Michaelangelo & Me

Antonioni, that is. L'Avventura begins with this image of Anna departing through an archway.

It ends with this image of Claudia and Sandro in a moment of reconciliation in front of Mt. Etna.

Anyone who enjoys black & white images should watch this film, one of the greatest ever made.

Apparently Antonioni at some point called this 1960 film a mystery in reverse: it more or less starts with a solution, and broadens into a mystery. But if one pays attention, it's pretty obvious that the question of Anna's disappearance is of little interest after several days. Early on she has gotten herself out of a relationship that gave her no satisfaction, her disappearance the solution to her dilemma. The continuing mystery is about her friend Claudia, who becomes involved with her fiance Sandro, a man who has conveniently lowered his sights to become a consultant. He wishes he could go back to doing architectural design work, but he's too comfortable being an estimator to bother.

Monica Vitti's portrayal of Claudia's quest reveals a character of incredible strength, intelligence, compassion, and subtlety.

Every image in the film is constructed with the care of a master photographer. That the camera moves around the locations is an added bonus that still photographs aren't afforded.

The currently available DVD from Janus Films is a pretty decent transfer. There was one scratch in the print that I noticed, but generally it's quite clean.

final day for Frank

This scan is from the dust jacket of the most recent edition of the famous book first published in 1958 in France. The first US edition was published by Grove Press in 1959, and it's never really been out of print since.

Under the "better late than never" theory, some mention should be made of last week end's trip to Washington to see the exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of this landmark book. Being only 6 at the time of publication, and not interested in photography books until 2001, I have to accept the opinions of the experts that The Americans truly was something radical for its day. The exhibit doesn't dwell on that aspect of the book, merely mentioning here and there the reception. What is examined in great detail is the process that Robert Frank went through to produce the book: his earlier photography in Peru, Wales, London; his grant application for a Guggenheim Fellowship (which took advantage of his friendship with Walker Evans who edited his application, reviewed it as one of the grant committee, and recommended his acceptance as same); letters to Evans while on the road; recreation of many work prints to give the impression of his editing chores; a display of all the contact sheets from the travels; and two large galleries devoted to the prints selected for the book.

Having exhibition size prints to evaluate the photographs is obviously a big help. None of the prints in the Steidl edition of the book are larger than 7.75 x 5.125 in - not large enough to get more than an impression. The show presents them in a manner which really honors the photographs. The book is more about sequence and context and groupings. The exhibit allows one to appreciate the individual images, while also making some of the sequencing more obvious when prints are directly beside one another on the wall, rather than on following pages of a book. (The most obvious for me was "Belle Isle - Detroit" with an open black car driving left to right followed by "Detroit" of a closed white car driving right to left. They're certainly heading for a collision, which came twelve years later.)

For those who don't have a copy of the book and are interested in all of the material in the exhibit, the catalogue contains much of it, including all the contact sheets, and all the images in the original book. BTW, the sequence is the same, but images are printed in facing pages, whereas Frank's design of the book has each image on its own page facing a blank page with caption.

Today is the final day to see the exhibit in Washington. Sorry this isn't much warning. Alas, the show travels to San Francisco and New York later in 2009. Go see it. The images are still powerful fifty years later.

Thanks to Roger Wiley for making the trip and meeting me in Washington.

Charleston - South Carolina by Robert Frank

doubt not

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For those to the north of north 38 degrees, despair not. Spring really has returned. It's true, we were out with our gloves on this morning, but it was t-shirts by the end of the day.

when will they come out?

Several weeks ago, I asked Joe Reifer what the deal was with all the covered  cars in his neighborhood. They seem to sprout up rather repeatedly. I didn't think there were any around here. Wrong again.

The wife and I were recently out trying to complete another section of the Rivanna Trail that in concept - if not quite in actuality at this point - rings Charlottesville. Being not particularly dedicated to this "project," we've been at it for several years now. The section we traversed lastly was more roadway than trail. Lo and behold - you start looking for them, and they're everywhere, at least around town.

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And unconsciously, I've got them all heading in the same direction...

a return to normalcy

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After a rather harrowing two days of head congestion, parts of which time was spent driving east through the flatlands, we arrived in our state's most populous region. We were far from the only ones visiting the beach in April, but an evening stroll on the "boardwalk" was a pleasant affair that included only a few others.

