Variety

Fae DeCay - 012413

I watched the documentary, Thinking XXX.  It chronicles the making of a photo series by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders where he takes two portraits of porn stars (male, female, gay and straight porn), one clothed, one nude.   Much of the movie has the stars talking about the industry.  It also has rich commentary and analysis by John Waters and Gore Vidal.  In it, Gore Vidal shared this great thought on porn and the human condition.

We never seem to tire at looking at naked bodies.  That is true, but they always have to be new ones. Gore Vidal from the movie Thinking XXX.

This quote has two great features, the hook and then the yank of the hook.  In the hook or the first part, he describes how we endlessly enjoy viewing the nude.  I enjoy looking at the nude form.  I prefer female nudes, but appreciate male nudes as well.  For centuries, artists, and many creators lacking artistic intent,  captured the nude form through paintings, sculptures, photography, writing, etc.  We can't help but look when confronted.  For me, I enjoy seeing not only the nude form, but how the artist captured it.

Ludovica Albertoni Cetera - Bernini - my photo 012413

Ludovica Albertoni Cetera - Bernini - my photo 012413

The master sculptors Bernini and Rodin both captured nudes, but in different ways.  The almost-photo realism of the Bernini's art makes me want to touch it and feel the real moment captured.  I want to feel St. Teresa's  ecstasy.  I can almost feel the passion, fear, and arousal in his masterpiece, "The Rape of Prosperpina" where you can see how his hands are pressing into the flesh of her thigh.   As for Rodin, he is not so much a realist as much as sharing the raw emotions and behaviors of the moment.  Whether it is the elegant simpleness of "The Kiss" or the sultry passion of the "Lovers, 1911" or the torn and conflicted pain of "The Tragic Muse" (one of my favorites), I am feeling what is being represented in the work.   I not only want to, desire to, and seek these nudes out, I must see them.  I am drawn to them at both the primal animal self and the intellectual appreciative self as well.

The Tragic Muse - Rodin - Photographer unknown

This desire leads to the second part, the yank and setting of the hook in Vidal's quote about always needing to see new ones.   Even though I have personal favorites of nude imagery, sculpture,  erotica, porn, etc., I will always want to see new ones - new faces, bodies, stories, and themes.   It is lust, need, and appreciation that I need to look at them and want more.

This desire for change, variety, and novel experiences applies to my art as well.  Once I create and refine an image, or set of images, from a photo shoot with a model, I start getting inspired for the next shoot.  If it is with the same model, I focus on where can we go deeper and change it up.  If it is a new model, what new things will she bring that I haven't seen or created before.  Regardless, I tend to then lose some interest in the work I created and completed and desire the next one, and then the next one.

Am I shallow for continually wanting and not being satisfied with how I create and consume the nude form?  On one hand, this insatiable desire sometimes leads me to feeling it is more of an obsession or thirst that can never be quenched.  On the other hand, if this desire ever stopped or was denied to me, would I become less of who I am?

The price of branding and exposure.

Valya - 092612

I am in a conundrum.  To become a better artist and to try to make a living from it I have to promote myself more. I appreciate and understand that, but where is the balance?  How much of this exposure is about my product or about my own personal brand?  What is the price of branding and exposure?

A friend gave us an beautiful original platinum print a few years ago of a young Mexican woman standing by a fountain in a plaza.  That is a definite description of the product and could mean the print is worth a few dollars or a few thousand.  With just this description though, I would only pay the lower end of the spectrum.

A friend gave us a beautiful original Edward Weston platinum print of Frida Kahlo.  Just that sentence alone increased the photo's value substantially.  It has two very powerful names with Edward Weston as the photographer and Frida Kahlo as the subject.  It bears both their brands.

When building a personal brand, the creator's personality, accomplishments, failures, challenges, likes and dislikes, and creations are built into the brand.   Think about Edward Weston's brand - black and white modern photographer and pioneer of the art, fine-art nude photographer pioneer, lived in the US and Mexico, often took photos of his lovers or had intimate relationships with his models, part of the California photography movement, co-founder of the Group f/64, and so on.  He was temperamental, had estranged children, and other personal challenges.  All of this has become part of his legend and his brand and helps ensure his art continues to hold or gain value.

Out of all the prints I've sold, I've never heard anyone say, "I own a Sutphin photo."  I would probably hear, "I have a great photo of horses and windmills that I bought from this guy in California."  Only people that know me personally and know my work have a chance of looking at a photo of mine and being able to identify it by style, content, etc., that it is one of mine.  Most others just see the content.   My branding is weak in two ways, no one recognizes my name to my art and no one can look at my art and identify it as mine. 

