Postcards from the Creative Journey

762 Photographer or Artist?

If your chosen photographic medium were to disappear, what would you do? Consider some of the more obscure photographic processes of the past that are no longer commercially viable. Platinotype paper is not longer commercially available. People who want to make platinotypes have learned how to mix their own sensitizers and coat their own paper. If you define yourself in terms of a specific medium what do you do when your medium, or the components that allow you to create your medium are no longer available?

Would you try to move on to another form of photographic technology, or would you give up all together and use your artistic skills in another area, say watercolors?

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For a brief period in the 1990's commercially coated platinum paper was available. I thought it was wonderful. Alas, there were not enough of us to make that venture profitable. My preferred medium disappeared. I learned how to coat my own paper and did so for about ten years.

761 - Which Came First? First Published 12/28/2014

The book or the exhibit? (I’ll bet you thought I was going with the old “chicken or egg” riddle, didn’t you?) Are the photographs on the wall the work of art, or are they pages from a book hanging on the wall? Does the book exist as a souvenir of the exhibit, or is the exhibit a grand marketing event to promote sales of the book? Or do both exhibit and book exist because the internet version of the art was so compelling people wanted to be able to hold in their hands the images they viewed on their mobile device or their computer? We produce work in interesting times, don’t we? (Woo hoo - an entire paragraph without a single declarative sentence!)

The ability to produce work and distribute the same images in many different formats seems to be a fairly modern thing. Paintings have always been paintings. With the advent of printing, we could see reproductions of paintings. They were books, but it was clear the original work of art was the painting. With photography, printing, the internet and other forms of electronic publishing, we have a choice of what is our primary means of distributing our art. Deciding on the primary means of distribution is a major decision for today’s photographer.

760 Actually Starting the Fifty Years of Photography Project

One of the interesting things to see (I have yet to do so, so I can speak theoretically) as I assemble the More Memories Than Dreams Project is how many of the photographs in the Fifty Project will make it into the More Memories Than Dreams Project. I am pretty sure not all will make it and it will be interesting to understand why they have fallen from favor or why their replacements are demonstrably better.

It’s been about a month since I wrote the above paragraph as a draft to capture my thoughts at the time. In the intervening days I have gone through the first ten years of contact sheets of 35 millimeter roll film as well as the start of my large format negative archives (I purchased my first large format camera in 1978.).

The Fifty Project only had one photograph from the first ten years. I have identified well over fifty images that I find intriguing enough to include in the More Memories Than Dreams Project. I have yet to begin digitizing these negatives for a closer analysis. Once that process begins I wager the number of images will be reduced for various technical and/or aesthetic reasons.

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This image is one I'm considering for More Memories Than Dreams. It's a 4x5 negative made during a very chaotic period in my life. I hope it makes it in.

759 - Ya Gotta Have Some Good Friends, First Published 7/7/2013

Conventional wisdom says “Friends will help you move. Good Friends will help you move the body.” Really Good Friends (RGF) will tell you the truth about your photographs. When we ask, “Are these photographs any good?” the RGF will tell you if they are good, or if they are not good. If they are sensitive, they will also tell you why they are good or not so good. When you get the truth plus the reason, then you have a RGF worth keeping forever.

It’s really important to have those type of people in your life because any comments you get from family and casual acquaintances is usually of the effusive variety and may not be true. The same goes for critiques on social media sites. Very rarely will you see anything that provides input of any value on your work. There’s always self-critique, but not everyone has integrity and honesty to look at something and say, “No, that’s not good enough” about one of their own photographs. You need someone else to do that for you.

758 Are Criteria for Acceptance Fixed or Variable?

While looking at old images as part of the More Memories than Dreams Project one of the first questions is, “Do we judge by the standards of the time, by today’s standards or do we need to place them in context of the artistic journey?” It’s a good question that I will be facing as I “return to the days of yesteryear” assembling a collection of photographs for the Project. I think the selection of images will be based on exactly what I want the project to be about. It could be historical, it could be “greatest hits,” or it could show a progressive artistic growth.

I think this question will be answered when I begin looking at proof sheets. It’s one of those essential project questions that will be answered along the way. I am not going to think too hard about it right now because of a discussion I had early in my career with my General Project Manager. He told me it was more important to start doing something rather than to try and think the whole thing through before beginning work. His experience was that plans rarely (if ever) remain unchanged. Doing was more important than thinking because you’re going to change along the way no matter what.

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This image is one of the first I am considering for MMTD. It was good then (1974). Is it good today (2021)? 

757 - My Photography Is All About “The Process.” First Published 4/30/2017

I hear that from a lot of photographers. In short, the only person that really cares about The Process is the photographer. Okay, maybe some other photographers that do similar work might be interested in The Process out of curiosity.

The only thing the audience sees (and cares about) is the result. They look at the photograph and they see the result of The Process. So, while you might be enamored with The Process, remember The Process is used to create The Art, which is shared with the audience. Your audience cares about The Art, not how you made it.

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If you’re sharp eyed you will remember this image from the Daily Photograph Blog on January 31, 2021.

756 More Memories Than Dreams

I started the next big project, “More Memories than Dreams (MMTD): Fifty Years of Photography (I first wrote about it on 12/10/2020). I was talked out of creating a printed book for this project in favor of a series of pdf publications on my website. That makes more sense because; (1) It breaks down a big project into smaller tasks and (2) I’m pretty sure my web site would draw more viewers than purchasers of a Blurb Book. Each of the smaller publications will cover approximately one decade. I expect this side project to take a year or two.

Indiana Joe is now preparing to enter the terror filled film archives (See January 14, 2021) and make a death defying rescue of some (hopefully) worthwhile images.

Thoughts, observations, experiences and maybe even some technical discussions about how the project is progressing will be posted as additional Sunday blog entries as the project goes along.

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This intimate sylvan landscape  didn't make it into the "Fifty" Project. It just might be included in More Memories than Dreams. It will be interesting to see how the "Fifty" photographs fare in the MMTD project. 

755 - The Flame of Recognition. First Published 6/7/2015

Photographically, Edward Weston is one of my artistic heroes. Reading “The Flame of Recognition” when I was in college was the key event that made me understand photography could be much, much more than the snapshots I had been making. Weston’s “Flame of Recognition” lit my fire for creative photography (sorry about the word play) and his clean compositions (“the strongest way of seeing”) have been a guide for my photographic compositions ever since. I have fallen short of achieving his brilliance many times, but I continue to ask myself, “What is the strongest way of seeing the scene in front of me?”

What made Weston such a good photographer? The question was answered in the film, “The Photographer” by Willard VanDyke (a film maker and member of the f/64 group). In the film, the narrator ascribes Weston’s success to:

• An intense love for the world around him
• A sharp eye attuned to the values of the mind behind them
• Constant search for significant form, the need to find order in what first appears to be chaos
• The discipline of technique the painstaking skill of the master craftsman

In the handy list provided by the narrator there is not a single reference to anything specifically photographic. The characteristics are strictly mental and can apply to any art form. In fact, I would suggest that these four points are essential to living the creative life.

Here’s a link to the film on YouTube. Spend about twenty minutes and learn about a great photographer.     https://youtu.be/5sF8K1NfHnM