The next morning, after the free breakfast - during which an inordinate number of individuals exhibited incredible patience to brave the waffle experience - far more people were out taking in the air and the views. The weather had improved over the previous day's as well...

I won't deny that we've contributed to the commercialization of this area. We stayed in a new hotel with the ocean nearly at our feet. The hotels do a fine job of blocking the view - unless you are willing to pay the tariff, and become part of their clientele.

My other pet peeve? City vehicles driving on the beach, driving on the boardwalk, driving everywhere pedestrians should have exclusive access. Another reason it's hard to consider this thoroughfare a boardwalk.

the drawer

It's not like as if nothing as been going on around here. Obviously life continues, much as it's been in the past. The modern need to chronicle and broadcast every move is probably at an all time low. Well, that low must be in the near past, because here I am writing about some dank recess.

Several weeks ago I happend to glance at some notes from months ago. At the top of the list of things to work on, was an idea that began last summer, and the slightest periphery of it was glimpsed. Now I'm some ways into it, but as usual have no real idea where I'm headed with it. One step at a time, I set up the pictures and see what comes of it. Still working with 4 x 5 film, I find myself working on a composition, exposing one or two sheets of film, then stopping to take those exposures to the lab and see results prior to tearing apart the composition and moving on to something else. I'm obviously in no hurry, to find out where I'm headed, or to see the exposures.

It's not necessarily my intent to be as vague as possible. I guess it comes naturally...

...the contents of my drawer, a collection of odds & ends over some 20+ years with no discernable reason for their retention, other than they're too real to dispose of. The use of lights and an interior working environment has been a big change from the usual landscape work of the past. Here I'm creating small interior landscapes.

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a week, already

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No excuses really, but there seem to be other concerns lately. I've fallen off the treadmill of posting and reading out there on the world wide wasteage, the ultimate black hole of time.

Here's something from last week from nosing around the neighborhood while waiting for CLW during dance class. It may eventually show up on Google Earth south of CHO - those are landing lights/strobes in the bgrnd.

a twist - no shouting

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What would our local luminary TJ, guide, hypocrite, and gauge in all things political, architectural, and human have to say about the current state of access to the building which he built and which this chunk of marble now stands?

Calling the requisite authorities to get clearance to photograph in the Rotunda at the University of Virginia, I was told I could carry a camera into the building, as any other member of the general public was permitted to do. But that I could not bring a tripod on which to place the camera, or an easel on which to place a book in order to continue my Landscapes in the Landscape project. The use of tripods denotes some kind of professional use of equipment, and there is no circumstance in which professional usage of the premises is permitted unless it has something to do with university programming.

This seems rather arbitrary, but of course it's one more instance of officials needing to control images created on premises within their spheres of influence, be they public or private. There seem to be three options at this point: 1) carry the Linhof in the backpack into the building, conceal a tripod and go outlaw anyway; 2) get to the point where I can use the Linhof hand held; 3) use something other than the 4 x 5 which can be more readily hand held.

Is this what laws are intended to do to us, make us into outlaws in order to control us against our own natures?

wfmu beg-a-thon

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whose wysiwyg?

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Obviously the same photograph, from William Eggleston's Guide. The first scan is from the 2nd edition copyright 2002 of the Guide. The second scan is from The Nature of Photographs by Stephen Shore, the 2nd edition copyright 2007. Both these books are recent additions to my library. I've never seen the original editions of either.

Given that Eggleston's color photography is supposed to be about color, and not necessarily the content, how are we to evaluate the photographs when the colors are reproduced in such widely varying shades of yellow? This is far from a scientific study, merely a quick & dirty reproduction of what I see when looking at the two books side by side. The prints are reproduced as closely as I see them given a reasonable amount of time. And what I see is that the reprint of the Eggleston book of his own photographs is not very well done. Both books are printed in China.

What this suggests to me is that our current obsession with color management is a fundamentally bogus concern. If you're making your own prints to either sell or hang on the wall of your own house, naturally you want to get them as close as possible to the originals. But that's never going to be very close, given the disparity of materials - digital and transparency film being transmissive, and paper prints being reflective. Once you enter the domain of book printing, whether POD or offset, the fidelity to the original becomes much more of a challenge. There are so many variables, that getting an image good enough seems to be a much more sane goal than chasing the vanishing tails of perfection.