Rocky Mountain Front near Heart Butte, Blackfoot Indian Reservation, Montana - 092612

The answer appears very simple - get my work and name out there.  Promote, promote, promote.  The cost of it though is what do I associate with my name?   I see I can have at least two very different categories of clients, starting with portraits and erotic fine-art photography.  I doubt my clients for either group really care of or for the other type of work I do.  Do I hide one (probably the nudes) to grow my other brand and business?  Am I ready for my personal history, warts and all, to become part of my brand?  Is my history exciting enough to add to my brand?  I think about this because as someone's notoriety grows, so does his/her exposure and discovery of personal history.  Both my friends/clients and my competition are going to want to know about me if my art star rises.  How will this information of my work and life affect those around me?

It is sad that we can't embrace sexuality, sensuality, and eroticism as an open art form without worrying about fall out from it.  I greatly lament this, but it is the reality and I must figure out my niche and how I can exploit it.  It's easy for me to think I wont worry about what others think of me, but if I want to grow my brand, I need to be concerned about it's value and appearance as well.  As much as I am growing into accepting who I am and trying not to worry what others think, that nagging worry will always be there. 

Why are they hidden?*

Valya-090812

"What do I remember about med school?
'This is my air hole (pointing to her nose)
My sound holes (pointing to her ears)
My food hole (pointing to her mouth)
My pee and baby holes (pointing to the front of her pants)
and my poop hole (pointing to her tush)'
All other stuff is related to those holes. " Dr. Sylvia

I got that great quote from one of the physicians I used to work with after asking her a technical medical question.  All the other doctors and nurses in the room laughed as hard as I did.  She pretty much summed up most of internal medicine right there.

 I recently had to train a group of employees about retrieving key information from a drug side-effects database and I came upon two sticking points.  The first was an acronym I didn't know and the second was a medical term for a symptom to multiple potentially dangerous conditions.

I came across the term LMP and had no idea what the acronym represented.  I asked one nurse I work with and he blushed.  I asked his boss, another nurse who is a no-nonsense and just out right said, "LMP - Last Menstrual Period. "  For some dumb reason I blushed.  I knew though I had to get over my blushing since being descriptive is a needed part of medicine.

The second event concerned doing a search on the symptom - "blood present in urine."  I chose this term for a training exercise since it brought up many interesting bits of information from the data base.  One employee warned me that it could be an awkward topic when training fellow global coworkers in certain cultures and locations.  I ended up keeping the term in the class and push through any initial emotional responses from the learners.  In my opinion, its part of our job, get over it.  It wasn't like I was saying the event in crude terms like "blood in your nasty piss".

We all have these body parts.  They all have functions and purposes, yet we are shy about them.   I know some of these body parts have less-than-idyllic functions and purposes.  We still have them though and they are a part of us.  This need to censor our natural bodies goes to all parts of our culture, especially art.

I have an anus.  I also have testes and a penis.  All my nude models I've photographed (so far) have vaginas and anuses**.  We all have the holes (in one form or another) that Dr. Sylvia mentioned.

In my photography, I captured (both intentionally and inadvertently) all of these bits and pieces, however, have you really seen any of these in the photos I've posted before today?  Nope.  In our "fine art" world, many consider them off limits as elements of acceptable art.  Why do we hide these bits of ourselves that make us human, that makes us male or female?  I am guilty of hiding them by putting them into shadow, covering them, etc.  Why?  Why hide them?

Parts of this argument can get into the porn vs. art debate.  Other arguments may include the crassness and baseness of the subject matter pulls the attention away from the art and makes the appearance of these parts the only noticeable element of the piece.  I can see both points.

I have no societal answers to these complex questions on showing our basic parts.  For myself though, I've am evolving my own aesthetic on when to include or occlude/obscure them.  It needs to come down to my intent of the piece.

I am growing more willing to include these items in my "published" art (my photos that are going to live out in the world, beyond the film negatives and my hard drive).  This applies to anuses, vaginas, genital labia, penises, etc.  For me to include them, they have to:

• be integral to the purpose of the piece
• not overwhelm the piece, unless there is a purpose for it to overwhelm
• be acknowledged and/or approved by the model, knowing that this part is being shown.

I think all parts of human body can be beautiful.  I haven't photographed a nude male yet (other than myself), but find all parts of the male anatomy to have a purpose and role in art as well.

I guess much of this has been hashed out in the porn vs. art debate?   Is my intent of showing these bits for profit and exploitation, or is there an artistic reason behind it.  I am hoping for the latter.

* As much as I've enjoyed the deep metaphysical/cosmological/chronological posts of the past few days, sometimes it is important to explore the basic and close-by things in our lives as well.

** Latin scholars may stipulate that plural form of anus would be ani, but after a google search, it appears anuses is the modern accepted term.

What's up, Karl?

Moon - Van dyke process - Cotton Rag

"What's up, Karl?"

"What's up Karl?"

The importance of a comma.

You wouldn't know this by tracking this blog, but I really enjoy writing for it.  Sadly, I've been busy with other life things and let this exercise and discipline slide by the side.  While not producing anything here in a while, I've worked a great bit on my art and life.

The life bit - it continues to move on.  Work is busy.  I went the UK and Basel, Switzerland for two weeks.  I traveled to my second home in Las Vegas a number of times.  I contacted and am planning collaborative efforts with a few photographer friends.

