A photographic imagination

I contributed this to a conversationon on Art & Perception

My old Nikon FM collects dust on my dresser becuase the digital darkroom transformed what I had come to know as photography. It moved me from picture taking to image making. Now the only real "photographic" moment is the end stage of the manufacturing process when a Digital C-print is pulled. For me it has been important to have the "photographic" in the making of the object while disregarding the "photographic" in the image making process. So in a traditional sense, for me, there's not much photography in my process to enjoy.

What I do enjoy is where image making intersects with storytelling - you frame the world - frame a point of view. In some ways "view finder" better describes what it is. The really emancipating thing has been to find/seek/uncover the authentic - the essence of the emotional connection in the image without the "view" being my truth or something close to me. I'm always chasing that both in my own work and when I'm looking at other's work.

When I first posted on Fotolog in June 2003, I called my page "A photographic imagination". I had just read Sontag's On Photography and I wanted to put a marker down that these images should not be viewed as documents - they were manipulated and as such the images were not representative but representational.

I was also beginning to undestand how pixel based display was a great democratizer - all these screen images were made of the same substance. A Picasso painting, a DaVinci drawing, a deep space image form the Hubble Telescope or an Ansel Adams photograph were certainly different objects in the real world but on the screen they were just a collection of pixels. The playing field was leveled, the image content would be judged on it's own aesthetic and against every other image that could be displayed. The eye would decide.

From the start I wanted to give people something to think about - but not as a message or a lesson or a meaning. I think I lacked the confidence to articulate that early on. But it is there like the manipulation is as part of my whole apporach. I want the viewer active to "look into the image" rather than just looking at the image.

I am not an equipment geek. If the device captures images without a flash, has a memory card I can read and a charged battery I'd probably use it. I don't need a perfect capture, I want to make a capture perfect. I need raw materials so I "harvest" images, hundreds per day. I'll capture till I drain my battery. I hardly look at the LCD when I am shooting, I try never to stop moving. I capture everything at. low res 640 x 480. I have lost any connection to the preciousness of any individual snap.

I use Flickr to post my images because it is a distribution point and provides a publication platform and an audience. I want an audience. Of course this serves two masters because I can move easliy from presenter to an audience to being part of the audience.

At the point where I was searching for a way of working - first Fotolog and then Flickr gave me a daily production and publishing structure and a format to see a body of work developing.

It allows me to be prolific without purpose and organically find threads in the work. The dark side is that there is such a need to get the next image - almost an obligation. I realize this is a product of my own need for immediate gratification. I tend to ration the published images to one per day. The sheer volume of images posted on both of these services is a stark reminder of how insignificant any single image can be. It is quite intimidating.

I am always surprised by what people connect to in an individual image, what they are moved by. I am starting to sense a bond. It is not that I said something nice about their picture or made them a contact so they say something nice about mine. There is something we have in common, something they know and I know.

In the end to me photography is like sex, the intersection of what interests you and what you can get. This is what I can get.

Posted by admin at 08:54 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In one of Time's features on "You" they write:

Even more than blogs or video-sharing sites, Flickr has the power to forge international bonds because it works in an entirely nonverbal medium.

They mention two Flickr users Ali Khurshid and Lavannya Goradia but don't provide links to their work. How lame is that!

Posted by admin at 11:48 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

"Whatever you spend your time and money doing," said News-Press managing editor Mackenzie Warren, "is news" and when Martin Parr or Brian Urlichor Luc Delahaye photograph it , it is art.

I have been stuck on how these two ideas (in the three seperate posts) relate to each other.

Photography and blogs uses push botton solutions to simplify complex technical processes.

Curation influences: a blog post on a newspaper site makes it "news". A photograph on a gallery wall makes it "art".

"Hyper local "is niche in both the contemporaty gallery scene and street by street coverage.

Blogging and photography in practice are very plastic and elastic. The more widely distributed the tools become, the more pedestrian the output is. A "snapshot aesthetic" takes hold.

This quote for Sontag's On Photography

From its start, photography implied the capture of the largest possible number of subjects. Painting never had so imperial a scope. The subsequent industrialization of camera technology only carried out a promise inherent in photography from its very beginning: to democratize all experiences by translating them into images.

could easily be written as this

From its start, blogging implied the capture of the largest possible number of subjects. Journalism never had so imperial a scope. The subsequent industrialization of web publishing technology only carried out a promise inherent in the internet from its very beginning: to democratize all experiences by translating them into readable pages.

Or have I had too much coffee agian this morning?