The other thought this suggests is that our current obsession with technical perfection is merely an excuse for either pretty pictures or images that don't communicate much thought or feeling.

greetings from Grundy, pt. 4

 

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Joe Reifer commented about the first Grundy entry:

My gut reaction was that this is a pretty insane man vs. nature shot. But then I realized the semantics are wrong. Obviously the game is over and it's a man defeated nature shot.

and TJ Avery also pointed out:

Here in flat, featureless Houston, the common method of building anything is usually to reduce the land to nothing but dirt first. Our neighborhood was built just that way. The result is that everything existing now (houses, trees, shrubs, green spaces (what few there are), and streets) are 100% man-made or placed by man in a desired fashion (i.e. per some design).

...You could argue that the clean, orderly appearance of such HOA (home owner's association) governed neighborhoods is beautiful. Why else would so many want to live there? But it's all fake. Not one bit of it was shaped by nature in a natural way.

There is plenty of evidence of nature being literally blasted into submission, especially in the latest addition to my "Continued Exploration" gallery. But most of our suburban and urban landscapes have no natural element left to them - that haven't been managed and rearranged by humans.

I think we look at landscapes like these in Grundy and are in awe of the manipulation because the human presence is still so fundamentally tenuous. With a density of only 54 people / square mile, there aren't too many of them physically present. But their works of destruction certainly are. On the other hand, go to any city and we accept the fact that the natural world has been subjugated to such a degree that it's not anywhere in our consciousness. The masses of concrete, steel, and humanity completely overpower the environment in which they stand, whereas we can still see perfectly clearly the environment in which a place like Grundy stands.

Which is the more "truthfu"l environment? (Is there any point in such a question?) Grundy seems much more a work in progress than somewhere like New York, Houston, or Los Angeles. In which case it probably stands a better chance of being "saved" from it's own "progress."

greetings from Grundy, pt. 3

 

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It wasn't until I was leaving that I became aware of it, but since Grundy is built on one of the few flat pieces of land in the county, and that bit of land happens to be in the flood plain at the intersection of the Levisa and the Slate rivers, they're currently in the process of surrounding the town with a concrete levee with movable gates, courtesey of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The county lost most of its records in a 1977 flood, so they have good reason to try to prevent this from happening again.

The only non courthouse large format photograph of this past weekend was from Grundy, somewhere I'd definitely like to visit again, despite my claims of ugliness from the past couple of entries. A scan of the 4x5 original has been added here. Grundy happens to be ripe territory for visual evidence of large scale manipulations of the environment by humans.

greetings from Grundy, pt. 2

 

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Despite what may be claimed by John & Margaret Peters in their book Virginia's Historic Courthouses, that Buchanan County became one of the wealthiest in Virginia after the oil "crisis" of the early 1970's, the Wikipedia entry lists the county as the poorest in the state and among the 100 poorest counties in the country. A cursory afternoon drive by viewing from this past weekend also confirms that it is one of the ugliest places in the state. Not the landscape itself, which is a warren of mountains and streams in the eastern Appalachians. As per usual, it's how humans have shaped it that has made it such an atrocity.

With only about 29,000 residents in an area of 504 square miles, there is a population density of about 54 people per square mile. Compare that with Arlington County's 7000 per square mile. The problem appears to be that 90% of those individuals live in mobile homes, surely some of the least attractive housing ever developed for humans. Buchanan County really has no flat land on which to build dwellings, so the housing/trailers are grouped along the stream beds. While there may be a population density of only 54/sm, the ubiquitous trailer and the associated debris of modern life contribute to an environment that is overwhelmingly visually polluted. In the summer it may be less obtrusive, hdden by foliage. But at this time of year, without any snow to hide its ugliness, the intrusion of humans on the land is blatantly obvious.

NOTE TO SELF: spend more time in Buchanan County to see if the above impressions stand up with repeated visits & further photographic exploration

greetings from Grundy, pt. 1

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This just in from the western portion of our great state of Virginia. Much of the damage in Buchanan County was inflicted in the early part of the 20th century. Now I think they are still trying to deal with the damage done by earlier generations. 180 degrees behind me was the site (the large cleared area inside the river bend) for a Super Wally World that was never built. No telling if it ever will be.