The art bit - big changes.  I completed an alternative processes class where we made photograms, cyanotypes, Polaroid, Van dykes, gel transfers, assemblage, collage (digital and analog), toy cameras (Holgas and Dianas), tin types, and many other cool techniques.  Some of them worked for me, others didn't.  The big discovery though was my need to get away from just taking a picture, editing and enhancing it and calling it done when I printed it and put it in a frame.  There are so many great ways to present my art.  I am really getting into creating digital collages based on themes.  Why can't I put words directly on the art?  Now if I want to, I do.

Another big learning lesson was that it is so easy to create reproducible art in photography - just make another print.  Somehow I found comfort in knowing I could always make another print.  For many of these alternative processes, I only get one piece and no more like it.  This gave me an appreciation for marble sculptors, painters, and other single-item creators in the art world.  By knowing there is only one piece like this in the world, it feels more powerful and special.

For my final project, I chose a theme and created 5 pieces using different alternative techniques.  The theme was on objectification of women and caused a good bit of debate during the class critique.  I loved that.  You will see more on that in a special post.  

I also worked with four nude models in the past few months.  Each was completely different and brought her own unique gifts as muse and model to the shoot.  You will see some of those pieces in upcoming posts as I write about each shoot.

Now it is time to focus again on getting my business going.  All this creation is fun, but I need to get going on planning and implementing the next stage in my life.  I am slowly setting up work in the SF Bay Area.  I am also trying to set up work in my second home, Las Vegas.  I will write more about LV in the future.

One thing I will write about Las Vegas now is that I've had the pleasure of catching up with Terrel from Photo Anthems.  Last Sunday, we went out for a drive in the country scouting locations.  I enjoy talking with him about art, photography, life, women, Las Vegas, family, and all other things in between. 

I am also in contact with a good friend and artistic creative both behind and in front of the camera.  She and I went to high school together.  Once her life settles down from moving back to the US with her family, we are planning to do some big collaborations.

Its been a great Spring.  My artistic energy is pushing me and I am pushing myself to create stuff I never imagined before.  I look forward to sharing in the future.

Up top is a scan of my Van dyke print of Moon.  Below is my cyanotype.  Both are created using a light sensitive emulsion spread onto paper.  After laying a large negative on top of it (created in phototshop, but any film negative would work) similar to a contact print, I left them out in the sun for 5-10 minutes.  After processing them, voila.  I love analog art.  I prefer the Van dyke of Moon much more, but I loved learning both methods.

Moon  - Cyanotype - Cotton Rag

I love this song and nobody sang it like Janis.

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Kick in the ass

Yes. I used PS Dark Arts on Myself - 012812

"It's great to have a passion, but you must also have a work ethic around it." Unknown*

For the past month or so I received multiple subtle and explicit messages to get my shit together.  Most of these messages concern my art.  All of them are basically saying, "Karl, You take pretty good photos.  You have an eye for capturing people in your photos.  Good boy.  Now you really need to move on to the next level.  You need to do it better and you need to get it done.  Not only done, but done right."

I  hired a graphic/web designer/artist to help me build a commercial website.  She designed  a new logo for me late last year.  I was impressed by it and looked at her portfolio of commercial websites she designed and was very impressed.  I showed her my half-ass, stagnant website and she gently tore it apart in a critique.  I knew then I had hired the right partner to help build the new one.  A month later, and many hours of writing text, selecting key photos, and many other tasks concerning SEO, keywords, aspect ratios, and categorizations, it is almost ready to go public.  I will co-premier it here and Facebook when it is ready to go.  I will also share her name and website in that post.

That experience taught me a valuable lesson.  If I am going to spend a good chunk of money and get a strong commercial site going, I had better go all in or pack up.  You can't go into business half way.  All in or fold.   Balls deep.  Shit or get off the pot.  Ok.  Enough metaphors for that.

While on Christmas break I saw a great a video clip of a George Carlin tribute with Louie C.K.  Louie C.K. is a comic genius and speaks so many truths for me.  In this tribute he shares the influence of Carlin on his career.  The key lesson is to keep reinventing his work and push his comedy further and further and get to what is raw, core, and never stop exploring.  Go deeper.   The gold starts at 4:55.



It is too easy to keep producing the same images the same way and getting the same responses.  I keep creating the same stuff, just with different flavors.  I keep getting the same results, and not going too far both in my art and in the success of my art.

The golden nugget from this video made me realize that I get the best feedback from my stuff that pushes me in new directions, new materials, new concepts, new people, new methods, and new feelings.  It is time to let some things go that are finished and run their course with me.  It feels like being given a new wild world to go out and explore!!!

So, if the first lesson was to go all in or go home and the second lesson was to keep reinventing and pushing myself harder, deeper, and into new areas, the third one was a hard criticism on what I have done.  It made me first question what type of photographer/artist I am in the sense of the quality of my work and then kicked me in the ass to do something about it.