Posted by admin at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

An interview with Alex Soth
Via Conscientious

The one caveat is that blogging is probably bad for one’s reputation in the art world. The art world is built on exclusivity. Blogs are built on availability. Most art stars don’t even have websites for fear of appearing pedestrian. But photography, for me, is a pedestrian art. It is democratic and accessible. So I participate in the blogosphere knowing full well that it probably hurts my art-world reputation.

This maybe true, but more and more artists may find a "direct to consumer" approach another path which opens doors to opportunity and audience. There is tangible value you have having people involved in your body of work over time even as you are striving for other things - gallery and books.

What do you think?

Posted by admin at 08:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I am so often convinced the blogs, vlogs, pods are linked to the very modern tradition of photography.

Does this statement ring true?

Blogging is a modern invention—one that, from its inception, inspired a host of conflicts and anxieties. Indeed, when we talk about blogs we are talking about modernity; the doubts that blogs inspires are the doubts that modernity inspires. Blogging is a proxy for modern life and its discontents.

What are some of these troubles? From the first, the essential nature of blogging was puzzling. It tended to blur categories—which can be both exciting and unsettling. Was blogging a kind of art? of commerce? of journalism? of science? of surveillance? Was it a form of creativity, a way of bringing newness into the world, or was its relation to reality essentially mimetic or, even, that of a parasite?

The original:
The Treacherous Medium

Photography is a modern invention—one that, from its inception, inspired a host of conflicts and anxieties. Indeed, when we talk about photography we are talking about modernity; the doubts that photography inspires are the doubts that modernity inspires. Photography is a proxy for modern life and its discontents.

What are some of these troubles? From the first, the essential nature of photography was puzzling. It tended to blur categories—which can be both exciting and unsettling. Was photography a kind of art? of commerce? of journalism? of science? of surveillance? Was it a form of creativity, a way of bringing newness into the world, or was its relation to reality essentially mimetic or, even, that of a parasite?

Thanks to GalleryHopper for the pointer

What do you think?

Posted by admin at 12:30 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Eric Schmidt of Google estimated that on avergae every blog has only one reader....

Thousands of Words About Pictures
from Personism

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s some afoot in the world of blogs about photography (not to be confused with photoblogs). Lately it seems like lots and lots of smart people are writing interesting things on the subject. Some people, like Raul Gutierrez, have been writing interesting blogs for a long time now. Others, like say Brian Ulrich have recently stepped it up a bit, perhaps nudged along by Alec Soth, who only started his blog recently, but has already acquired an almost slavish following. (I too am one of those enthusiastic fans.)

I am pleased by this new development, but also somewhat dismayed. Pleased because the best of these blogs are enlightening about the discipline, but not single-mindedly about photography - they’re broader than than that and touch on life, inspiration and sometimes politics. It’s nice having a window into what makes the people who I enjoy and admire tick. I’m dismayed because, well, how’s a girl supposed to keep up?? I’m not just talking about my ever-growing list of bookmarks, a formidable undertaking in and of itself… I’m also talking about my own musings here. It’s a struggle to stay up to par. All these smart people are messing with the curve, damnit. Anyway, all of that said, here’s what I’m reading and why:

Posted by admin at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A dying breed..(paid) movie critics
Orlando Sentinel Communications

The movie-obsessed have migrated to the Internet, where ethics can lead to co-opted opinions, phony "buzz" and bought-and-paid-for exposure. Are these honest opinions, are have the studios finally gotten their fondest wish, turning reviewing into just part of their PR machine?

And career-wise, the fickle nature of the Net means that sites come in and out of style. How can you build a living out of that, unless you live in your mom's basement? The ones drawing traffic and turning profits today will be old news and off your "favorites" list faster than you can say "Whatever happened to Borat?" or "Ain't it what news?"

Ironically enough, posted to Sentinal Movies Blog.

Posted by admin at 07:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (0)

When worlds collide

From Publishing 2.0

The widely-used and much reviled term “user-generated content” implies that somebody is making something. But the dirty little secret of “user-generated” sites like YouTube and MySpace is that much of the content is not made by the users themselves — it’s appropriated from someone else.

At the end of the day, whenever anybody uploads or posts something to the web, it’s just a form of publishing. What’s radical about the new digital reality is that I can publish anything that I made — and I can publish anything that anybody else made.

Basic common sense tells you that if I were to take all of the content from another blog, publish it here, and then run ads against it, that would be wrong. Much of the tangled web we now face results from the euphemistic obfuscation of terms like “user-generated content.” If we call it what it is — for example, people streaming music from their MySpace pages while MySpace runs ads on those pages — then we can have a clear debate about the right and wrong of it.

