Thanksgiving 2006 #4

Thanksgiving 2006 #3

Thanksgiving 2006 #2

Thanksgiving 2006 #1

Quelle Nuit!

Skeletons, circa 4000 BCE, found near Mantua, Italy

Bill Brandt

Bill Brandt, Francis Bacon, 1963, Copyright Bill Brandt

We were talking the other day about dreams, and how the verisimilitude of photography fosters their expression. Bill Brandt once said something interesting, in this context, about the way in which familiarity is almost a prerequisite to the expression of strangeness:

"Thus it was I found atmosphere to be the spell that charged the commonplace with beauty. And I am still not sure what atmosphere is. I would be hard put to define it. I only know it is a combination of elements, perhaps most simply and yet most inadequately described in technical terms of lighting and viewpoint, which reveals the subject as familiar yet strange. I doubt whether atmosphere, in the meaning it has for me, can be conveyed by a picture of something which is quite unfamiliar to the beholder."

Brandt's linking of the commonplace and the beautiful, the real and the surreal, was echoed by Susan Sontag when she wrote that "the mainstream of photographic activity has shown that a Surrealist manipulation or theatricalization of the real is unnecessary, if not actually redundant. . . . The less doctored, the less patently crafted, the more naive - the more authoritative the photograph was likely to be."


But I would guess this wisdom was hard won for Brandt, the former pupil of Man Ray. You can see it in the pictures. Although he never abandoned his pursuit of the surreal, he wasn't nearly as successful when he strained for it . . .

Bill Brandt, Campden Hill, London, 1953 . Copyright Bill Brandt

. . . as when he didn't.


Bill Brandt, Evening in Kew Gardens, London, 1930. Copyright Bill Brandt

Subjects

Every picture tells a story? Well, maybe not, but certainly every picture has a subject.

Most of the time, I would guess, when we critically analyze a photograph, we accord greater weight to its formal aspects, to the means of representation, than we do to the subject.

Sometimes, though, the subject of a picture is such that it renders all other attributes irrelevant. Or unnecessary. Or at least not part of our critical reaction to the picture.

Consider, for example, this image from Timothy Archibald's Sex Machine series:


Timothy Archibald, Sex Machines, 2002-2005. Copyright Timothy Archibald

I think we can safely say that this is an interesting picture, whatever its formal qualities. In fact, consideration of those qualities, in the usual sense, is probably irrelevant. It's not that the subject transcends its execution - it doesn't - but that any discussion of the formal attributes of this picture would be rendered merely comical by its subject matter.

Much the same is true of Misty Keasler's photographs of Japanese love hotels. Although they are not as immediately striking as Archibald's images, our critical opinion of them is informed more by our reaction to their subject matter than by any formal concerns.


Misty Keasler, Bondage Kitty (Hello Kitty S&M Room), Hotel Adonis, Osaka, 2004. Copyright M. Keasler.

On the other hand, because Keasler's subject is more subtle than Archibald's, her pictures, to be understood, may require more extra-pictorial explanation of what that subject is.

It's not at all uncommon for such extra-pictorial information - whether in the form of a title or otherwise - to influence, and even alter, our critical evaluation of a photograph, usually by amplifying our emotional reaction to it. For example:


Alec Soth, Johnny Cash's Boyhood Home, Dyess, Arkansas, 2002, Copyright A. Soth

We might consider Alec Soth's photograph of Johnny Cash's boyhood home to be an interesting picture even without its title. But not quite as interesting. What if it were, say, Steny Hoyer's boyhood home? (Who?) Would it still have the frisson that Johnny Cash brings to it? Probably not. That's why it has the title.

Other titles not only influence our critical perception of a picture but may hijack it altogether. For example:


Minor White, Windowsill Daydreaming, 1958. Copyright M. White

Here, simply by appending the words "Windowsill Daydreaming," Minor White reduced a truly beautiful photograph of reflections on a windowsill - of light on form - to a kind of anthropomorphic and sentimental kitsch not far removed from all those pictures of solitary trees entitled "Loneliness." (I mean, why call it an "equivalent" if you have to name it?)

And sometimes subject matter can so undermine a photograph that critical evaluation, while not strictly irrelevant, becomes pointless. For example:

Melanie Pullen, Dorothy, 2003 Copyright Melanie Pullen

This is from a series entitled "High Fashion Crime Scenes," a subject that exists only in the mind of one Melanie Pullen, who, having imagined these scenes, staged and photographed them. Why? Who knows. To make money and become famous, I guess, just like everyone else.

And, finally, to bring these thoughts to an abrupt but fitting close:


Eddie Adams, Viet Cong Execution, Saigon, 1968 (Associated Press)

One subject that really matters.


For an interview with Archibald, go to Conscientious. Keasler talked about her work recently in The Morning News. Alec Soth has a blog on which he once posted an interesting evaluation of this picture; I can't find it now. Minor White is a God to his followers, with all that implies. Melanie Pullen exhibited these pictures at the Wirtz Gallery, where you could see more of them if you wanted to. And Eddie Adams' photo of the execution of a Viet Cong agent was the beginning of the end of that war.