I sent out a few proof portrait images.  The subject liked a few and then did something shocking, but also taught me a lesson.  The subject edited  one of my photos and sent it back with the list of edits.  Holy fuck.  Nobody has edited my photos before, especially without telling me first.

At first I was pissed.  How dare somebody touch my work like that!  I went for a walk around the neighborhood and came back and decided to look at the edits and compare them to the original I had sent out.  In came the head kick of humility and the lesson - Karl, your digital photo editing skills are kind of rudimentary and basic.  Karl, you do some digital photo editing really well, but if you are going to do this seriously, you really have to get better at it.

I use Adobe Lightroom for my photo workflow, everything from downloading and storage, through editing and refining, to creating a print or digital output.  It has many great tools that are similar to what can be found in the traditional darkroom.  It greatly complimented my darkroom knowledge and helped me make the transition from film to digital.   All along I denied the value of Photoshop.  I felt it was too complicated to learn.  It made my art a technical exercise, not a passion of the soul.  I would get lost in all the layers and gadgets and my art would lose its soul.  All of these were excuses, not reasons.

I am in the middle of an intensive Photoshop course now and am finally beginning to understand that its a wondrous tool box that can liberate so many of the limitations that straight photography places on me.  I am quickly realizing that I am not making the best art I can and honoring my subjects by my reticence to learning this important (and let's face it, industry) tool.   It is sort of like learning magic.

I've learned many new things that remind me of the Harry Potter universe.  Magic has both its good and bad arts.  In the books, all Hogwarts students had to learn the Magic of the Dark Arts.  For some it became their primary tool for power, for others it became a last-use weapon or a knowledge on how to defend ones self from it.

I think this is true of Photoshop as well.  There are so many ways to manipulate photos within that program.  There is the subtle stuff like correcting for perspective, saturating or de-saturating colors, reducing wrinkles, getting rid of pimples, etc.  There is the heavy stuff like distorting the body to look thinner, taller, whiter, darker, and closer to an ideal of what someone should like vs. what they truly look like.  All of these tools are available for the photographer to change the photograph from simple edits to a work of fiction.  These are some potentially dark arts that I need to learn and master.  How I use my knowledge and mastery of the dark arts will determine whether my intent was good or not.

Below is a video about the dangers of Photoshop.



I haven't written a blog post in the past few weeks due to all the work I am pushing into my art while still working my paying job and trying to maintain a life.  I am not getting any younger.  I know I have many more years behind me than ahead of me.  I need to get my art done before I die and I need to get off my lazy ass and do it.  I also have to do it better or why do it all?

*I hate it when I hear a great quote and can't find who said it.  Google can only do so much I guess.  I know it was an author. 

NY again

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space - Umberto Boccioni - MoMA - 112211

I got back Monday from a four night trip to New York.  This was not a work trip, nor a photography class trip.  This was a "me" trip.

During my extended break of the last two months,  I traveled with and to see family twice.  I got to do a lot of alone traveling up to Montana, but the family was part of it.  I needed this trip, my trip.  My trip to be alone and let myself choose the paths of the day.  I had to take this trip because I probably wont have a block of time off like this ever again.  I rarely take big trips for myself. 

My hotel was near Penn Station on 29th St.  Nothing fancy, but was clean, had free breakfasts, and convenient to multiple subways.  I went to many museums, walked all over the city in beautiful autumn weather, visited a few places again that I needed to feel a part of and explored a few new ones.

I did not give myself any city photographic assignments while their except one. I knew I was going to see lots of the city so I was sure I would photograph something.  I visited one neighborhood with a special name that I wanted to visit for years.   My one photographic city theme I self-assigned was personal, deeply personal.

I photographed two models separately, Megan and Valya.  Valya referred Megan for a special project I am working on.  We had a short thirty minute session where I got what I needed.  Megan did a great job and was pleasant to work with.

My session with Valya was an artistic gift, as always.  I will post a few photos from our session and write about it in a few days.

This trip turned very personal for me during my wanderings about town.  I had time to think of the city, my life, my choices, and who I am.  I didn't get many answers, but at least I found some questions I can stop asking.  I also realized that somethings are still too close to push into the past.

I left Monday to return home.  As I got into the taxi to go to JFK, I realized I was at a border moment of my own.  I had to either go home to San Francisco that moment or I would need to leave my California life, and all it held, and lose myself in the sea of anonymity and clean slates that New York could provide.  At that moment, I thought about cancelling the cab and walking away to disappear.  New York does that to me.

New York isn't self destructive for me.  Every time I go there I get pulled into a world where no one knows me, has expectations of me, or really even cares about me.   We all coexist, weaving in and out of each others' lives on the sidewalks, in the subways, and through out our days in the city.  Even though we see each other and may even say something like "excuse me", our lives will probably never intersect again and the mutual anonymity keeps our hearts quiet and private.   In a way, that is more liberating than anything I have felt in my life - to feel the world let go of me and just let me be.

