Eugene Richards

Well I went to the library to get Richards' book The Blue Room, the book is at the library but is still in processing. I have requested the book so as soon as it is ready to be shelved I will post more about it. I am going to talk now about the book review that James Kaufmann did in Photographer's Forum. "The rich color photographs that fill every other page of The Blue Room depict places so totally worn down that it would be easy to call them trashed, but the photographs have such rare beauty that this sort of landfill thinking feels entirely wrong. To call them ruins, maybe, and then think of them as an archeologist might gets closer to the feeling." This is the kind of response that I am looking for from my photographs of houses. I am still trying to figure out how to get it though. "If you look at the photographs that make up The Blue Room long enough, you will see what is left after lives go wrong, bad, down, over and all the way out." I want people to see this with my photographs but also see what was there or could have been there before. I want to get people asking questions about the past and the future. "This image, like so many in The Blue Room, tells us more about loss and pain than the proverbial 1,000 words ever could." The image is not important, since I have let you know that, need I say more.

Lecture: Dr. Fredrika Jacobs, Burning the Devil and Dusting the Madonna: Images Efficacy in the Renaissance

When saw the post for this lecture I though it was something completely different. Efficacy: the power to produce and effect. I took this to mean something a little different than what the lecture produced. Although this was not what I expected it was interesting. Dr. Jacobs talked about how people through the years people have worshiped the Madonna and how they believe the way that you talk, look, or interact with the different Madonnas will effect your outcome. Although this is exactly what efficacy means I took it to mean how the Madonnas would effect on an intellectual, spiritual, emotional way, not that they believe that events will happen. In a way I would like people to look at my work and feel a similar way. I don't want people to think that something "supernatural" will happen but that my work has effected them in the same "deep" way.

Quotes from: Glacial Proportions, James Balog's Extreme Ice Survey, By: Claire Sykes, Photographer's Forum Summer 2009

Balog: "I believe photography is one of the most powerful mediums of communication ever invented. Too much of the time, it's squandered on trivialities. I'd like to see us aspire to the angels of our higher nature. If we can pull our minds and hearts together to use the medium to its full power, we can make an important impact on the world."

- WOW! Couldn't have said it better. When I read this it makes me want to be the (not to be cliche) best I can be. This is what I want my photography to do "make an important impact on the world" as little or big as it may be.

Balog: "This is what it looks like. See how beautiful this is. This is worth your time and attention - because we might lose it. I feel their life, their presence, but I also feel the past and the future in these landscapes when I look at them. I see where we are right now in terms of what we have less of, and I project myself forward, in time and see a place without these 'creatures' before me."

- Here Balog is talking about glaciers, however this is quite similar to how I feel when I look at old abandoned houses.

I have decided to re-work this whole blog thing (as long as Tom let's me). I realized that I am stressing way too much over finding artists that reflect in their work a way that I want to go with my work. I have decided that I am going to read as much as possible on the subject matter of the work that I want to do, photography in general, as well as photographers whose work reflects where I want to go with my work. I decided to go this route because I was so busy "googling" for photographers that I missed a great one right in front of me. Eugene Richards' book The Blue Room was reviewed in a Photographer's Forum. I have had this magazine for weeks and never even opened it. I also have found a lot of quotes from photographers and critics that I think if I am able to read over and over will keep my mind on the right track and keep inspiring me. So from now on I will post just about anything that I find that is important and will help me achieve what it is that I want to achieve with my work. Tomorrow I am going to go pick-up Richards' book so will surely have more from that later.

9/20/09

I have been doing a lot of thinking and reading, so much so that my head hurts. I have been reading books on photography. One book that I really like is Why People Photograph by Robert Adams. Here are some quotes that really made me think:

"Your own photography is never enough. Every photographer who has lasted has depended on other people's pictures too - photographs that may be public or private, serious or funny, but that carry with them a reminder of community."(13)

"When photographers get beyond copying the achievements of others, or just repeating their own accidental first successes, they learn that they do no know where in the world they will find pictures. Nobody does. Each photograph that works is a revelation to its supposed creator."(15)

"Artists sometimes claim that they work without thought of an audience - that they make pictures just for themselves. We are not deceived. The only reward worth that much effort is a response, and if no one pays attention, or if the artist cannot live on hope, then he or she is lost."(29)

"Art is by nature self-explanatory. We call it art precisely because of its sufficiency. Its vivid detail and overall cohesion give it a clarity not ordinarily apparent in the rest of life."(31)

"Art depends on there being affection in its creator's life, and an artist must find ways, like everyone else, to nourish it. A photographer down on his or her knees picturing a dog has found pleasure enough to make many things possible."(51)

I have narrowed down my ideas for subjects down to two, vampires and old run down houses. I am going to re-read Bram Stoker's Dracula and plan on photographing scenes from the book as I envision them. I am also going to re-work the old houses so that people will understand how I feel about them.

I have picked-up more books from the library. I got another book on orchids and several on vampires. I have always been interested in vampires and vampire stories. To this day I think Bram Stoker's Dracula is the best vampire story of all time. I think the reason that I am so drawn to vampires is the mystery and the fact that they could never be. I am really excited to learn more about vampires, orchids and ruins, but am still very unsure where to go when I am done researching. Hopefully my next meeting with Tom will help with that. I also read another book that has nothing to do with the things that I have mentioned. I read The Mind's Eye. I found some things in there that I can relate to or things that if I think about more will hopefully help me in my own photography. Here are some quotes:

"In order to 'give a meaning' to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry."

"It is putting one's head, one's eye, and one's heart on the same axis."

"He is never able to wind the scene backward in order to photograph it all over again."

"Composition must be one of our constant preoccupations, but at the moment of shooting it can stem only from our intuition, for we are out to capture the fugitive moment, and all the interrelationships involved are on the move."

"Technique is important only insofar as you must master it in order to communicate what you see. Your own personal technique has to be created and adapted solely in order to make your vision effective on film."

"The world's lesson in photography might have happy or disastrous results, depending on the little fact of whether it is shown to be isolated, detached or not, from its contexts of time, place, humanity."

I am going to pick-up some more books on photography and hopefully learn something about myself and what I want to do with my work. I also plan to try some meditation to try to get into myself.

9/13/09 House Photos

9/13/09

I went to the library and picked up a couple books, one on orchids and one on ruins. A few years ago I had started taking photographs of old run down houses in my home town. These houses have always intrigued me. I think that they are beautiful aesthetically and mentally when you look at them. Whenever I see a house that has been left to the elements several questions go through my mind. How did it get this way? Who lived there? What was life like growing up in this house? Along with many more. I have not gotten into the book on ruins yet. I started with the book on orchids. Here are a couple of the photographs that I came up with a few years ago on the houses. I seem to be having trouble uploading the images of the houses so I will keep at it and load them when it decides to work. The orchids I am drawn to because they are so beautiful and there are no other flowers out there like them. I have recently had an orchid rebloom which I didn't think that I was going to be able to do. The book on orchids that I started reading is very interesting. I have learned that people came up with sexual innuendos because of the way the flowers looked as well as the fact that early on scientists could not figure out how the flowers were pollinated. I am going to keep researching but am not sure where things are going to go from here.

Belinda Eaton

As a response to my meeting with Tom I googled contemporary painters.  I found several that when I saw their work a wave of emotions came over me.  When I first saw Belinda Eaton's paintings there were so many emotions I couldn't even pin-point which one's were there.  I really like her paintings of close-up faces.  She has somehow captured the emotions of the faces as well as a photograph would, which is probably where the emotions I felt when I saw the paintings came from.  I am posting a few of my favorite of her paintings.