Exxon

Yesterday's New York Times quotes Rex Tillerson, chief executive of Exxon Mobil, warning the world that "governments should not rush into policies that could damage the global economy in order to limit carbon emissions."

As the Times notes, the mere concession that carbon emissions are in some way problematic represents a major shift for Exxon Mobil, which has consistently denied not just the role of such emissions in global warming but the fact of global warming itself.

Or maybe not much of a shift after all. As the Times continues:

"Mr. Tillerson’s remarks were his first formal and extensive comments since the publication of a report two weeks ago by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a leading panel of international scientists and reviewers, concluding that there is 90 percent certainty that human activity is decisive in changing the global climate.

"Mr. Tillerson told reporters that he had not read the report but said, 'My understanding is there’s not a clear 100 percent conclusion drawn.' He added: 'Nobody can conclusively 100 percent know how this is going to play out. I think that’s important.'”

Isn't that wonderful? As the water rises, the chief executive of the world's largest corporation, admitting that he hasn't even bothered to read the IPCC report, takes comfort from its conclusion that there is only 90 percent certainty that his conduct, and that of his company, is to blame. At this rate, he won't concede that the water is rising until it's lapping over the tops of his wingtips.

Can there be any doubt that the modern corporation is today the single greatest force for harm in the world? The only real question is whether corporations actively corrupt human beings, who might behave better as individuals, or whether they merely provide a shield, an excuse, for the expression of our inherent rapaciousness. Hard to say, but crystal clear we would be better off without them.

It's unlikely, of course, but, who knows, with the help of Rex Tillerson and his ilk, the day may yet come.

Happy Valentine's Day . . .

. . . dearest.

The Candidate Shrugs

The race for the Democratic nomination, having barely commenced, has already presented at least four awkward questions:

1) Is it possible to be any more stupid than Joe Biden? (The answer is yes; George Bush is more stupid than Joe Biden.)

2) Could you actually vote for a candidate from North Carolina, no matter how well intentioned? (Probably not.)

3) Could Hillary be even less principled than Bill? (The answer appears to be yes; her refusal to concede the abysmally bad judgment of her war vote is a display not of principle but of continuing bad judgment.)

4) Are we not compelled by history to vote for an African-American with the attributes of Barack Obama? (Now that's a good question.)

Girlfriend playing the piano.

Laughing girlfriend, trying to hide.

Science!

I'm sure this has implications for the future of photography, among other things, but right now I'm too bemused to think about it.

"In 1999, Dr. [Lene Vestergaard] Hau headed a team of scientists that slowed light, which travels a brisk 186,282 miles a second when unimpeded, to a leisurely 38 miles an hour by shining it into an exotic, ultracooled cloud of sodium atoms. At temperatures a fraction of a degree above absolute zero, the atoms coalesce into a single quantum mechanical entity known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. Shining a laser on the cloud tunes its optical properties so that it becomes molasses when a second light pulse enters it.

"Then, in 2001, Dr. Hau and a second team of physicists, this one from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, brought light to a complete halt by slowly turning off the laser. The Bose-Einstein cloud turned opaque, trapping the light pulse inside. When the laser was turned back on, the trapped light pulse flew out."

Read more in today's New York Times.

Sleeping girlfriend.

The Candidate Shrugs

There is an interesting article in the January 22 issue of The New Yorker. In it, Raffi Khatchadourian, a staff writer at the magazine, explores how Adam Gadahn, an American kid from Southern California, became Azzam al-Amriki, a Kalashnikov-carrying member of Al Qaeda.

So how did it happen? Well, as it develops, Khatchadourian doesn't know. That doesn't stop him, of course, from proffering a number of theories, of which the best developed blames Gadahn's interest in death metal music. (To convey just a little of the flavor, much of the supporting evidence is provided by one Spinoza Ray Prozak.) And if it wasn't death metal music, Khatchadourian assures us, it must have been Gadahn's association with bad companions, including radical Islamists, in that notorious hotbed of insurrection, Orange County, California.

This nonsense, of which The New Yorker should be ashamed, calls to mind the equally inane rhetoric of George Bush in the days after September 11, 2001: "Americans are asking," Bush said, "why do they hate us?" His answer? "They hate our freedoms - our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."

Could Bush possibly have believed that? Does anyone? Isn't it, in fact, pretty clear that those who hate us do so because we have acted, and continue to act, in hateful ways? Just as it is probable that Adam Gadahn joined Al Qaeda not because of the effects of death metal music or even of bad companions but because he was, in some fundamental way, fed up with all the bullshit? That'd be my guess, anyway.

Michael Kenna (2)

The other day I came across, on wood s lot, this photograph by Michal Cala, whose work I had not previously seen, and thought it offered an illuminating counterpoint to a similar photograph by Kenna:


Michal Cala, Untitled, date unknown. Copyright Michal Cala


Michael Kenna, Ratcliffe Power Station, Study 7, 1986. Copyright M. Kenna.

These pictures speak for themselves.