New Stuff

Mollee and Courtney - 103111

A few weeks ago I went out with two of my favorite photographers/model friends.  Courtney and Mollee took me to their secret abandoned house to do a shoot with both of them.  I wanted to photograph Mollee for my borders series and then photograph both of them for another conceptual series.

Mollee - 103111

I forget how much fun, energy, and creativity comes out during a shoot with kindred spirits.  Mollee and Courtney are amazing photographers and know how to work both sides of the camera.  I also enjoyed their enthusiasm, laughter, hard work, and mostly, their belief in my work and efforts to help me get what I needed.

Courtney - 103111

We went out for dinner afterward and had one of the best chats about our lives, art, and other stuff.  Makes me glad to be where I am and to know great people.

Mollee and Courtney - 103111

Little Bird - The White Stripes

“I definitely want Brooklyn to be christened, but I don't know into what religion yet.”- David Beckam

Valya - 081511

I mentioned in my last post about my trip to New York that I spent an afternoon in Brooklyn.  I got off the train and met up with Valya, a great model I worked with last year while in the city.  As I went to meet her I was worried that the great art we created was a one time deal, but I was excited to see if we could try it again.

We talked a bit and I learned how to use her Canon since I didn't bring my serious equipment and had to borrow her camera.  We then set about the session.  I am not going to talk about the shoot other than Valya was amazing to work with again and always made sure to help me get what I wanted.  She inspired and contributed toward the art we made.

Valya - 081511

During and after the photo shoot, we talked about the work I want to create when I return during my longer visit later this fall.  I am developing a few concepts with her that are exciting and departures from my prior stuff. 

We had lunch after the shoot and I had to catch the subway to get to the airport.  During the trek back to Manhattan I reflected on the photo shoot, the conversation, and the energy. Valya is a top model that makes each shoot important, fun, erotic, and helps create great stuff way beyond what I wanted.

Thanks again Valya!  You are a true artist, muse and great lady.

Valya - 081511

"Literature isn't innocent."... - Roberto Bolaño

*Butterfly  - 080111

Nor is art or life.  Innocence is just a part of the spectrum of the world and the things in it.  When we look at all of the world (both concrete and abstract), most things can be innocent or exist innocently until innocence is lost, but are rarely innocent forever.  Innocence can be lost through many means direct and indirect, good and bad.

I did a quick online search of "What is the opposite of innocence."  The answers depended on how I chose to define "innocence" or innocent."

If I defined it as "blameless" then the antonyms were: badness, blame, corruption, evil, guilt, and sin.

If I defined it as "harmlessness" or  "naivete "then the antonyms were: experience, impurity, knowledge, treacherousness, wildness.

Another writer offered a more elaborate pairing of words:
guilt/innocence
cunning/innocence
worldly/innocence
offensive/innocence
immoral/innocence
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080423162403AA0sdcK

I have a much used metaphor of comparing many of life's things to drugs.  Drugs are neither good or bad, it is how we use them that are on the spectrum of good to bad.  Drugs are not innocent either.  The same thing can be said of sex, money, humor, power, porn, art, propaganda, politics, cars, travel, humility, confidence, and love. Innocence itself is neither good, nor bad.  It is how it is used or removed (lost) that is good or bad or just is.

"Literature isn't innocent."  The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolaño

When I was a teacher, we were supposed to plan our classes for the lowest level learners, yet provide content for higher level learners.  If I looked at mathematical innocence (naivete) versus knowledge, I had to make sure my content addressed both.  The same is true for so many other publicly consumed items.

The number one rule for a comedian is "know your audience."  Are they expecting clean comedy like Jerry Seinfeld, political comedy like Tina Fey, or ribald comedy like Bob Saget, or thought provoking, personal, and explicit comedy like Louise C.K. or Sarah Silverman.  In my opinion, all of their comedy is good, genuine, and appropriate for the right audiences.

Comedy is definitely not innocent though.  Clean comedy is not innocent.  It points out bad behavior, bad people, the human condition, and tough subject matter.  It just doesn't have all the fucks, shits, assholes and other expletives.

Art is not innocent either.  It is up to the creator's intent whether it is innocent.  Some people make innocent art.  Children drawing flowers, rainbows, and puppies is about as innocent as can be, but not all children's art is innocent.  A teacher friend of mine saw a child's crayon drawing that showed a grown up hurting a child.  After contacting the counselor and asking questions, they reported the incident to Child Protective Services as a possible abuse case.  It turned out to be a severe abuse case.  This young boy definitely created art that was not innocent.  It came from knowledge and experience.  This is an example when non-innocent art was the most important art that boy could create.  It may have saved his life.

If a child's drawing is not innocent, can a piece of art featuring a nude figure be innocent?  It depends on the artist's intent.  It also depends on how each individual viewer of the piece interprets it.  That is true for all art I guess.  What I may see as innocent rainbows, butterflies and leaves could be interpreted completely differently by someone else.  Why would it be interpreted as possibly loss innocence?  I believe it is the artist or viewers own life knowledge, personal psyche, and other experiences that shape that view.