Update on Wednesday, January 28, 2009 at 07:06AM by KMW

An interesting note about the Army Corps of Engineers photo on Wikipedia: compare it with my photo of Grundy in Greetings from Grundy pt. 3. All the buildings between the road through town and the river at the outside of the curve have been removed. That area is now either part of the levee system or outside of it's new boundary. It looks like fully half of the commercial space of Grundy has been removed to protect the other half.

some kind of motto

Seen in a car window yesterday while waiting for CLW during the weekly piano lesson. I can get behind this, despite the seeming end of my rope spinning project.

BTW, here are several more pics from yesterday's cold spell.

"bubble"

 

Another experiment from Steven Soderbergh, a man who will seemingly try anything. My initial reaction to this low budget feature shot on HD video for a reported $1.6 million was that it is Soderburg's entry in the Dogme 95 category: a non professional cast, no lighting other than what is available on location, no music other than some driving acoustic guitar, direction, camera, and editing by the same individual: Soderbergh.

The film doesn't strictly adhere to the Dogme 95 rules, but it's obviously an attempt to create a work of immediacy that doesn't rely on the artifice of the huge Hollywood machine that Soderbergh wields remarkably well.

Set in Parkersburg, West Virginia, the story revolves around a woman Martha whose life is spent caring for her ailing father and working at the local doll factory. Her "best friend" is a young man who also works at the factory. There are multiple scenes of them working and eating lunch in the break room. Bubble is one of the few American fictional films ever to truly give an accurate depiction of what factory work is like, the crushing repetition, the poverty of emotion and expectation, to be relieved only by the consumption of globs of greasy fast food washed down with 32 oz. soft drinks.

Small in all ways, Bubble has only a modicum of surface emotion revealed by the non professional actors playing themselves. But the scarcity of expectation creates a blank slate on which to project the undercurrents of jealousy, betrayal, and ultimately murder.

reshoots

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On any project that goes as many places (probably more than 200 buildings) and lasts as long (entering the fourth year, and at least another one to go) as this courthouse project has, it's bound to be necessary to do some reshoots. I'm going through what I've got, and naturally the earliest work has the most problems with conforming to the design of the more recent work. These past two weekends I've spent some time travelling to relatively close courthouses in order to reshoot subjects in better light, and in the case of last week to fill in a slight gap. Yesterday the clouds finally gathered and produced the predicted rain, forcing me to grab a couple of exposures in Cumberland County with precipitation on the camera. Not a desired consequence for the Sinar. The methodology has been refined over time, and I'm seeing what could be improved in the earliest exposures.

versatile

WARNING! HUMOR ALERT!

 

Pamela Seymour Smith Sharp

Willoughby Sharp in 2006

From the NY Times obit of Willoughby Sharp, I've learned of the death of the respected and loved conceptual artist who was a writer, educator, curator, performer, publisher, video visionary, and more. Read this article to find out about several of his infamous pieces, such as Stay, a performance with a seduction, a gunshot and a broken video feed at a crucial moment, and Full Womb, in which he tumbled in a dryer with a baby bottle for fifteen minutes.

The online version of his obituary was altered slightly from the printed copy which first caught my attention. The latter gave Mr. Sharp's profession as "Avant-Gardist." Without casting any aspersions on Willoughby, and knowing that his is a tall order to fill, I think I've finally found what I want to be when I grow up. It's taken a long time, but better late than never. Avant-Gardist. Yeah. It's going to be a stretch, but WTF it's a new year and these are the kinds of things one can decide independently.

Sorry to say I never knew Willoughby.  My sympathies to his family and friends. But at least now I know what to do with my life.

age vs. beauty

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Perhaps "third time's the charm." These roses are holding on remarkably well. This probably has something to do with where they're being stored: in the basement where there is only a modicum of natural light, none of it direct. While they're now 13 weeks past their date of expiration, it seems they're more beautiful than ever, and haven't changed  much since the last entry. Which inevitably suggests another series.

And don't forget that this is evidence that some things do improve with age.

"shoulda-woulda-coulda"

 

This came in the mail today, an invitation to participate in the portfolio review/project review/single image competition in Santa Fe at what used to be called the Santa Fe Center for Photography. Is this yet another means to separate photographers from their money - as if the entire digital "revolution" wasn't effective enough? If I decide to participate, am I going to be sharing space with the likes of "Erin?"

Anyone out there got some experience with portfolio reviews that they care to share? I'd really like to have my cynicism about these things destroyed...