In a great tradiion, MySpace and You Tube is the home of appropriation art. In that sense we have contemporary and modern traditions that as Wiikipedia says of Duchamp: "Duchamp's "creativity" as an artist lies in the gesture of selecting the urinal as an art piece and displaying it in an artistic context." So MySpace and You Tube "artists", if they can prove the transformative nature the "long tail" on the appropriated work on their page they can sit at ease. .

Posted by admin at 07:41 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Last year I ran and lost for a position on the School Leadership committee at my daughter's school here in NY. My campaign focused on bringing in a media literacy program. Wish I had this in hand for the campaign!

From DIY Media WeblogHosted by USC Annenberg Center

Henry Jenkins has posted on his blog about the paper he and his colleagues have written for the MacArthur Foundation, about participatory culture and media literacy. I have followed Jenkins' lead in my attempts to learn how to link DIY media skills with civic engagement, and agree that this is about more than just entertainment -- it's about an entire approach to culture, which Jenkins calls "participatory culture."

We have also identified a set of core social skills and cultural competencies that young people should acquire if they are to be full, active, creative, and ethical participants in this emerging participatory culture:

Play -- the capacity to experiment with your surroundings as a form of problem-solving

Performance -- the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery

Simulation -- the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real world processes

Appropriation -- the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content

Multitasking -- the ability to scan one's environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.

Distributed Cognition -- the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities

Collective Intelligence -- the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal

Judgment -- the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources

Transmedia Navigation -- the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities

Networking -- the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information

Negotiation -- the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

Some children are acquiring some of these skills through their participation in the informal learning communities that surround popular culture. Some teachers are incorporating some of these skills into their classroom instruction. Some afterschool programs are incorporating some of these skills into their activities. Yet, as the above qualifications suggest, the integration of these important social skills and cultural competencies remains haphazard at best. Media education is taking place for some youth across a variety of contexts, but it is not a central part of the educational experience of all students. Our goal for this report is to encourage greater reflection and public discussion on how we might incorporate these core principles systematically across curricula and across the divide between in-school and out-of-school activities. Such a systemic approach is needed if we are to close the participation gap, confront the transparency problem, and help young people work through the ethical dilemmas they face in their everyday lives. Such a systemic approach is needed if children are to acquire the core social skills and cultural competencies needed in a modern era.

Posted by admin at 05:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Over ten years ago when Lionel Martinez and I were trawlng FactSheet 5 for material for our local show Zine TV, it was already clear the most edgy and provactive material was being produced not in NY or SF but in all places in between where there was an all night Kinkos.

As a matter of record, self publsining did not begin with blogs. Micro niche publishing did not begin with blogs. What blogs came to the table with was push button software like the Brownie camera, a way of keeping score with counters for links and page views, instant feedback and Ad sesne dollars.

Urban Scrawl
From the NY Times

BY Megan O'rourke

Does Downtown still exist — and does it matter? The quick answer to the first question is no. “Up Is Up” drives home the argument that it wasn’t just rising rents but AIDS that brought this period to a definitive end. The age of outrageous play was replaced by an age of sex ed and condo conversions. The media may proclaim Red Hook or Bushwick the new Bohemia, but these neighborhoods simply don’t have the seedy charge of the East Village in the 1970s and ’80s — and contemporary hipster style, intellectual and sartorial, hardly has the same anti-authoritarian bristle. As little kids in New York in the 1980s, my brother and I were scared (I blush to remember) of punks’ metallic studs and mohawks; it’s hard to imagine first graders being terrified of a hipster in a trucker cap and expensive jeans. Today, the city is so expensive that the real Bohemians are dispersed among disparate, far-flung neighborhoods.

But maybe that’s not so tragic. After all, the third factor in the disappearance of Downtown is the Internet. In an era when real estate is costly but virtual space is cheap, the community that once could be found only on Astor Place exists online. Today, there are plenty of magazines and Web sites continuing the do-it-yourself tradition of Downtown. But they’re largely in the yonder regions of America, where outfits like Spork (out of Tucson) and Forklift, Ohio (out of Cincinnati), to name just two I like, are publishing irreverent work that swipes at the mainstream. In the afterword to “Up Is Up,” Dennis Cooper declares “I wanted to make it as a writer, and I thought I had to be in New York for that to happen.” But many writers no longer feel that way. If there is to be a new Downtown, it is probably taking shape in a city like Portland, Ore., out among the fresh pine trees, and those of us in New York can visit it online.

Posted by admin at 05:40 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)