Sunday, July 31, 2016
Friday, June 10, 2016
Thoughts on art.
A camera is just a tool that can be used to create Art (with a capital A) just as a pencil, piece of charcoal etc. can be used for the same purpose. The amount of time it takes to gain facility with a pencil does not insure that the product is Art. Just as buying a 5000 dollar camera doesn't necessarily give the owner artistic credibility. Almost all, so called, visual art is, in fact, craft and interior decoration that is palatable to an uneducated mass. With a camera, the craft, the technique of making an in-focus image is much easier to acquire then for most other media, but an in-focus closeup of a flower is still just an in-focus closeup of a flower, and has nothing to do with art whether done with colored pencils, oil paint, pastel, a computer program or a digital camera.
I took photography with a guy named Harry Callahan and his approach to the photographic image was both arcane and illusive. There are photographic images that are Art (with a capital A) but developing the skill and sensibility to capture those images is just as difficult as developing the hand skills.
A camera is just a tool that can be used to create Art (with a capital A) just as a pencil, piece of charcoal etc. can be used for the same purpose. The amount of time it takes to gain facility with a pencil does not insure that the product is Art. Just as buying a 5000 dollar camera doesn't necessarily give the owner artistic credibility. Almost all, so called, visual art is, in fact, craft and interior decoration that is palatable to an uneducated mass. With a camera, the craft, the technique of making an in-focus image is much easier to acquire then for most other media, but an in-focus closeup of a flower is still just an in-focus closeup of a flower, and has nothing to do with art whether done with colored pencils, oil paint, pastel, a computer program or a digital camera.
I took photography with a guy named Harry Callahan and his approach to the photographic image was both arcane and illusive. There are photographic images that are Art (with a capital A) but developing the skill and sensibility to capture those images is just as difficult as developing the hand skills.
Friday, April 1, 2016
Thoughts on images
My imagery hovers somewhere in the space between the literal and the unimagined. Things are almost, yet not what they seem and then melt into other possible elements that likewise only exist slightly outside our frame of reference. We have all experienced the disquieting feeling when a subtle movement in our peripheral vision, which we quickly turn our head to see, only confounds us by its disappearance.
At their best, the pictures are visually and formally exciting and their ambiguous message content reveals and re-reveals itself with prolonged viewing.
At their best, the pictures are visually and formally exciting and their ambiguous message content reveals and re-reveals itself with prolonged viewing.
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