What’s New? A belief in a search for Beauty…?

After reading a bit on GalleryHopper and looking a bit at this review - among other things….This quote:

“The birds are always marvelously dressed, progress is a word stripped of its meaning, and a cow that nourishes the world will always go two miles an hour.” – Joseph Fernand Henri Léger

attributed to Fernand Leger, it sticks with me. I read it in the context of “Making Art New” by Robert Adams – in his book collection of essays – “Beauty in Photography”…

Léger observed that “If pictorial expression has changed, it is because modern life has necessitated it,” adding that “the thing that is imagined is less fixed, the object exposes itself less than it did formerly. When one crosses a landscape by automobile or express train, it becomes fragmented; it loses its descriptive value but gains in synthetic value. The view through the door of the railroad car or the automobile windshield, in combination with the speed, has altered the habitual look of things. A modern man registers a hundred times more sensory impressions than an eighteenth-century artist.” – Jodi Hauptmann – catalogue essay -

Above as qouted from a review / comment a by Carter B. Horsley in “The City Review”.

Imagine what today might look like to someone like Leger in this hyper-world of ours. Add planes, cell phones, the Internet…. and soon you could imagine a jittery and brief encounter – pseudo real in global time – a position of being both local and global – personal and non-personal… take a breath.

Think about the habitual look of things. What things might we see in common anymore? A sunset ? A moonrise ? The cool breeze and a raindrop.

I wonder about all this in the context of “What’s New?”… in photography – perhaps nothing is able to really be “new” or “groundbreaking” in the sense that to me, it seems it is useless to measure the worth of a new photograph or a photographer’s work by the distance it may try to establish from what has been done already. To question of what might be “groundbreaking” is to miss the point in my opinion. To be searching for what is “fresh” is along the same lines. Life is fresh.

So “What’s New?” is today – what is right now. Good pictures of that content alone, I believe, can become what we care about seeing tomorrow or the next – and that is something that is impossible in a way to predict or construct. It just happens – and by chance becomes noticed.

Perhaps thought it is already all around us – beauty that is – and it’s up to us figure out how to tease that experience – or recognize it – or just feel it a little bit – in of our daily lives.

…examining the threshold at which ordinary visibility ends and perception begins ….

Manufactured Landscapes – Little Choices

There’s a number of ways that one can pursue to help raise consciousness of our relationship (humankind) with our environment. It can quite simply be on a personal level, thinking about the choices we make as enter into the peak of our consumer cycle…(Holiday Season). And so what better way to infuse your enthusiasm for making better choices in expressing your admiration for those special to you than to go see Manufactured Landscapes…

Showing today and tomorrow only… November 17, 18 – 2007 1:15 PM Hollywood Theater.

So, I’m going to walk down there – and I’m going to drag my boy there with me…maybe my wife and daughter too… Maybe I can trick them with “let’s go to the movies”… Oh, my boy will be expecting something entirely different I’m sure… He’s about to turn 7 years old soon… so something a little more “action figure” packed for sure would be an easy sell… but maybe, just maybe I can get us to think a little harder about the simple choices we can make and the potentially vast impacts those little choices add up to.

Here’s to trying… I know I’m excited to see Edward Burtynsky’s work put out to a larger audience – in a different context. “By not saying what they should see… perhaps it will allow them to see their world a little differently….” E.B. – So this will be a little family experiment.

Go see a view on “Manufactured Landscapes”… and form your own opinion. Is this what we want?

…examining the threshold at which ordinary visibility ends and perception begins ….

Raising Consciousness – Reality and Representation

…” people now are really forced to think about what they see in a photograph – and what to make of it. Whereas until recently the viewer easily got away with not really questioning what he or she saw in the image, or what the intention of a photographer might have been, now one is forced to scrutinize every image on a much deeper level. The consciousness of the relation of reality and representation is becoming much more apparent.”

from “A Conversation with Kai-Olaf Hesse” -on Conscientious – Jörg Colberg

The little snippet above is to me what might be most interesting about current fine art photography work. For me, it’s not about gimmicks, manipulation, big or small – it’s more about how those things which I would call “technique” or “presentation” along with the content of the image and whether or not it may elicit more scrutiny. Yet at the same time I wonder… hasn’t that always been the “big idea”?

…examing the threshold at which ordinary visibility ends and perception begins ….

Rita Godlevskis – What is your most important photograph?

Today – 3 PM

An important question to consider…. what is your most important photograph, and then, ask yourself why?

Should be an interesting talk…

…examining the threshold at which ordinary visibility ends and perception begins ….

Matthew Jordan

Don’t Forget Me
40×55″C-Print
2005

From the series: “Half-Empty” by Matthew Jordan.

Nice work – check it out on the website… and commented upon here….

Mirrors or Windows are exactly half-empty – until you look .

…examing the threshold at which ordinary visibility ends and perception begins ….