There are many forces out there on all sides of the political spectrum trying to squelch artistic expression that is not innocent.  Some use religion or profit or politics or power or prejudice or many other reasons to bury non-innocent expression.  Is there ever a time when it is right to censure for innocence?  I am sure there are a few, but only a very few.

Sebastiao Salgado creates amazingly beautiful photos using the finest craft to make a finished fine art print.  The composition is perfect, along with the tonality, framing, and other artistic aspects.  The subject matter though is often tough, charged, sometimes tragic, and often painful.  It is not innocent.  He is sharing the loss of innocence of humanity through showing starvation, slave labor, war, and other catastrophes.  The perpetrators of the evil depicted would probably like to censure him.

**Bernini's Ludovica - Rome - Jan 2010

I gave up trying to make purely innocent pretty art a few years ago.  I appreciate those who can make it and know I don't want to and am kind of lousy at it.  I  enjoy making aesthetically beautiful photos, but they are not innocent.  My art lost its innocence because I have lost mine as well.  Some of my lost innocence resulted in knowledge, guilt, experience, corruption, and even fun.

My art is not anywhere near the importance or impact of Salgado's.  While we share that our art isn't innocent, that is about the only commonality.  This is good because there is already one Salgado and one Karl.   I've learned that art hates redundancy.

To believe things like art, literature, music, and other creative endeavors of life are or should be only innocent actually takes away any  realistic hope of it being innocent.  By demanding it being innocent, we force it to become ignorant.  We are censuring what it is.  There is a growing battle between purity, innocence and simple thoughts against wisdom, exploration, hedonism, expression, and progress.  We all will need to decide which side we lean to in this culture war and how far we are willing to advocate (or fight) for it.   Just by how I stated those words, I guess I tipped my hand on which side my beliefs stand. All artistic outlets shouldn't have to be innocent to survive and succeed.  Life is not innocent, nor should art be artificially innocent either.

*Taken in my innocent days of photography.
** Was Bernini capturing a non-innocent moment?  Did my photo of it make it lose its innocence? 


Don Henley - The End Of The Innocence by jpdc11

Future focus... or not

Rain (via lensbaby) - 062711

I first heard about it from a photographer friend on Facebook.  Another friend asked me about it over the weekend.  Today I read an article about it at Slate.com.  It is being touted as the biggest evolutionary jump in photography since... the beginning of photography.  It is called Lytro and soon you wont have to focus on whatever you photograph.

Looking about isn't a techie-gadget blog, but some things catch my eye and Lytro is one of them.  In current digital and film cameras, the photographer composes the shot, focuses, and shoots.  The depth of field is regulated by the aperture and determines how deep the focus goes into the scene.  Inside the camera, the image is captured on a single plane of film or sensor.  Lytro is a completely different way of doing that.  The photographer composes the shot and pushes the button.  No focus or depth-of-field to worry about.

Lytro does its magic by taking multiple images at the same instant.  When you download the photo package to your computer, the software lets you decide what is in focus and what isn't.  This works really well when your image has details in multiple layers of depth.  This technology can also work for 3D images as well.  You can watch the silly video below or play with some Lytro photos at this site.  It is fun.



Some professional photographers feel threatened by this.  All those years of study and thousands of pictures learning how to master depth of field, special focus, and technique are useless because this camera takes care of that.  Now everyone can take a photo and have the power to adjust the focus after it is shot.  Amateurs are going to think they are pros because of these new powers.  As a professional photographer, I am not worried.  I believe this is good for the art.

First, my digital camera is a 13mp full frame camera that creates large RAW files of a single image that I focused to the way I want it.  The Lytro will create a photo that has the same focus, but its resolution will not be as high.  This makes the Lytro more of an amateur camera with users not expecting to make large prints of fine detail.

Second, my choice of focus and depth is important, but regardless of whether it is film or digital, most of the work occurs in post processing.  I touch up the photo (But not overly so.  I hate waxy-skinned perfection), dodge and burn, adjust saturation, crop, and perform other bits of my magic on the image.  The focus was only the beginning to making it a finished image.  I enjoy having that control over the process.  I doubt amateurs will do much more than select focus, maybe de-saturate it and call it good.  It will not be a refined and finished image.

Third, the old adage, "The tide raises all boats." is true for photography.  By improving the quality of amateur photographers shots, it will force the pros to improve as well.  I know I always have room to improve my craft and art.  I welcome the challenge.

Finally, I have to add that most amateurs don't consider composition of the image.  They don't often think of how a certain shadow, texture, color, or expression will work with the overall photo.  They take snaps of their friends at parties and put them up on Facebook.  I know this sounds elitist on my part, but I've earned a right to differentiate my work from the masses.  That is what separates it from amateur stuff.  Lytro is going to change how we photograph things, but it want necessarily make every photo art.  It is the artist that does that.


