the sources of stereotypes are often themselves simplified (think of thuggish gangsta rappers or satanic black metal musicians).  As a veteran of the US Air Force, I often stereotyped Marines as macho imbeciles who couldn’t think for themselves.  The verb form of the word “judge” has many different nuanced meanings (dictionary.com), but the common thread is that judgement is, as an act that conclusive after evidence is brought forth and examined.  After meeting some Marines at the DoD Weather School at Chanute AFB, I came to judge Marines, on the whole. as honorable and brave people who chose a different path of service to our country.

This verbose examination of the two words is important in understanding the series entitled “Judging America” from Joel Pares.  Below is one of the images from the series:

from "Judging America" by Joel Pares

from “Judging America” by Joel Pares

As the viewer can see, the image is a diptych of sorts.  It is an animated .GIF file.  The first image is a portrait set against a black background.  In the example above, it is a white man wearing a tank top.  He’s holding a noose in one hand and the flag of the Confederacy in the other.  After about 10 seconds, the image morphs into a portrait of someone against a tan background with text at the bottom revealing the identity of the person in the portrait.  It’s the same person, but now we see him wearing a casual outfit and carrying a Bible.  His name is Jack Johnson, and he’s a full time Christian pastor and missionary.

There is no artist statement on the artist’s website, so all I have to go on regarding the concept of this project are words from a Petapixel.com article:

They say not judge a book by its cover, for photographer Joel Parés‘ series “Judging America,” that’s exactly what he wants you to do… at first. Presented as simple portrait GIFs, Parés wants you to start by judging the book — or in this case person — by his or her ethnicity, profession, or sexual orientation, and then, just as you’ve decided what it is you want to believe about the person you’re looking at, he reveals the reality.

There’s the setup of this project.  Now let’s first dive in to the formal elements.

The presentation as animated .GIF files is a novel one for diptych images, and one I have never personally come across.  Normally, a diptych is one image made up of two separate frames (think of my Armed and … series), but here we have one frame that contains two images that are presented serially.  Obviously, this raises some financial challenges as presenting the project in way that has the intended impact would require some rather expensive computer equipment.  The least expensive option would probably require a computer and a pico projector for each diptych.  The color balance is consistent throughout, even if some of the digital processing is a bit heavy handed.  In some of the images, the HDR-style processing was taken a little too far and gives some of the subjects an almost cartoonish look.  In terms of composition, there is nothing really special going on in these images.  The portraits themselves are rather conventional.  I did, however, note that not all of the images were consistent with their use of the frame.  As this is a digital project, this could be dismissed, but it could also pose problems later should Pares ever decide to present printed images.

Now that the formal elements are out of the way, it’s time to take a much more critical view of the images.  Pares is presenting these diptychs as follows – the first image is that of a portrayed stereotype, while the second is the reality of that particular person.  In each image, we are presented with someone from a different ethnic or cultural background, with one case being sexual orientation and yet another being an occupation.  Pares wants us to judge the person, then find out how wrong we were in that judgement when the truth is revealed.

It’s all about the context.  Pares removes any context external to the subject (namely, an environment) and, using the relative safety of the studio (where images are created from anything that can be imagined), adds his own context to the subject.  In all of these images, we see a blatant projection of a stereotype of a particular subject – a Latino gardener, an Asian nail salon employee, a black thug, a Middle Eastern terrorist, et al.  All of these negative images are created from, what I can only assume, is Pares’ imagination as there is no artist statement to explain the process by which he arrived at these stereotypes.  In stripping the environment and adding his own context, one wonders if these are not a projection of his own stereotypes and prejudices of those from a culture, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or occupation that is not his own.  We never get to see just the person, we only get to see what Pares wants us to see.

If one sees a man snarling and wielding 2 guns, a woman holding an AK-47, or a white man with a noose, without any other context, how does one not tend to think negatively, especially given the heavy handed nature with which it is presented, especially through his very effective use of color?  Again, there is no artist statement, so there is nothing on which to base an answer to that question.

And that brings up the difference between the words stereotype and judgement.  Pares shows us the stereotype (from whose perspective?) and wants us to make a judgement from only the evidence he presents.  Perhaps this is only the humanist in me, but I believe a majority of people are capable of realizing that there is not enough evidence presented in the images in order to make a sound judgement.

Finally, the viewer is presented with the truth of that particular person.  Pares goes from a menacing black color cast to a warm brown color cast, in order to temper the negative judgement made by the viewer in the previous image.   For this author, it had quite the opposite effect.  The feeling I am being manipulated is closer to the emotion that these images evoke when I view this project.  Res ipsa loquitur.

Why can’t an Asian woman attending a graduate program at Stanford also work in a nail salon?  Why would we assume that a man with the word “Queer” tattooed across his chest and wearing a boa couldn’t be an outreach worker?  Why would we assume that just because one wears glasses and carries a backpack that he’s a nerd?

Pares was effective with one diptych.  Jane Nguyen is an Asian lady dressed as an exotic dancer in the stereotype image while in the truth image we find out that she is a widowed mother of three children.  When it comes to seeing occupations, the person’s life outside can never be known unless it’s revealed.  The occupation of exotic dancer carries with it a myriad of different negative stereotypes.  There also exist many different reasons why one would become an exotic dancer.

If this had been a critique on how entertainment and news media portray those of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds as well as sexual orientations and occupations, then this heavy handed approach could possibly take on a greater validity.  Better yet, why can’t we see the subjects in their environments and try to see those elements of the environment that might give rise to a stereotype?  In this way, the artist’s hand is minimized, and then the selective nature of photography allows for a more natural narrative to flow, and a lot less manipulation of the viewer on the part of the artist takes place.

In the end, I’m left with the feeling that the thesis was developed, but as the project proceeded, Pares failed to adjust his thesis for the results he was getting.  Then, instead of then reexamining the results, the decision was made to push ahead anyway and try to force the art to fit into the parameters of the original thesis (this goes back to my issues with conceptual art).  Again, without an articulated artist statement, this is all supposition, but a reasonable person could come to this “judgement.” As artists, sometimes the art teaches us.  I’ve personally learned a lot about myself in my last couple of projects, and even had to adjust my thesis for one of them as what I learned contradicted my formal assumptions.  This is how we learn and grow as artists.

As to the stereotypes and judgements of US Marines, as a veteran of the USAF, it is all in the spirit of friendly inter-service rivalry.  Semper fidelis, Mr. Pares!