Video Note - This video is from a memorial concert for George Harrison.  It is great to see the Clapton, Starr, and other great musicians having fun singing this song.  George's son Dhani looks like a young version of his dad.

Evolution in Art

Young Spartans, 1860- Edgar Degas

“If the classical body is a representation of man’s baseness, then the evolutionary body is a return of that which has been repressed. And if the classical nude represents pure form, intellect, rationality… … then the evolutionary body figures the subject as hopelessly bound to his corporeality “ - Martha Lucy – Reading the Animal in Degas’s Young Spartans [1].

What a difference a few centuries makes in the Western art world. Up through the Baroque period, artists were experimenting with ways to portray the human form, whether lofty and noble, mortal and liminal, or debased and low down. Even with all these varied ways of showing the levels of humanity, there was usually a respectful acknowledgment, or at least nod, to the church and religion. Then along came Darwin and his The Origin of the Species positing the theory of evolution. Artists, academics, and other influential groups starting to represent scientific principles that were contrary to church dogma.

In Edgar Degas’s painting, Young Spartans, there are three groups of people. In foreground left, a group of bare breasted women tauntingly and challengingly face toward a group of men. On the right side a group of nude young men face toward the women, sizing up their potential adversaries/mates and stretching as if readying for competition or a fight. Between the two groups stand clothed characters in the background, observing the upcoming competition/courtship.

In Lucy’s article, the author proposes the characters on both sides, but especially the young males represent Degas’ intentional use of evolutionary theory to mock the historic classical artistic values honoring the perfection of the human physique. The group of men is shown in all different poses that could represent the major steps of evolution, from crawling on all fours to a limber, classical body.

While writing about this, Lucy uses multiple times the term “atavistic” which comes term “atavism”. Atavism is “tendency to revert to ancestral type.”[2] This “tendency” to show traits of our ancestors is evident in the development of the human fetus. The developing fetus will grow through stages where it has a tail, has similar structures to non-vertebrates and then lower vertebrates until it becomes a recognizable human form. The atavistic growth is evident in Degas’ rendering of the men going from ground crawlers to upright males. This willingness of purposefully including evolutionary elements into the artwork is not a subtle subversive message aimed at religion, but an obvious attack on the principles that humans are stationary beings near to perfection and modeled after God. Instead of using a religious theme to promote the propaganda of the church, Degas is potentially using his painting to promote the ideas of science and evolution. This anti-church act may have resulted in his death a century or two earlier, but must have been more acceptable as science and its disciplines were being accepted by the academic and higher levels of society and culture during this period of Degas’ art life.



1. "Reading the Animal in Degas's Young Spartans" by Martha Lucy - Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide - a journal of nineteenth-century visual culture.

2. Altavism – Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atavism
 

The masked work of James Ensor

Self-Portrait With Masks - 1899 James Ensor

“The mask traditionally functioned as a complex carrier of meaning. For Ensor, it seems also to have allowed for boundaries to be blurred, and for certain questions to be raised? “ - Richard Kalina – Looking for James Ensor

The purpose of a mask is to hide identity while adding a new one. We wear masks for special occasions, Halloween, and to commit crimes. According to this article, James Ensor used them to both hide the identity and to place a deep symbol into his art.

Ensor’s mom owned a shop that sold masks. Growing up around masks must have given him an appreciation of the power they hold. He knew real people existed behind the mask, but by wearing them gained new identities. He used this ability to switch persona as metaphors in his photos.

The Astonishment of the Wouse - 1889 James Ensor

In the painting, The Astonishment of the Mask Wouse, Ensor presents common characters (e.g., an old woman, a helper,etc.) that are part of every day life and hides them behind masks. By masking these characters, the familiarity of the character to the viewer is loss because the mask makes us see a hidden side of them. We wonder if the mask represents what the wearer wants us to think of them. The mask may also represent what they are trying to hide from us, but comes out when we try to see humans as being more complex than initial appearances allow.

We all wear masks that present us as different people in different circumstances. At work, home, church, public meetings, on the bus, etc., we put on disguises to protect ourselves from our secrets. In Bruce Springsteen’s song Brilliant Disguise, he first sings of the disguises worn by his wife:

So tell me who I see 
when I look in your eyes 
Is that you baby 
or just a brilliant disguise 
Later in the song he confesses that he wears a brilliant disguise as well: 
So when you look at me 
you better look hard and look twice 
Is that me baby 
or just a brilliant disguise… 
… God have mercy on the man 
Who doubts what he's sure of.

Maybe Ensor used masks to show that we all wear them to pretend to be something else. I think he also painted them to show that while we think the mask looks one way to us, those looking at us see something much different, something unintended and unwanted.

She Wants Revenge - An Exhibit Exercise

Judith Slaying Holofernes - Artemisia Gentileschi

I got an interesting assignment in my art class last semester.  I had to go to a few local art museums and find a piece I appreciated and build my own "exhibit" around it based on a unifying theme.  The themes could not be an artist (Dali), artistic era (Baroque) or region/country (Italian art).  I had to find pieces of art during the periods we studied and virtually borrow them for our fantasy exhibit.

I went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and saw a photo of Andy Warhol's gunshot wound scars taken by Richard Avedon.  After learning about the circumstances behind the shooting, I found my theme, women who seek vengeance.

I decided the women could be real, fictional, or mythical and be represented in paintings, sculpture, film, or any other artistic medium.  The artists could be men or women.  I found it interesting though how male and female artists depict their avenging ladies.  Artemisia Gentileschi's three paintings of the biblical Judith story as she beheads Holofernes has passion and conviction in the justice of the moment.  Artemisia was one of the few successful Italian Baroque woman painters.  She was raped and treated poorly afterward (belittled, tortured, and commoditized) early in her adulthood.  Did that influence the anger and disdain you see in Judith's face?  Please compare it to the painting of the same story by Caravaggio.

Now, on to the show.

She Wants Revenge

a fictional exhibit

She Wants Revenge

This exhibit shares with the viewer the theme of women seeking violent revenge or punishment on those who wronged them.  The reasons for the revenge could be stolen loves, betrayal of trust, political differences, or rejection.

While all of the works have one or more avenging women, most of the pieces were created by men.  You are encouraged to look at each piece and consider the story, the characters and the artists and performers to compare how feminine vengeance has been portrayed for the past 500 years.

1. Judith Slaying Holofernes 1614 - 1620, 2. Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes 1625  3. Judith and her Maidservant 1613-1614
Artist: Artemisia Gentileschi
Media: Oil on Canvas Painting
Movement: Italian Baroque
Location: 1. Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Napoli Italy, 2. Palazzo Pitti, Florence 3. The Detroit Institute of the Arts.
Images Sources: Wikipedia

Judith beheading Holofernes - Caravaggio

Medusa’s Head on Athena’s Shield - 1595-1596
Artist: Caravaggio
Media: Oil Painting
Location: Florence
Movement: Italian Baroque
Image Source: wikipedia
Notes: Medusa was born and grew into a ravishingly beautiful woman.  She was a priestess in Athena’s temple.  She and Poseidon, “God of the Sea”, slept together in Athena's temple.  Athena became angry and changed Medusa's beautiful hair into snakes and her face so horrid that her onlookers would turn to stone.  After Persues beheaded Medusa, and he put her head on Athena’s shield as a weapon.

1. The Sons of Niobe Being Slain by Apollo and Diana 1660 -1670, 2. Death of Niobe's Children 1591  3. Les Enfants de Niobe tués par Apollon et Diane  - 1770
Artist: 1. Jan de Bisschop, 2. Abraham Bloemaert, 3. Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier
Media: 1. Brown wash over black chalk, 2. Oil on Canvas 3, Huile sur papier
Movement: 1. Dutch Baroque, 2. Dutch Baroque (Northern Mannernisms), 3. Romantic
Location: 1. The J. Paul Getty Museum , Los Angeles, 2. Statens Museum of Kunst, Copenhagen 3.Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen, Rouen.
Images Sources: 1. The J. Paul Getty Museum , 2. PD Art 3. PD Art
Notes: As punishment to Niobe, queen of Thebes, for being arrogant, Greek deities Diana and Apollo killed her seven sons and seven daughters from above with bows and arrows.

Maria la Chiquita (Maria the Little One) - 1897
Artist: Jose Guadalupe Posada
Media: Engraving on metal
Location: Posada 36 Grabados, Mexico City
Movement: Mexican Modernist
Image Source: http://www.artoftheprint.com/artistpages/posada_jose_guadalupe_maria.htm
Notes: Maria Villa (prostitute name  - La Chiquita) was a high class prostitute in Mexico City.  On her days off,  she went out with her steady boyfriend Francisco.  He starts seeing another prostitute, Esperanza Gutierrez (prostitue name La Malagueña).  La Chiquita saw them at a restaurant.  In her anger she felt La Malagueña had insulted her honor.  In revenge, she went to La Malagueña’s apartment, words were exchanged and La Chiquita shot her.  As a twist, she used Francisco’s pistol, which he entrusted to her for safe keeping while he went out drinking and to keep him out of trouble.  In her trial she acknowledged the murder as a defense of her honor.  In this engraving, she is standing as if in a duel.  She received 20 years in prison since women were not sentenced to death in Mexico.

Chicago "He had it coming"- 2002
Director: Robert Marshall
Media: Movie
Location/Image Source: Miramax Films
Genre: Musical/Noir

Andy Warhol - 1969
Photograph by Richard Avedon
Movement: Documentary/Post Modern
Location: Surveillance Exhibit - SF MoMA - Spring 2011
Notes: Andy Warhol touching the scar on his belly where Valerie Solanis shot him after he rejected her manuscript.



Kill Bill 2 - 2004 (Opening scene, Beatrix and Superman, Bill’s Death)
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Media: Movie
Location/Image Sources: A Band Apart Films
Genre: Exploitation, homage